As promised, I return to masculinism, which @fangedhyparxis mentioned recently. I find this to be a useful movement for thinking about sexuality. Had I encountered this earlier in life, my whole process of coming out and self-acceptance would have been much easier. (1/21)

When I talk about masculinism I have in mind mainly Benedict Friedländer (F.) and Hans Blüher (B.). The contemporary alt-right author Jack Donovan has a very different idea of masculinity and is a tribalist I have no patience for as a philosopher. (2/21)

What was unique about these authors in the German homosexual movement was their understanding of homosexuality not as a hybrid phenomenon (a woman in a man's body, or vice versa), but rather as a simple extension of male bonding. (3/21)

And phenomenologically, this fits much more with my own experience, against the hybrid notions that dominated popular culture as I grew up. Friedländer reminds me of the authors from the blog "Spiritual Friendship", who were also important to me... (4/21)

Whereas the bloggers at Spiritual Friendship are trying to show that homosexual relations are not always carnal, Friedländer at times wants to bring down a lofty, spiritualized notion of male friendship down to earth and show the role of erotic attraction in it. (5/21)

Friedländer from "above" and the spiritual friends from "below", both end up describing a form of chaste, homosexual friendship. Indeed, Friedländer thinks that this is the basis for any argument against sodomy, because... (6/21)

... only when you know the true purpose of homosexuality can you argue against its improper uses according to him. Unfortunately, that argument of his is not sound, and truth be told, I have yet to come across a good argument for that conclusion. So much for Friedländer. (7/21)

Before I start on Hans Blüher, it should be said at the outset: B. was a notorious antisemite and also an antifeminist, and my purpose here is not to fully endorse him (nor F. for that matter), but just to show how he can be useful. (8/21)

(B. did have, however, many jewish friends (F. himself was a jew), and if we know him today it is in part because of Hans Joachim Schoeps, who tried to rehabilitate him after the war. Ofri Ilany has worked on this, not published yet though, afaik.) (9/21)

The significance of B. is to have taken F.'s theory of male bonding, fleshed it out, and built a whole anti-liberal defense of the social function of homosexuality. Despite his misogyny, antisemitism, huge ego, etc... if we are going to find a positive... (10/21)

role for homosexuality in a non-liberal political theory (and I think a Catholic theory will be of this kind), Blüher will be an important starting point (as well as his inspiration, Plato). Even the negative points of B. and F. can be of use...(11/21)

e.g., the tirades against want F. calls "Pfaffentrug und Frauenmacht" - today they read as clumsy attempts at criticizing heteronormativity. Indeed, I find it puzzling to find the Männerbund to be called a "heteronormative homoaffectivity" ...(12/21)

... as the point is that there is not only human flourishing within the family, but also within these male groups. Blüher would be horrified at gay marriage, as he thought not families, but masculine societies were the unique contribution of homosexuals to society! (13/21)

What are these societies? For B. they are societies of men, who by gathering together outside and away from the family and the private sphere, generate culture and the State, the truly public sphere. They are held together by homoeroticism... (14/21)

... but this homoeroticism is not necessarily acted on. These are not circlejerks. Claudia Bruns argues that B.'s notion of masculinity is influenced by Weininger's intellectualized idea of virility (contra Donovan). Consider, Weininger calls Napoleon feminine, ... (15/21)

"the pimp of the world"! One sees this in B.'s examples of "Männerhelde", the ideal leaders who, due to their great virility, awaken homoeroticism in other men and thus bind them together in a single male alliance, Männerbund. (16/21)

(The Männerheld may appear to be an almost mythic figure in B., and I guess I would believe so, were it not the fact, that one of my best friends from Berlin matches the descriptions to a T. He has no club around him because there is no way compel the best to rule) (17/21)

In any case, B. is quite clear that it is actually detrimental to the order and stability of the Männerbund if there are too many homosexuals, "inverted types" as he calls them, within them. He talks about eroticism in a broad way, not always meaning genital desire. (18/21)

B.'s focus on the role of male societies to the exclusion of mixed and female ones reflects a narrowness of vision, but it is also to be explained by the fact that he is arguing against Bachofen and his idea of a primitive matriarchy and erring in the opposite direction. (19/21)

How to incorporate this idea of Männerbund into what I call the "Sodomite Vocation" isn't something I have worked out yet, but I think it is one element to understand homosexuality as something that fits me into society, and does not leave me a lone, free individual... (20/21)

and conversely, it also gives an erotic and bodily depth to what can be rather spiritualized and idealized notions of society that I am fond of in Platonist authors. This is long enough now. (21/21)