Also, something that came to my brain just now is that whenever I mention Walt Whitman to older men (60+), they always hoot and holler about his writings and intellect and it always makes me wonder if they were aware of his raging homosexuality and if they were aware, would they change their minds?
I don’t know, just run-on sentence food for thought.
My fear is that in this situation their media literacy simply does not extend beyond “America the beautiful,” but I do like to imagine there is an underground cabal of fiercely heterosexual old men who analyze Whitman’s homoeroticism in masked candlelight.
Maybe they want him back.
I think a lot of times (heterosexual) men feel comfortable praising other men because they are still praising masculinity. Yes, WW’s words are often tender and sensitive and aligned with homosexuality as we now perceive it. But I also think that as long as the types of men that I think you are referencing feel that what they are praising is still masculine, then they can “look past” the blatant homosexuality that they would probably otherwise struggle with. I really hope that makes sense. Basically, I think that generally homophobic men are still capable of a certain level of comfortability with homosexuality as long as masculinity is involved (and their own masculinity isn’t “at stake”).