Greatest hits of RealJock

RealJock.com, a name that is too on the nose by far, is a tumbleweed-strewn, technically backward, almost unreadable homosexualist discussion site for “jocks.” As not many of us are thus describable, RealJock’s demographic is self-limiting. And the site is barely used – so much so that most postings are listed as deriving from a “Hidden/Deleted Member.”

Nonetheless, as with DataLounge, here is a place where gays can actually be honest.

1. “What are big muscles actually for?”

   I’m not trying to put down big muscular dudes. All I’m trying to figure out is why don’t they do anything with their brawn – not just the professional bodybuilders but anybody who pushes themselves to get so big and not really use the strength that comes with the size.

   • In The Wizard of Oz, maybe the Wicked Witch of the East would have survived if some big guys had been there to lift the house off her body and carry her to a hospital.

   • Look at Superman. He is a big muscular guy who has superpowers. And he actually uses his strength and powers. You rarely, if ever, see him shirtless.

   • During the Katrina disaster, most of the rescue workers were either average-size or maybe had a slight build, and they were risking their lives to lift people out of the flood and carry them to safety. Where were the big buff dudes to help?

   • Also, we’ve all seen those news stories about some morbidly obese person being carried out of their home and transported to a hospital, right? Well, look at the paramedics and/or firefighters who show up to do that job. Most of them don’t have huge muscular bodies and yet they join together to lift the extremely huge patient onto the stretcher. Again, no musclebound person is there to help with that.

   When I see muscles that large, I think of strength. But it’s usually wasted strength. It’s like our modern lifestyle doesn’t really support a person with such enormous size and strength. Most of us don’t live on a farm so we don’t need large muscles and strength to handle those chores. We don’t have to chop down trees to build our own homes.

   It’s better to be excessively big and muscular than be obese, of course. But there are some similarities between the two.

   • Both the obese person and the bodybuilder consume large quantities of food… while some people don’t have anything to eat.

   • Obese people have to buy large clothes. Bodybuilders buy large clothes too (some pride themselves on needing larger clothes).

   • Obese people don’t really use their bodies for anything. Neither do most large bodybuilders.

   It’s almost like those guys are just cattle being raised for beef.

   Again, I am only talking about the massively huge guys, not those of us who have a “basic” muscular build. I appreciate their dedication to keeping healthy and fit (hopefully naturally). And I don’t care how big a guy gets, but it’s just that all you really see guys do is show off their bodies and not do anything with their strength. You are more apt to hear a guy say “I’m trying to beef up so I can look good at the beach,” but it’s rare to hear someone say “I’m trying to beef up because I got a job with a moving company and need the excess muscle to do my job.” Or something to that effect.

   Muscle and being strong are good for us and it looks good too. But why get sooo big and strong just to show your abs and biceps to people without actually using those abs and biceps for something. Do more than just drive to the gym and take off your shirt. Huge muscles are good for building large structures, helping people lift heavy objects, and lots of other things. That’s all I’m saying.

2. A perennial topic, “hypersexualization,” and what will prove to be a perennial topic, Truvada whores. Here we have the prolix but unique Sydney Rugby Jock (no relation).

   Since you fail to make the distinction between interalized homophobia and concerns for the mass outbreak of STIs, I question your credentials as an effective sexual-health counsellor…. Trauma relating to rejection of a homosexual attraction is not what is making concerned people call PrEP users Truvada whores. It’s the accompanying message and the campaigns designed for it, which appears increasingly to be opportunistically advocating ’60s‑ and ’70s-style “free love” and for bareback sex to become an entrenched norm.

   Well, because we know now that real gay sex never involves or involved condoms, a fact eldergays pretended not to know for nigh on three decades.

   Why is it that this opportunity to utilize PrEP to encourage less self-destructive oversexualization has been instead hijacked by some of the very same persons who provided the impetus for the massive increase in bareback sex? We gay men don’t know how to relate to each other in nonsexualized ways, and by attempting to create a normalization of bareback sex and promiscuous sexuality, we are going to potentially destroy the mechanisms which have kept the majority in a relatively functional level of good mental health.

   Young gay men are already bombarded with expectations that they must be available sexually for any number of guys ready to take advantage of their lack of confidence in dealing with the hypersexual environment they are exposed to when they start to engage themselves into the scene. This also goes for older gay men; even experienced gay men don’t all want to be hypersexual.

   Self-esteem issues in the community are not just from internalized homophobic messages that your sexual choices are wrong[;] the feeling of being only a sexual being for other men to use and abuse destroys self-esteem and perpetuates the views and behaviours which never allow many gay men to develop healthy relationships or supportive community links.

   This leads to a [self-fulfilling prophecy] of jaded and cynical older gay men who progressively find it more difficult to engage in a community which only values sexually virile and “desirable” gay men.

   Why not start to address the key reasons for hypersexualization instead of entrenching it? PrEP has its place, but the implementation and strategies involved in its rollout have been extremely ill-conceived and a missed opportunity.

3. Another perennial topic: Why “kids today” refuse to be naked at the gym for even a second. This degree of paranoia is completely new and almost universal. It is appropriate to be naked in an athletic dressing room or locker room, and also appropriate to be clothed, including just wearing one or two towels. But it is batshit crazy to put your underwear on while still wearing a towel.

   To summarize every contributing factor I can think of or that I’ve heard of:

   1. Kids today know that we exist, hence anybody could be gay. Yet these kids are ostensibly pro-LGBT+. We see again how one can be pro-gay or pro-trans, or pro-gay and pro-LGBT, but never both.

      Corollary: Some very aware young men recognize the old trolls who plague every established gym, then overgeneralize. Or they just reasonably want to make sure the old troll never sees them naked.

