No Fats, Femmes, Asians, or Oldies

Online dating/cruising is a minefield of snap judgments and highly specific standards that the gay community knows all too well. Maybe it's because there's not too many of us to begin with (as compared to our straight pals) and we flock to the net to find each other, or because dating websites are just so damn popular now... or maybe both of these reasons, but the world of online dating/cruising is not new to LGBT people. I remember when I was first coming out, the internet was such an amazing resource for talking to individuals who actually understood the issues I was going through. I have and always will have a special place in my heart for the web, as it is both a meeting point for like-minded individuals who have not been given a voice, a resource for education, and also a tool for social justice.

So there I was, talking to another gay guy about life... when he mentioned to me that he felt so amazingly old. He confided in me that not too many gay guys talked to him anymore because of his age. He was 25. He mentioned that he wants to find a LTR (long term relationship) before he turns 30, because at that point he will be considered dead in the gay community.

I was watching Another Gay Movie with some friends (pretty funny at parts, if you can get over the crazy stereotyping... it became such a staple in my apartment that we would watch it in conjuction with Mamma Mia  almost daily while doing homework and refer to our evening plans as experiencing 'Another Gay Mamma') when I noticed a movie gag about 4 guys going into a gay bar. They're asked how old they are by some bears to which one guy sweetly replies that he's only 17. The bears scoff and say that he's already peaked within the gay community, and leaves him to find younger guys.

Of course this movie gag is completely in jest, but it brings up an interesting piece of gay male culture: the rampant ageism. The man I was talking to online was not kidding when he told me that he felt like he was going to be considered dead when he reached the age of 30. He was perhaps making an exaggeration, but was picking up on a very real truth within the gay male community: youth is worshiped. This may sound no different from straight culture (given that bieber is being fetishized by women) but ageism is even more apparent within the gay male community.

In Darker Shades of Queer, Chong-suk Han discusses his experiences as a gay man of color, and how he has noticed blatant racism within queer circles in addition to homophobia in communities of color. He brings up the critical point that oppressed groups that would benefit from being empathetic to each other's causes (people of color and non-heterosexuals) often discriminate against each other in order to cling to the small piece of privilege that hate brings with it, leaving queer people of color to live in the borderlands of these groups, not necessarily feeling welcome in either. Think about it. In Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, The L Word, and Queer as Folk (which are unfortunately seen as the tantamount of gay experience) mainly feature upper middle class white people.

Author Jason Chang really hits the nail on the head when he discusses how Asian-American men in particular are seen as feminine and as undesirable sex partners (sexism/racism/heterosexism connection). This goes in concert with Chong-suk Han's argument, who agrees and goes on to discuss how Black and Hispanic men are seen as hyper-masculine and over-sexualized to the point of people viewing them as sex objects.

I was on a cruising website (probably not the kind of cruise you're thinking of) talking to this guy, when he responded by telling me that he wasn't interested in femmes. At the time, I had no idea what he meant by 'femme' other than that I was probably being associated with a woman. I probed him for more information (as I often do with strangers) and he told me that based on how I look/presented myself, I was too feminine for him. He told me that he is only looking for straight-acting (i.e. masculine) men. I thought to myself, "Okay, that's just one person's preference" and proceeded to look for other guys with less gender-representation-specific standards. I took me all of 1 minute to find another guy with a profile that said "No femmes"... and then another and another and another. I have never seen a dating/cruising profile or even heard of a gay man who is unattracted to 'straight-acting' men. 

All of these connected stories lead to my main idea: marginalization of these groups. Unfortunately it's all too common for gay men to proclaim they deem a combination (or perhaps all) of these groups unattractive. Many claim that their attraction is based on personal preference... and indeed it is... but (if you know me) you know that I like to look at how the big-picture/society shapes our individual experiences/actions/motivations/desires. To say that our desires are only internal and biological would be false, as it pays no homage to how culture and history shape our current situations/desires (and indeed they do). Of course biology does play a role in our sexual attractions, but so do social norms and cultural expectations. What individuals in one society may collectively deem attractive may not carry over to another time period, or even another culture. To say that men are only attracted to blonde haired and blue eyed women is an amazingly white-centered, hetero-normative idea that does not hold up when looking at sexual attraction across the world, throughout time, or among same-sex couples.

 That being said, in gay male culture in United States, there are some cultural moors that dictate who is and isn't attractive. These ideals that white, trim, masculine men are the most attractive are, I believe, a potent mix of sexism, racism, and internalized hetero-sexism. Actually, it's not just here, and not just with gay men.

This is not to say that all people are racist (white people tend to freak out when I use the word 'racism', so I try to explain myself extra carefully so as to make them less defensive and more likely to listen), but it is to say that our snap judgments we make about who is and is not attractive are influenced in part from several cultural ideals that place specific individuals (who have historically held the most societal power) at the pinnacle of attraction. Is it a coincidence that gay males tend to view feminine men as less attractive, when we live in a society that grants more social, cultural, and economic power to men? I think not.

It could be said that my argument is simply me lamenting from not being labeled at the most attractive, but I ask you to do your own research. Go onto gay male dating/cruising websites and take a look. Hell, go onto craigslist. See for yourself. Tell me what you find.


P.S. The female cast of the L Word is actually made of entirely heterosexual women... because apparently straight women are better at being lesbians than... lesbians. Really makes you think about how 'gayness' marketed on TV is actually quite different from the everyday experiences of queer people.