It will probably increase your odds a bit if your presentation is very butch. Most gay men like masculine energy. Some of them may care more about that than about thaa about the genitalia detailia.

It stretches the purpose of taxonomy to lump Kinsey 5.9s, 0.1s, 3s, and every possible point in between, into the same group labeled "bi." If a guy is attracted to men over women at a 50 or 100-to-1 ratio, why on earth shouldn't they consider themselves gay, rather than lump themselves in with "I'll fuck a guy, but I only want a girlfriend and eventually a wife and family" guys?

FWIW I've noticed, in an entirely unscientific way, that heterosexually-inclined guys seem more amenable to identifying as "bi," particularly in that sexual-but-not-romantic sense, while homosexually-inclined guys seem more inclined to stick with "gay" or hedge with an in between label like "homoflexible." My speculation is that the former see any deviation from strict heterosexuality as significant, and indicative of the need for a separate identity, while the latter are already far removed from "the norm" and make more pragmatic judgements, based on personal history, romantic/sexual attraction mix, and the likelihood of it actually making a difference in reality.

@1 - As a gay man who has known many gay men and has also slept with women, I must say... Each of those three sentences you've written is so far from the reality I've known, I have to wonder if you've ever met a gay guy before. Sorry, but liking men because they are masculine does not increase likelihood of liking women who are masculine. It just doesn't work that way.

I'm one of those bi-but-round-me-up-to-lesbian women who likes gay porn, occasionally gets crushes on gay men, and--back when everyone was young and confused--used to like to mess around with gay men (well, I guess they were more boys at the time) and was sort of hurt that they weren't as into it as I was. So I feel your pain GAYMAD. I do. Why don't you find a bi man who will happily fuck you while telling you how much he likes dick. Or even a GGG straight man with good personal hygiene and fashion sense who will tell you how gay he is just to get you off.

LW asks: "What is the most ethical way to operate here?" Dan doesn't outline any ethical behaviors, even in regards to LW's statement that she is "feeling particularly sexual toward my gay male friends." To start, I would recommend that LW make sure those feeling are kept in check. LW should also be candid about herself and her fantasy in any ads, as well as what she does and does not expect regarding any personal connection after the sex is over.

LW should also consider that fantasies require a little suspension of disbelief. So when that gay-identified man responds to her ad, LW should avoid trying to sort out those that are gay-identified bi versus gay-identified gay.

Reposting the letter for easier reference in the comments:

I'm wondering if this is the right place to ask a question for the show or if I MUST call? Either way, I'm just wondering: I identify as a queer female, having dated men and women almost in equal measure. Lately I'm finding that my fantasies are changing gears: I'm fantasizing about gay men, watching gay porn, feeling particularly sexual toward my gay male friends. I want to have intercourse with gay men. Is this insane and impossible? Might it be offensive to gay men that I'm actively trying to figure out how to satisfy my needs in this way? Is it unlikely that any gay men would be willing to get naked with a girl (and like it?)? I suppose one solution is to seek out a bisexual man, but is there anything else you'd recommend? What is the most ethical way to operate here?

Girl's Awkward Yearnings Mostly A Disaster

As to GAYMAD: I suggest trying the red states. Plenty of gay dudes there who fuck women, marry women, and have children with women. Before the call of cock blows up their families, of course.

I think that question and response was on the podcast not in the column.

@4 - I've met plenty of gay & bi & trans men & women. I guess the reality you have known is nothing like this: http://comics.billroundy.com/?p=1116

@9 -- It was, it was in last week's episode in fact.

@9 is correct.

@10, that comic is so awesome, thank you.

