Video link courtesy of DocumentingReality.com
This seventy-second clip from from the movie Bruno catches discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron dispensing advice to the main character, played by Sacha Cohen. As is the shtick in these movies, Cameron does not know this is a fake situation. His comments about women and sex go a long way toward explaining a few things, to be sure.
And I wonder what those conservatives who still accept Cameron, even fund him, will think about his recommendation to an unmarried man that he allow women to “seduce him.” Heaven help his wife with attitudes like this.
Lately I have begun to better understand the role that heterosexist attitudes play in the formation of homophobia. Early on women were property, then slaves and then just insignificant. Not until the last century did they gain any level of equality but the old feelings run deep. People have found ways to justify their second class status through scripture as well.
I am fully convinced that hatred of homosexuality came first, and was then provided for through the efforts of those who massaged the verses to accommodate it. If none suitable for the task existed, another theme would be extracted for the purpose. Hatred of homosexuality is an imperative for many, and like racism and sexism, will not be erased from our culture fully for a long time to come.
In my experience, it’s hard to underestimate misogynists, and therefore I could imagine plenty of people who find nothing at all offensive with Cameron’s opinions and advice. Their agreement with such blatantly false and hurtful stereotypes would only be enhanced and justified by Cameron’s claims of being a “researcher.”
Thanks for posting this David. I thoroughly enjoyed the film on many levels, but especially because it reveals Paul Cameron’s sexism and misogyny. (Marvin Bloom, who appears in two of my plays, like many of his fellow gay men of a certain age, didn’t like the film too much.)
Just last year I wrote about the anti-woman/anti-feminine posture that many ex-gay theorists and practitioners espouse. In this “struggle” they make it clear that they believe men are valuable and worthy to be saved while women are an after thought or simply part of the treatment to save the men (ie marriage)
From Women & the Ex-Gay Movement
Peterson, you bring up a very interesting point. I remember watching a documentary on Joan Rivers concerning how she was a pioneer in being one of the first women to step out of the boundaries. She talked about double standards and how, when a man says something vulgar it “adds” to his masculinity, but when a woman says the exact same thing she is “just being a witch with a capital ‘B’.”
The presidential election is another example of how negative attitudes towards women are still alive and well. Hilary Clinton was perceived as a cold-hearted, rigid, self-serving person because she didn’t do an impression of June Cleaver. I remember the news coverage making such a big deal over her and how they would imply she was not “feminine” as if she was “acting like a man.” They never went out and said it in those terms, but the underlining message was clear.
Back in the 80s, when my dad owned an extermination company, he hired a woman for pest control services. There were customers who refused to allow her to service their home. They told my dad that she should be in the office as a secretary or something, not as a pest control technician.
What really got my goat about Paul Cameron in this clip is how he is saying to let women seduce Bruno. What??? Hello??? Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle (Wheel of Fortune pun). Isn’t premarital sex a no-no in Mr. Cameron’s religious world? My friends who grew up in the Evangelical spectrum of Christianity have told me horror stories of how they were drilled and killed over NOT having sex before marriage. How they would burn in the hottest pit of hell if they “deflowered” a woman before her wedding day.
I guess the worst “sin” for Mr. Cameron is being gay, and doing “lesser sins” is ok if it gets you out of “the homosexual lifestyle.” I am amazed he doesn’t have some dumb grass without the “gr” therapy where, to “get back to being straight” the “patient” first gets seduced by “feminine” guys, then transvestites, then works his way to butch women, they gradually works his way to the “ideal” woman – the 50’s June Cleaver type.
Paul Cameron wrote a book on “sexual gradualism,” basically advising young people to do “everything but,” (as we used to say in the old days), as a way of making sure they turned out heterosexual.
A few years ago I had a rather revealing conversation with a young woman who was an extreme evangelical. When she discovered I was openly gay, she chastised me and informed me that there was much “scientific” evidence that gay people could be “changed”. She even went so far as to say that she personally knew a number of “ex-gays”. I was of course fascinated and ask her to introduce to a few of these people as I had never actually met such a person. I also asked her if she could name one supposed scientific expert who supported this claim. Of course she couldn’t name one ex-gay that she personally knew…..but she was able to supply Cameron’s name as the “major” expert in ex-gay science. When I informed her of the truth about Cameron, she simply laughed and said something about lies and left-wing propaganda. The sad thing is that most homophobes and bigots are so determined to believe Cameron’s lies, they can’t even begin to remotely consider that what he says is not the gospel truth. If they did so….it would shatter their entire belief system.
Dr. Timothy Smith:
The reality is the ex-gay ministry is based on a package of lies, the greatest being what Chambers states as “the opposite of homosexuality is holiness.”
OK… everything Cameron says in that clip is (IMO) misogynistic.
This clip is from about 15 years ago with some of the cast from my favorite escape from reality movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I think Guy Pearce has the best response to Cameron — or anyone else with similar statements. I wish I had the next few minutes of the show.