The reason I liked the idea of the Gawker anti-my-gay post was that there is a definite (and much-analyzed) trend to either over - or de-sexualize what it means to be a gay man. The former is, of course, the assumption that "gay" means "ready to sleep with everyone male within a 100-mile radius, in particular your lithe 16-year-old nephew." The latter manifests itself as Queer Eye, Will and Grace, and any other attempt at defining "gay" not as "sexually attracted to/involved with men exclusively" but as "fashion-savvy and loves spending time with women." The latter - the women part - is especially problematic, because if anything, gay men have less interest in spending time with women than do any other segment of society. Much of their time can be and often is spent in an all-male world, where they can find both possible romantic partners and friends of the same sex, the two of which cannot be combined for straights. However, perhaps because gay teens often have a bunch of female friends, there's this idea floating around that gay men love-love-love women, enjoy their company more than straight men do, and want them for everything short of intercourse. But why on earth would this be the case? Of course there are individual gay men who connect for any number of reasons with individual women. And of course there are certain professions where women and gay men meet in great numbers. But once the threat of high-school bigotry subsides, does your typical gay man want to spend his time surrounded by females? That's not my sense.
So while I doubt that there's a movement of women out to 'adopt' gays as their friend-pets, I do think there's a general misunderstanding out there about how gay men relate to women. Anything that helps clear this up...
Friday, January 29, 2010
The missing intro to the post below
Posted by Phoebe Maltz Bovy at Friday, January 29, 2010
Labels: gender studies, unsolicited manifestos
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