Aren’t gay men BRILLIANT? They are such loyal friends and they’re always good for a laugh. They’re the BEST shopping partners too and are always up for dancing to Beyoncé! GBFs 4EVA!
Yes, dear, and all Irish people are leprechauns and Paris is full of onion-wearing mime artists.
Representation of LGBT* people in the media is getting BETTER, but it is still vastly limited. Unless you are one of the lucky people who grew up around gay people, you might think that all gay men are fabulously camp chat show presenters and all gay women are sports commentators. Hopefully, you recognise that this isn’t the case. You can probably count the number of transgender people on TV on one hand.
LEGENDARY gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk encouraged all gay people to be more visible so that young people would be surrounded by a spectrum of infinitely varied gay people – that way people would see that stereotypes are meaningless.
Let’s take a look at some common stereotypes about gay people.
I think you get the message – there are far, far too many stereotypes about LGBT* people.
‘I think all stereotypes are sh*t. Whether it’s a racial stereotype or a sexual stereotype or a cultural stereotype, you’re always going to find SOMEONE who fits the bill. But stereotypes suggest that a group, or at least a majority of that group, behaves in a certain way, and that kills the idea of individuality.’
BFL, 43, Minnesota, USA.
Stereotypes are rubbish for one very simple reason – they dehumanise people and allow terrible prejudices and discrimination to come creeping in. Bigots THRIVE on stereotypes. It’s much easier to hate a faceless stereotype than it is a human being.
As well as being awesome, LGBT* people are also a persecuted minority. This is not awesome. I’m afraid it’s not all cocktail parties and gay cruises – for many people all around the world, being gay is ILLEGAL. I know, it’s cray.
Let’s think about some other persecuted minorities. I’m going to use an example we see in newspapers and on the telly a lot – Muslims. Instead of talking about ‘terrorists’, very often newsreaders talk about ‘Muslim terrorists’ or ‘Muslim extremists’. Does it matter that the terrorists identify as Muslim? NO, IT DOES NOT. People who aren’t very clever start to associate the two phrases until bigots start saying things like, ‘All Muslims are terrorists.’ This, my friend, is dangerous thinking.
Similarly, stereotypes about LGBT* people fuel homophobia, which we will talk about a lot more in the next chapter.
Each LGBT* person is completely unique and individual. Although a lot of gay people might like some of the same things (there is a rich and varied gay or queer ‘culture’), no two LGBT* people are the same.
Even if you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer, you’re still just you. There are infinite ways of being gay, and they’re all brilliant. So saying things like, ‘All gay men dress well,’ is unhelpful and dehumanising to the gay men who don’t give a flying fig about fashion.
Remember, being gay is just one element of your identity, so how could we possibly all be the same?
Every once in a blue moon, stereotypes may have the tiniest grain of truth (lots of gay men DO like Beyoncé, but who doesn’t – she’s the dancing Aslan of pop), but that doesn’t mean it should be applied to a whole group! Except for the one about Parisian mimes. That’s all true. KIDDING!
One of the best things about choosing to IDENTIFY as gay or bi is that you are already making your own rules. I’m not for a second suggesting there is one set of rules for straight people and one for non-straight, but identifying as LGB or T or * means you have opted out of the majority group (you’re never too young to learn that the whole world is largely run and designed for straight, white, cis men, or ‘the patriarchy’). This pretty much means you are free to adopt whichever elements of gay or queer culture you see fit.
The biggest bonus to coming out is that you can be who you want to be with no hiding and no apologies.
‘[When I came out] it was easier, because I had been pretending to be something I wasn’t. Being gay meant that I could be more honest about the things that I liked.’
Ben, 23, Manchester.
Basically, you can pick and choose which ‘stereotypes’ you want to adhere to, because some of them are part of a great tradition set out by generations of LGB* people. What if you DO want to work as cabin crew? Do it. What if you want to work as cabin crew AND play rugby AND listen to musical theatre soundtracks BUT ALSO thrash metal? Well, guess what? Your identity is yours to design.
If you’re a gay girl who wants to shave her head, who the heck has any right to tell you not to? It’s your hair.
I’d like to point out that gay people do not cause homophobia with our behaviour. Homophobes are simply bigoted, and that, my friend, is their problem.
LGB* people do not choose to be LGB*. Homophobes choose to hate.
