Rose McGowan: Gay Men May Hate Women Even More Than Straight Men Do…Or Maybe Not

Last month Rose McGowan, perhaps best known as the star of the multilayered, hyper-literate, and almost impossibly intelligent TV show Charmed, threw down the velvet glove and besmirched the gay male community as a bunch of He-Man Woman Haters.

What’s worse—get this!—she suggested they may hate women even more than straight men do.

In a podcast with conservative gay male author Bret Easton Ellis—who recently defamed millennials as “Generation Wuss”—the woman who once actually allowed Marilyn Manson to place his penis inside her bellowed:

Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so. I have an indictment of the gay community right now, I’m actually really upset with them….You wanna talk about the fact that I have heard nobody in the gay community, no gay males, standing up for women on any level?….Women, by and large, have very much helped the gay community get to where they are today….And I have seen not a single peep from these people, who supposedly represent lesbians as well….I see now people who have basically fought for the right to stand on top of a float wearing an orange Speedo and take Molly.

Ouch! Oh no, she di’int!

She even called all this so-called gay misogyny a “huge problem,” a statement which by itself is hugely problematic.

Since I fancy myself a healer and a bridge-builder and a community organizer and, at times, even a shaman, I would kindly and gently like to suggest that at the very least, gay men hate women’s bodies more than straight men do. Is that fair? Can we all agree on that? Yes, it’s true that gay men don’t rape women and catcall them on the streets of Manhattan, but that’s far less due to a sense of virtue and self-restraint than it is a simple lack of desire.

But to allege that gay men hate women’s very inner being—their souls, their spirits, their cores, their chakras, their chi, and their throbbing, pulsating, undulating, teasing and tantalizing eternal and irrepressible Goddess Energy—more than straight men do? I mean, is that even possible?

Aren’t women and gay men supposed to be allies? Aren’t they supposed to, like, network, march together, sing together, laugh together, cry together, drink pumpkin-spice lattes together, and share “Likes” together on Facebook in order to fight the straight white male patriarchy that oppresses everyone—even straight white males who are so blinded by testosterone and hatred that they don’t even realize they’re oppressing themselves? Was she just having a bad day? Did someone put ants in her pants or something?

Facing a huge, bitter, and frankly venomous backlash from gay males and feminists, McGowan took to the Huffington Post to temper her initial statements. She claims she “made a dumb generalization,” yet she stubbornly dug in what are undoubtedly her very high heels and said her “overall point” still stands. “I’ve lived and breathed gay rights for as long as I can remember,” she insisted—yet tellingly, she neglected to mention whether she’d also smelled and tasted them. She offered somewhat of a fig leaf—or is it an olive branch? (I always get those two confused)—when she implied that she and the sisterhood would be willing to stop saying “That’s so gay” if gay men ceased and desisted with the slut-shaming.

Most importantly, she rolled back the most incendiary of her initial comments, i.e., the vile and unacceptable insinuation that the gays may be more filled with lady-hatred than the straights. She has repented and seen the light and now says that gay men are generally less misogynistic than hetero dudebros, although there are a few renegades that come “damn close.”

Whew. Glad she got that straight.