I Hate Straights

Film still from LaBruce’s movie Skin Flick. Courtesy peres projects, Los Angeles.

Forget about fag bashing. It's time for a little equal opportunity straight bashing. When I was a sissy homo punk in the 80s, big macho het boys with foot-tall Mohawks and Crass jackets, conveniently setting their radical, anarcho-leftist leanings aside for a moment, would punch me in the nose for showing queer super-8 movies in punk venues. Their avowed neo-Nazi skinhead enemies at the same show, now united in homo hatred, would run over and spit on me in solidarity. My punk dyke friends would form a human shield, but the damage was already done. From that point on, I would dedicate much of my work to pushing overt homosexuality into the faces of heterosexuals, both virulent homophobes and liberal bleeding hearts alike. It's the femmie homosexual people can't stand the most, especially if he's sexually aggressive and unapologetic about it, so that's the image we set out to promote. We used to refer to heterosexuals as breeders back then. Child-hating W. C. Fields was our idol, and we loved Roman Polanski in The Tenant—you know, the part where, dressed in drag, he walks over to a little boy in a park and slaps him across the face for no reason. Why do people who breed think they're so special, we puzzled, bringing a kid into this overpopulated, war-ravaged world, desperately trying to grasp onto some pathetic shard of immortality? In the sage words of Kim and Kelley Deal (of the Breeders, no less), "If you're so special, why aren't you dead?" At my university there was a group called the League Against Homosexuals. Their motto, spread on leaflets across campus, was "Queers don't produce, they seduce." I adopted their credo as my own in the most public way possible. But today, twentysomething homosexuals, especially the ones who read Vice, think it's cool to be discreet about their faggotry, to act as if it doesn't have any effect on the rest of their lives or anyone else's. We used to call that "the closet." So, queer bashing is still necessary. (Somebody should take the "Fag Five" of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy out into a back alley and hospitalize them for promoting the image of gays as materialistic breeder-lovers.) But how about a little straight bashing, too? I think everyone needs a good beating. Uncle Tom fags need it. Straight-acting fags and straights alike need it. Bash them all. Anyone who is complicit in the user-friendly fag trend should have their knees broken. The only people I don't feel like bashing lately are mincing queens and actual fag bashers. The next time you see a hetero couple holding hands, run over and yell "Herpes-carrying breeder" at them and punch them in the nose. You'll feel better for it. Join the homosexual intifada. BRUCE LaBRUCE
Go to brucelabruce.com and buy a T-shirt or something, OK?