There are various threads to gay culture which are not stereotypes, but are rather identities within an identity. You can’t choose whether you fancy guys or girls, but once you’ve accepted who you fancy, there ARE lifestyle choices to be made. These are some of the various subcultures you may have heard about or may experience on the gay scene:
Of course, most gay men and women are NONE of those things and are just men or women who fancy people with the same genitals as them. It’s an identity buffet – you can take your plate up and just have a little scoop of gay, or you can go nuts and load up on as many labels as you can carry back to the table.
‘I sometimes think it would be easier if I did look more like a stereotypical “lesbian”, because it would be easier to pull! But that’s just not me … you have to wear the clothes you like.’
Jenny, 31, Dublin, Ireland.
If you identify as lesbian or gay, I bet you think you’re pretty good at being able to spot a fellow ’mo, right? I’d like you to take a pen and in the space below draw a gay man and a gay woman … GO!
I bet some of you have drawn either:
But for many decades, LGBT* people had to be INVISIBLE for fear of persecution. Therefore, most gay men and women had to blend in effortlessly like alien bodysnatchers – only not evil, obviously. It’s super homophobic to suggest that all gay men and women look alike.
That said, some gay men and women enjoy playing with style and gender typing. Any subculture will have uniforms to an extent – look at goths or mods, etc. Adopting a certain sexual-identity look is very different to being transgender, as we discussed in the section on identity. It is more about an aesthetic – borrowing gender norms or aspiring towards androgyny. Why shouldn’t a woman cut her hair short? Why shouldn’t guys wear make-up? Part of the fun of being gay is sticking two fingers up at ‘the norm’.
In the next section, let’s look at some particular stereotypes, starting with gay men.
The word ‘camp’ is often applied to gay men, although anything can be camp. Gay women can be fantastically camp – just look at Sue Perkins. Camp means excessive, flamboyant, kitsch and theatrical but also sophisticated, witty and subversive behaviour or things. Later on, when we look at ‘gay icons’, you’ll see that many celebrities beloved by gay people possess these qualities.
Despite ‘camp’ sounding literally fabulous, it is more often than not used as an insult, sometimes by straight people but, perhaps more shockingly, by gay people themselves. ‘He’s too camp for me’ trips off the tongue of many a gay guy when he’s deciding whether or not to bum someone.
Another term we could have added to the definition of camp is ‘effeminate’, and this is where the problem seems to be.
It seems unlikely that young gay men are born camp and yet, when I was a teacher, there were glaringly camp five- and six-year-olds in my Year 1 classes. How can this be? One possibility is that these boys identify as female from a young age – lots of trans people do; remember Rory’s story. Maybe they’re sexually confused, meaning that they are attracted to other boys but are unaware that being gay is an option, so they start to echo ‘female’ traits. However, this could be as a result of their feeling ‘different’ to their male peers, so they simply adopt the traits of their closer female friends. Another theory is that young gay men have a refined eye for camp and track down camp icons in the media and emulate their behaviour.
Whatever the origin of camp, it’s fair to say that however butch gay men think they are, total strangers are often MORE than able to spot a gay chap at twenty paces, especially if they themselves are gay.
If we were to ask a hundred gay men, ‘Do you think you’re camp?’ though, they’d scratch their testicles, adopt a tone ten decibels lower than normal and say, ‘Naaaarrr, mate, not me.’ I estimate possibly three or four might say, ‘Oooh, sometimes, if I’ve had a drink.’
Gay men seem terrified of being camp. They plaster their Grindr profiles with ‘Straight Acting’ and frantically grow beards. (More on hyper-masculinity in a moment.) The consensus seems to be that, while we think camp is great for chat show hosts, we don’t wanna bum it.
Is this simply roaring misogyny? Do gay men just hate women and anything stereotypically female? Living in a male-dominated world seems to have infected us with a notion that anything male is BETTER. Is this why some gay women ALSO reject feminine norms and chase down the characteristics of the dominant group on the planet – men?
I don’t think so. I think it’s far worse. I think we hate OURSELVES.
Bummer, right?
But this isn’t our fault. After DECADES of being told in all sorts of ways that gay men are LESS THAN straight men, we’ve turned that hate inwards. We aren’t rejecting female traits; we’re rejecting stereotypically gay ones.
How sad is this? Answer: Mega sad.
