How to become gay
How to become gay
How to be gay in 10 easy steps
Participants ride a float in a gay pride parade in Salt Lake City. Drag yourself out there. Literally. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters
Participants ride a float in a gay pride parade in Salt Lake City. Drag yourself out there. Literally. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters
The other day when I tweeted my distaste for the latest Kylie Minogue single (a form of sacrilege in some circles) one of my followers replied with one of my least favorite phrases: «We’re going to revoke your gay card.» Not only is this trite rejoinder (thanks to Ellen DeGeneres, we’ve been joking about earning toasters for nearly 15 years now) but it maintains the illusion that one must like certain things in order to be gay.
There’s no such thing as a gay monolith. There are as many ways to be gay as there are colors in the rainbow (now who is being easy and glib?). Dishing out gay cards is like telling people they aren’t allowed to be gay because they haven’t seen the requisite number of Glee episodes.
In his new book, How to Be Gay, professor David M Halperin says: «Gayness is not a state or condition. It’s a mode of perception, an attitude, an ethos: in short, it is a practice.» As the New York Times review of his book points out, the thing that really brings gay people together is their culture.
So in this age of mainstreaming, where gay men come out of the closet not to attend dinner parties of catty queens like themselves and the cast of Boys in the Band but to a room of welcoming members of society both straight and gay, how can we form a culture of our own? If there are a million ways to be gay, can we settle on a few key experiences every gay man should experience to draw them together?
Here are my suggestions:
1. Have a diva
Everyone needs a Kylie, even if you think Time Bomb is kind of a crappy song. Having a strong female icon is somehow central to the gay identity (for more on that, pick up Halperin’s book) and harkens back to the darkest days of gay identity when these troubled broads were the closest thing you could find to a representation of gay life. The diva of choice doesn’t need to be one of the familiar one-named ladies of song (Madonna, Cher, Judy, Liza, Barbra, Mariah, Gaga, and both Bettes), it can be anyone from Joni Mitchell to Courtney Love, Diana Vreeland to Patsy Stone, Hilary Clinton to Michelle Obama. Just pick one, and never ever ever ever leave her.
2. Dress in drag
Even if it’s just once for Halloween, go out in the world wearing the clothing of the opposite gender. It will it unleash a personality you didn’t even know you had in you and it will make you OK with femininity. So many gay men are afraid of even the slightest bit of swish being detected. «No fems,» has been branded into all of our mentality. But one night when the femme is in total control will never make you fear it again. And it will put you in touch with the brave bottle throwers who started the Stonewall Riots back in the day.
3. Cruise
Everyone used to know to glance over your shoulder after three steps if you were interested in that sexy stranger on the sidewalk. There was a complex network of looks and signals that men used to use to attract each other, something that made gay men much more attuned to body language and perceptive than our straight counterparts. Learn how to do that. Not only will it improve your gay experience, but the way you interact with everyone. Street cruising is mostly dead – no, it can’t be done on Grindr – but a trip to a bath house will teach you all you ever need to know.
4. Know about poppers
If only so people will get your jokes about Rush and Jungle Juice, know what poppers are. You don’t have to use them, but it’s one secret we’ve kept from most of the gay community for decades so we have to keep it going. It’s our version of Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe.
5. Protest
Get out there with a picket sign and some anger and fight for your rights. Even before Stonewall we have a long history of fighting the man, and that should never die. You can collect signatures for marriage equality or you can join an Occupy protest and fight income inequality, but never stop fighting. And if PDA (public displays of agitation) aren’t your thing, there are plenty of causes that need fundraising, which can easily be done over brunch (a gay art that somehow is not on this list).
6. Go to Pride
Standing out in the hot June sun can sure be a drag (all puns intended) but everyone should experience the depth and breadth of the community at this event at least once. See the people outside of your social circle, the tourists from a far, and those people who wouldn’t mix with in a million gay years. And where else are you going to see Dykes on Bikes anyway?
7. Develop a gaydar
This sense of being able to find other homosexuals in the given area isn’t inborn like a sense of direction or ESP. No, it must be acquired through years of hard work and figuring out just which clues are going to give guys away. (Even then it’s still not infallible whenever European tourists are around.) But it’s essential. Not only will it help you determine when you’re in a safe space with others of your kind, it will also direct you to which clerk to flirt with for a discount and which flight attendant to wink at for a free tiny bottle of vodka.