This is extremely restrained. To answer the five consecutive questions:

1 - as to insane, no idea; as to impossible, the world would be a better place if it were

2 - This seems basically a conversion fantasy, and, putting it extremely mildly, that does not make the world a better place, although Team Homo has not attained full consensus

3 - Not that unlikely; people can enjoy sex with a partner to whom they are not attracted

4 - That seeking bi men seems so second-rate is a big red flag

5 - Well done for wanting to act ethically; keep it to hookups and don't make any moves to initiate a relationship? (assuming LW means pursuit of sex; the letter is unclear)

One thing that caught my attention was the LW's concern about her fantasies being too "offensive" or the most "ethical" way to seek their fulfillment. Sounds like she feels guilty for having these fantasies. Like, she feels bad for fantasizing about "violating" someone else's sexual orientation. But then again, that may be part of the appeal.

@8: "call of cock"? I think you mean "Call of Cockthulhu"
lol gettit

Just how "gay" do they have to be to fulfill your fantasy?

I would be a terrible candidate. I'm a perfect Kinsey 6, a 100% homo guy. I am flatly not attracted to women, no matter how good a friend they may be. I seriously don't think I could get a boner in the presence of a woman (and I've tried). When I was younger, I had a few women friends try to get me interested, and it just didn't work. So we could be best friends in the world, but sexy time would be off the menu.

However, I know lots of guys who are not pegged quit so firmly at the 6 end of the Kinsey scale. Lots of primarily gay guys have had sex with women before. If you find a Kinsey 5, say, who identifies as gay, but still occasionally attracted to women, then that is a possible candidate for your fantasy.

Good luck.

@15 Mr. V

Nobel Prize for restraint. Homeric.

Don't hit on your friends. They are your friends, not your sexual fantasy fodder, and unless they've displayed obvious interest, it's just as rude as a friend-dude trying to get in your pants unexpectedly/awkwardly.

Do exorcise this fetish through a personal ad - all parties fully informed and protected.

Do examine the kink if you feel guilty about it. It sounds like a version of the irresistibility fantasy. If it disturbs you, figuring out what it means for you can help it lose it's edge And then it can just be part of your masturbatory routine. If it doesn't bother you, then just be honest with the guys you seek out and treat them well.

Ms Gui - That's a large part of why I think it's a serious Conversion Fantasy, and not really a good match for the podcast caller. A one-off encounter with problematic aspects if it were to be a regular staple is a fairly common thing to try, and can be given FTWL. It's interesting seeing letters like these from this side of the problematic aspect; the last several all seem to have been from the other side.

Mr Ghost - Kind of you; it seemed the LW's display of conscience ought to be encouraged.

I've slept with one or two men who've identified as gay.

My advice? Go to a gay club that's heavily geared towards men (not a "gay and lesbian" club). You'll be surrounded by "gay" men, some of whom are in fact bi. Flirt with them, but don't be creepy about it; keep it subtle enough that the actual gay men interpret it as harmless and safe flirting. But obvious enough that the bi dudes get the picture.

Or she could seek out a threesome with a Gay M/Bi M couple. To her, they are two gay dudes, one of whom is interested in fucking her.

@14: I think you're overthinking this one. No one asks guys to dissect the psychological reasons behind their interest in "lesbian" porn.

@4 I think you were being Rickrolled, dude.

Overall, I guess, good luck to the LW, it all seems kind of icky.

@22 I kind of agree... but she's actively trying to take her fantasy out into the real world, so it's probably worth it to consider what impacts she'll be having on her... targets.

@22
I think your suggestion shows the greatest potential to work within an already established M/M relationship that has a BiM who'd like to have some sexual contact with a woman from time to time. With both men present, LW should get a bigger high without needing to worry about the ethics or sheer logistics of finding a 100% gay guy who might be interested.

Ms Fan - I like the threesome idea. The club idea feels gendered. Frankly, I'm a little surprised there are still clubs heavily geared to Gs (or Ls, for that matter) any more in the mad dash towards a post-gay world. The strategy might be optimal for LW's attaining her desire, but it would really have to be just the right sort of club for even mild flirtation not to get creepy quickly. OS people have the whole world in which to flirt and pick each other up; the LW herself would appear to agree with the idea that appropriating gay space isn't ideal.

