This Book is Gay (6 page)

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.