8. Appreciate camp
It’s everything from Showgirls and Mommie Dearest to John Waters and your aunt Nancy who loves to show up at family events with lipstick on her teeth and do her Charo impersonation. Yes, before «hipsters» ironically co-opted things that were awful, gay men invented camp and it has pervaded our aesthetic. In some respects it’s about loving an outsider and wanting to embrace it even while disparaging the things that make it amazing. Much like the supreme court’s definition of pornography, it’s hard to define camp but we all know it when we see it. And if you don’t know it, then you’re just another sincere mark for all the camp connoisseurs out there.
9. Visit the Aids quilt
Aids nearly wiped out a generation of gay men. Many gay men coming of age now know this intellectually, but they have no clue about the emotional cost of losing all of their friends slowly but surely to a disease or being forced to live with the diagnosis as a death sentence. While the quilt is now a shrine to everyone who has died of the disease, and not just gay men, it is the closest thing we have to a museum and the best way to document all the lives that have past. We owe it to them not to be forgotten.
10. Come out
In our age of Gay Straight Alliances in schools and celebrities who live in a perpetual glass closet without ever making a final announcement, coming out seems it’s going out of style. «Why should gay people have to come when straight people don’t?» While in some distant gaytopia that might come to pass but until then it’s probably the only unifying experience every gay person has.
We all have a coming out story, whether it was when your mom says she knew already, your father stopped talking to you, or your boss just didn’t care and told you to go back to your desk. No matter what else you may or may not have in common with another gay person, you can always fall back on this. It’s like talking about the weather, but far more interesting, and often with more tears.
How Did I Become Gay?
There was one question I used to obsess over. It was THE question I had about myself for years. It first grabbed me in college and followed me all the way into my 30s.
I’m big on self-awareness. I think it’s the key to almost everything. I’ve mentioned before that I believe a worrisome, fear-laden, obsessive focus on self is toxic. I also believe that a thoughtful, consistent reflection on the self is quite healthy. But for me, this question was the former and not the latter. I regret now how much time I spent wondering, pondering, crying over this question:
How did I become gay?
I mean, I guess it’s a natural question.
As humans, we will either find or manufacture the meaning of everything.
We stare at the stars and clouds and see animals.
We see a friend’s new tattoo and ask, «What does it mean?».
We scrutinize the pyramids or Stonehenge, assuming there is some bigger existential meaning beyond it being just neatly stacked rocks. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.
Rarely can we just be okay with, «It is what it is.» We assume there has to be more. So we pursue stories to help us make sense of it all.
Not only do we want to know why something is the way it is, we want to know where it came from.
Where did these vegetables come from?
Where did this antique come from?
Where did this idea come from?
«Where are YOU from?»
Humans really like to know where things came from, where they got started.
So I guess it’s natural that our greatest question of provenance is,
«Where did I come from?»
And the latest fad is «personal genetics services» which, for a fee, will sequence your DNA if you send them some spit. Then they’ll furnish you with a report telling you you’re 23.4% northern European, 12.6% Native American, 33.9% sub-saharan African, 1.7% Scandinavian, and 28.4% east Asian. I have no idea how this affects your life, but people love it. It must be soothing in some way to say, «Oh, thaaaaat’s where I came from.»
Maybe it’s because our family had small dogs. Maybe we should have had bigger, manlier dogs. idk.
Maybe it’s because I made scrapbooks as a child. Or because I saved my braces in a scrapbook once.
Or Anderson Cooper’s silver hair and golden face.
It’s true. I spent years obsessing over how I got this way, and it was a terrible waste of time.
Being gay has historically been very taboo. And taboos are loaded with myths, rumors, misconceptions, stereotypes, and assumptions. And when you are young and without the internet (as I was growing up), all of those myths swirl in your head, creating a lot of confusion. I was using that myth-soup to make sense of these very unwelcome feelings. It wasn’t helpful.
Some people still think that being gay is a result of being abused or bad parenting. This never fit into my story because I wasn’t abused and both my parents were fantastic. I got lots of hugs and nurturing and emotional support growing up. And even if I didn’t, the vast majority of people still end up straight. I have lots of gay friends who came from wonderfully supportive families and some who came from high-drama families.
I think the belief that it comes from bad parenting is the worst. That myth is a terrible burden on parents of gay kids, and I wish we could kill it off once and for all.
Truth be told, I don’t know how or why I am gay.
I like asking my gay friends when they knew they were gay. For some it was high school, and for others it was much, much younger. I have friends who were fully aware by the time they were 6 or 7. They honestly believe that they were born that way, and I believe them. I have other friends who believe environmental factors played a part. Sexuality is very mysterious, I’ve learned.
