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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Teenage years are hell. Hang in there. It gets so much better.
But for HGG, I might add this advice: being straight, it's often hard to find a GIRL whose personality I really like. So while I'm not about to say being gay is "no harder than being straight" in our society, I will say that this problem likely has less to do with being gay and more to do with simply finding the right person for you. Doing that is hard for everyone, gay or straight.
Gay teenagers tend to be so gay they can't hide it. Your peer group will catch up with you and come out in college, after college. You should learn to embrace your gay traits. Often, not yet out gays will reject anything perceived as gay to prove, to themselves, to others that THEY are not like that.
If you learn to like those traits in yourself you will be able to accept them in others.
Not sure what the social climate is like where you live, but you might want to check out a local gay softball/other sport league. You'll never find more butch homos than on the diamond.
Basically, they're homophobic homosexuals. In my opinion, they're nothing but whiny nightmares to be around.
But then you grow up and you get over it. You realize that most gay men aren't swishy queens, and the ones that are are your brothers-in-arms too, but you are by no means required to sleep with them if you don't want to.
In some ways I probably would have said things like you if I'd ever been forced to describe what type of guys I liked at that age. And I would never believe that I'd get to have so much fun with guys who were so much more "straight-acting"* than I even imagined existed in my wildest dreams (and my dreams were pretty wild), but I also wouldn't have believed that I'd have had so much fun with so many guys who my younger self would have dismissed as "too gay."
In other words,(a) thank God I grew up and (b) even as a grown-up, I'm still meeting different types of gay men, so I'm going to guess that you haven't met them all either.
Dan has an important point: avoid the pitfall of looking down on other gay youth who are out and flamboyant and "stereotypically gay." That'll make you an asshole.
Speaking of, Dan can refer to me as a fag anytime. I'm just unbearable that way. Oh yeah, that's the other lesson I forgot:
(c) lots of gay men are unbearable... but don't become one of them by growing up to be a judgmental prick.
(fair warning: the article is - as i said - completely fucking stupid).
Oh, and as far as I'm concerned, "straight acting" means you eat pussy and "straight appearing" means you do it in pubic.
Point is, you'll never find a perfectly masculine gay man, so don't waste your energy trying. Better to come to grips with the inherent nature of gayness and accept gay for what it is.
No, seriously. I had the same damn problem when I was 17 myself. Turns out that there are a lot of gay dudes out there who you're gonna totally wanna make out with - it's just that high school isn't usually the time when we come out for the first time. Be patient, know what you want, and wait for it. It'll come.
Meanwhile, if you want some action, take advantage of the fact that most straight guys in high school are typically horny enough where they don't care whether it's a guy or a girl sucking them off. Seriously. Be aggressively flirty and you'll be surprised how many straight guys won't mind at all. And you may find that one of these "straight" guys is gay after all. In fact, I was one of them (as well as another once-closeted friend of mine).
Circular reasoning will get you nowhere, son.
Hang in there, letter writer. Cut the others some slack, they're just having fun. Cut yourself some slack, too. The best years are yet to come!
There's nothing more that I hate than shopping, or smelling 5 different perfumes and recommending which one to buy (please pick the flowery one so I can gag as I run my tongue along your neck and taste the rancid crap you are spraying on daily), or looking for furniture.
I'll admit that I've only know 2 gay guys in my 30+ years of life, but I have to believe that homosexuals have the same relationship dynamics that heteros have (i.e. - dominant vs submissive, nagging vs nagged, masculine vs femenine), so the same compromises must take place. If a guy turns you on physically, get to know him personally. If there is enough physical and mental compatibility to overlook the habits that drive you batshit crazy, go for a relationship and communicate what pisses you off to your significant other. It will work itself out in the end if you are both honest. After 13 years of marriage, my wife knows not to argue when I decide to stay in the car and read rather than patrol a mall and look for sales. She got a ride to the mall, has my credit cards, and gets a ride home, so she doesn't drag me through the stereotypical female shopping spree that would make me puke.
Isn't love grand?
Do the things you enjoy doing. Evenutally your gaydar will improve to the point that you will be able to confidently grope a straight acting stranger on the bus.