We might not all like all of our stereotypes, but they are ours. They belong to us. The rest of the world is so shady about gay people that, love it or hate it, I think we could all be a little bit more supportive of gay culture. Let me tell you something, boys and girls, you can ‘straight act’ all you want, but if you’re sleeping with your own sex, to the rest of the world you’re as gay as John Waters living in a pink tent with Clare Balding while watching Drag Race.
You might as well own it.
As mentioned previously, any subculture may develop a uniform, but for some gay men the ‘look’ has gone far beyond mere clothing. It’s – you guessed it – a stereotype, but gay men are often thought to have the best bodies on the market.
Go to any big gay club and – another stereotype incoming – you’ll see HUGE guys shuffling around with their tops off. Barrel chests, six-packs and necks as big as my thigh have become a curious norm. It seems the aspirational aesthetic is that of CARTOON HUMAN Desperate Dan.
There are couple of theories behind this gym-bunny culture. It could be linked to the gay man’s love of all things masculine. Men want to shag men, so the more man there is of you, the better. If you want to get laid a lot, be a fantasy … be a cartoon. Be the opposite of feminine.
The second theory is sadder. If a young gay guy is being drip fed messages that female < male and gay < straight, then gay guys may develop an internal loathing of all things female and gay, thus striving for the most masculine appearance possible – like you can pump your way out of being gay.
The Velvet Rage author Alan Downs supports the notion that the gay obsession with body mass is down to self-loathing. He believes gay men chase impossible levels of fitness to overcome an inner sadness – you’ll be happy if only you become that bit more perfect and if just a few more men want to bum you. He believes gay men look for validation in all the wrong places.
I don’t wholly agree with either of those theories. I simply think we’re subjected to peer pressure, even as adults – we see a Muscle Mary in porn, in the club, on the beach and start to think it’s achievable. This is something that women have been subject to for years, particularly from exposure to six-foot, six-stone models in fashion magazines.
It’s a statistical fact that gay men are more prone to eating disorders than our straight brothers. We’re going to extreme lengths to fit in down the clubs. Given that I’ve never seen a straight guy dancing with his shirt off, it’s not a mystery to figure out why.
Clue: A six pack never made anyone happy. No-one ever got to the stage at the gym where they said, ‘I DID IT! I AM NOW SATISFIED.’ Maybe some of us get hooked on the idea that true happiness is just one gym session away and so we keep going.
As I said in the section on camp, it doesn’t matter what you look like or how you dress, once you’re gay, you’re gay in the eyes of the world. There is no ‘he’s gayer than me’. If you find yourself saying things like that, we’re dealing with something very sad and very deep rooted.
Desperate Dan bodies are also no great enigma. STEROIDS. I’m afraid it’s that simple. Go to a gay beach and play REAL OR STEROIDS? Some guys have naturally lean, defined or even muscled bodies, but I think you can spot a steroid user a mile off. Steroid use is endemic on the gay scene. All those really huge guys, with few exceptions, are using.
So. Let’s talk about the ’roids. The ones we’re talking about are anabolic-androgenic steroids (or AAS for short). Users inject or swallow high doses of the male hormone testosterone, which promotes growth. Most users take them non-continuously, causing fluctuations in their body mass as and when they need to look buff. Some users take a cocktail of different steroids, a practice known as ‘stacking’.
If everyone’s on them, they can’t be so bad, right? Right? Wrong.
I think that table speaks for itself. As with any illegal drug (note that some people are prescribed hormone treatment for valid reasons), just because your mates are doing it doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Also, I’m not sure how I can say this delicately. NO ONE WANTS TO SHAG A BALD SPOTTY PSYCHO WITH BALLS LIKE SHRIVELLED RAISINS. (I’m known for my tact.)
So it’s a vicious circle. Guys will only look buff for as long as they’re on the drugs, so you are well aware your physique is not down to you or your efforts at the gym – like fake self-esteem. Frankly, it’s cheating, pure and simple.
More to the point, no one ever made themselves happy just by going to the gym. The big guys still wanna be bigger. It’s a never-ending quest for a state of perfection that doesn’t exist. Guys on steroids aren’t happier, they’re just bigger. Finally, the Desperate Dan look is very specific, and not everyone is into that ’roidy look (I think it looks FREAKISH). It’s no guarantee of finding a love match.
‘You can tell when a guy’s on steroids – bulging head veins! I personally think it’s not such a great look. Huge, great arms and chests with skinny little legs. I find it repulsive, to be honest.’