I read an article recently where the author was talking about some new research on LGBT stuff.
He was really happy that the guys who did the research failed to find proof for a «gay gene.» That was his smoking gun, and you could tell he was very excited about it. I’m still not sure what point he was trying to make with that. Maybe he thinks we LGBT folk secretly chose it, a rebellious way to stick it to our parents or God or the culture. Maybe he thinks we’re all crazy. Maybe he thinks we’re making this up—it’s all in our heads—and we’re all just lying to get attention.
I wish I could gently put my hands on that man’s shoulders, look him in the eye and say, «Mister. I’m not lying. It’s real. And I get plenty of attention, thank you very much.*»
I mean. does it really matter?
Does it even matter how or why people are gay? Maybe one day science will crack the case, and it’ll all be very clear. Until then, why can’t we believe people when they tell us about a reality in their lives? Why can’t we be okay with listening before having to understand it all? Why can’t we just lean in and whisper, «Thank you. I believe you. I love you. Tell me more.»
How to Get a Straight Guy to Like You: Can You Make a Straight Guy Gay?
After years in the LGBT community, Jorge knows a few things about being gay or bi. Or maybe he just likes to pretend that he does.
Stubble. Very straight.
How to Get a Straight Guy Interested: Is It Even Worth It?
Most guys in the world are straight. If you like men, it’s only a matter of time until you’re going to find a straight one attractive; they’re all over the place.
Under most circumstances, this doesn’t have to be a big deal. You see a guy you like, you realize quickly enough that he’s straight, and you move on.
Some of us might not want to give up so easily, however. Though it’s probably not the best idea, some people let their feelings take over, and they become infatuated with a specific straight guy. Others have a strange attraction exclusively to straight guys, which makes dating other gay and bi guys difficult.
So you may be asking yourself: How do you make a straight guy gay? Can you get a straight guy to be more flexible with his preferences?
Even if you could, would it be worth it? Wouldn’t it just lead to tons of drama?
There are no easy answers to this. Some might be tempted to dismiss the possibility of heteroflexibility and tell you to leave the straight guy alone—but a lot of people’s orientations are more complicated than just a «straight or gay» dynamic.
That’s what we’ll explore in this article.
How to Tell If a Guy Is Bisexual
The first question you should probably ask yourself is this: Could the guy you like actually be bi? As you might imagine, it’s much easier to get a «straight» guy to like you if he’s not straight at all!
Lots of us make assumptions about people’s orientations. If he’s dated girls before, you might assume he’s straight without even thinking of the possibility that he could be open to getting it on with guys as well. You may not even have any idea about his romantic life, but assumed he doesn’t like men because he «acts straight.»
Think back to the evidence you have about his preferences. Did you make automatic assumptions like these with no real evidence? If so, then for all you know, he could be bi or even gay!
Though the only way to know for sure if a guy is bi or bi-curious is by asking him, there are some vague signs that you can look for to clue you in early on.
Signs That He’s Bi or Bi-Curious
Coming Right Out With It
Finally, you can just ask him. This is the only way to know for sure, but unfortunately you might have to beat around the bush to work it out of him. Many bisexual guys will automatically deny that they like guys if you ask, almost as a reflex. You have to first show that you’re cool with him and that you’re not going to be judgmental of his orientation.
You might wonder why he might be worried about judgment coming from a gay guy, but it definitely exists. Lots of people deny the existence of bisexual men and insist that they’re just secretly gay and in denial. Gay men in particular are guilty of this. If he thinks that you’re going to just roll your eyes and make assumptions about him, or try to push him to be «more gay,» then he’ll insist that he’s straight.
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Some people might say that it’s immature for him to have this attitude and that he should just be proud of who he is, but that’s exactly the problem: people might misunderstand him. When a bisexual man is outed, usually several annoying things happen.
Assumptions People Make About Bi Men
This doesn’t mean that he’s necessarily justified in being closeted, but you can at least understand why he would be hesitant to be open about his bisexuality to someone who he thinks will spread it around. He will instantly be treated differently by people because of the stigma, and he will probably be treated like something he’s not.
Straight pillows on a straight bed. Signs of straightness.
How to Get a «Straight» Guy to Admit That He Likes You
So once you have a pretty good idea that the guy you like might be bisexual, you have to make him feel comfortable to confide this in you. It doesn’t have to be with words—he could just jump your bones as a demonstration—but there does usually need to be some kind of trust between you before anything happens.
