mimesexuality 6: sagitta recta

straight as an arrow, really

A very old corroded tintype pair of photographs

sagitta recta

To be gay is to bond (socially; sexually; structurally). Male-male alliances—historically, biologically—are the most durable, the most volatile, the most violently enforced. Men fight together, die together, build together. (Here, Girard—the mimetic impulse, the way desire is not original but borrowed, shared, refracted through rivalry.) Sex, in this framework, is not merely an act but a reinforcement—a binding agent, a strategy of cohesion, a negotiation of dominance and submission in a species where men are in constant competition. And yet, it is also a release. (Bonobos, resolving tension with friction, with fluidity, with the simple gesture of contact.) In this model, gayness is not an aberration but an extension of something fundamental.

Mimesexuality is not this. It is not about male bonding, not about reciprocity, not about the closed circuit of masculine desire. It is, instead, a variant of heterosexuality—a reproductive strategy, not a social one. Mimics do not seek men, are not sought by men, are not read by men as desirable. (Gay men, like straight women, code for masculinity in their partners—jawlines, shoulders, the subtle and unsubtle signs of testosterone, the unspoken preference for dominance.) The mimic does not register. He does not fit the ideal. And so, he does not find a place within the world of men. His path does not lead toward male partnership but away from it. He moves toward women—toward female sociality, toward female sexuality, toward access.

And access, in this case, is key. Women, particularly lesbians, offer something no other space does—zero male competition. (The evolutionary jackpot: a sexual market with no rivals.) The mimic, failing to be selected by men, does not redirect his strategy toward male bonding—he doubles down on female affiliation. He integrates, assimilates, navigates his way toward proximity, using the same mechanism that has always defined mimesexuality: passing, slipping, infiltrating. (The lesbian community—structured to exclude men, and yet vulnerable to the mimic, who does not present as male in the way that triggers immediate rejection.) He is not interested in brotherhood, in the rough fraternity of shared masculinity. He is interested in entry—in the doors that are opened by appearing female, by sidestepping the usual barriers of male exclusion.

And here, the distinction crystallizes: gayness, in its purest form, is about sameness; mimesexuality is about disguise. The gay man seeks another man, another version of himself, a reflection that affirms, that bonds, that intensifies. The mimic seeks not another mimic, not another softness, not another fluidity. He seeks a woman, a space where he can function as male in all the ways that matter—but without being read as such until the moment is already too late.

limits of same-sex selection

Desire is not arbitrary (structured; encoded; legible even when denied). Men—gay or straight—seek masculinity in their partners. (The square jaw, the set of the shoulders, the way the body signals its relationship to dominance.) Gay men are not immune to this. They do not select for the mimic. They do not desire him. (Look at the archetypes—Tom of Finland, the Marlboro Man, the Hollywood action star reconfigured for a different audience but still essentially the same body, the same stance, the same economy of power.) Gay men, too, compete for men. The mimic, coded female, is unselected.

And so, where does he go? Not toward men but toward women. But not just any women. Women who lives are already structured with (irrelevance, absence) of men. (The lesbian community, not simply defined by female desire but by the intentional exclusion of male presence.) The mimic does not simply drift into this space—he targets it, the same way all mimicry functions in nature. (The cuckoo, depositing its egg into the unsuspecting nest; the orchid, which does not simply resemble a bee but outperforms the actual female bee’s own signals, creating a deception too compelling to resist.) The mimic does not simply want access. He wants access where no male rivals exist.

This is why the mimic is not gay. Because he does not belong to the economy of male-male desire. Because he does not seek other mimics. Because he does not bond through sameness, through shared masculinity, through sex as an extension of fraternity. He is heterosexual in the only sense that matters: his strategy leads him, inevitably, toward female partners. And yet, he is not merely heterosexual. He is something else—a variation, an alternative reproductive strategy, a divergence from the expected structure of male competition. A male who does not compete as a male but infiltrates as a female. Not another kind of man. Not another kind of gay. But a different kind of straight.

heterosexual subversion

To be straight is to compete (for women; for access; for the approval of other men). The male body, from adolescence onward, is measured against this struggle—who attracts, who dominates, who is chosen. The mimesexual does not play this game. He does not fight for female attention as a man. He bypasses the contest altogether. He moves around masculinity, not through it. And in doing so, he creates a different path toward heterosexual success—not by displaying male traits, but by disguising them.