Yes, the gays of yesteryear have intricate & specific words for the different kinds of gay men, gay experiences, etc, but all those terms originated from a wholly- or partially- closeted experience. And as everyone knows, the closet includes a large amount of self-hatred, and that old language is dripping w/ it. We need new language to describe the various elements that will make up the "gay culture" of the future, which is going to be a culture that views the closet as something distant and quaint, like public executions. i.e. Something to be taken seriously, but not something that is part of anyone's direct or even indirect experience.
I know now that this was my own fear and insecurity talking. Now I have enormous respect and admiration for the Johnny Weirs of the world. I still wouldn't date him--I'm still more attracted to more butch guys. But check your own internalized homophobia.
And Dan is right. There are undoubtedly other other butch gay boys in your school. The problem is they are completely invisible and in the closet. You are unlikely to meet guys like that until you are past high school, when guys like that are more comfortable coming out. There are exceptions, but most of the boys that come out in high school really don't have much choice.
So either get over your fears and date a sissy-boy, or wait a couple years.
However, you should remember that "straight-appearing" is not equivalent to "normal". As Dan pointed out, there's absolutely nothing wrong with stereotypical gay men. It's taken almost three years for some of my stereotypical gay friends to be themselves around my kids. Initially, they were tense and trying to be butch because that's what they thought they should be around my kids. I hated it. I became friends with them for who they are and want my children to love and appreciate them for they are, too.
So, be yourself, relax, and you will meet whatever guy it is you are seeking. Meanwhile, enjoy your youth. Once you're grown and have the responsibilities of a mortgage, college tuition for your kids, braces for your kids, kids who won't give you any privacy so that their Daddies could maybe actually have some "bedroom time", you will look back at your youth and not regret the good times you had then and the wonderful times you have now as a family. Good luck!
So for part of my senior year and freshman year of college, I was in a very thin-walled closet. Asked my best-friend out on a date, claimed I liked her, she started crying because she had just heard about a similar case or something that ended with the closeted kid killing himself after his attempts at playing straight failed spectacularly. Went to prom by myself, missed an after-party where a guy planned on asking me out, then spent most of my freshman year being all forlorn and pulling that "gay guys suck, they suck" thing.
Then I came out and felt a whole lot better.
And really, you can say "oh, nobody knows my secret", but I guarantee there are plenty of people who do. There was a coming out pool at my high school that correctly guessed I'd come out before my 19th birthday, which I did, but that also had written "might already be out". My brother told me when he found out, "oh, I didn't know you were pretending to be straight" and that he tried to hook me up with a friend of his when I was 15 and he was 14.
You can also look down on the effeminate or flamboyant as though they don't have license to anything macho, but my friend was in the JROTC, did drag, came to prom in a dress and ceremoniously shoved away a recruiting app by saying "don't ask, don't tell" on the last day of school. Having sex with men makes you no less a man than having sex with women makes you straight -- were the latter true, I'd have a wife by now... well, okay, so it happened just once, but still.
And that goes double for holding far-too-high standards for masculinity cults. There are an awful lot of bears out there who claim to be oh-so-masculine but end up singing showtunes at karaoke, plenty of rugby playing queers who dress in drag out-of-season, more than a few gay cops who swish when they walk and more wine-swilling crudite-chomping basketball players than you'd imagine were out there.
Don't oversell your expectations.
At no point did he refer to swishiness, or effeminacy, or lisps or anything else; he referred to personality.
Such as the type of personality that goes all claws-out psycho on a kid who's asking a legitimate question.
And even if he is talking about behavior, rather than personality: Who the hell do you think you are to judge?
HGG: You're right that some gay guys are shallow, vapid twits considerably more interested in fashion than carrying on an intelligent conversation about the world; and that some of them can be right twats when they feel their poor little feelings have been tweaked.
Some, on the other hand, are actually intelligent, pleasant people who -- lisp or swish or not -- are drop-dead sexy because they aren't flighty little himbos.
I won't advise you to hang in there and wait for college. Go get yourself involved in a youth organization now, if there are any nearby, or take advantage of web sites like adam4adam.com. You stand a chance of meeting someone, relatively soon, whose personality might be a little closer to what you're looking for.
Best of luck.
High school is not the universe. The people you meet there are all confused teenagers. Believe me, if they aren't confused about sex they are confused about something else.
Do as well in school as you can, so you can go to a large university and meet all sorts of people. Don't think freshmen year at college will be all it takes - but by senior year, you'll have met lots of different people, and different types of homos. Consider a school with a chapter of a gay frat, like Delta Lambda Phi.
