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To me, Disney and durian are one in the same: nauseatingly sweet. The first essay in Manuel Betancourt鈥檚 , a collection of essays about the author鈥檚 coming out and of age, is similarly saccharine. Betancourt is not only partial to Disney but grants it unbridled weight in his adult life, arguing that he has 鈥渟muggled鈥� some sort of queer ontology out of its 鈥渙ppressively heterosexual fairy tales.鈥�

Unremarkably aroused by Disney鈥檚 gambit of meatheads, Betancourt foregrounds his nascent sexual proclivities to stake an ambitious claim: 鈥淎s Disney gave its female heroines agency in their desire, it also allowed audiences to objectify its male characters.鈥� Apparently, the pressures of heterosexual love are incidental to personal freedom, and patent displays of male musculature are a radical inversion of the male gaze. Betancourt is all too aware that neither of these statements is true鈥攈e explores dress codes and body policing in the next essay. His myopia is selective insofar as it serves his argument.

Betancourt portends my skepticism until he doesn鈥檛: 鈥淸I]t鈥檚 unclear if these childhood moments 鈥� predicted the gay man I would become, or if I have simply warped them to do so in my mind. The result, I guess, is no different either way.鈥� Um鈥� isn鈥檛 it? Betancourt subbing personal experience for analysis echoes Kay Gabriel鈥檚 argument in a 2022 article for : Queer memoirists who satiate nonqueer readers with snapshots of personal hardship rather than illuminate shared social forms鈥攍ike, say, joy鈥攅ffectively neuter themselves. Betancourt鈥檚 Disney nostalgia, precisely: Furiously hard in the tenebrous recesses of the theater, his boner works itself out, as Gabriel puts it, 鈥渋n powerful but highly limited ways on some strange people over there.鈥�

Granted, Betancourt鈥檚 childhood, piddled away in front of the TV, seems lonely. And horny鈥攕o much so that, by his own admission, it hampers his analytical faculties: 鈥淚 can鈥檛 deny that sometimes my shallowness (or my horniness, more like) gets the best of me.鈥� For example, the 鈥渉airy,鈥� 鈥渞ippling,鈥� and 鈥渓ovingly defined鈥� pecs of Hercules; the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; Buffy鈥檚 Xander; and, in the real world, Ricky Martin inundate the pages with a dull libidinal yearning. Saved by the Bell鈥檚 A.C. Slater鈥攁ll-star wrestler and general harbinger of Jersey Shore鈥檚 later grip on millennial sexuality鈥攊s, in particular, 鈥渁 revelation.鈥� 

Reflections on Slater metastasize into lascivious musings on how wrestling garb and related imagery can 鈥渞ewire the markers of masculine ideals as inherently homoerotic.鈥� These ideas are both fantastical and heavy-handed; allusion is not our Slater-satyr鈥檚 forte. 鈥淸T]ight asses aren鈥檛 mere by-products of arduous training but open invitations (in ways more literal than you can imagine).鈥� Surely any self-described gay man and the most cursorily adventurous heterosexual could鈥檝e gleaned the anal reference without the parenthetical appendage; if not, why do they need to? Clamoring for readership, Betancourt casts a wide net, letting slip lithe catches for the clumsier philistines mucking about.

Stylistic issues aside, Betancourt acknowledges that desire and self-expression are 鈥渉ard to disentangle,鈥� yet he doesn鈥檛 recognize that this very entanglement may be confining his own view. As a gay man, I see little of my own urges in Betancourt鈥檚. 鈥淭o explicitly deny the sexual pull such images [of shirtless amateur wrestlers] can have 鈥� is to feed into a toxicity that refuses to let men be unwittingly desired (by other men).鈥� This leaves me sexually and theoretically marooned. I do deny it (wrestling doesn鈥檛 turn me on!) and regardless: How would my lust anchor my masculinity? Despite acknowledging that 鈥渨hat men want and what men look like aren鈥檛 questions to be asked in a vacuum,鈥� Betancourt doesn鈥檛 make context central to his analysis. I am all for finding teleological value in desire, but Betancourt is thinking with the wrong head.

Betancourt does, at times, escape his cognitive cul-de-sac. In 鈥淗ombres,鈥� Betancourt explores the titular Colombian telenovela as a 鈥済limpse into a possible future and a rare window into an alien present.鈥� Hombres鈥� seemingly 鈥減rogressive鈥� male characters were facsimiles for the professional class of men Betancourt鈥檚 classmates would become, boys whose masculinity relied on his torment. Marshaled against the show鈥檚 larger, systemic pitfalls鈥攕uch as its infinite forgiveness of male fragility and total inability to pass the Bechdel test鈥攚e learn that Hombres was essentialist down to its title, its denotations of masculinity contingent on who was and wasn鈥檛 meant to watch. Here, Betancourt鈥檚 personal experience is couched in a clear exploration of Colombian masculinity, augmenting close analysis of Hombres and its social mores rather than the other way around.

Betancourt鈥檚 final essay, 鈥淎 Cock in a Frock,鈥� proves the limitations of those preceding if only by showing that, done right, personal experience can pose some epistemic value. Taking a RuPaul tagline (鈥渨e鈥檙e all born naked and the rest is drag鈥�) as an ontological launchpad, Betancourt weaves between cross-dressers, women in pantsuits, straight men, and queers to make a simple but convincing point: Sex and gender are irreducible from desire. It鈥檚 here where his writing is at its best. Building solidarity across disparate experiences rather than leveraging them for intellectual cachet, Betancourt鈥檚 analytical power rests precisely in the space between what he and other queer men do and don鈥檛 share.

Promulgating one鈥檚 trauma is increasingly necessary to 鈥渓egitimate鈥� subjectivity, conveniently obfuscating the various shapes power can take. This compromise reduces bodies into messages, or masculinity into culture, rather than seeing either as a multi-operable tool of violence, oppression, or liberation. Such is my issue with The Male Gazed: Betancourt鈥檚 trauma stalls his analytical propulsion. Victimhood is no stand-in for culture, less still an engine for hot takes. As glimmers in the final pages, Betancourt is capable of cultural critique that weds his life to larger observations about masculinity and queerness. To this end, being called a 鈥渇aggot鈥� is ancillary鈥攊f only he would realize that.