#average male songwriter singing about a female love interest is just ‘you look GOOD. I want YOU’

[daisyachain]

Convinced dad to accompany me to Orville Peck as a social experiment. Not an artist I’m that familiar with but hey I know a few songs and he’s a good enough performer on a technical level that it’s entertaining just to watch him and the supporting band do their thing. Kept half an ear on the lyrics out of curiosity as to how identifiably non-heterosexual they were, since it’s kind of part of the (cattle) brand and dad went in with no prior knowledge.

What was interesting is that many of them weren’t strictly clockable and many of those were intuitively clockable. Heterosexuality is so intensely mediated by gender roles that a song about a love interest who drives a rig isn’t as easy to (mis)read as m -> f as a song about a love interest who serves coffee. A song that positions the narrator as a hanger-on or a side piece reads as m -> f when the the narrator is angry or vengeful and less so when the narrator is quietly sarcastic. A love interest that provides comfort or security doesn’t read as female even when a male singer can’t possibly be referring to anything but.

Logically there would be about as many woman truck drivers as gay, but both of them are equally hard to fit into our schema of a truck driver. It’s difficult to imagine a model of heterosexuality not intensely mediated by misogyny; it’s hard to imagine a pop culture narrative or even my real life friends’ relationships position a woman as solid, smart, reliable, or protective. Like with the doctor-fishing accident puzzle, there is a push and pull between misogyny and homophobia in trying to interpret songs/stories that don’t match the societal mold.

Given the historical roots of homophobia in misogyny—homophobia as a violent reaction to relationships with no clear superior in the cases of Edward II(?) and James I, four-thousand-year-old European top/bottom discourse, the conflation of trans women, crossdressing men, drag artists, and gay men as well as the (euro/Anglo but also present elsewhere) societal fixation on that image—I love to wonder if heterosexuality exists.

One common thread through studies of specifically male gay history is that superior/inferior male relationships (distinctions of age, position, or class, cf badgays episode I thiiiiink Qutbuddin Mubarak Shah on slaves being considered boys no matter what age) exist on a different level of social acceptability compared to what we in the present day consider a gay relationship. Superior/inferior relationships aren’t enshrined as heterosexual marriage is and are marginalized as frivolity/peccadillo/improper behaviour, but these still generally have a level of acceptability or at least widespread acknowledgement. Romantic or sexual entanglement between two men of equal status, on the other hand, creates a formal uncertainty where neither is guaranteed to be the superior, where class or position is called into question, where the laws of a patriarchal society cannot apply because the prerequisite does not exist.

Following that thread, a ‘real’ gay relationship is between two men of equal standing. So it goes with the modern conception of lesbian relationships, which have not historically fallen under the same level of scrutiny wrt woman-woman power dynamics because that would require historical writers to consider women having thoughts, and the modern heterosexual relationships.

Except, historically the m/f relationship has been considered (by men) (in many but not all societies) to be a superior/inferior relationship. Many if not most men in the most gender-equal societies today consider it to be superior/inferior, a very real affection born from protectiveness/benevolence/patronage/cuteness aggression as a teacher might feel for a student or an aristocrat for a valet + that just also happens to have a sexual component for reasons of whatever biology. Again, looking at real life people who I know and their rancid dating histories, a lot of men approach dating as a Roman emperor might approach a handsome young house slave.

Following this train of logic: it’s commonly accepted today that the superior/inferior m/m model (often expressed as pederasty) is not strictly ‘gay’ in the modern sense. It’s its own form of relationship that doesn’t really exist in the current conception of love (For Good Reason) but does exist in the current conception of abuse (be it boss/employee sexual harassment or child abuse). Many m/f relationships are conceived of as superior/inferior by the participants. Many, not most, m/f relationships do exist as abusive structures and can only be conceived of as abusive.

Therefore, due to whatever misogyny, historical baggage, and social constraints, ‘real’ heterosexuality is a rare phenomenon, and we have only just recently witnessed its birth as a culturally understood idea. Only with the reform of divorce laws and property ownership in the mid-20th century in a very few countries did real heterosexuality become possible. Most men have not yet achieved it. Straight Men Are Our Smallest Minority Group.