As long as you live you will meet different types of people. Don't give up or get frustrated!
Since then, I've progressed from being simply out to doing some class projects on gay-related topics: namely, stereotyping, gay civil rights, DADT, a great deal of things. It turns out to be really educational and all my peers love it. I've managed to make people rethink the way they judge others, gays in particular. My teachers are proud of the respect I manage to generate from my classmates.
There's nothing wrong with flamers. I've come to realized we all put up with the same crap together. You either are or are not gay- everything else, such as how you express it, is ultimately irrelevant. I don't express it by swishing my hips. I express it by looking for another guy that's as 'normal' (I can't even put an appropriate word there- I can't help it, too, that's my attraction) as I am and simply being in love. There's a damn wide spectrum of 'gay' and sometimes I feel like my tastes are painfully narrow, but hey, I wander into Slog and find another person like me!
Take it easy, if you can, and know that there's someone out here that knows EXACTLY what you're going through every day. If you ever want to talk or anything (I don't know your situation, if you're out or anything, etc, but I do know what you're dealing with) just drop me a line here, somehow.
Not saying that this ISN'T the case here, but something about this letter reminded me of my fag-hag ways in my teens.
I was terrified of sex and relationships, but was struggling with all the hormones and desires, so I tended to "fall in love" with the completely unachievable, and therefore SAFE, no-risk boys - my fellow drama queers. All the flirting, 100% of the drama, daydreams and tears, none of the penetration. And even the occasional make-out (see also, 100% of the drama).
I wonder if some of the yearning that we see in "guys who like guys but hate gays" isn't always internalized self-hatred, but partly inexperience and insecurity, which makes "liking boys who WON'T like me back" seem like an easier choice.
It's all part and parcel of lacking self-confidence and fearing rejection, I guess (and in this case, just being a teenager).
I'd second Dan's advice and point out to HGG that in his own words he's only identifying guys that seem obviously gay, or are officially out in high school, the kind of experience people don't usually choose unless they can't possibly get away with the alternative. This has benefits from a masturbation fantasy scenario standpoint, though, HGG. Just remember that at least one of the super hot "straight" guys at your school is actually gay.
Hang on till college, go somewhere fairly liberal, and cruise some slightly older guys once you're no longer jailbait. More masculine gay men will abound.
And, Dan is right...the butch, athletic stud types generally take a bit longer to emerge from their closets/cocoons, (though that seems to be changing all the time as more and more kids are feeling comfortable enough to come out at earlier and earlier ages...and not just the femme kids, either)...that's what makes college so exciting. Just make sure you go to college in a town with an active gay population (ie, bars and some gay culture) and preferably one with a diverse student population. You're probably going to have to satisfy yourself with jacking off to Joe Gage movies until you move out of the house.
What I meant to say was, "...he hates his competition."
Take care.
First of all--if you're 15 and still in high school, this is your mantra: it's only three more years; it's only three more years. That sounds like a long time now--and it will feel like a long time when you're experiencing it-- but in the course of a 75 year lifetime, it's not much more than a heartbeat. No matter what's happening now, it's only temporary.
And if you're in high school--start making plans NOW to go away to college, preferably a large one in or near a large city, where you will be able to meet lots of different gay people, on and off campus.
No matter what stage of life you're in, find different ways to meet people. You've already been given lots of advice. Find a gay softball league, or a gay hiking club, or a gay cycling club. You'll probably meet fewer effiminate gay men in those than you would in, say, a gay chorus (and note that I said you'd meet *fewer* effeminate men--not none!). If there are not explicitly gay clubs like that where you live, join the "straight" variety. Or join a gym. Gays have been known to join them before (ahem), and you might meet somebody when you least expect it.
Don't apologize for the kind of person you want to date. People have their types. You're looking for someone more masculine. That's not a crime.
But--like a lot of people have said--don't dismiss the effeminate gay people out of hand. Ask yourself why you find them so distasteful, and be honest with yourself. Is it because society says gay=effeminate=sick? That's utterly untrue, and the fact that you find the fems so offensive may be an indication that you've accepted the lie. There's a big difference between preferring the butcher guys and hating feminine ones. The hatred (or disgust, or distaste) is a signal flag.