How do you get a «straight» guy (or one who identifies this way in public) to trust you enough to show you his bi side, though? As we discussed above, you’re going to have to show him that you’re no threat to his social life and that you’re not going to create drama for him. You need to communicate the following:
What He Needs to Know
How to Communicate All of This to Your Straight Guy
Now you might be wondering, how do you convey all of this to the guy you like? Even if you agree with all of what is listed above, it would of course be silly to go down every bullet point, explaining yourself at length.
That’s why it’s better not to explain directly, but rather to let him draw conclusions from your example.
How to Show Him You’re Trustworthy
Work this information subtly into your conversations. Demonstrate these traits through your behavior. For example, if he notices that you’re not a gossip and are not constantly talking about other people’s business to him, he will trust you more.
Now What?
Now you wait. Spend time with him, try to build a friendship, and wait. If you have laid this groundwork, and he really does like you in a sexual way, then soon enough the opportunity to act on it will present itself.
Most guys who identify as straight aren’t going to want to run off into the gay sunset with you. Keep this in mind.
What Kind of Relationship Are You Looking For?
While you’re trying to get this straight guy comfortable with you, you might also want to ask yourself a few more questions:
This is where things get a little hairier. If you’re looking for an actual romantic relationship with a «straight» guy who does not publicly identify as bisexual, then you’ll be fighting an uphill battle most of the time.
Most romantic relationships fail miserably when they are kept secret. There are too many external pressures. You’ll have to hide your affection. He’ll have to hide his lover from his friends and family.
A person’s romantic partner often takes up a big portion of his life, so it’s hard to hide this. Besides that, others are usually curious about their friends’ romantic lives. Soon enough, people will start asking questions. Why is he still single? Are you seeing anyone? Why do you spend so much time together?
The rumors will fly especially if you are openly gay yourself. He will almost inevitably find himself having to distance himself from you just to quell rumors. This can be very painful. It’s like living a lie.
On the other hand, if you just want to have some fun, there’s no real harm in it. Some guys have zero romantic interest in other men, but are still attracted to them physically. In other words, he may be eager to hook up with you, but doesn’t want to hold hands and pick out china patterns together. Maybe you feel the same.
That’s perfectly fine. Just because we have a physical relationship with someone doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we have to get married or something. Maybe the two of you could be friends who just happen to hook up every once in a while.
Do You Have a Weird Obsession With Making Straight Guys Gay?
One more consideration that you might want to make is whether you are interested in straight guys specifically because they are straight. Does it actually disappoint you a little to find out he’s bi?
Do you get a thrill from «turning» a straight guy gay? Does it turn you off if you know that he’s been with guys before or that he is admittedly bisexual?
While we all have our kinks, this can become a real problem for you. It basically means that you will only be able to get with unavailable men, and that you will grow bored of them as soon as they are no longer «straight.»
There may be a deeper, subconscious issue involved here, but that’s beyond the scope of the article. If you think that you may be chasing straight guys for these reasons, then I encourage you to do some self-reflection. Is there something that you don’t like about yourself? Do you constantly need the validation of being desired by a straight guy? Do you only feel confident in your attractiveness whenever you can «turn a straight man gay»?
Think about this carefully. You may not be able to form a genuine bond of friendship with this guy if you feel this way. You may be unable to view him as anything but a conquest who serves to boost your ego.
How to Make a Straight Guy Gay: Is It Even Possible?
Finally, let’s clarify once and for all: Can you make a straight guy gay?
If a guy is totally, 100% straight, without a single bi-curious bone in his body, the answer is of course no. You cannot change someone’s orientation.
On the other hand, there are lots of guys who are actually bisexual or bi-curious, but simply identify as straight. If you hook up with a guy like this, you aren’t changing his orientation, you’re just helping him discover a part of it that he might not have been aware of.
It really does come down to semantics. What do you consider being straight or gay?
As long as you’re respectful of other people’s boundaries, there’s nothing wrong with exploring the gray areas of sexuality with another guy. Just remember to wear your rubbers.
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
Questions & Answers
Question: I’m in 5th grade and I’m bi. I like a straight guy. What should I do?
Answer: Er, is this straight guy your age? Hopefully he is. Either way, you can’t make someone gay or bi if they really are straight. If he is your age, then just focus on being friends with him without expecting anything more from it. If something more happens, then good for you, but don’t force anything. Let it flow.
Question: l love my uncle, but he doesn’t love me. What do I do?
Answer: Let it go. He doesn’t love you back and you can’t make him, so just let it go.
