A while back, on Laelaps's blog, I had a contretemps with Matt Moneymaker, head of the BFRO. Although he resolutely refused to read my book--because it was supposedly part of some literary scam--he thought he understood the details of my argument and also could suss out my personality.
I let the issue go then, and don't mean to revivify it now. Participants at the BFRO forum were convinced he had gotten the better of argument. I disagree, but otherwise leave it to the reader to decide.
What I've been thinking about recently, though, is the way that his attack supported the thesis of the book.
One argument I made was that Bigfoot was popular among (some) working-class white men because through it ideas about masculinity could be wrestled with--not necessarily solved, but confronted and played with.
So, it's no surprise, then, that Moneymaker would boil the argument down to masculinity. He suggested that I was homosexual--and, more than that, a gay man who was uncomfortable with his own sexuality and could not be a true man, but let the world hold me back.
I let the comment slide at the time because, in part, I don't want to take offense at being called gay. I'm not, but I don't want to treat the term as pejorative, which, i think, was part of Moneymaker's intent. I also let it slide because it seemed to me then--as it does now--that Moneymaker proved the weakness of his own argument by resorting to questions about sexuality--forgetting any attempt to deal with, you know, evidence and logic.
But, I think it is worth noting as a data point which supports the thesis. Bigfoot, at least as it's been understood over the last half-century or so, often raises questions about the authenticity of masculinity.
I let the issue go then, and don't mean to revivify it now. Participants at the BFRO forum were convinced he had gotten the better of argument. I disagree, but otherwise leave it to the reader to decide.
What I've been thinking about recently, though, is the way that his attack supported the thesis of the book.
One argument I made was that Bigfoot was popular among (some) working-class white men because through it ideas about masculinity could be wrestled with--not necessarily solved, but confronted and played with.
So, it's no surprise, then, that Moneymaker would boil the argument down to masculinity. He suggested that I was homosexual--and, more than that, a gay man who was uncomfortable with his own sexuality and could not be a true man, but let the world hold me back.
I let the comment slide at the time because, in part, I don't want to take offense at being called gay. I'm not, but I don't want to treat the term as pejorative, which, i think, was part of Moneymaker's intent. I also let it slide because it seemed to me then--as it does now--that Moneymaker proved the weakness of his own argument by resorting to questions about sexuality--forgetting any attempt to deal with, you know, evidence and logic.
But, I think it is worth noting as a data point which supports the thesis. Bigfoot, at least as it's been understood over the last half-century or so, often raises questions about the authenticity of masculinity.