He sings about hating faggots, but styles himself like a gay man.
“Is Eminem queer?”, asks Peter Tatchell of the gay rights group OutRage!.
“If I saw a man like him in the street, I would probably assume he was gay”.
“Eminem certainly looks and dresses queer. His short-cropped, bleached blonde hair, earrings, tattoos and white vests are typical gay club fashion. It would be easy to mistake him for a gay man”.
“For someone who says he hates fags, Eminem is totally obsessed with gay sex. Almost every track on his Marshall Mathers album has a reference to homosexuality, much of it dwelling on oral and anal sex. This fascination with gay sexuality begs the question: Why? If he loathes homosexuality, why does keep rapping about it all the time?”
“There is no evidence that he is gay, but his image and lyrics do make me wonder”.
Tatchell’s comments come on the eve of Eminem’s UK tour, starting on 8 February 2001.
“Eminem’s abusive, violent homophobic fantasies suggest a deep, inner unease with his own sexuality. Well-adjusted heterosexual men don’t care if other guys are gay or straight. Their response is: live and let live”.
“Does Eminem fit the stereotype of the homophobic repressed gay man?”
“Eighty per cent of aggressively homophobic men are self-loathing, repressed homosexuals, according to Prof Henry Adams of the University of Georgia”.
“His research, published by the American Psychological Association in 1996, tested men who were strongly anti-gay, and who claimed they were totally heterosexual. He wired these men to a penile-circumference measuring device and showed them gay sex videos. Prof Adams found that eight out of ten of these homophobic men became sexually aroused (got an erection) while watching the gay vidoes”.
“Prof Adams concluded that men who express strongly anti-gay attitudes are usually expressing a fear and loathing of their own repressed homosexual feelings. Homophobia is mostly a displaced, disordered form of homosexuality, where the person attempts to deny their queer desires to themselves and to others”.
“Eminem may be an exception to the general rule that most homophobes are self-hating gays. But he seems very insecure about his manhood. Why else would he resort to such over-the-top macho, homophobic posturing? His ostentatiously anti-gay lyrics look like a desperate attempt to prove his masculinity and heterosexuality.
“It is evident from his abusive relationships with his mother and wife that he doesn’t like women. Like many misogynistic gay men, Eminem would rather hang out with other guys. That’s why he loves the macho world of rap. It’s an all-male scene, where the brothers chill together united in their disrespect for women”.
“It is not hard to imagine Eminem as a woman-hating, self-loathing, repressed gay man”, said Tatchell.