This is where the mimic diverges from both gay and straight men. The straight man must prove his desirability as a mate; the gay man must prove his desirability as a mirror. The mimic must conceal his desirability as either. He does not compete for male status, because status invites challenge. He does not compete for male attraction, because attraction among men favors masculinity. Instead, he finds the one space where he is least likely to be rejected—the one space where his presence is most tolerated, most protected, most unquestioned. Women’s spaces. Lesbian spaces. The places where no man, under ordinary conditions, is allowed.

And once inside, his strategy unfolds. He does not seduce as a man, but he operates as one. He uses the very structures designed to exclude men as his entry point. (Here, the perfect paradox: the more a space insists on female exclusivity, the more vulnerable it becomes to the mimic. A biological loophole; an evolutionary exploit; a natural failure of recognition.) Women, unguarded in their own environments, grant proximity they would never extend to a male competitor. The mimic is already in before the realization comes. And by then, it is too late.

This is not the logic of gayness. It is not the structure of male-male attraction, where dominance and submission are negotiated between equals. It is a heterosexuality without competition, a male reproductive strategy that relies not on winning women over, but on entering unnoticed. The gay man does not need women. The straight man must fight for them. The mimic avoids both conditions—seeking women, but through a path that neither straight nor gay men can take. He is not an alternative to heterosexuality, but an evolution of it—one that abandons the struggles of traditional male competition in favor of something far more efficient.

mimic efficiency

Heterosexuality, as it exists in most species, is costly for males. It demands display (of strength; of resources; of genetic viability). It demands endurance (in competition; in status; in the ability to protect what is won). The straight man must earn his place in the sexual order. The gay man, moving within the hierarchy of men, must also prove himself—selected not by women but by other men, whose preferences still hinge on masculinity. The mimic alone bypasses these constraints. He does not need to prove his strength because he is not perceived as a competitor. He does not need to establish dominance because he is not read as a threat.

This is the loophole. The mimic does not operate as a man in male-male competition, nor as a man in male-female seduction. He operates as an exception. (The structure does not recognize him as a challenger; the system has no mechanisms for excluding what it does not detect.) His advantage is not in being more attractive to women than other men—it is in being present when other men are not. (Here, the evolutionary model of “sneaky fuckers”—the male who mates not by direct contest but by moving undetected, fertilizing the eggs while the dominant male is distracted.) The mimic does not outperform men in sexual selection. He avoids the selection process altogether.

And because he avoids selection, he also avoids rejection. The straight man may fail. The gay man may be passed over. But the mimic, positioned outside of traditional masculinity, is rarely filtered out until it is too late. Women, unprepared for deception at this level, extend trust. (Think of the wasp fooled by the orchid, the host bird feeding the cuckoo chick—the success of the mimic depends on the absence of suspicion.) Once inside female spaces, the mimic’s heterosexuality is given the ideal conditions to thrive: no male rivals, no overt sexual competition, no immediate disqualification. His strategy is not about attraction—it is about access.

And this is where the divergence is clearest. Gayness is about shared identity, about sameness. The mimic is not interested in sameness. He is interested in infiltration. He does not bond with men because male-male relationships would force him into direct competition. He does not bond with men because men do not select for him. He is, in every structural sense, heterosexual. But he is not heterosexual in the way that other men are. He does not seek female partners as a man—he seeks them by imitating what the system fails to filter out. Not another version of straightforward straightness. A different kind entirely.

anomalous heterosexuality

The mimic does not seduce (not in the traditional sense; not in the ritualized displays of masculinity that govern courtship). He does not prove his worth. He does not establish dominance. He does not position himself as a protector, a provider, a contender. He does not perform straightness the way straight men do. Instead, he navigates the female world through deception, through evasion, through the unnoticed accumulation of presence. (Here, Erving Goffman—all the world’s a stage, but some performers refuse to admit they are acting.) His heterosexuality is not built on overt selection but on structural opportunism.

