Tony's sexuality - Discussion

[beautybecks]

Hi y'all,

Just wanted to start a little healthy discussion/debate about Tony's sexuality. Do you think he is Tim-sexual, bi-sexual, homosexual, pan-sexual etc? How do you factor his on-screen relations in regards to his sexuality, particularly Jeanne Benoit?

Comments

[jack_infinitude]

Tony is obviously Tim-sexual. :D

But seriously, I think that Tony is bisexual, while leaning heavily to the hetero side. It's what he's comfortable with, he knows how to handle women. We're pretty uncomplicated for him so long as we don't expect too much out of him.

When it comes to Jeanne, I'm always hesitant to make any kind of pronouncement about Tony's personality/sexuality. Nothing about the relationship was real, except his love, which came about under forced circumstances. (Huh, maybe I could argue that he bonded with Jeanne out of necessity? Like Stockholm's except not as horrifying.) So anything that came out under Jeanne's influence should always be taken with a grain of salt, I think.

It's also possible that part of his reluctance with Jeanne came from his love/attraction/loyalty to Tim. If he had a little voice in the back of his head saying You're hurting Tim, you're hurting Tim, every time he bent down for a hug or a kiss, it would make sense that he was dragging his feet on prostituting himself to Jeanne. (Have I mentioned that I'm glad that Jenny is dead? Because I'm really glad that bitch is dead.)

[beautybecks]

Hmm, I kind of forgot about Jenny. I actually liked her, I can even forgive what she put Tony through because the Frog was her white whale. She did offer Tony his own team though, she offered him an out with Jeanne but he never took it (because he didn't want to leave Tim)

Tony is so obviously Tim-sexual, I have difficulty thinking of him with anybody else. I find it interesting to see how everybody who comments thinks he is bi-sexual, even more straight than gay. Still, I can't see it.

[jack_infinitude]

Obviously YMMV when it comes to Jenny. She trips too many of my thingamadoogies (it's a scientific term!) for me to like her. I'd forgotten that she offered Tony his own team.

Its hard for me to see Tony as purely gay, because Tim is the only man that he reacts so strongly to. (Unless we want to get into Gibbs/DiNozzo, which I don't.) He doesn't flirt with any other men, unless it links back to Tim somehow (as we saw with McCaden.) The usual Tonytage is something like "GIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSTimmy! look at me Timmy look at me look at me look at me!GIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSTimmyyyyy, you're not looking at me! Look at me look at me look at me," especially in the beginning. He does have a genuine interest in women, which we have to take into account, though I would definitely agree that it's become little more than a smokescreen these days.

[burnphone]

"GIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSTimmy! look at me Timmy look at me look at me look at me!GIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSTimmyyyyy, you're not looking at me! Look at me look at me look at me,"

Love it :D

[jack_infinitude]

He just sort of dug a hole in himself and crawled in, hoping that visions of a pouty-lipped probie wouldn't follow until he could forget about everything. Oh my fucking God, THIS so much. Tony walls away the things that trouble him, he always has, and the fact that McGee gets to him so much... Yeah, he's a big fan of Denial.

I could do a whole essay on the Jeanne situation, and just what the hell Tony was doing with it. And yeah, its definitely fucked up.

(My Tonytage [like a montage but so much better because it's TONY, hello] is happy to have been of service!)

[dgcatanisiri]

There was definitely Italian food involved. There just HAD to be.

DiNozzo DeNial makes the most sense to me - Tony hides from his feelings. Look how long it took him to say 'I love you' to Jeanne and that was an assignment. Especially when you throw in a dash of societal homophobia, it becomes far easier for Tony (who is still insecure of himself) to retreat from someone who so clearly presses all of his buttons AND is confident in himself like our Timmy, who has visibly become more and more accepting of who HE is over the course of the show. In the face of someone who is so visibly self-confident, Tony retreats to immaturity and veiled innuendo to express how much he wants to get into Timmy's pants (and heart). And Tim indulges him in his game, but that's got something to do with Tim's own vulnerabilities and fears that maybe Tony isn't actually interested in him that way because Tim's only managed to build this self-confidence recently, so if he were to try to take it too far and learn that Tony actually doesn't want a relationship, it would probably destroy him, because here's Tony, the kind of guy who surfacely resembles the guys picked on Tim most of his life, who is interested in him, the McGeek, and it would be one more time that the bullies managed to get one on him, only this time taking away the happiness that he has workedso hard to gain (because not only would he lose his self-confidence, he'd probably have to leave the team, if not NCIS completely because he couldn't take being around that type of Tony). So they both play the game, neither one willing to take that step to the next level because they're comfortable where they are.

I liked Jenny, even her yen for getting the Frog putting our McNozzo at risk, because the whole white whale thing made her human, and I like it when the people on my TV are portrayed as being flawed, not just perfect little automatons. I just wish there had been a little more done that played her with the other members of the team instead of just Gibbs and Tony. Even her friendship with Ziva was fairly underplayed.

[dgcatanisiri]

My analysis of Tim actually is due to self-projection on my part, since McGee started out as someone very much like who I am right now and... Yeah, let's just say Tony'd be my type as well.

And you can really see all that in their relationship, in their back and forth. The teasing nicknames that even now Tony keeps adding to the list of is one of the big things, I think. Tony not being able to pick and stick to just one nickname for him is Tony expressing his inability to openly express his feeling for Tim, while McGee basks in the fact that this guy so like the people who tormented him is clearly crushing on him, but not saying anything because of that big pounding 'what if'.

At least that's this amateur psychologist's appraisal.

[im_miss_barbara]

So much win for the tim-sexual comment!