Real gay guys
March 02, 2017
The Epidemic of
Gay LonelinessBy Michael Hobbes
I
“I used to get so thrilled when the meth was all gone.”
This is my partner Jeremy.
“When you hold it,” he says, “you have to keep using it. When it’s gone, it’s like, ‘Oh good, I can go back to my life now.’ I would endure up all weekend and go to these sex parties and then touch like shit until Wednesday. About two years ago I switched to cocaine because I could work the next day.”
Jeremy is telling me this from a hospital bed, six stories above Seattle. He won’t tell me the exact circumstances of the overdose, only that a stranger called an ambulance and he woke up here.
Jeremy is not the comrade I was expecting to have this conversation with. Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea he used anything heavier than martinis. He is trim, intelligent, gluten-free, the considerate of guy who wears a operate shirt no matter what day of the week it is. The first time we met, three years ago, he asked me if I knew a good place to do CrossFit. Today, when I ask him how the hospital’s been so far, the first thing he says is that there’s no Wi-F
Have you ever read The Caucasian Chalk Circle? Don’t. It’s really boring. A leaden, joyless, ferociously unsubtle play about communism that I was forced to read when I was 15. It’s low on laughs, to say the least. But it was a part of my drama class, and I enjoyed acting, so I tried to get on board with it. I read it in advance. And, as the class started, I asked the teacher if I could play one of the farmers in it.
There was a pause. I could see an notion forming in her consciousness. Here – she mind – here’s a teachable moment. She gathered the entire class into a circle, with me and her at its centre. And she demonstrated to the room why I could never play a farmer.
Farmers, she explained, walk in a certain way: shoulders forward, slouching posture, heavy stride (looking back, I wonder if she’d only ever seen farmers with club feet). Next, she did my walk. Pelvis out, shoulders back, hips swishing from side to side. I believe she even threw in a limp wrist for good measure. Sadly, she concluded, the way I walked was too “poetic”, and I’d never make a convincing farmer. We all knew she meant: I have a gay walk.
Aside from the glaring question that this
Why do some gay men “sound” gay? After three years of research, linguistics professors Henry Rogers and Ron Smyth may be on the verge of answering that question. After identifying phonetic characteristics that seem to make a man’s voice sound male lover, their best hunch is that some gay men may subconsciously adopt certain female speech patterns. They want to know how men acquire this style of speaking, and why – especially when culture so often stigmatizes those with gay-sounding voices.
Rogers and Smyth are also exploring the stereotypes that queer men sound effeminate and are recognized by the way they speak. They asked people to heed to recordings of 25 men, 17 of them gay. In 62 per cent of the cases the listeners identified the sexual orientation of the speakers correctly. Perhaps fewer than half of homosexual men sound gay, says Rogers.
The straightest-sounding voice in the study was in fact a gay guy, and the sixth gayest-sounding voice was a linear man.
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What Gay and Bi Men Really Want
Are physical and sexual attraction the most appealing qualities in a partner? Or are unseen qualities like good manners and reliability the most attractive?
Following on from his research into what direct women want and what straight men want, D&M Research’s managing director Derek Jones has taken the next logical step with his latest study into what gay and bi(sexual) men want.
In order to dig deeper and illustrate out a true list of turn-ons and turn-offs for gay and bi men, Derek once again used of the Im-Ex Polygraph method. He originally devised this method of analysis to distinguish what people say they want from brands, products or services from what they really want by comparing stated versus derived measures of importance.
Qualities the queer and bi men said they desired in a partner (‘stated’) were compared to the qualities introduce in example celebrities they nominated as attractive (‘implied’). The same comparison was made between stated and implied negative qualities, to determine what attributes are really the biggest turn-offs.
What gay and bi men say they want
Just love straight women and unbent men, “we enjoy be
Many gay men grew up feeling ashamed of not conforming to cultural expectations about “real boys” or “real men.” Especially during middle and high academy, they may possess been bullied or publicly humiliated because of their difference—made to feel fancy outsiders and not “one of the boys.” They may have found it easier relating to women than men, though they didn’t fully belong to the girl team, either.
Every gay guy I’ve seen in my practice over the years has had a conflicted, troubled relationship with his own masculinity, often shaping his behavior in destructive ways. Writing for Vice, Jeff Leavell captures the dynamic nicely: “Queer people, especially gay men, are known for dealing with a slew of self-doubts and anxieties in noxious ways. Homosexual men are liable to feel incredibly insecure over their masculinity, a compassionate of internalized homophobia that leads them to idolize 'masc 4 masc', 'gaybros' and [to] shame and oppress femme men.”
Here we observe one of the most common defenses against shame: getting rid of it by offloading or projecting it onto somebody else; in this case, one of those “femme men.” In consequence, “masc” men who humiliate “femmes” replay the shame trauma of their