There’s more at stake here, too, because you could potentially cause issues for him with your family. This situation isn’t necessarily taboo in all cultures, but it is in most of them, and it could put your uncle in a very awkward position of being ostracized by your parents even if he did love you back.
There are plenty of guys out there in the world that you can love; let him go and find someone else. ideally, someone who isn’t closely related to you.
Answer: You can’t make him feel for you. Please don’t bother trying to make someone like you; it doesn’t work. But, if he already likes you, you can find out what he wants by asking. (Easier said than done, I know.)
How to Be Gay
The first hint of trouble came in an e-mail message. It reached me on Friday, March 17, 2000, at 4:09 p.m. The message was from a guy named Jeff in Erie, Pa., who was otherwise unknown to me.
At first, I couldn’t figure out why Jeff was writing me. He kept referring to some college course, and he seemed to be very exercised over it. He wanted to know what it was really about. He went on sarcastically to suggest that I tell the executive committee of the English department to include in the curriculum, for balance, another course, entitled “How to Be a Heartless Conservative.”
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The first hint of trouble came in an e-mail message. It reached me on Friday, March 17, 2000, at 4:09 p.m. The message was from a guy named Jeff in Erie, Pa., who was otherwise unknown to me.
At first, I couldn’t figure out why Jeff was writing me. He kept referring to some college course, and he seemed to be very exercised over it. He wanted to know what it was really about. He went on sarcastically to suggest that I tell the executive committee of the English department to include in the curriculum, for balance, another course, entitled “How to Be a Heartless Conservative.”
It turned out that Jeff was not alone in his indignation. A dozen e-mail messages, most of them abusive and some of them obscene, followed in quick succession. The subsequent days and weeks brought many more.
Eventually, I realized that earlier on that Friday, the registrar’s office at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where I teach English, had activated its course-information Web site, listing the classes to be offered during the fall term. At virtually the same moment, the Web site of the National Review had run a story called “How to Be Gay 101.” Except for the heading, the story consisted entirely of one page from Michigan’s newly published course listings.
So what was this story that was too good for the National Review, which had evidently been tipped off, to keep under wraps for a single day? It had to do with an undergraduate English course I had just invented called “How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.”
The course examined how gay men acquire a conscious identity, a common culture, a particular outlook on the world, a distinctive sensibility. It was designed to explore a basic paradox: How do you become who you are? Or, as the course description put it: “Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn’t mean that you don’t have to learn how to become one.”
The course looked specifically at gay men’s appropriation and reuse of works from mainstream culture and their transformation of those works into vehicles of gay sensibility and gay meaning. The ultimate goal of such an inquiry was to shed light on the nature and formation of gay male subjectivity, and to provide a nonpsychological account of it, by approaching homosexuality as a social, not an individual, condition and as a cultural practice rather than a sexual one.
Those who study gay male culture encounter an initial, daunting obstacle: Some people don’t believe there is such a thing. Although the existence of gay male culture is routinely acknowledged as a fact, it is just as routinely denied as a truth.
That gay men have a specific attachment to certain cultural objects and forms is the widespread, unquestioned assumption behind a lot of American popular humor. No one will look at you aghast, or cry out in protest, or stop you in midsentence, if you dare to imply that a guy who worships divas, who loves torch songs or show tunes, who knows all Bette Davis’s best lines by heart, or who attaches supreme importance to fine points of style or interior design might, just possibly, not turn out to be completely straight.
When a satirical student newspaper at the University of Michigan wanted to mock the panic of one alumnus over the election of an openly gay student-body president, it wrote that the new president “has finally succeeded in his quest to turn Michigan’s entire student body homosexual.” Within minutes, the paper wrote, “European techno music began blaring throughout Central and North Campus.” A course in postmodern interior design became mandatory for freshmen, and “94 percent of the school’s curriculum now involves show tunes.”
This is the stuff of popular stereotype.
Perhaps for that very reason, if you assert with a straight face that there is such a thing as gay male culture, people will immediately object, citing a thousand different reasons why such a thing is impossible, or ridiculous, or offensive, and why anyone who says otherwise is deluded, completely out of date, morally suspect, and politically irresponsible. Which probably won’t stop the very people who make those objections from telling you a joke about gay men and show tunes—even with their next breath.
Happily, some large cracks have lately appeared in that fine line between casual acknowledgment and determined denial. At least since the success of such cable-television series as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and RuPaul’s Drag Race, it has become commonplace to regard male homosexuality as comprising not only a set of specific sexual practices but also an assortment of characteristic social and cultural practices.
