From the Salon
Two interesting gay-ish pieces from Salon.com:
Coming out of the closet — to be straight. “At the age of 28, after eight years of dating women — that is, never having dated men — I realized that I wanted to be with men. And that, in fact, I had never wanted to be with women — not sexually, anyway.” (The writer is a woman.)
Nellies need not apply. “This is an absurd cruelty that gay culture plays on itself. We encourage effeminacy with one bejeweled, manicured hand but slap it down with the callused, unjeweled other. Few of us want to have sex with guys in dresses. Especially the guys in the dresses.”
I wonder what the percentage of homosexual men are effeminate? To this day I still don’t ‘get’ popular gay culture. I don’t understand why it includes and sometimes even demands effeminate behavior. I just don’t see it, and I don’t feel any urge to be part of it. People may describe me as ‘straight-acting’, but I’m not acting! Fer god’s sake, I’m just being me, just like I’ve been all my life!
I’m gay, yeah, but why does that mean I have to indulge in the stereotype? Yes, I believe it is a stereotype. And why? Because that’s all society sees, that’s the only way they can differentiate homosexuals from the general population, and definition = comfort for these people. But I wonder if the flaming queens are only the tip of the iceberg that is the entire gay population, but they are all anyone sees, and so they assume, even in this article, that gay men are all like that.
Obviously, a defining part of being gay is that we are men who like _men_. Another important point to remember is that we don’t like _women_. So why would we like men who look like women?
As for why some gay men are fruity, you’ve got me. I have no idea. All I can say is that I agreed with the Onion article about the gay parade putting gay rights back about a century. It wasn’t just funny; it was true.
I find the reasoning in this article kind of confused. It is not the same thing to be accepting of something and to encourage it, as gay people should know full well. Gay men are delighted to accept men of all degrees of masculinity into their social circles…but the things we could do to actually encourage it, such as sleep with the femmiest guys we can find, we don’t.
That seems to me to be pretty solid evidence that effeminacy is ingrained — some people learn to suppress it, and then change later, but no one picks up that behavior except in its most trivial realizations (saying “girl” and such, which is not the unattractive behavior which ). Why should we if it’s not going to get us laid?
For that matter, the article doesn’t distinguish between what we do in loose social contexts and what we do when on dates, and they are different behaviors.
I find the reasoning both of the above posts somewhat confusing. As a gay man, I don’t “like women?” I adore women! I just don’t particularly want to have sex with them. And that lack of attraction has little to do with how effeminate or butch THEY are, it has much more to do with basic physical plumbing.
The contention that “straight-behaving” men (if you don’t like the word “acting”) are behaving somehow more “natural,” that there even IS a “natural” way for men and women to behave along this butch-femme axis strikes me as bogus. Everyone’s behavior, and what behavior they find attractive in others, is determined by some combination we don’t yet understand of biology and environment. There is no default setting.
Unfortuantely, the Salon article was right on in its observation that many gay men reject others for their nelliness, and not just from dating consideration. Have you seen those websites for those “normal- acting” gay men’s groups, who play sports and go camping? That’s social ostracism.
Finally, we all try to put our best face forward during a first date, but is that face really that different from the one you wear in other social contexts? Yeesh! How do you expect the guy to get to know you?