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(To read a great review of Androphilia in Portland's lead fag rag Just Out by Nick Pell, go to www.justout.com, click on current issue and go to page 15. Or visit Jack Malebranche’s site, www.jackmalebranche.com, for the author’s own intro to his work.)
Last night I attended Jack Malebranche’s Androphilia reading at Powell’s on Hawthorne (Portland, OR). I had just finished reading the book, which has been giving me much food for thought over the past weeks, and feelings of both dismay and something close to revelation. Undeniably I was also curious to see who else would be there. I expected the crowd to be close to 100% male and I wasn’t disappointed. The discussion seemed awkward at first, but perhaps that initial vulnerability (I hesitate to use the word, knowing the author probably wouldn’t like it) helped endear Malebranche to his audience. I do not believe anyone, regardless of how much they profess indifference to other peoples’ opinions of or feelings about them, is truly immune to the sense of connecting and sharing an understanding with a group of people, especially when they’re standing in a room right in front of them. Malebranche certainly comes off more likable in person, and by the end of the talk, I felt a sense of relief, almost of some kind of healing, which I’m not sure I can explain yet. Part of it came from the tension beforehand of expecting a showdown of sorts between injured sissies and Mr. Drill-Sergeant Malebranche. And to some extent, with the likes of Kaj-Ann Pepper and a tall gentleman who identified himself as “Mama Jo” amongst the audience, that did happen, but it was relatively civilized and peaceful. Mr. Pepper asked if there was room in the world of masculinity for him to wear a skirt to work. Malebranche basically answered No, although with finesse, saying that when you wear women’s clothing you cut yourself off from other men. “It’s not even that they hate you, it’s that they don’t know how to deal with you,” he said.
Although it wasn’t discussed during the Q&A, Malebranche has made no secret of the fact that he’s an ordained priest in the Church of Satan. I’ve been wondering how that fits in, if it does at all, with his masculine-purist vision. He speaks in Androphilia of manhood as a religion, and I’ve seen posts of his promoting essays with titles like “Satanism and Fascism.” This is the one lingering doubt I have about the possibly dark underlying motives of his androphile philosophy. There seem to be covert gleams of admiration for the accomplishments of fascist regimes in the book, for instance on page 73, in the section on Cultural Masculinity: “The Nazis did an especially impressive job of linking National Socialism to manhood, from their youth programs to the overtly masculine way in which they styled themselves.” Towards the beginning of the reading last night, he said a couple times, in response to a question about whether he was really out to get effeminates, “I don’t have the guns or the manpower to take them out.” It seemed to be said in a jestful spirit, but after mulling it over, I can’t help wondering: “What if you did have the guns and manpower to take them out?” But he clearly states in the book (p. 48), “I don’t advocate poor treatment of effeminates.” Since he seems an honorable man, I’ll take him at his word.
There are a couple other problems I have with Malebranche’s manifesto. As a friend of mine who was also at last night’s reading pointed out, I don’t think Jack Malebranche knows what a feminist really is. Practically the only woman he quotes anywhere in his book is the entertaining but quite insane Camilla Paglia, who can hardly be taken as representative of anyone’s views but her own. Undoubtedly there have been some shrill quasi-separatist feminists in the past who have entirely vilified men and masculinity, but respected feminists like bell hooks have said that true feminism has never been anti-male. (For example, in The Will To Change, hooks asserts, “The radical feminist labeling of all men as oppressors and all women as victims was a way to deflect attention away from the reality of men and our ignorance about them.”) I also see Malebranche as a hypocrite when he derides the way “gays tend to portray straight men as a one-dimensional bunch,” then turns around and does the same thing to gays, painting them all as rainbow-flag-waving, diva-worshipping, “sad, damaged clowns.” What Malebranche doesn’t take into account is that many semi-effeminate homo guys, myself included, are also fed up with the more annoying aspects of gay culture, and have been for some time. I started my own queer alterna-zine in 2005 called Dreck and one of the first things I published was an essay by Jack Malebranche titled “Gay is Dead: Long Live the Homosexual Underground.”
What it boils down to for me is the age-old mantra Live and Let Live. If you’re really into masculinity, great. If you’re really into the opposite of masculinity, great, if that’s something you need to define your life. Personally I’ve reached a point of being fed up with gender politics in general. As Portland artist Mike Kabler said in a recent rant, “Be who you want and fuck who you want and shut up about it.” (I may be paraphrasing slightly.) Even so, I must admit I find much of what Jack Malebranche says in Androphilia about the desirability of masculine traits such as honor and dignity to be true, and his critique of the excesses of gay culture is in many ways incisive and insightful. I walked out of the reading last night feeling like I had more in common with him than I did before. Even if I’m not ready to subscribe wholeheartedly to his masculine religion – or any religion - I think he does deserve the applause he got last night for being the one to start a dialogue on this very touchy, and very timely, topic.