This flattering image of gay culture—of gayness as culture—is not entirely new, even if its entry into the stock of received ideas that make up the common sense of straight society is relatively recent. That gay men are particularly responsive to music and the arts was already a theme in the writings of psychiatrists and sexologists at the turn of the 20th century. In 1954 the psychoanalyst Carl Jung noted that gay men “may have good taste and an aesthetic sense.” By the late 1960s, the anthropologist Esther Newton could speak quite casually of “the widespread belief that homosexuals are especially sensitive to matters of aesthetics and refinement.”
Richard Florida, an economist and social theorist (as well as a self-confessed heterosexual), may have given that ancient suspicion a new, empirical foundation. In a series of sociological and statistical studies of what he has called the “creative class,” Florida argues that the presence of gay people in a locality is an excellent predictor of a viable high-tech industry and its potential for growth. The reason is that high-tech jobs nowadays follow the work force, and the new class of “creative” workers is composed of “nerds” and oddballs who gravitate to places with “low entry barriers to human capital.” Gay people, in this context, are the “canaries of the Creative Age.” They can flourish only in a pure atmosphere characterized by a high quotient of “lifestyle amenities,” coolness, “culture and fashion,” “vibrant street life,” and “a cutting-edge music scene.” And so the presence of gay people “in large numbers is an indicator of an underlying culture that’s open-minded and diverse—and thus conducive to creativity.”
All of which provides empirical confirmation, however flimsy, of the notion that homosexuality is not just a sexual orientation but a cultural orientation, a dedicated commitment to certain social or aesthetic values, an entire way of being.
That distinctively gay way of being, moreover, appears to be rooted in a particular queer way of feeling. And that queer way of feeling—that queer subjectivity—expresses itself through a peculiar, dissident way of relating to cultural objects (movies, songs, clothes, books, works of art) and cultural forms in general (art and architecture, opera and musical theater, pop and disco, style and fashion, emotion and language). As a cultural practice, male homosexuality involves a characteristic way of receiving, reinterpreting, and reusing mainstream culture. As a result, certain figures who are already prominent in the mass media become gay icons: They get taken up by gay men with a peculiar intensity that differs from their wider reception in the straight world. (That practice is so marked, and so widely acknowledged, that the National Portrait Gallery in London could organize an entire exhibition around the theme of Gay Icons in 2009.)
What this implies is that it is not enough for a man to be homosexual in order to be gay. Same-sex desire alone does not equal gayness. “Gay” refers not just to something you are, but also to something you do. Which means that you don’t have to be homosexual in order to do it. Gayness is not a state or condition. It’s a mode of perception, an attitude, an ethos: In short, it is a practice.
And if gayness is a practice, it is something you can do well or badly. In order to do it well, you may need to be shown how to do it by someone (gay or straight) who is already good at it and who can initiate you into it—by demonstrating to you, through example, how to practice it and by training you to do it right.
Rather than dismiss out of hand the outrageous idea that there is a right way to be gay, I want to try to understand what it means. For what it registers is a set of intuitions about the relation between sexuality and form. If we could discover in what that relation consists, we would be in a better position to grasp a fundamental element of our existence, which even feminists have been slow to analyze—namely, the sexual politics of cultural form.
Will gay men still have to learn how to be gay when gay liberation has done its work and they no longer feel excluded from heterosexual culture?
When homophobia is finally overcome, when it is a thing of the past, when gay people achieve equal rights, social recognition, and acceptance, when we are fully integrated into straight society—when all that comes to pass, will it spell the end of gay culture, or gay subculture, as we know it?
That is indeed what people like Daniel Harris, the author of The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, and the journalist Andrew Sullivan, who wrote the much-discussed essay “The End of Gay Culture,” have argued. I dispute their assertions, but perhaps their prognostications are not wrong, only premature. Perhaps the day is coming when more favorable social conditions will vindicate their claims.
People have wondered, after all, whether Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, James Baldwin’s Another Country, or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird would become incomprehensible or meaningless if there ever came a time when race ceased to be socially marked in American society. Similarly, would the humor of Lenny Bruce or Woody Allen lose its ability to make us laugh when or if Jews become thoroughly assimilated? Isn’t that humor already starting to look a bit archaic?
Gay culture’s apparent decline actually stems from structural causes that have little to do with the growing social acceptance of homosexuality. There has been a huge transformation in the material base of gay life in the United States, and in metropolitan centers elsewhere, during the past three decades. That transformation has had a profound impact on the shape of gay life and culture. It is the result of three large-scale developments: the recapitalization of the inner city and the resulting gentrification of urban neighborhoods; the epidemic of AIDS; and the invention of the Internet.