Hmm. A tough one. Doesn't seem reasonable to expect it could happen with a Kinsey 6. I like the suggestion that she find a bi man who is willing to talk to her about how much he likes cock while they have sex.

To me, this is another case of a woman that seems to think that since she's a woman she can't possibly be guilty of offensive behavior when it comes to sexually objectifying men--especially gay men. Think how tiresome this would be if it were the standard straight-man-fanatsizing-about-having-sex-with-a-lesbian, but add to it the arrogance to expect that a friend would indulge him.

@1: "It will probably increase your odds a bit if your presentation is very butch. Most gay men like masculine energy. Some of them may care more about that than about thaa about the genitalia detailia."

This is utter rubbish. Gay men do not effectively "want to have sex with women who look and act like men" or whatever you're implying.

I have a friend who actually did match the part of what the LW desires, he is not bi, but had never had the chance and was curious. A friend of a friend volunteered, and he got that curiosity scratched. Not clinically, but in a friendly manner and that was that off his "list".

@26: Perhaps objectification, but there are still persons, albeit few and far between who could make this happen, and who hold similar curiosities. Granted, my example occurred among persons in a country who is very gay-friendly and more likely when a boy can grow up and not feel the same pressures to date women by family or society. It was also among people who knew each other, and at the guy's request, so not the same dynamics as the LW.

"I suppose one solution is to seek out a bisexual man..."

Well, uh, yeah.

If she is attracted to androgyny or non-traditionally gendered men, or just digs the man-on-man action, bi-guys are pretty much the way to scratch that itch. [That's what we do. It's in the manual (The Big Book of Bi, or The Bi-ble as we call it).] If that's where she's at, I don't see where there is a problem.

If--as Mr. ven points out--this is about fucking a man that doesn't fuck women, but would magically be all into it for her, then she needs to go sit on the bench with the bro-dudes who think that lesbians "just haven't had a good enough dicking."

The fact that she seems to dismiss bi guys as a viable solution, tempts me to call bi-erasure--something I really avoid doing--on this behaviorally bi woman. For shame.

I CAN ANSWER THIS. I am a female bodied person who is primarily attracted to gay/queer men. Specifically, I am a transgender gay man, but I have no interest in transitioning my body, so at a glance I appear to be a queer woman who is interested in gay men, and I have had absolutely zero problems attracting them and have never had to put up an ad.*

My basic experience is that there is a lot of interest in me for a lot of different reasons. They seem to range from curiosity, to being homoflexible, to being thoroughly bisexual but extremely gay presenting, to people who are just very interested in me, personally, and can dig on whatever body happens to come with my brain. I'm sure that there more reasons, but those are the ones that jump out. Whatever the reason, my point is the interest is there and the opportunities can be ample.

As for how to go about things ethically (and I say this as an ethics obsessed person), I think that you're worrying about the wrong thing. It's not unethical to flirt, and you can gauge their responses from there. Additionally, I find that most of them are the ones making passes at me, so it's a little moot. (I will admit that I am a performer with a sexual tilt to a lot of my work, so that may do something to make people interested and also give them a reason to talk to me, but other queer women seem to have similar experiences.)

Additionally, on the ethics note, gay men hit on each other like you wouldn't believe. That is just a thing that the guys in the clubs do and what they go there for, so by definition, they also get hit on by people they're not interested in as a regular part of playing that game. The issue there is just more to be graceful about how you go about it.

And, though this probably only results in a small amount of interest generated (most coming from total strangers or people who have seen me perform), but I am extremely LOUD about the fact that I am attracted to queer men. This let's the guys around me know that I am available if they want to make a pass, and also opens people's minds up to the fact that this happens even if they're not interested, themselves.

