Possibility of being gay

Last week I confessed that a recent perform
 ance by the Pichet Klunchun Dance Company left me unexpectedly aroused. I decided it was the result of the male dancers’ muscular bodies making contact as they gasped, but a straight woman has since told me she too found something homoerotic in these productions.
    How could she interpret the dance the same way as I do, and regard the semi-nude male dancers’ touching as an expression of homosexuality?
    Many people see two good-looking men walking together and think they might be gay. And if one of them places a hand on the other’s shoulder, it confirms their suspicion.
    What would make a good-looking man “seem gay”? Because he’s handsome and fit, walking with another man, touching another man? People’s assumptions seem to go beyond the stereotype we’re fed by the media. Something else is at work in society’s consciousness.
    What do we need to do when we love someone? For one thing, we need to touch them. It could be an embrace, holding hands, touching different parts of their body, or a kiss. And, while love is about touching, sex involves nudity. When we imagine sexual activity, the bodies are naked, certainly not fully clothed.
    Meanwhile we believe that love is sex, and authentic sex comes from love.
    I think that when people see two men express their love by touching, they think they’re gay because that’s how love is normally expressed. And when the men are half-naked, it’s easy to start thinking about sex.
    In our imagination we tend to see gay men as beautiful, even if in reality many gay men aren’t good-looking and handsome guys can also be straight. This shows that we’re viewing other people, especially strangers, through our imagination, not according to any knowledge of who they really are.
    We should stop this imagining about love and sex and instead relate to them more meaningfully. If we can drop the idea of romantic love when we think about love, kissing, touching and having sex, we will see the relationship between men more clearly. And straight men will be freer to express their love and friendship.
    Two shirtless men touching each other doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gay. We think like that because of our constructed ideas and symbols. It’s not about what they do – it’s about what we think.