...I was less interested in Freud's original speculations about homosexuality than I was in how his theoretical formulations were used and misused by subsequent psychoanalysts, who then created a theory and practice that was profoundly hostile to gay men, as well as to other non-normative sexualities. ...I argue that this "othering" is traceable to a motivation to conform with the conservative values of contemporary American culture. According to Freud, these negative affects toward "hated rivals" undergo deep repression and are transformed into love objects. Since the Greeks were in the main strongly homosexual, it was inevitable that we should find among them a representation of woman as a being who frightens and repels because she is castrated. If an extra-terrestrial read this assemblage of writing he or she could be forgiven for thinking that earthling theorists found gay men to be a uniquely attractive subject for speculation, and that they constituted an especially peculiar and malignant byway embedded in the human condition.