* - As a final note, I did have an account on adam4adam.com just as an experiment. They prohibit women and transgender men (bigots), so I just put a shot of my legs in the profile. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people contacted me to say, "I'm totally into feminine gay guys, but by any chance are you a woman because I would totally love that!", so you could always try something like that, too. I think that pretty much the only way you could be "unethical" is to use an app to lure a guy to your house thinking that he was going to get some dick which you clearly don't plan to do- anything else is fine.

i'm all about dropping the labels and whatnot (however, for clarity sakes, if clarity is what to call it, labeling does help with the information processing task) so perhaps someone can help me out here.

gay is gay = guy with guys who do not fuck women
bi is bi = any/either m/f orientation will do

so by the sheer nature of gay, meaning men with men, how in the WORLD is a gay guy fucking a women and that's still gay? does one not "become" (i use become loosely and for lack of a better one) bi, by (pun intended) the sheer gender fucking crossover?

i mean how are you gay and fuck women and are still gay. a man can be predominantly male fucking oriented but the minute he PiVs, i don't understand how that is still gay. unless of course, we start extrapolating by relationship versus sex. i have sex with men and women but i will only date or have a relationship with a man.

i'm so confused. (on this matter. i think the coochie is nice, feminine, an enigma, and perhaps even interesting, but i am not the least bit interested in having sex with it. gooo penis!!!!)

P.S. dan, despite looking for that mail/post/article for 15 minutes (which was really thoughtful and considerate) this might be the laziest answer i have ever seen you write (i still love you). but you didn't really help this poor soul at all :-(

There are some of us gay guys that are actually curious about hooking up with a woman... I'm one of them. I don't consider myself Bi because a woman just on her own is not a turn on to me, but in the context of being with her and another guy, there are some things that could happen. But would I possibly try with just a woman on her own? Yeah, but I can guarantee it wouldn't be that good LOL. The only thing I would be interested in is what "it" would feel like. Other than that I would have no interest in her whatsoever... But hey, I'm sure there are some others like me out there that never went that way and has curiosities! Maybe try craigslist? I dunno, I've had 0 luck with this, so it's not surprising she would too..

@25: I’ve been out with gay male friends to gay clubs which were mostly men (not leather daddy clubs, that sort of thing) and had lots of fun flirting with the gay guys there, many of whom were in groups. And sometimes a guy in the group would end up hitting on me, which always surprised me because I’d presumed they were there because they were all gay. In my case I would turn them down because if I’d wanted to pull a man, I wouldn’t have gone to a gay club – my eyes would have been on the women there, if anyone.

So maybe a better strategy would be to go out to gay clubs, be flirty in a sociable way, and see if any “gay” guys hit on her.

Admittedly, my experience of going out to gay clubs with gay friends was back in the 90s, so things may have changed as far as typical gender split. I’ve definitely been to gay clubs where all were welcome, including the straight friends.

@26: Ah, but you missed the detail that LW is not straight – she identifies as queer, so she’s had plenty of queer sex. Just not gay M/bi F sex. My guess is that it’s the taboo that attracts her. And nowhere do I read the LW as expecting a friend to indulge her; she just said the thought turned her on.

And she doesn’t seem to think she can’t possibly be guilty of offensive behaviour – her whole question was how to avoid being perceived as offensive and proceed in an ethical manner.

@27: Finding a straight-curious guy might be the way to go.

@31: Apt username. By your logic, “if a guy sucks one dick he’s gay/bi”, which is an attitude I’ve heard before, primarily from gay men. It’s an unhelpful attitude. Like @2 says, if someone is 98% one way and 2% the other, why not just identify as what you’re 98% of? The odds of meeting that extra special person in the 2% are so low compared to meeting someone in the 98%, you may as well not advertise yourself as expecting it. But. It could occasionally happen, a few times in someone’s lifetime. The way someone like that chooses to identify is up to them.

@32: Craigslist is an excellent suggestion.

@29 "The Big Book of Bi"--I'm picturing a friendly Richard Scarry-type cover with all sorts of Busytown characters.

Fetishization of gay men is a new thing. Women are reading gay erotica, writing gay erotica, and forgetting that real people aren't novel characters.

