Emasculation to Homophobia

As a child growing up in the 70's with a single mom, I'd always hear my mother told that because I was in the house reading, instead of in the streets fighting or playing football, that I would grow up to be a sissy.

I think the main reason it didn't impact me as much is that my mom didn't seem to care, so I didn't care.

For a child of that era, especially a black boy, the one thing that would get you to fight was being called a sissy or a punk. It robbed you of your "manness" because punks and sissies were not men.

As we got older, the concept of not being a "real" man was a hurtful thing for some men to hear. That being said, proving that you were a man was crucial to your image so that not being a punk was primary, and not tolerating them was a close second.

Look at hip-hop for a moment... Lil Wayne makes a song called lollipop. That he saw as so suspect, that he prefaced the WHOLE song with a "no homo" at the beginning.

But going further than my childhood, look at civil rights where the men were denied jobs and the women given menial labor to support a family that the man is supposed to. Look at slavery where wives were taken from their husbands and sometimes "taken" in front of their husbands to show their non sexual impotence to stop it. There are even reports of male slaves being raped and beaten if they resisted but ostracized by their peers if the didn't.

Just a few examples.