No Homo - an Explanation for The Women in The Audience

Putting this under "Romance and Relationships" because I think it fits in this category better than others.

For the past 25 some odd years men - in America and abroad - have lived by codified but generally unspoken rules which have kept everyone simultaneously "on edge" and "in the clear". It is my job in this blogpost to help elucidate on them where I can, to offer some insight and elaboration into something I still see people failing to grasp or understand.

A brief summary of the "no homo" phenomena - when two or more men are together, and one does something that's on or over the bevel of "gay" - he's gotta say "no homo" or he's gay.

"Gay" isn't really a hardline diagnosis - whether you like it or not "Gay" is a transient state of being - you can do "Gay" stuff but there isn't really a "point of no return" - a "Gay" man can stop doing "Gay" stuff and then through that he stops being "Gay" - much like how a "Straight" man can stop banging women and start banging dudes and then, at that moment, become "Gay".

So, in other words, a guy walks up to the function in a pair of shorts that are a little too short - generally speaking the rules that all or most men understand state that - as a man - it's not a good look to wear shorts that show off your knees or anything above them, and the shorter they get - the "Gayer" they get.

So, a guy shows up in a pair of daisy dukes, straight up you can see what he's got in his pockets - his pockets go lower than the denim - he says "No Homo" and all is forgiven, maybe he's gotta come up with an excuse, maybe he jests a little bit and jokes around about the situation - the tension is diffused.

Why was there tension to begin with?

Put simply - men are horndogs, especially in America.

In America, since the 1960's - hell it was still a thing before the 60's but it was a little more hush hush - the motto has been "any hole's a goal", so, when a guy in the group starts tiptoeing the line between "Gay" and "not Gay" a little too much, the rest of the guys start getting iffy. They start getting concerned that the guy drinking the Pink Lemonade Smirnoff Ice is gonna drink one too many and start hugging his homies - and by extension if they don't cut him off from that behavior real quick, they by extension are complicit in the "Gay" shit.

Now this wasn't always a problem, hell there's footage of soldiers in WW2 who probably laid pipe like nobody's business all stripping down and skinny dipping together in the Pacific - when and why did it change?

Somewhere between the 80's and late 90's - and the reason it changed was because in that time period it became impossible to just ignore that hardline "Gay" people existed.

You had celebrities coming out or being forced out of the closet - Ellen DeGeneres came out as a Lesbian on her show back when it wasn't a talk show (yeah it didn't used to be a talk show, it started off as a comedy with a laugh track) - Freddie Mercury contracted AIDS and died - "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge" came out in 1985 and it is the "Gayest" fucking horror movie ever (this is not pejorative, look at the wikipedia page, there is an entire section about it) and everyone who was involved in the movie knew that Mark Patton (Jesse in the movie) preferred the company of men. The point is in all of this - it became impossible for the common man to ignore that people with a "Gay" lifestyle existed - and thus the paranoia started.

Are there "Gays" in my state? My town? My own friend group? Tom down the street isn't looking to fuck me - is he?

Thus, men started to take precautions - they wore less revealing clothing because they didn't want their guy friends eyeing them up like pieces of meat, they drank harder alcohol that tasted less and less flavorful, they did their damnedest to become as manly as possible - quoting action movies at every opportunity, constantly espousing their love of Ladies, Guns, Beer, and Titties - and they did it all because even if you don't have hardline confirmation that the guy down the street is "Gay" - you can still have suspicions. Once you get those rats in your head they're hard to shake, even if he got a girlfriend or a wife - she could just be a beard.

So, this is why you'd see complete reversals on pretty minor but daily things over the course of a decade or so - you look at videos and pictures from the 80's - it's the summer, it's hot outside - guys are wearing hot pants - you look at the same thing ten years later and they're wearing long ass jorts that make them look like Crash Bandicoot.

So, if this was the way that things happened back then, why are the rules being rolled back nowadays? Well, we hit critical mass - there were enough "Gay" people that were in not just TV shows, music, movies, etc. but in day to day life that people just got used to it - I work at a gas station within spitting distance of a lake and I have seen so many damn grown men - and I mean people who lived through the sustained periods where "No Homo" rules were in affect in a major way - walk in wearing shorts that keep getting progressively shorter - while walking out with their arms full of hard seltzers and malt beverages.

People are getting over it - but the rules, while diminished, are still in affect for most localities.

Therefore - to finish up - I'd like to briefly list a couple of them.

-A man's shorts must always hang lower than his knee caps - some purists dictate that these shorts must also cover his knee caps while he is sitting down.

-A man cannot shave his legs.

-A man may drink fruity alcoholic beverages - but not around his friends. It doesn't matter that the Kiwi-Pineapple Mike's Harder tastes like a damn Capri-Sun, you'll look "Gay" if you do it.

-If a man hugs one of his homies it's gotta be short, sweet, and to the point - preferably one armed, a couple pats on the back, no longer than three seconds.

-If a man enters a bathroom to piss and all the urinals and stalls are full he's gotta leave and wait for someone to walk out - because it's "Gay" to stare at another man while he has his dick in his hands.

-A man can never admit to taking fashion advice - from anyone. When asked about their outfit in a sincere manner by anyone one of the best responses (to ensure that the interaction doesn't become "Gay") is to just say "Yeah, got it out of the pile this morning, didn't wanna do laundry".

-A man can only admit to crying at a piece of media if it involves war - or a dog dying. Getting too emotional over shit that didn't happen is fruity.

And to round this all out:

-Men are allowed to act "Gay" around their homies - provided they are legitimately acting, it's a short interaction, it's not repeated, and everyone gets a good laugh about it - the moment the group stops laughing and you try it again and hear silence is the moment you know you've gone too far, take a hint, take the L, and move on.