No Homo Bro

    “But no homo” uttered the teenage boy after expressing his gratitude towards his male friend for being there for him after he lost both his parents.  After all this boy has been through, he finally became vulnerable enough to express his feelings towards his friend, but he still has a seed inside of him that any acknowledgment of emotion would mean that he has is attracted to men.  

    Modern men face a treacherous outcome in their same sex relationships.  Feelings are feminized and misunderstood to mean that the man expressing the feelings has a sexual attraction to the other. This has left men with stoic, cold, and shallow friendships with other men.  Furthermore, the phrase “no homo” deepens the segregation between heterosexual and homosexual men.

    The taboo that straight men have created around homosexuality has not only severed their own relationships with themselves but also ousted homosexual men.  When a man must assert that he does not sexual preference towards other men due to one action or another, it creates a sharp divide.  In the man’s mind, after saying a comment like “no homo”, it is translated as oh no I am not gay, that would be a bad thing and I am not that.  What happens when heterosexual men meet a homosexual man? To me, it seems that there would be a tension as if the homosexual man is completely unlike them and somehow a “bad” or “weird” man.  When saying such as “no homo” are eliminated from men’s verbiage, maybe it will lay the ground for authentic man to man friendships and furthermore, create a climate for inclusivity of homosexual men into heterosexual men’s circles.