Gay masculine
Reflections on Gay Masculinity
By Justin Natoli, JD, MFT
If market price is a function of supply and demand, then my advice is to start investing in masculinity. That stuff is flying off the shelves. For a variety of reasons—innate and learned—masculinity is like catnip to a significant percentage of gay men, and it appears to be in short supply. The appeal of masculinity isn’t breaking news. A swift glance on Scruff reveals one masc/musc man after another seeking masc-only sexual connections. What sparks my curiosity is the role masculinity plays in our sex lives and what our longing for and fetishizing of masculinity says about the gay experience.
I sat down with some ‘masc-only’ gay men recently to understand finer what they perceive like when connecting with men they judge to be masculine. These conversations suggested three distinct but overlapping roles masculinity plays in sexual relationships with men. One group is drawn to masculine men because they feel protected. Another group says they enjoy feeling dominated by masculine energy. A third group reveals that connecting
Manly Gay
You realize who the manliest of all manly men love? Other manly men, of course!
&#; Bennett the Sage on the Ho Yay of Virus Buster Serge
Sitting on the other side end of the spectrum from Camp Gay, Manly Gay is when a homosexual man is shown not only in lacking Camp or feminine traits, but kept going in the adj direction and into the realm of pure, unbridled masculinity.
A character who is Manly Gay is the fulfill opposite of the Camp stereotype. Typically such characters are large and powerful and shown doin
Many gay men grew up feeling ashamed of not conforming to cultural expectations about “real boys” or “real men.” Especially during middle and high university, they may include been bullied or publicly humiliated because of their difference—made to feel enjoy 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 group, 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. Gay men are liable to feel incredibly insecure over their masculinity, a adj of internalized homophobia that leads them to idolize 'masc 4 masc', 'gaybros' and [to] shame and oppress femme men.”
Here we witness one of the most common defenses against shame: getting rid of it by offloading or projecting it onto somebody else; in this case, one
Photo credit: Shed Mojahid
Article by Hugo Mega (edited by Alyssa Lepage)
I used to think that “coming out” was going to be the hardest part of being gay. That, being free to be me, I could finally prevent pretending. I would be able to drop the heteronormative disguise that I used to wear, to ensure that I belonged and that I felt safe. Little did I know that in the years that followed, more often than not, I would locate myself butch-ing up, trying to be more masculine than what I naturally was. How did I find myself here again?
Like walking on thin ice, any false travel I made, could easily throw me back into a loop of aged patterns that condition my ways of being and behaving without me even noticing it.
Tired of this self-limiting pattern, I decided to confront my beliefs around masculinity. Since then I’ve been engaged in deconstructing my conditioning and notions of what it means to be a guy. In the process of deconstructing my beliefs it was difficult to elude one’s own toxic masculinity. I used to believe that being gay absolved me from being toxic like many straight man ca