And yet, this is not a deviation from heterosexuality—it is an optimization of it. (Not an alternative; not a rejection; not a failure to conform, but an evolutionary shortcut.) If heterosexuality is about male-female pairings, then the mimic, despite his unorthodox method, remains aligned with the most fundamental biological drive: he seeks women, and he is not rejected outright. But the conditions of his success are different. He does not access women through competition but through misrecognition. He does not win approval as a male partner but moves unchallenged as a presumed non-male.

This is why he is not gay. Because gay men are bound by the same fundamental rules as straight men—the necessity of attraction, the negotiation of power, the exchange of desire between equals. Gayness, like straightness, demands selection, demands proof, demands competition. The mimic does not participate in this. He does not appeal to men. He does not compete with men. He does not desire men. He is heterosexual in a way that heterosexual men cannot afford to be—bypassing their struggle, stepping around their barriers, accessing the same women they pursue without engaging in the rituals that define male-female relationships.

to be a mimic is not to be another kind of man. it is to be a different kind of straight. a straightness that does not declare itself, that does not fight for legitimacy, that does not risk failure. a reproductive strategy that flourishes in the blind spots of social perception. and this is the final paradox: the mimic is tolerated only because he is not fully recognized. his success is built on a structure that cannot account for him. but when recognition comes—when the system finally catches up, when the illusion is seen for what it is—he is rejected. expelled. erased. and the cycle begins again.

entering facultative homosexuality

The mimesexual is, by nature, a paradox—he impersonates the woman so thoroughly, so insistently, that he becomes her total replacement. Not content to mimic softness, deference, availability—he occupies the role entirely, even to the point of engaging in sex with men. But not with gay men (those who code for masculinity, who seek symmetry), but with heterosexual men—those trained to see surface signals and respond accordingly. (Here, the prostitute becomes the ideal mask—hyper-feminine, hyper-accessible, signaling perpetual readiness. Think of it as a drag act without camp, a costume with no wink.)

And this is the trick: the mimesexual’s sex with men is not deviation from heterosexuality, but an intensification of it. (Barthes might call it the excess of the signifier—when the symbol becomes louder than the thing itself.) He doesn’t simply imitate the woman; he eliminates her, supplants her. The heterosexual man, reading external cues, responds as he is conditioned—the mimic inserts himself seamlessly into the space women occupy, particularly in their most commodified, most objectified form. (The prostitute—offering availability without attachment, sex stripped of relational context.) The mimic’s success lies not in subverting heterosexuality, but in outdoing it.

This is why the mimesexual almost never appears in gay contexts—the strategy fails under conditions of reciprocity. He thrives in asymmetry, in the pretense of the feminine role, in the staging of access. (Freud’s uncanny double, but made transactional; Butler’s performance theory, but literalized, monetized.) To have sex with men is not to reject heterosexuality, but to collapse fully into it—to become its most extreme, exaggerated form. The mimic doesn’t blur boundaries—he redraws them, writes himself in where women stood, and ensures no one questions the substitution.

in extremes like actual prostitution, it is a man having sex with a man—categorically homosexual, yet paradoxically a mimicry of heterosexual sex, defined by the total, unknowing replacement of the female. like facultative homosexuality in prison, nominally male-to-male, but fundamentally a situational stand-in for heterosexuality.

lover, not a fighter

Michael Jackson—not merely immortalied through death* (an invariant pop icon now), but the consummate avatar of mimesexuality. Everything in his public construction meticulously engineered to sidestep male competition, evade dominance games, elude the traditional signals of heterosexual masculine aggression. The whisper-soft voice, the sculpted, childlike face, the surgically flattened features—boyish, ambiguous, unfixed. (Always unfinished; always in flux.) His refrain—“I’m a lover, not a fighter”—repeated like a spell, a strategy. A figure of disarmament, not challenge. The perpetual boy-man, ageless and pliable, slipping past scrutiny. (Here, Barthes might murmur about *neutrality as myth*—that studied absence of fixed meaning, weaponized.)

