A respected but now inactive user, Glenn, saw the picture posted back in 2007 and mused:
I think that has to do with the theorised “male gaze” in which most pictures/movies/etc presuppose a male observer. Thus, a picture of a hot guy is often homo-erotic and a picture of a naked woman is almost definitely hetero in nature.
Before responding, I’d like to take this opportunity to state that while I am not technicaly a TS, I am a hermaphrodite who has previously self-identified as female and now lives as a man (a process simplified by a unisex name), so I feel specially qualified to answer this question.
The homoerotic aspects are most easily noticed in the subtle violence, hypermasculinity of the subject, and the voyeuristic aspect, each of which individually would be unusual for a female artist, but represented together in a single work are virtually unheard of. Also, all female artists are dykes. No, this piece is the creation of a male artist, and intended, perhaps unknowingly, for a male audience.
Moreover, while some might dismiss this piece as a fetishistic work, combining a religious subject matter with a ten-year-old boy’s simplistic revenge fantasy. But this is not the case. I believe the artist is a young man, probably in his early twenties, still living a very carefully guarded existence under the auspices of his intensely religious parents. He has an interest in bodybuilding, or rather an interest in male bodybuilding magazines, which are perhaps the only sexual outlet he can find in an existence dominated by family and church. He has always been interested in the male form, but learned long ago to limit his profligate output to religious figures as a means of avoiding suspicion.
But this is not an act of repression and shame, as we would at first suspect. No, this is a carefully crafted piece, in which the Christian perspective of redemption and forgiveness is rejected outright by an act of violent, intentional blasphemy. The artist has long empathized with the figure of Christ, suffering silent and misunderstood, but here he reimagines him (and himself) as a phoenix, breaking free from the confines of tradition and announcing himself to the world proud and unbroken.
This is not just the work of a gay man, this is an unyielding declaration of gayness, in no uncertain terms. This is, in fact, the gayest piece of art that has ever been created. And truly, it is a masterpiece.
Now, it’s possible that Glenn was goofin’ with us, and playing on the use of the term “gay” to have contemporary connotations of “undesirable”, especially in schoolyards of the time, but would not be acceptable nomenclature now. I prefer to think that he (or, perhaps, they?) was spitting pure truth.