Unabashed Real Man: A Response from the Author of the Esquire Piece

Tom Chiarella
April 12 at 6:01pm
I'm not sure what you want me to say, but I don't really blame you for being angry. Wasn't my favorite assignment ever, I can tell you and there was much wrestling on the edits. The presumptive heterosexuality of the world must get a little maddening. Obviously it does, hence the website (The Unabashed Queer) I suppose.I liked my first draft of that piece a lot better than what ran, and what ran on yahoo, with those stupid categories just infuriated me. The piece says nothing about "real men" I promise. That's just some stupid headline yahoo made up.What can I say? It'd be a little two faced to apologize, since I can tell you I was sensitive to a lot of this stuff going in. I knew I would take my hits. I had no idea it would go up on yahoo. Personally I love the word snatch however-- why is that disgusting?-- and the word cock was edited out, which just pissed me off. So, what does that add up to? I don't know; I just want to say point taken, made, whatever. Sometimes love the idea of writing something complex in a short space, other times I think that job just sucks. Maybe the link is enough, and maybe you've said your piece but I'm happy to converse about it. Feel free to write me back.Tom

The Unabashed Queer
Today at 11:39am
Thank you for your thoughtful response, Tom.Yes, my website is a response to the mainstream, the heteronormative. I'm always eager to read something about the meaning of a man, or qualities a man should have, etc. Especially when it comes from a heterosexist source (such as Esquire). It's not two-faced to apologize. I understand writing a piece as a job--I guess it's akin to an attorney who represents a client she believes is guilty. My problem with the word "snatch," personally, is that it seems like a close cousin to cunt. Coming from a presumably straight white man makes it even more questionable. It doesn't sound like a term of endearment by any means. The kind of discourse in your piece adds fuel to an already raging fire of misogyny, one that looks at women as objects and encourages men to adhere to certain standards lest their manhood be threatened. I know it is never easy or pleasant to read a personal attack so I appreciate your understanding and sensitivity. To me, that kind of sensitivity, the ability to identify with those of varying identities is the true mark of a man (or woman or anything in between). Instead of what makes a man a man and what makes a woman a woman, aren't we really asking what makes us adults? When do we leave the ignorance and irresponsibility of childhood behind and step up to the plate?

Unabashed Str-Hate Part II: Esquire Tells Us What a Man Is

I cannot trust Yahoo! News to give me important information. Admittedly, I was pleased to see that Stevie Nicks told Lindsay Lohan to “Stand Back” re: Lohan portraying Nicks in a film biopic. Sometimes Yahoo! News includes world events but mostly it is littered with Cosmo Magazine-like headlines: Stars’ Salaries Revealed, Six Things You Say to Ruin Your Date

While innocently checking my email last night I see this newsworthy morsel: “Columnist’s Take on the Qualities of a ‘Real Man.’” Oh yes, I thought, this should be rich.  The link took me to an Esquire Magazine article written by  Tom Chiarella who is the Fiction Editor at Esquire. “What Is a Man," the titles asks, "Characteristics of the Ideal Man."  The subtitle says: Read this. Print it. Thumbtack it to your desk. Thank us later. (And pick up the "How to Be a Man" issue in the meantime.)  There is a fucking “How to Be a Man” issue? I am going to buy a copy, wipe my dirty post-sex ass with it, and send it to the editors.

“A man carries cash,” the piece begins. That explains why the magnetic strip on my debit card is worn out and nearly unreadable. What follows is a list of things a man can do: cook eggs, find anything to watch on TV, "sneak a look at cleavage [without caring] if he gets busted once in a while."  Sigh.  Big gay, dick-eating, sigh.  Maybe Tim Allen is writing under the pseudonym Tom Chiarella.

Here are a few of my favorite parts:

A man loves the human body, the revelation of nakedness. He loves the sight of the pale breast, the physics of the human skeleton, the alternating current of the flesh. He is thrilled by the snatch, by the wrist, the sight of a bare shoulder.

Did this motherfucker just say “snatch?” He’s thrilled by the sight of a “snatch?” What self-respecting "snatch" is letting Tom Chiarella take a look at it? Is he married or just banging hookers? Disgusting.

“When his woman bends to pick up her underwear, he feels that thrum that only a man can feel.” 

So basically he’s turned on watching “his woman” clean up. His woman.  Where is Julia Sugarbaker when you need her to read a chauvinist?

You can tell Chiarella thinks he wrote something really profound and poignant. He goes off on tangents about standing on a street corner “watching stuff” and how he’s like a zoo animal “both captive and free.” Well, I’d like to help him feel like a zoo animal by putting him in the state pen for a few days so he can really get a taste of what a man is when some great, big motherfucker turns him out and makes him take it up the ass.

This is a heinous piece full of misogynist, auto-fellating, self-congratulatory sentiment.  I hate straights.

Unabashed Bromance Makes Me Wanna Die

This movie makes me want to rip my face off, stick needles in whatever is left, and then fuck it. I hate Judd Apatow's films, I hate the name Judd Apatow, I hate the fat guy with the curly hair, and I hate Paul Rudd.