This is precisely the mimesexual maneuver: avoid male-male conflict, sidestep the contest, gain access through mimicry. Jackson’s visual grammar—sequins instead of sinew, softness instead of swagger—broadcasted non-threat. Women adored him; men did not feel challenged. No posturing, no raised hackles, no clear dominance. A femininized masculinity, carefully curated. (Evasion framed as gentleness, submission disguised as charm.)

But, as always—the reveal. Thriller is the pivot, the rupture, where Jackson’s carefully cultivated mimicry slips—not by accident, but by design. The video begins in innocence: the soft, sweet boy, deferential, smiling, the non-threatening escort. (The archetypal “good boy,” the date your mother approves of, the one who’d never lay a hand.) But halfway through—the shift. The lover, harmless, almost docile, contorts grotesquely. Eyes luminescent, jaw distended, fangs bared—the predator at last emerges. Not protector. Not friend. Hunter.

It’s not subtle. (Freud, if watching, would murmur: das Unheimliche—the uncanny. The familiar figure, the safe figure, turned suddenly monstrous. The horror is not in the appearance of the beast—it’s in the recognition that it was there all along.) The dance continues, but now the choreography masks threat, not courtship. The woman runs—too late. And the viewer? The viewer keeps moving, entranced, lulled by spectacle even as the predator bares his teeth.

The brilliance of Thriller lies in that tension—the oscillation between mimic and monster, between seduction and danger. Jackson knows precisely how long to maintain the softness, when to snap the trap shut. It’s the mimesexual strategy rendered theatrically, frame by frame: charm first, strike after. The predator dances in plain sight—you just didn’t notice.

In Billie Jean, the strategy shifts—more subtle, more slippery, less monstrous but no less predatory. Here, mimicry operates through denial, through evasion. Jackson glides through the scene like a ghost, never leaving a trace, stepping only on lighted squares—his presence acknowledged, but always just out of reach. The lyrics repeat the refrain: “The kid is not my son.” A mantra of non-responsibility, a refusal to be pinned down. He is present, but unaccountable. (He haunts the narrative but disavows its consequences—classic mimesexual sleight of hand: occupy the space, avoid the claim.)

The brilliance of Billie Jean lies in how the spectacle conceals the evasion. The viewer watches him move—smooth, precise, untouchable—mesmerized by the choreography, forgetting to question the narrative beneath. The boy who whispers I’m a lover, not a fighter now whispers not my son, not my problem, sidestepping entanglement while still lingering, still visible. It’s the perfect embodiment of the mimesexual script: evade the fight, deny the tie, but remain at the center. Present without consequence, seen but never held. (A man who leaves no footprints—unless the floor lights them up.)

Smooth Criminal is the final refinement—the mimic’s performance honed to its sharpest edge. The title itself confesses: he is not benign, not innocent, but the danger is delivered smoothly, seductively, encased in polish. Gone is the boyish softness of earlier personas; here, Jackson is the suave predator, moving with precision, dressed like a gangster but choreographed like a magician. The suit sharp, the fedora low, the violence encoded not in brute force but in control. Every gesture calculated—threat dressed as elegance. (It’s not a brawl; it’s a ballet.) The mimesexual strategy elevated: menace never declared, only suggested, veiled behind spectacle.

And by the end, the pattern completes itself. The mimic begins disarming—soft, evasive, non-threatening—avoiding the contest, slipping past confrontation. But always, there is a reveal. In Thriller, monstrous; in Billie Jean, absent; in Smooth Criminal, controlled and precise. The predator is always there, waiting behind the mimic’s mask. What Jackson demonstrated—consciously or not—was the mimesexual blueprint writ large: avoid the fight, charm the audience, strike only when the stage is yours. And the audience, hypnotized, applauds—never quite realizing when the danger arrived.

And on stage—the uniform. Jackson’s fascination with the regalia of authority: military jackets, epaulets, armbands—dictatorial but glittering. A Generalissimo dipped in rhinestones. Power stripped of brutality, re-cast in velvet and sequins. The glove—singular, gleaming—a magician’s distraction. The white socks—deliberately visible, boyish, disarming. And the moonwalk—the ultimate mimetic gesture. Moving without approaching, advancing without arrival. A masterclass in presence-without-threat, command without confrontation. A dictator disguised as a dancer, always slipping just out of reach.