The velvet rage book

“Whether he is flamboyantly fashionable with a body chiseled to perfection or chronically dissatisfied and without lasting relationships, the stereotypical extremes of male gay behavior are fueled by the same dim force: shame. The inevitable byproduct of growing up gay in a straight man’s world, the experience of shame in childhood and adolescence sends a lad the message that he is other and that he is worthless. To avoid feeling shameful later in life--and even after he is no longer explicitly shamed by his sexuality--a gay man will quietly rage against the memory of this message and strive to excel dramatically to prove it wrong. The stereotypical manifestation of this inner battle is a gay man’s success in the arts, fashion and in his body image; as with all the other forms of beauty, creativity and success, he is hiding behind the facades he creates. Building on the collected psychological explore and the author’s own experience of the past twenty years, The Velvet Rage will aid gay men profoundly understand their dichotomous extremes. Explaining the psychological