Masculine gays
Reflections on Gay Masculinity
By Justin Natoli, JD, MFT
If market price is a function of supply and require, 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 homosexual men, and it appears to be in brief supply. The appeal of masculinity isn’t breaking news. A quick glance on Scruff reveals one masc/musc man after another looking for 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’ lgbtq+ men recently to realize better what they undergo 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 with masculine men validates their own masculinity and helps them feel more masculine. Time and tim
Illustration by Sarah MacReading
In this morning and age, it’s almost old hat for gay characters on popular TV to trend more toward Homer Simpson than Waylon Smithers. From Happy Endings‘ Max Blum to Looking‘s Richie Ventura, the “masc” queer dude has gone from an simple punch line to the new norm, and it’s far from a massive leap to claim that in 2016, certain ideas of gay masculinity possess finally become firmly entrenched in mainstream Western pop society.
Masculinity is, indeed, something that queer men obsess over and have obsessed over since the 1970s and the rise of clone culture. It’s an obsession often manifested in derisive and self-loathing ways, because gay men often fetishize masculinity to the point that they look down upon and subordinate their feminine peers. The same pattern is evident among straight men—sexism and misogyny, after all, are alive and well—but this similar type of anti-effeminacy often goes unnoticed among gay men themselves.
The parallels between how anti-effeminacy plays out between the two groups—straight and gay men—is too-little studied. So while completing my master’s degree in sociology at Louisian
Can a Gay Man be Manly?
The recent rulings, and non-rulings, of the Supreme Court on same-sex attracted marriage have inspired me to write on a subject I have been thinking about for some time. Rather than tackling the issue of whether lgbtq+ couples should be allowed to get married and the impact on society (which is probably better on some other blog or larger discussion) I will try to keep the subject focused on manliness and homosexuality. However, I want to be clear at the outset about my stance on marriage. I believe marriage is between one man and one woman for life, and for the last 18 years I have been faithful to hold to that belief, though, as any marriage can attest, it has not always been easy. I don’t think God, nature, biology, sociology, etc. could be more distinct on how the sexes are supposed to go together. Doing my best to avoid a naturalistic fallacy, I’ll say this. If we observed in any other species a growing percentage of its members confused about which sex to mate with, it would be an noticeable red flag. At the least we would say, “That is not the way nature intended.” and perhaps try to settle a solution to help them; introduce more females or males to the soc
Manly Male lover
You comprehend 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 contrary end of the spectrum from Camp Gay, Manly Male lover is when a homosexual man is shown not only in lacking Camp or feminine traits, but kept going in the other side direction and into the realm of pure,