To appreciate the nature of the change and its decisive, far-reaching effects, recall the conditions under which gay culture emerged. To begin with, gay liberation in the 1960s produced a wave of gay migration that by the 1970s had brought hundreds of thousands of gay men from all regions of the country to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Miami, and half a dozen other big cities. In particular, gay men moved from the comparative isolation of small towns or rural areas to specific urban districts, the so-called gay ghettos that were taking shape in major metropolitan centers.
The concentration of large numbers of gay people in urban neighborhoods had decisive political, economic, and cultural consequences. It provided a power base for a gay political movement. It supported a large commercial infrastructure, including not only bars, bathhouses, and other unique sexual institutions, but also a local, community-based press and other forms of communication, along with bookstores and coffeehouses. It created the kind of mass public that is essential to underwrite a flourishing cultural scene and to inspire constant political ferment. Finally, it produced queer communities freed from the surveillance of straight folks.
If you wanted to get laid, in those days, you had to leave the house. The Internet was a decade or two in the future, and cellphones were not even on the horizon. In order to find sexual partners, you had to attach yourself to one of the institutions of gay male social life: bars, bathhouses, the Metropolitan Community Church, the local gay business association, the gay biker club, the gay chorus, one of the gay political organizations or pressure groups. In many of those social contexts, you were bound to meet all sorts of people you would never have encountered in your own social circle, along with numbers of people you would never have chosen to meet on your own, including a whole bunch you wouldn’t have wanted to be caught dead with, if it had been up to you.
But it wasn’t up to you. You had to take the crowds that congregated in gay venues as you found them. Which meant that you were exposed to many different ideas about what it meant to be gay. As if that were not enough, the new gay public culture virtually guaranteed that people who moved to a gay enclave would encounter a lot of old-timers who were more experienced at being gay and more sophisticated about it than they were.
Moreover, those veterans of urban gay life often held shockingly militant, uncompromising, anti-homophobic, anti-heterosexist, anti-mainstream political views. People who had already been living in gay ghettos for years had had time and opportunity to be “liberated»: to be deprogrammed, to get rid of their stupid, heterosexual prejudices, to achieve a politicized consciousness as well as a pride in their gay identity. By encountering those people, with their greater daring and sophistication and confidence, the new arrivals from the provinces often found their assumptions, values, and pictures of the right way to live, of how to be gay, seriously challenged.
The AIDS epidemic facilitated the ultimate triumph of urban redevelopment by removing or weakening individuals and communities opposed to the developers’ plans to rezone, reconfigure, raze, and rebuild entire neighborhoods. In the end, the malign coincidence of the AIDS epidemic with a surge of urbanism, property development, gentrification, and a corresponding rise in real-estate prices in the 1980s destroyed the gay ghettos that had been centers of gay life and gay culture for a couple of decades, starting in the late 1960s.
That has had a devastating effect on gay culture.
Without significant gay populations concentrated in local neighborhoods, the power base of the gay movement was significantly weakened, as was the economic base of the gay media. Local gay newspapers were replaced by national glossy magazines that, in an effort to appeal to a national public of prosperous gay individuals who could afford the products advertised in their pages, became increasingly uncontroversial, commercial, and lightweight, eventually turning into the gay equivalent of in-flight magazines.
The loss of a queer public sphere was redeemed by the rise of the Internet and the production of virtual communities. Face-to-face contact in gay neighborhoods became increasingly dispensable. You could find gay people online. You didn’t have to live in a gay neighborhood, which was no longer very gay and which you couldn’t afford anyway. In fact, you didn’t even have to move to a big city. You didn’t have to live among gay people at all. You never had to leave your bedroom. Gay life became a paradise for agoraphobes.
You could now select the gay people you wanted to associate with before you met them. You didn’t have to expose yourself to folks who might have more experience of gay life than you did. You could hang on to your unliberated, heterosexist, macho prejudices, your denial, your fear. You could continue to subscribe to your ideal model of a good homosexual: someone virtuous, virile, self-respecting, dignified, “non-scene,” nonpromiscuous, with a conventional outlook and a solid attachment to traditional values—a proper citizen and an upstanding member of (straight) society.
In short, the emergence of a dispersed, virtual community and the disappearance of a queer public sphere, along with the loss of a couple of generations of gay men to AIDS, has removed many of the conditions necessary for the maintenance and advancement of gay liberation—for consciousness-raising, cultural and political ferment, and the cross-generational transmission of queer values. The lack of a critical mass of gay people physically present in a single location makes it difficult for the pace of gay cultural sophistication to accelerate. It stymies the diffusion of gay culture.
