Androphilia, A Manifesto is a polemic directed at the gay community and contemporary gay culture. In Androphilia, Donovan employs the word androphilia to distinguish his own experience of homosexual desire, which he defines as a “Mars/Mars” attraction between two men, from the label “gay” which, Donovan claims, is inseparable from connotations of effeminacy and “a whole cultural and a political movement that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics.” Donovan uses the term androphilia to emphasize masculinity in both the object and the subject of male homosexual desire, and rejects the gender nonconformity that he sees in gay identity. Donovan advocates withdrawal from the gay community and mainstream gay culture, the rejection of the label “gay,” for those men who feel limited by it, and advises those men to concentrate on developing friendships with heterosexual men and to explore traditional male gender roles.
In an essay separate from the manifesto itself, entitled “Agreements Between Men,” Donovan makes an aesthetic argument against same-sex marriage, opting for more private arrangements and expressions of bonds, inspired by male friendships instead of heterosexual romance. When asked about legal bans on same-sex marriage, Donovan clarified that he was “sympathetic to some sort of legal arrangement” but “against same-sex marriage, using the word marriage,” on the grounds that marriage is a cultural institution with, “too much historical baggage.”
Some critics have argued that Donovan tends to make too many “harsh, negative generalizations” about the gay community and have described his delivery in Androphilia as “alienating.” Others have implied that Donovan wants to push gay men back into “the closet.” One reviewer, writing for Canadian gay newspaper Xtra, compared Donovan to a character in a John Rechy novel, who “puts a kitten in a brown paper bag and drowns it in his bathtub” in an effort to “validate his masculinity.” Mark Simpson, British journalist and editor of the 1995 book Anti-Gay, called Donovan “a straight-talking Drill Instructor for today’s gay generation, weaning them off pop divas and bear beauty pageants and licking them into a more manly, more self-reliant shape, ready to re-join the masculine fray.”
Mark Thompson, gay author and former senior editor of The Advocate (1975–1994), agreed with some of Donovan's critiques of the gay community “in principle”: “Our popular gay male culture is inundated with countless examples of gay men living shallow, addicted lives – one of many among a tribe of lost ‘boys’ who live only for their own burnished image until it all becomes too late.” Thompson said he would “be among the first to clock the egregious ways of what long called ‘Gay Inc.’ and its nasty habits of siphoning hard-won dollars into self-perpetuating bureaucracies.” However, Thompson called for gay unity and considered "disingenuous" Donovan’s view that the victimization and oppression of homosexual males is mostly “an illusion” promoted by gay activists to raise money, and cited several challenges LGBT people face. According to Thompson, Androphilia’s message was really only relevant for a “relatively narrow swath of white, middle-class gays.” To make this argument, Thompson goes beyond the focus on gay men that Donovan generally maintains in his writing.
Queer literature reviewer Richard LaBonte advised readers against writing off Androphilia completely, stating that the book was “a heartfelt argument that ‘the gay identity’ is too sissy, too socialist, and way too libertine for this man-loving man.” LaBonte compared Donovan to Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Bawer, and Daniel Harris and identified Androphilia’s message as “an extreme manifestation of their kind of stereo-phobia.”
Other writers have applauded Androphilia or embraced the label of “androphile” wholeheartedly. Nick Pell, who interviewed Donovan for Portland, Oregon’s Just Out, wrote that Androphilia was “relevant and timely” and would soon be “required reading for young homosexual men looking for an alternative to disco balls, rainbow flags and celebrity gossip.” Matt Moody wrote in his review for the San Diego–based Gay and Lesbian Times that “finally, finally, another gay man is advocating what I’ve believed for years: the belief that men who admire or love men should be more responsible, not give into the effeminate gay cultural fad, avoid the personal, career, and social pitfalls common to those who live in a completely emasculated world, and build stronger ties with heterosexual men who share common interests.” Homoerotic fetish artist Drubskin described Androphilia as a “liberating read,” and wrote approvingly of Donovan’s challenges to “old thinking,” “victim mentality” and “the prejudices and castrating influences of Feminism and The Gay Movement.”
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