Premium: 3/29/2026
The 33 Project
Hello hello. Hope you’ve had a nice weekend! I need a coffee!
Here are your weekend recs:
1/ The Surprising Reason for the New Homophobia. Thought this was an interesting, wide-ranging post on the state of homophobia and the American male.
Some pull quotes…
Mostly, though, his [shia labeouf’s] interview communicated a sense of muffled, oncoming alarm. Americans are burned-out, frustrated, and hunting for scapegoats. And here was another sign of gathering resentment toward queer people—of a new wave of homophobia rooted, in part, in the strange state of straight men.
And this was interesting to think on:
But although transphobia overlaps with homophobia, Charlesworth and Finkel argue that trans backlash is not the primary reason for rising anti-gay sentiment. Instead, they suggest that one factor explains the rise in all kinds of identity-based biases: the same blend of economic anxiety and anti-establishment sentiment that’s driving so much of American politics. They write, “Gay and lesbian people, newly woven into the fabric of mainstream society, may have been collateral damage in a broader revolt against a system that felt broken.”
The irony is that a minority once viewed as filled with sissies and losers is now portrayed as filled with bullies and power brokers, and straight people, especially men, seem to perceive themselves as the weak and afraid ones. This inversion explains a host of baffling political and cultural phenomena of late. It also shows that some of the most durable stereotypes about gay people were never really about sexuality—which might explain why the homophobes, more and more, seem to fit those stereotypes.
This topic fascinates and frightens me.