I am guessing these women are young enough to have forgotten that this has been done before. By every dirty old man who ever chased after a centerfold.

Imagining that people who have no interest in you sexually will be thrilled and/or validated by you insertion of them into your sex life is just totally bizarre to me. But dirty old men and women who read gay romance can live in hope.

(I love gay romance, BTW, I just don't equate actual gay men with characters in dirty books).

Late @34, that's pretty much spot-on. Sure you haven't come across it before?

Ms Fan - My club experience is probably more limited than yours, but you did originally state "a club that's heavily geared towards men". Perhaps the "heavily" influenced me a little. I said gendered mainly because I'm sure you can imagine the high holy Roberts that would ensue if an OS man took so active a line in a women's club. In my time, I infrequently appeared at a club probably best described as gay-and-welcoming, and cannot recall any instance of F-initiated FM flirting. As to why, I'll hazard a guess that it was in part because our smallish city didn't have any specialty clubs to be MM-exclusive or nearly so, though there was always one (and sometimes a second) mixed club where OS flirtation and pickups, though clearly in the minority, were part of the norm. As we lacked the variety of QAF Pittsburgh, people tended when in doubt as to what would be acceptable conduct at X or at Y to err on the side of politeness. I'd have no problem with taking your experience as more representative.

***

M? Sweet - (The ? is because you present first as [a transgender gay man] but later refer to [other queer women] or I'd have called you Mr without a second thought; do you have a preference?) Your post reminds me of a vague memory of Henry Kissinger's saying of there being plenty of action available for short, fat men (who just so happened to be US Secretary of State went unsaid).

It's really hard to tell from the letter, but LW could be (admirably, in my view) wary of luring a gay man into what I'll call a Bob and Rose (in that series, I think Rose was straight and LW isn't, but that's the closest comparison that comes to mind). The experience of falling in love with a woman can be (perhaps not necessarily) quite traumatic for a non-rounding gay man when it just happens; I can see worrying that bringing it about on purpose might fall on the wrong side of the line.

Great, now I gotta compete with some PoMo queer girl over what little dating/sex pool I already have?!

Ugh, go find a Bi guy and shut up about it. This girl is just being greedy.

@35 - I don't know that it's necessarily a 'new' thing. Gay male slash has been around at least since the '60s, or at least whenever the first Kirk/Spock stories started circulating. I'm one of those women that writes gay male porn, and I certainly don't view my characters as real people. They're idealised, just like in any romance genre, and I never assume that a real-life gay man will behave as any of my characters do.

Although I do view the dynamic as highly erotic and often get off on the images that I create in my head, I have no desire to push myself on a man whose defining characteristic is that he is not at all sexually attracted to me. Now, if a couple offered to let me watch - that's an entirely different story. But I would not participate beyond that passive role, probably not even if I were invited to. I want to see them interact, I don't want to put myself in the middle like that.

Although I do have to say that there is probably some merit in the LW seeking out a bi/gay couple for a threesome, rather than trying to snag a gold-star gay all on her own.

Endash @3, go to a bi meetup and you will meet a lot of bi people who are, basically, only out as bi to other bi people and whose monosexual friends believe they are gay. There's a lot of "Getting my parents used to the idea I was gay took forever, I don't want to shake everything up again now," and sadly, also a lot of "I've been part of the gay scene most of my adult life before I realised I was bi,, and I believe many of my friends would regard me as a kind of traitor and abandon me if they knew I'm interested in other genders too."

@40: Exactly this. Believe it or not, for men in particular, it's harder to be out as bi than as gay because both straight AND gay people mistrust your intentions, and there's a much smaller bi community to welcome you.

Ophian @36 -- It's a privilege granted only to a few. I don't qualify.

Ms Fan - Socially, very plausibly, though the growing rift ought to have everybody equally distrustful and unwelcoming of each other within the next generation or so. Legally, I'd probably better say nothing, my history giving me a heated opinion.

@ 36 Good story, brah.