Watch a scene from this bunk-ass movie.

Unabashed Str-Hate

"QUEERS READ THIS" is a leaflet passed out at the 1990 Pride March in New York City published “anonymously by Queers.” It is a manifesto meant to empower, enrage, and fire up complacent gays into action. The leaflet's final section is entitled “I Hate Straights," an epithet that enters my mind on a regular basis.

After seeing an all-gay cast in a performance piece last weekend, I commented to a gay friend that gay people are more talented than straights. "I don't know about that," he said with his brow furrowed. So, in the fine art of Matt Siegel, I took it to the next level and said, "I hate straight people."

"A lot of my best friends are straight," he said as if trying to raise my awareness.

Didn't he know he was simply supposed to agree with me, not try to teach me a goddamn lesson? My absurd comments were meant to bring us together as gay sistas. Gay people rarely say that we hate straights. We rarely turn the tables and try to exclude them and deny their basic human rights. That is the fun in saying the shit.

My biological father's mother, the dreadful cunt, used to say, "You don't hate, you dislike." I hate her. Hate is not a strong word. For instance, I hate when people say, "It is what it is." I hate the Overstock.com commercial with the country couple singing to each other. Levels of hate vary. If it makes you feel better, replace hate with resent. I resent straights unless they are obese--the fats know our pain. I especially resent straight men. I especially, especially resent straight, white men.


A winter day in L.A., 68 degrees and sunny. We all have Uggs and mittens on. I’m discreetly crossing the street toward Quiznos Sub shop. Walking in front of a cop on his motorcycle I think about how I detest the pigs.

"GO BACK WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT CROSS,” I hear over a loud speaker.

Looking over my shoulder, I see an embarrassed man return to the sidewalk. I giggle to myself pondering what I would be like as a cop with access to a loud-speaker. I would definitely be shouting every chance I got, alternating between black woman ("YEAH I GOT YOU. I GOT YOU ON CAMERA. YOU ON CANDID CAMERA, NOW. YOU AIN'T KNOW THAT.") and Faye Dunaway-as-Joan Crawford voices. “I’LL TELL YOU WHATCHA YOU’RE GONNA DO. YOU’RE GONNA MARCH YOURSELF BACK TO THE GODDAMN CURB AND STAY THERE UNTIL I SAY SO.”

Standing in line for a veggie “Sammie”--no mayo or mushrooms, add honey mustard, please--I notice a man around my age, taller, white, with glasses perched atop his head like a lady. He is nice-looking in my quick glance but I don’t ogle as a general rule. As my Sammie makes its way through the conveyor belt toaster, the tall man speaks to me. “Do you work in the Hollywood Production Building? What show do you work on? Where’d you go to college? Where are you from? Cut or Un-cut?” (No, he didn’t say that.) It turns out that he also works in my building so we walk back together. As he rifles through his wallet to give me his business card, he says, “Oh, by the way, I’m not gay.”

I feel my face flush. One cheek embarrassed, the other angry.

“Neither am I,” I say.

“Oh really,” I hear him stammer.

“No, I’m kidding.”

“Well, we should sit down and get coffee some time,” the straight says.

“OH YEAH,” I think, “LET’S DO THAT IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN SUCH A JOY AND HONOR BEING IN YOUR STRAIGHT, IRRESISTIBLE PRESENCE. YOU KNOW US GAY PEOPLE, IF A MEMBER OF THE SAME SEX SPEAKS TO US, WE CAN’T HELP BUT WANT TO BED THEM. THANK YOU FOR PREVENTING ANY EMBARRASSMENT ON MY PART IN SUCH A GENTLE, UNASSUMING WAY.”

I'm not sure what to deduce about this incident because the truth is I probably would have let him S my D. With that said, I never indicated any interest in him whatsoever and for him to clarify his sexuality like that is very typical straight male behavior. It's kind of along the same line of thinking that every gay man is a pedophile, that we cannot help ourselves from sexualizing everything we come into contact with.

I hate straights. It feels good saying it. It rhymes. I really hate the straights who think they're so fuckin' liberal cause they have a gay sibling or a gay friend who they accept. Or cause they support "No on 8." I hate straights who think they are down with me and my struggle so they can make jokes about HIV and AIDS. I hate straights who imitate effeminate gay men or use the term "flamer." I am not on fire, I don't need to be put out. I hate straights who think the gay struggle is over, they say, "oh it's so much better these days." IS IT? An effeminate fourteen year old boy was murdered outside of Los Angeles just a few months ago for being faggoty. Mainstream heterosexual press barely covers the hate murders that take place every year in this stinkin country. I hate straights who think they can identify in any way with my oppression. Your parents getting divorced when you were five years old is not equal to my oppression. I want to start a fucking Black Panther Party for queer people. You might catch me on the street with a megaphone shouting "KILL STRAIGHTY."

Anyways, if you want to have coffee with a dreary, assuming straight man, here is his business card (name blurred out cause all I need is a straight man suing my gay ass).