T, 22, Brisbane, Australia.
While gay men wage war against camp with muscle, gay women have their own in-fights. This war is about femininity. ‘Butch dykes’ often take issue with ‘lipstick lesbians’ and vice versa. You hear a lot of arguments like this:
‘I’m a lesbian so I want a woman who actually looks like a woman.’ Or ‘She’s just pretending to be dead femme; she’s really a dyke.’
As with gay men, this infighting isn’t helping anyone – we get enough grief from outside the community as it is. It seems that some women feel that adhering to or avoiding stereotypes is somehow damaging ‘the cause’, but of course this isn’t true. All any person can be is comfortable. It’s all about personal taste. Some women like make-up and fashion, and some don’t.
You’ll notice that THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SEXUALITY. In fact, what is more troubling is that straight women might be accused of being gay purely because they don’t like fussing over their hair, clothes and make-up – that’s both homophobic AND sexist.
What’s more, when it comes to dating, some women are very into butch lesbians, some women are into girly girls – there really is something for everyone.
A mixture of poor media representation and sheer misogyny has also furthered the myth of the ‘angry lesbian’, the idea that all gay women are militants who seek to kill and scalp men. This response is identical to the one that women get from men when they use the word ‘feminism’. It’s a way of men putting women down – to keep them in their place. Note that feminists are often accused of being lesbians. Let’s get it straight. Gay women do not hate men. They simply don’t want to have sex with them.
Very often, when talking about women’s issues, I find the term ‘men’ is used to describe ‘the patriarchy’. This is also a mistake.
This is so ridiculous it hardly warrants air time, but pornography (more on that later) has led some young heterosexual men to think that scantily clad gay women will coquettishly beckon them into a soft-focus three-way. Clearly this is not the case.
Some bi or queer women probably are looking for threesomes with clammy-palmed internet men, but most aren’t. No lesbian women are. I can’t state this enough: Lesbians like vaginas. They don’t even want blokes watching. I KNOW, how INCONSIDERATE. Note the sarcastic tone.
There is a more serious side to the idea that gay women are ‘waiting for the right man’. In certain parts of South Africa, ‘corrective rape’ is a terrible, heart-breaking practice whereby gay women (as many as an estimated ten a week) are raped or gang-raped ‘for their own good’ to turn them heterosexual. All of us, straight, gay or otherwise must, MUST accept that women of all sexualities have the same sexual freedoms as men.
One of the strangest stereotypes about us is that gay men hate lesbians and vice versa. Imma save you some time. If you are chatting to gay men who are dismissive of lesbians (or for that matter disparaging of the vagina as a concept), you are talking to misogynist dicks. If you are talking to a gay woman who classifies all gay men as lesbian haters, you are talking to a sexist homophobe.
It works both ways.
Needless to say, gay people often show a startling lack of awareness about trans people – confusing drag queens and transgendered people constantly.
There is no reason for these conflicts beyond trashy, worn, flea-bitten, drag-show stand-up jokes that should have been thrown out with crimpers and Tamagotchis.
Again, there is so much homophobia in the world. Why on earth would we want to add to it?
Poor bisexual people. I’ll include queer, pan and curious people in this section too. Because as humans we’re trained to enjoy binary things, people not conforming to GAY OR STRAIGHT can often be rejected by both sides.
Straight people think bisexuals are ‘greedy’ or ‘indecisive’, while gay people lean towards, ‘Oh they must be gay.’ Both think that, ‘when they meet the right person they’ll pick a team.’ As I said before, I really don’t think bisexual people would bother hedging their bets. It would be so much EASIER to pick a side, I’d imagine. Therefore, it takes guts to identify this way.
It’s up to you to decide if bi people are getting the best or worst of both worlds. I’d argue that bisexual people aren’t getting any of the privileges of straight society while they’re also lacking the community of being gay or lesbian.
Let’s all hug a bisexual this week. They need our support too.
In any group, there are bound to be social norms, and being LGBT* is no different. Perhaps some stereotypes arose from these shared attributes. No one has to conform to these traits, however. Despite the hundreds of stereotypes we’ve talked about in this chapter – regarding hairstyles, clothes, behaviour – it’s important to remember that even if you DO conform to certain stereotypes, you are still an individual. There is only one you, and you can do whatever you like as long as you look after yourself and don’t hurt anyone else.
Who do you want to be? There’s only one rule: always be true to yourself.
