Gay people, bisexuals, and those in the non-cis-gender communities don’t need any help developing their self-loathing. Perhaps future generations will do better with this, but despite all the progress, all the acceptance—real, forced, and imagined—we still struggle with ingrained stigmas and negativity. It’s just part of the picture. Acknowledging it and finding ways to reprogram ourselves, to work within and around our internalized notions of otherness, seems the best way to evolve. And that’s just my opinion. But as I move into my late 40s, I’ve taken on a realist approach to certain aspects of life, which, admittedly, can be depressing. That said, no, not “anything is possible.” Not really. And that’s okay. Why not just work with what we’ve got?

We like what we like. We are who we are. And that rather bland, plain-stated, “it is what it is”  approach to how I think of myself has kept me able to handle other, more concerning matters in my life. If I stopped to get hung up on the details, I’m not sure I’d be able to face the day—especially as complicated and demanding as The Day has become. I apply that laissez-faire perspective not just to the fact of my sexuality, but also to the related smaller details—to those behaviors that define my sexual personality. In similar spirit, I try and remain willing to make room for lots of different people in our rainbow. After all, inclusiveness is what that symbol represents, right? It’s a spectrum, by definition. The honest truth is that I have complicated feelings about our ever-widening spectrum of communities, but I can’t see how becoming super fragmented would result in anything positive. So, I push myself to think more inclusively and learn to embrace otherness that is, well…other than my own. Some days I’m better at it than others.

Regardless of how you define your gender or sexuality, however, there’s simply no room for hateful sentiments anywhere within our rainbow spectrum. Skepticism, anger, disbelief, ignorance…all of those things can be worked on, but hate feels really unyielding and final. Which is why I reacted in horror to discovering the G0ys. That’s spelled with a zero, by the way. Boy, is it ever.

It’s a movement of men who love men—most often, to the point of desiring physical contact. But they reject the rest of the homosexual paradigm. These g0ys-with-a-zero have all sorts of issues with how we gays-with-an-a conduct ourselves. They paint us as lowly creatures. And yet, they are MSMs. Their unapologetic assertion of superiority will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It’s alarming. It feels like the call is coming from somewhere inside the house.

Their website, which is reminiscent of a rickety old Geo Cities page, announces itself as “Ground zero in the un-gay paradigm shift,” and goes on to clarify what that means: “No tops, no bottoms, no trannys, no manginas, no genderfukk, no disrespect: Just men who happen to love other men—as men.” Check it out, g0ys.org.

The opening diatribe then goes on to explain that g0ys don’t feel comfortable with the term ‘gay,’ nor the stigmas surrounding that term, eventually surmising that they represent, “A sober, libertarian approach to masculine friendships with additional Judeo/Christian theological apologetics.”

Thankfully for us, these ignorant dolts don’t want anything to do with gays. But that’d be significantly more reassuring if they didn’t look and quack like the ducks we know they really are: self-loathing bi-and-homosexual men attempting to custom cut a sexuality they’re less conflicted about. They don’t want a spot on our spectrum, aren’t interested in our rainbow, they say. The collective otherness that’s celebrated there isn’t attractive to them. Because we’re not attractive to them and neither are our lifestyles, our mannerisms or our sexual behaviors. Why is that, you ask? Apparently, because it’s all terribly degrading. Degrading to their conception of masculinity, that is.

Now, in all fairness, some items on the g0y differential are positive and real. At the very core of the whole philosophy is the recurring assertion that same sex attraction occurs in over 60% of the population; they use the Kinsey Scale as their hard data. Fair enough. This goes far to reassure people that, in fact, the majority of us experience these attractions and there’s nothing terribly unusual about craving a so-called ‘deep bond’ with other men, even on the physical level. That this deep bond should encompass elements of masculinity and respect also seems healthy and reasonable, at least on the on the surface. And throughout, there’s an inherent rejection of hardcore pornography, which is also positive. In fact, much of what the g0ys have to say could be construed as a visceral reaction to what hardcore pornography has done to the average gay sexual imagination.

From there, things get increasingly wonky. They imply that the entire gay agenda is sociopathic, among other goodies.

“Loving other men has nothing whatsoever to do with gender-bending, x-dressing or playing the female role,” they assert, which they find, “…repugnant to our sensibilities of masculinity and respect.” Additionally, they “reject anything to do with playing inside another man’s anus,” which is characterized as dirty, degrading, and decidedly un-masculine.

Nothing homophobic or misogynistic happening here, Folks, just move along. Surely they didn’t mean to state that the so-called “female role” is somehow degrading, subservient or less-than.

And who, exactly, decides what comprises this “female role?” Assigning gender roles to sexual behaviors and positions isn’t particularly evolved. Actually, it’s downright archaic and lacks sexual imagination. And it doesn’t leave any room for the script-flipping notion of “getting a man to fuck you”—of luring him into that physically taxing role—in which case the bottom (or a woman, for that matter) could well be perceived as having the upper hand. See, it’s really not all so cut and dried, is it? And many men enjoy flip-fucking, which allows for each party to enjoy both positions. So, that’s a mutual degradation, then? Personally, I’ve always found men who are surefooted about what they want to be attractively masculine, whether or not that puts them on all fours (and whether or not that means I am personally compatible with them).

“Most guys know instinctively that anal sex is a grossly perilous and shameful fetish,” yarns one passage on the g0y site. “Playing in shit is dangerous and disgusting. Using a man’s arse as a proxy for a woman’s vag is a massive act of disrespect and incredibly perilous from a medical angle.”

A proxy for a woman’s vag? Who said anything about a proxy for a woman’s vag? These dudes couldn’t be further off course, stuck on a tangent about anal sex as an issue of morality. They use the spread of HIV and other STIs as proof that nothing was ever meant to be sexually stimulated back there. Back there, where there are just as many nerve endings as there are in our genitalia. You do the math since they refuse to.

The g0ys website has some 25 subpages with sections that’ll shut down each and every argument against their philosophies that you can possibly imagine. They wanna debate semantics and they’re ready for a fight—just flipping through some of it is exhausting. But you needn’t read very much of it to get a feel for the superiority, which—as far as I’m concerned—manifests as hate, especially when you combine it with all of their homophobia about gay mannerisms and culture. It’s one thing to say you don’t enjoy a sexual behavior. It’s another to assert it’s a disgusting crime against humanity and a ‘fetish’ that’s keeping us mired in degradation. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

It’s just as well they don’t want any part of what we’re having, because there’s zero room at the inn for these ignorant, divisive fuckers. That said, it’s difficult to resist going over the information in your mind; it’s infectious in all the worst ways. I find myself thinking, “The g0ys are certainly over the top, but so is double fisting, isn’t it?” Like I said, best not to get hung up on the details if you want to face the day and move forward. You do you.