Take care. I survived a high school that was extremely homophobic, but I got out, and went on to be one of the founding members of my college's first gay student's organization (and this was in the 70's). Now I've got the man of my dreams, and life couldn't be better.
I've thought about this to a fair extent: In high school, NOBODY WANTS TO BE GAY. Gay is an insult, second only to fag. If you come out as gay, you become the gay kid. You aren't yourself anymore. You get associated with the very out, very public flamers. I've had a few guys come out to me in private ever since my own very public outing, given my 'normalcy', and each of them echo this fear: if they come out, people will start treating them differently.
They all come from different backgrounds, but a lot of them are insecure about being pinned as feminine even though they aren't in the slightest. One comes from a family that has a deep military tradition in all the men; it's a really hyper-masculine environment. It's a tradition he's going to be following, too, despite DADT. It took him awhile to acknowledge that 'soldier' and 'gay' could be the same thing.
It's just totally incongruous to them: gay is not 'I love men' anymore, it becomes the whole culture that they simply aren't comfortable with or ready to take part in. They can't go near it- what will people think of them?
Sorry if I'm rambling, I'm a bit dazed coming home from school to find a letter and topics I can really closely relate to.
I was not ..
Consider this: there are over 60,000 active-duty homos in the US military. I like Army, personally, though I have friends who prefer to cruise the Marines.
My response, to him and to HGG: Being gay doesn't mean you act in a certain way. A number of sociological/societal factors have resulted in many gays adopting a flmaboyant, effeminate style or personality. Maybe at one time that was the only way to recognize people like us. Now it's not and gay people are free to act however they like. I personally think that being attracted to other men has nothing to do with how one acts or how masculine one is. On the other hand, if you want to act effeminate, that's okay. It's a valid personal style choice.
But we like what we like. I think people should be flexible in their dating horizons, but people also need to stop being offended that everyone isn't into them.
My husband is a lot less "gay-acting" now. But it doesn't really matter to me. I love him when he's framing a wall in jeans and a sweaty tshirt, hammering away; and I love him when he's singing Cher at the top of his amazing voice while dancing a pirouette through our living room.
My only other advice, HGG, is not to focus entirely on sex yet. How about on dating? Holding hands, mutual crushes, romance and awkward expressions of first like. The sex will come. Your a teenage guy and if you find another teenage guy you like it'll come crashing like a tsunami against a paper wall. But you might as well get your first relationship mistakes over now. gay youth are still socially/developmentally a couple of years behind straight kids because we don't get to start as early, usually. Let yourself learn how to date nad be with another person rather than just sex them up.
oh and college ( unless you go to bible school ) really is much much easier to find a playmate,lover, and friend.
HGG, check out any gay athletic groups in a city near you. Try a gay hiking group. The makeup of groups like this seem to skew more towards the masculine gay guy. Like Dan says, hang in there, it gets better.
Also, calling someone a self-hating gay because they don't like effeminate/queeny men is in itself a homophobic thing to say...you're implying that you believe that effeminate/queeny gay men are the NORM for gay male society and to hate the "norm" is to hate gay lifestyle in general. It's bullshit. Bravo for the queeny queers for being the first ones out of the closet but that doesn't make them the spokesperson for the Big Gay Club. We come in all shapes, sizes, colors and flavors and we should respect those differences and embrace them, but that doesn't mean I have to fuck them or have them over to my house for brunch.
As others have written, gay men--hell, people in general--tend to discover who they are after a few years of being out there as adults. There are certainly plenty of gay men who aren't budding Liberaces, and you'll certainly find them. It's not a choice between two extremes; There's a LOT of range inbetween Johnny Weir and John Wayne.
Gurl, most of those bitches making fun of you are just giant bottoms! Stand up for yourself, snap your very best snap and tell him if he doesn't stop putting you down he's not getting fucked tonight!
You made me laugh. So, thank you.
You sound pretty wonderful to me, too. (Congrats to the wife.) I hate shopping (except for guitars and whiskey), especially going to the mall. Not really a fan of perfume either.
You're spot on. Relationships require compromise. Indeed they do.
Thanks again for the smile.
Dan's answer makes sense.
I wish I could get my roommate to acknowledge this shit at his advanced age of 33 yrs old. Buys me flowers, sings me songs in his underwear, owns a copy of Brokeback Mountain (!), loves Madonna, George Michaels, etc and says women are too tedious for words. His mom's gay. His brother's gay.
