Sex is gay, y’all. I know this because Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and antisemite podcaster who once had a totally normal dinner with Kanye West and Donald Trump, told me so.
And I have to admit. After hearing his explanation, I have many confusions.
“You should not seek sex because if you seek sex you will become gay because sex is a gay act,” he said on his program late last month. “It’s totally gay.”
It’s not clear to me if he’s talking about men seeking sex with women (not gay) or men seeking sex with men (def gay). But I guess that doesn’t matter since apparently Fuentes thinks all sex is gay?
If you’re as confused as I am by this, don’t worry. Fuentes isn’t done.
“The straightest thing you could do is to never have sex,” he says. “And everyone knows that’s true.”
Uh, everyone? Because I can think of a lot of people who do not know this. Like, everyone I know and 99.9% of everyone I don’t know.
Fuentes continues, “Want to know why? Because you retain your semen and you sublimate your sexual desire to creating things.”
Creating things. At first, I thought he was arguing that procreative sex is the only sex anyone should be having, which is a favorite argument of religious extremists. It’s something they’ve been saying forever to write off LGBTQ+ people as nothing but a bunch of perverts.
But that’s not what Fuentes is arguing. He’s not saying that men should create things using their semen. He’s saying that men should store it up. Horde it like a dragon. In order to channel their sexual desire into something more important. Like creating white nationalist podcasts, I guess.
And maybe he’s right. Maybe people would be much more productive if they weren’t so busy doing it. But I can’t help thinking that people can have sex lives AND hobbies? The two things are not mutually exclusive.
I’m sure Fuentes will clear things up for us.
“That’s why celibacy is the straight thing because who are the celibates?” he asks. “Monks, priests, soldiers, ok? Great scientists, philosophers, geniuses.”
Hmm. Nope. Not clearer. But, hey, that is quite the list.
Considering the horrifying scope of sexual abuse against children at the hands of Catholic priests, it seems maybe a little misguided to include priests as an example of the straightest people on earth.
And what’s with the inclusion of soldiers? Does Fuentes really think soldiers don’t have sex? How does he explain the many cases of gonorrhea among American soldiers in Vietnam?
I don’t know who the sexless scientists, philosophers and geniuses Fuentes mentions are. But considering the right-wing extremist disdain for education, it also seems strange to claim that these educated elites, as the right disdainfully calls them, are paragons of straightness.
I mean, honestly, the whole clip seems like a parody of right-wing extremist incels, which goes to show that they have gone so far off the rails that they’re beyond parody.
It is also strange that Fuentes is saying sex is gay (in other words, sex is bad), when in May he was saying that he wanted a 16-year-old wife when he turns 30.
“I want a 16-year-old that’s untouched. Untouched. Pristine,” he says. “Uncorrupted, innocent. That’s what everybody wants.”
Yikes.
“Women don’t age like wine, they age like milk,” he explains.
He goes on to say that 16-year-old girls all want older guys anyway.
So I guess sex is gay unless it’s statutory rape? Then again, maybe he wants a young wife not to have sex with, but because he really wants to have a reason to hang around a high school without seeming like some kind of sick weirdo.
Obviously Fuentes is an idiot. Honestly, his ignorance shouldn’t be given any additional attention. And yet. There are plenty of folks who seek out his “wisdom” and share his views. And maybe not a lot of people share this particular view that all sex is gay. But they do believe his other views: Women are inferior; the Holocaust never happened; white guys like him are shining examples of masculinity. It’s gross, but this guy has an audience hanging on his every word.
On Twitter, people have commented that his “all sex is gay” rant is proof that Fuentes is himself gay. It’s not an argument I like. When we point at people like Fuentes and say, “Oh, someone like this must be deeply closeted,” we’re basically saying that there must be some kind of sexual frustration behind it all, passing it off as a joke.
And Fuentes, as a person, is a joke. But the ignorance and hatred that fuel him are deadly serious.