-Tony LeTigre
Last night I attended Jack Malebranche’s Androphilia reading at Powell’s on Hawthorne (Portland, OR). I had just finished reading the book, which has been giving me much food for thought over the past weeks, and feelings of both dismay and something close to revelation. Undeniably I was also curious to see who else would be there. I expected the crowd to be close to 100% male and I wasn’t disappointed. The discussion seemed awkward at first, but perhaps that initial vulnerability (I hesitate to use the word, knowing the author probably wouldn’t like it) helped endear Malebranche to his audience. I do not believe anyone, regardless of how much they profess indifference to other peoples’ opinions of or feelings about them, is truly immune to the sense of connecting and sharing an understanding with a group of people, especially when they’re standing in a room right in front of them. Malebranche certainly comes off more likable in person, and by the end of the talk, I felt a sense of relief, almost of some kind of healing, which I’m not sure I can explain yet. Part of it came from the tension beforehand of expecting a showdown of sorts between injured sissies and Mr. Drill-Sergeant Malebranche. And to some extent, with the likes of Kaj-Ann Pepper and a tall gentleman who identified himself as “Mama Jo” amongst the audience, that did happen, but it was relatively civilized and peaceful. Mr. Pepper asked if there was room in the world of masculinity for him to wear a skirt to work. Malebranche basically answered No, although with finesse, saying that when you wear women’s clothing you cut yourself off from other men. “It’s not even that they hate you, it’s that they don’t know how to deal with you,” he said.
Although it wasn’t discussed during the Q&A, Malebranche has made no secret of the fact that he’s an ordained priest in the Church of Satan. I’ve been wondering how that fits in, if it does at all, with his masculine-purist vision. He speaks in Androphilia of manhood as a religion, and I’ve seen posts of his promoting essays with titles like “Satanism and Fascism.” This is the one lingering doubt I have about the possibly dark underlying motives of his androphile philosophy. There seem to be covert gleams of admiration for the accomplishments of fascist regimes in the book, for instance on page 73, in the section on Cultural Masculinity: “The Nazis did an especially impressive job of linking National Socialism to manhood, from their youth programs to the overtly masculine way in which they styled themselves.” Towards the beginning of the reading last night, he said a couple times, in response to a question about whether he was really out to get effeminates, “I don’t have the guns or the manpower to take them out.” It seemed to be said in a jestful spirit, but after mulling it over, I can’t help wondering: “What if you did have the guns and manpower to take them out?” But he clearly states in the book (p. 48), “I don’t advocate poor treatment of effeminates.” Since he seems an honorable man, I’ll take him at his word.
There are a couple other problems I have with Malebranche’s manifesto. As a friend of mine who was also at last night’s reading pointed out, I don’t think Jack Malebranche knows what a feminist really is. Practically the only woman he quotes anywhere in his book is the entertaining but quite insane Camilla Paglia, who can hardly be taken as representative of anyone’s views but her own. Undoubtedly there have been some shrill quasi-separatist feminists in the past who have entirely vilified men and masculinity, but respected feminists like bell hooks have said that true feminism has never been anti-male. (For example, in The Will To Change, hooks asserts, “The radical feminist labeling of all men as oppressors and all women as victims was a way to deflect attention away from the reality of men and our ignorance about them.”) I also see Malebranche as a hypocrite when he derides the way “gays tend to portray straight men as a one-dimensional bunch,” then turns around and does the same thing to gays, painting them all as rainbow-flag-waving, diva-worshipping, “sad, damaged clowns.” What Malebranche doesn’t take into account is that many semi-effeminate homo guys, myself included, are also fed up with the more annoying aspects of gay culture, and have been for some time. I started my own queer alterna-zine in 2005 called Dreck and one of the first things I published was an essay by Jack Malebranche titled “Gay is Dead: Long Live the Homosexual Underground.”
What it boils down to for me is the age-old mantra Live and Let Live. If you’re really into masculinity, great. If you’re really into the opposite of masculinity, great, if that’s something you need to define your life. Personally I’ve reached a point of being fed up with gender politics in general. As Portland artist Mike Kabler said in a recent rant, “Be who you want and fuck who you want and shut up about it.” (I may be paraphrasing slightly.) Even so, I must admit I find much of what Jack Malebranche says in Androphilia about the desirability of masculine traits such as honor and dignity to be true, and his critique of the excesses of gay culture is in many ways incisive and insightful. I walked out of the reading last night feeling like I had more in common with him than I did before. Even if I’m not ready to subscribe wholeheartedly to his masculine religion – or any religion - I think he does deserve the applause he got last night for being the one to start a dialogue on this very touchy, and very timely, topic.
-Tony LeTigre
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