The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

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Downs coined the phrase to refer to a very specific anger he encountered in his gay patients – whether it was manifested in drug abuse, promiscuity or alcoholism – and whose roots, the book argues, are found in childhood shame and parental rejection. “Velvet rage is the deep and abiding anger that results from growing up in an environment when I learn that who I am as a gay person is unacceptable, perhaps even unlovable,” he explains. “This anger pushes me at times to overcompensate and try to earn love and acceptance by being more, better, beautiful, more sexy – in short, to become something I believe will make me more acceptable and loved.” I was brought up to be religious. At school I did have feelings of shame regarding being gay and my religion, but I’ve realised that God made me the way I am and that it can never be a sin to love someone. People seem to expect the Muslim community to be very homophobic, but if you talk to people about it they realise it is not a big deal. Can’t believe no one mentioned Randy Shilts’“The Mayor of Castro Street”. That book changed my life.

Few LGBT readers ever mention T.E. Lawrence’s war memoir, yet it deserves a key place among our historical classics,” Warren wrote. “Colonel Lawrence outed himself as thoroughly as a war hero and army officer could dare to do in post–World War I Britain. He never uses the word ‘gay,’ of course, but it’s crystal clear what he’s talking about. In the early 1950s, I read it in high school for a World War I book report, and cried my eyes out over the love story of Daud and Farraj, with its setting of the horrors of desert warfare. It was the first book that I ever happened upon that mirrored to me what LGBT identity is all about.” I can just enjoy things without the pressure of having to excel at them? Or for them to be life changingly amazing? As others in the review have noted this book sits in an interesting space in the community. The text is largely informed and directed at a cis-gendered often upper-middle class gay male audience but I think this is simultaneously a strength and a (minor) weakness of the text. Equality, Diversity & Inclusion are about people and culture, and is grounded in law by the Equality Act 2010 which covers nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and sex.

I’m a tough butch guy, a geeza I suppose, and with the guys I was hanging around with, watching football, I couldn’t accept that I could be with a fella. It wasn’t an option. Sexually, I thought, fine, but not the kissing, cuddling, walking down the street side of things. It wasn’t that I thought it was disgusting I just couldn’t see that working for me. One of the things I particularly liked about The Velvet Rage was the very practical ‘skills for life’ section that helps an y read er become more self-aware , better able to recognise how to set boundaries, how to recognise what their own needs and responsibilities are and ultimately better engage with the world and build relationships. The skills are based on the various theories that Downs puts forward of the barriers that are created for gay men which really gave me pause for thought, and I would encourage people to read both books to deepen their own insight.

Good good insights, I couldn't really relate with most of it but at least one learns what to avoid. BUT! I sometimes felt as though I was watching a National Geographic documentary: the gay man when at stage three does tarara, the gay man goes and hunts lol Benoit Denizet-Lewis asked our country’s leading queer writers to suggest five indispensable books. Flynn, Paul; Todd, Matthew (20 February 2011). "Pride and prejudice for gay men". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 September 2021. Downs outlines how feelings of worthlessness can be created in childhood quite unintentionally, and these lead gay adults to search for an unachievable perfection. EDI Director, Sarah Guerra, pens a blog about her reading of some important pieces of LGBTQ+ literature and cinema.Stage three begins for most gay men with a vague sense of freedom and vacillating awareness of confusion. Everything that is familiar feels somewhat foreign, and there is a growing awareness that life must be slowly redefined in all aspects. Toward the end of the book, the author offers ten short lessons to further encourage healthy relationships, such as Lesson #1: Don't let your sexual tastes be the filter for allowing people into your life and Lesson #8: Actively practice accepting your body as it is right now.

The first stage of the author's three-stage model is "Overwhelmed by Shame" and explores the period of time when many gay men remain "in the closet" and keep their sexuality hidden because of fear. He brings to light a powerful correlation between a father's love and a gay man's ability to accept his own sexual identity.Sadly, our culture raises man to be strong and silent. Straight or gay, the pressure is on from the time we're very young to become our culture's John Wayne-style of man. my only caveat is to take from it what you will. i think as gay males in our twenties and thirties, we might have a different developmental arc than the gay male generation ahead of us, for which this book seems to be written. however, the fundamental truths still exist and i found them to be very helpful. His secret he cannot reveal, not even to himself, for fear that it will consume him completely. Deep inside, far from the light of awareness the secret lives. Go down beneath the layers of public facade, personal myth and fantasy. Peel away the well crafted layers, for only then you can see the secret clearly for what it is: his own self-hatred.”

I couldn’t really relate to the characters in Faggots, either, and I don’t think I even finished the book. But it’s still on my bookshelf all these years later, sandwiched between Scott Heim’s terrific novel Mysterious Skin and Frank Browning’s probing sociological portrait of gay life, The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today. When I eventually told my parents at 25 my dad sighed and said, “But why are you like this?” My mum was crying. I let them say what they wanted, with my dad saying it was disgusting and my mum saying it was against Islam, because I wanted them to get it off their chests. My mum said anal sex was considered wrong in our religion. I’m glad she was so direct rather than pretending there was no issue, but I explained that being gay was about love and relationships, not about sexual mechanics. My father was concerned about our community finding out, but he said that if anyone was to challenge him he’d say, “Yes, he’s gay, so what! Mind your own business!” Baldwin was open about his homosexuality and relationships with both men and women. However, he believed that the focus on rigid categories was just a way of limiting freedom and that human sexuality is more fluid and less binary than was often expressed in his lifetime.The other day, as we were sitting around the office trying to be thoughtful about trans rights legal guidance for the city, a moment of levity transpired. Someone said that someone else who had been involved in the drafting had said, "Don't LGBTQ people want gender and sex to be conflated?" And without wading into the practical and theoretical morass of that debate, I'm glad we could laugh it off, because though I admire our unfortunately rare moments of solidarity and I hope for more allyship--surely there are few groups more heterogenous than the LGBTQ community! And that is only marginally less true of gay men, a group that has lots in common but, by virtue of our diaspora, so very much that sets our microunits apart from one another. I found this book very elucidating of the reasons behind gay problems and gay lifestyle. The stages described make sense and can be identified either with oneself or those in the circle of friends. The book can be benefitial to help those struggling with their own demons, regarding accepting who and what they are and how they can mange their emotional responses and their relationships.