Like HGG, roomie thinks "gay" means only what stereotypes have presented him and he ain't THAT.
There's more --- much more waiting for you HGG.
If I remember it right, the sister told him he had every right to be immature- he was only fully, truly, actually realized as a gay man for maybe a year or two up to that point. We've got a separate age measured in 'gay years', an inevitability given the current situation in society. So, right now, I'm probably 8 months old. Barely even a toddler. I learn a lot about myself. Hell, the ONLY guy I have come to feel a brief, wild hormonal desire for was actually a flamer in mannerisms and voice. I don't know what it was about his voice- it sent tingles down my spine.
That said, swishy gay men make this world a shinier, happier, more fabulous place, and they deserve all of our thanks for that.
Needless to say, I was completely wrong, and Dan is completely right. I think a huge contributing factor to the general effeminacy of out teens, along with Dan's point, is that many of the "manly" ones are involved in sports, where there is more homophobia and locker-room awkwardness than they would otherwise encounter. So they often stay closeted until very late in the game (i.e. college).
Case(s) in point: a full third of my water polo teammates who graduated last year are now "exploring their sexuality" as college freshmen. The most stereotypically straight guy I've ever met (absolutely huge/buff, full beard, etc.), who I lusted after for several years, came out between his freshman and sophomore years of college. Hell, I'm not exactly a lumberjack myself, but I'm captain of my swim team and I can bench more than any of our football players. There ARE "straight-acting" gay guys out there, HGG. Plenty of them. You just need to be patient.
(Side note: Even if you don't find "that personality" sexually appealing, at least be nice. A lot of those painfully effeminate guys who I couldn't imagine dating have turned out to be pretty good friends.)
Eh, in the end I think there are more deserving candidates of our pity.
JROTC and French were seriously bad choices on my part.
and you too adrian..(@28)
Don't do it.
Go ahead and cry yourself to sleep, ya big nancy. Write back when you're thirty.
Being in high school is a reason to be naive and judgmental, but it's not a full excuse. You're old enough by the time you're in high school, especially if you're self-aware enough to come out to yourself, to be past needing help to realize that stereotypes aren't universal. A straight guy asking if all straight girls were like the ones he met in high school wouldn't get ANY apologies from the peanut gallery, ditto someone asking about black dudes or Asian girls. Just because you think you're above "those gays" doesn't mean it's any less bigoted to preach about it.
Of course, where I'm from, 99% of the sex ed classes consist of the football coach standing in front of the class pointing at a picture of a vagina going "THIS FOR BABY" then pointing to a girl in the class and saying "YOU COOK, MAKE BABY".
Thankfully, my sex ed teacher was a waterskiing lesbian with 2 kids and a shotput champion girlfriend who wasn't above making us scream out the names of the body parts at the start of class to keep us from giggling throughout.
In high school, I had a huge crush on this guy. He was a jock, a total surfer god, and all the girls wanted him. Total stud of the school.
About 2 years after high school, he came out. Nobody ever would have thought that he was gay.
So some of those straight guys you're lusting after might not actually be straight.
I agree... when I was in high school I used to complain that I never met any gay girls at all, when it turns out that I just wasn't paying enough attention and was overlooking the ones who were simply just not screaming it. I bet the LW suffers a bit from this too, I simply hadn't met enough queer folks yet to really be any good at recognizing them, talk about a catch 22.
The problem with gay guys is that they're faggots.
Someone needs to come up with a work-around to address that.
Hang in there, and in the mean time, keep an open eye and an open mind… and develop friendships with dykes.
Because… um… dykes are awesome?
http://www.thebutchfactor.com/7-09_Butch…
Instead, they — that being our two phys. ed. teachers, both in retrospect so clearly dykesville when no one dared speak thy name — would pull out a b/w film reel from the 1950s (this was in the 1980s, mind) and show obviously different ones for the girls and the boys.
All I know is I was sick the day that our class got indoctrinated. It's only memorable vicariously because of all the ruckus the following Monday about someone swapping the reels in some prank and never getting caught.
* except for the psychotic ones that stalk you long after you've broken it off and given back the ring, the books, and her favourite hoodie she let you wear while you were still dating.