The agenda of gay politics and gay life has now been captured by the concerns of people who live dispersed and relatively isolated, stranded among heterosexuals in small towns and rural areas, instead of bunched together in metropolitan centers. And what are the concerns of gay people who find themselves in such locations? Access to mainstream social forms: military service, church membership, and marriage.
In such a context, gay culture seems increasingly bizarre, insubstantial, intangible, nebulous, irrelevant. It is the sign of a failure (or refusal) to assimilate. What would gay people want nowadays with a separate culture anyway? Such a thing might have made sense in the Bad Old Days of social oppression and exclusion. Now it is simply a barrier to progress. Gay culture has no future.
Those predictions overlook a crucial consideration. Social acceptance should not be confused with the collapse of heterosexual dominance. Gay liberation and, more recently, the gay-rights movement have not undone the social and ideological dominance of heterosexuality, even if they have made its hegemony a bit less secure and less total.
Instead, what seems to be happening is the reverse. Gay people, in their determination to integrate themselves into the larger society, and to demonstrate their essential normality, are rushing to embrace heterosexual forms of life, including heterosexual norms. In so doing, they are accepting the terms in which heterosexual dominance is articulated, and they are positively promoting them.
Gay people seem to be rediscovering and championing the superiority of heterosexual social forms, including astonishingly archaic forms (like wedding announcements in the society pages of local newspapers) that heterosexuals themselves are abandoning. We are trying to beat heterosexuals at their own game.
We are witnessing the rise of a new and vehement cult of gay ordinariness. In an apparent effort to surpass straight people in the normality sweepstakes and to escape the lingering taint of stigma, gay people lately have begun preening themselves on their dullness, commonness, averageness. A noticeable aggressiveness has started to inform their insistence on how boring they are, how conventional, how completely indistinguishable from everyone else.
In a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times about the possibility of Americans electing an openly gay president, Maureen Dowd quoted Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based political lobbying organization for gay people, who “fretted to his husband that a gay president would be anticlimactic. ‘People expect this bizarro and outlandish behavior,’ he told me. ‘We’re always the funny neighbor wearing colorful, avant-garde clothing. We would let down people with our boringness and banality when they learn that we go to grocery stores Saturday afternoon, take our kids to school plays and go see movies.’” Electing a gay president would change nothing, apparently. (In which case, why bother?)
What did Quinn mean by “everything”? The changes she went on to emphasize had nothing to do with increased material benefits, equality before the law, the progress of human rights, the rewards of distributive justice, the defeat of homophobia, the breaking up of the heterosexual monopoly on conjugality and private life, or the removal of legal barriers to the formation and preservation of intimate relationships. Quinn described the impact that the legalization of gay marriage would have on herself and her partner in these words: “Tomorrow, my family will gather for my niece’s college graduation party, and that’ll be a totally different day because we’ll get to talk about when our wedding will be and what it’ll look like, and what dress Jordan, our grand-niece, will wear as the flower girl. And that’s a moment I really thought would never come.”
Sometimes I think homosexuality is wasted on gay people.
What Quinn’s testimony plainly indicates is that the end of discrimination, the rectification of social injustice, and the leveling of all differential treatment of sexual minorities—even should it occur—would not be the same thing as the end of the cultural dominance of heterosexuality, the disappearance of heterosexuality as a set of cultural norms.
We will be queer forever.
What makes gay people different from others is not just that we are discriminated against, mistreated, regarded as sick or perverted. That alone is not what shapes gay culture. (That indeed could end.) It’s that we live in a world in which heterosexuality is the norm. Heterosexual culture remains our first culture, and in order to survive and to flourish in its midst, gay people must engage in an appropriation of it that is also a resistance to it.
So long as queer kids continue to be born into heterosexual families and into a society that is normatively, notionally heterosexual, they will have to devise their own nonstandard relation to heterosexual culture. Gay subjectivity will always be shaped by the primeval need on the part of gay subjects to queer heteronormative culture.
That is not going to change. Not for a very long time. And we’d better hope it doesn’t.
Where would we be, after all, without the insights, the impertinence, the unfazed critical intelligence provided by gay subculture? And where would we be without its awareness of so much about the way we live our lives that is particular to specific social forms? Without that alienated perspective, those social forms would pass for obvious, or natural—which is to say, they would remain invisible. And so the shape of our existence would escape us.
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Post 3 of 6 in the Gay Sugar Dating Series
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