Macho Man
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Androphilia, A Manifesto: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity
by Jack Malebranche
Scapegoat Press, 144 pages, $12.95

WITHOUT APOLOGY, without frills—brought to you by Scapegoat Publishing, whose motto is “Blame Us”—Jack Malebranche hacks away at longstanding myths about the gay community in this new book. These myths as he sees them are embedded in the full title of his book, whose four elements I propose to analyze by way of review.

“Androphilia” means a romantic and/or sexual attraction to adult men, in this specific context by adult men; and it’s the word that Malebranche prefers over “gay” or its alternatives. His primary relationship is with a male “compadre”—in place of “life partner,” “significant other,” or other awkward honorifics. In contrast to the traditional polarized understanding of homosexuality, he writes, “I experience androphilia not as an attraction to some alien opposite, but as an attraction to variations of sameness.”