   2. Kids know cameraphones exist. They somehow fear that somebody’s taking their picture. (Because that’s what they would do? Because they enjoy watching covert upskirt videos?) Yet they too use their phones in dressing rooms. (The only rational wording for a warning sign on this topic is this: “We know you’re going to use your phone. Just don’t take any photos or make any kind of recording, please.”)

      Corollary: They watch amateur porn online. Some part of their hindbrain fears becoming the subject of such amateur porn.

   3. Few boys grew up with several brothers, least of all in shared bedrooms. They weren’t exposed even to their brothers’ bodies. Male bodies are an unknown country. In this respect all boys are now recapitulating the lives of every gay boy before the 21st century began: Now non-gay boys have a closet too.

   4. Boys don’t go to men-only clubs with their dads. (Lots of boys don’t have dads. Then there’s the worst-case scenario of dykes raising sons.)

   5. Very recently, trannies’ and Mohammedans’ demands for “universal” changing rooms, or the notional demands that White liberal females ascribe to those unsatisfiable, civilization-rattling pressure groups, and the expectation that some “boys” may have vaginas (they won’t, don’t, and can’t), hoodwink susceptible liberal or progressive boys into believing their cocks and balls are phallocratic organs of oppression.

      This is for fucking real.

      (An enclosed changing room is useful for some persons with disabilities and anyone who comes along with a helper. But as a “universal” imposition, it represents prudery, body shame, and transgender lying.)

   6. In a similar feedback loop, shower stalls, especially with curtains, instill the belief that one must shower in a stall with a curtain.

   Observations by DataLounge and RealJock, links elided:

   • Well, back in the day there weren’t people taking pictures of everything, porn was actually remotely difficult to find, and the nuclear family wasn’t vilified by the media in [favour of] single motherhood.

     Body standards are also higher now, and even if they aren’t, social/digital media sure makes it feel that way due to all the photos that are glorified now on a larger scale.

     Back then, people went shirtless more often because things were normal; things aren’t normal anymore and most guys are more turned on by Internet porn than real-life experiences.

   • Jaded semi-bitchy commentary on a thread topic that persistently resurfaces:

     • Older guys (pretty much anyone who was alive during the JFK administration and older) don’t particularly have any hangups about locker-room nudity. This had largely to do with schools, public gyms and swimming pools, and YMCAs having gender-segregated swimming times and nude swimming, and a general lack of concern about gym/steamroom creepers checking out everyone’s junk.

       The few who did were probably ostracized if not smacked down for their inappropriate behaviour.

     • Guys who grew up during the Carter and Reagan administrations have few hangups, but generally like to keep some amount of modesty, and generally use the locker room for its intended purpose (change clothing, shower, GTFO), unlike the older dudes who seem to linger around….

       Granted, 80% of these old guys have no sexually predatory designs on anyone. They just seem to think that the locker room is a place to hang out nude and play three-hour rounds of pinochle or do the New York Times crossword, or discuss their never-ending array of ailments with guys of any age who are in earshot.

     • College-aged guys and younger (typically too young to really remember the Clinton administration or pre-TSA air travel) are totally convinced that 95% of the guys in the gym locker room are looking for the first excuse to anally rape them, and so they cover up from tit to toe with the biggest beach towel they can buy, while awkwardly shuffling into their baggy boxers and jeans at a speed that would cripple all but the most flexible gymnasts.

       …which elicits LULZ from the older guys who are mostly straight, and perhaps some LULZ from the gay older guys who just might not find every chicken that stumbles into the locker room to be that appetizing.

   • There is a small segment of the current generation of young gay men that seems to be so identified with their sisters and/or girlfriends that they have emulated the traditionally female characteristics of being highly offended at being looked at in any way. It seems like a useless sense of modesty in a locker-room situation.

   • OP may be just young enough to have missed out on the nudity at the Y when he was a kid. We used to take our swimming lessons in the nude at the Y. It was intended to get you over being self-conscious in front of other boys. They don’t do that any more, so I guess that’s why we have the towel dances in locker rooms nowadays.

   • I would give other reasons for nude swimming. The older swimsuits of natural fibers really did clog the pool filters, the way towels produce lint in dryers. Furthermore, the thinking went that a man only wore a suit to spare women the male nudity, not other men the sight.

     In the absence of women, as at the YMCA, a reason for a suit didn’t exist. Because it seemed illogical that if all the men or boys had already stripped naked for the mandatory gang shower that they should then put a suit on to get in the water, only to shower together naked again when finished. The indoor pool was like an extension of the shower room, and indeed I remember some Ys where the showers were right off the pool deck, entered through large doorless archways – everything all open in plain view.

     And many men liked to swim nude if given the choice. Sensual, perhaps [cf. The Swimming-Pool Library, which inevitably comes up here], but also easier and more practical. No saggy, draggy suit in the water in the days before Speedos, no wet suit to deal with afterwards, with the towels usually supplied by the Y and left there. About the only thing you had to bring with you to swim at the Y was a comb.

     I’ll also note the complete reversal of the attitudes to male nudity between then and today.

     • First, swimming nude was a special male privilege, which women rarely if ever got to do.

     • Second, being unconcerned with social nudity was considered masculine, whereas being shy was seen as a feminine trait. Unlike the assumption today, it was the manly guys who wanted to swim naked, and the “sissy” (gay) guys who didn’t. The standard retort to any boy who did demonstrate shyness was “What’s the matter, are you a girl?”

   (Yes, boys and men really did swim nude back in the day. There are umpteen attestations and many photographs. Australians confirm to me that the more macho a man is, the less he wears at the beach, true of surf lifeguards most of all.)

Punchline

My name acronymizes to “real jock.”