Barack Obama's "I Make Love To Men Daily, But In The Imagination"

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About

I Make Love To Men Daily, But In The Imagination refers to a series of quotes from a letter written by 21-year-old Barack Obama to an ex-girlfriend in 1983. In the letter, the future President seemed to imply that he was bisexual and took a relativistic view of gender, with the quote spreading as a prominent catchphrase and receiving praise from many online following a viral article in mid-August 2023 that referenced them.

Origin

In November 1982, a young Barack Obama wrote a letter to his ex-girlfriend, Alex McNear. Years later, McNear showed some of her letters from Obama to biographer David Garrow, with the sections referencing "homosexuality" redacted.^[2] Garrow later found a way through the Emory University library, where the letters were kept, to access the redacted passages.

On August 12th, 2023, the New York Post printed a story describing the letters and quoting them. In the first quoted passage, Obama wrote:

In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination.

In the second, he wrote:

My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so until I can think in terms of people, not women as opposed to men. But, in returning to the body, I see that I have been made a man, and physically in life, I choose to accept that contingency

Spread

After the New York Post shared a link to the article on X, users on the platform began to joke about the contents of the Obama letters. Some linked it to Obama's Strategy for Picking up Girls, painting a picture of Obama as a theory-quoting fellow posing as queer to get girls.

For example, X user @pissvortex described Obama "as pioneering the world's most powerful Bi woman acquisition techniques," in an August 13th, 2023, post to X (seen below, left) that earned over 21,000 likes in a day.^[3] Also that day, user @lmaojank joked about Obama's "communist pickup lines," earning over 16,000 likes (seen below, right) in a similar timeframe.^[4]

Many others praised the quality of the young Obama's writing and insight into human sexuality, taking his remarks as sincere. For example, X user @tracer4b shared a meme (seen below, top) on X that day, which earned almost 700 likes over the course of a day, praising Obama's composition.^[5] Also on August 13th, user @Gargoyledd posted that Obama's discussion of gender identity was "eloquent," earning over 1,000 likes in a similar timeframe (seen below, bottom).^[6]