Words, Bodies, and Gay Spaces: A Discussion Thread

Recently, we received this letter from a long-time reader that raised some really serious questions, so we’re passing it along to you. This issue is particularly important to address, especially as a community formed around the consumption of pornography. Part Ask QC, part discussion space, let’s talk it out, eh?

Hi Queerclick family,

This isn’t so much a “question to ask,” but more a hope that we, as Queerclick users and consumers of gay pornography, can have a discussion. There was a comment made on a recent post (Authentic Footballers: Cesar) about the young model’s body type. Now I’ve seen these types of comments multiple times in multiple photo spreads across my time as a Queerclick user. Only one other time have I decided to make a remark about the language being used – in some ways, I suppose, I’ve become numb to it. The “it” I’m referring to is the hateful, cruel language we like to easily dish out when something doesn’t suit our fancy. I’ve always wondered what motivates someone to make a cruel comment – they are obviously expending energy to write this comment when I would think that if you didn’t like something you’ve seen, you’d move on rather quickly as opposed to lingering even longer.

Now that isn’t what I’m trying to get at – the discussion I want to start is that of gay bodies in gay spaces. We’re on the outset of a historic time of representation in LGTBQ history – a standing (U.S.) President is accepting of our community, we have multiple new LGBTQ identified politicians (including Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay Senator) and our visibility is higher than ever. Why is it, then, that we continue to hate ourselves? Many of us bash other gay men who aren’t our idyllic versions of beauty, we continue the cruel traditions of gossiping and uneducated judgment – for what purpose? What good does it do when an out-group tears itself apart from the inside out?

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying all gay men do this but it is indeed part of popular gay culture. Think of our media representations (The A List, anyone?) or our strong presence in realms that cultivate ideals of beauty and worth through appearance only (fashion for instance). Why has anorexia, bulimia and steroid use been on a continual rise in gay communities? Why do we continue to punish ourselves? An unfortunate truth is that many of us feel we have to continue working in a patriarchal structure that demands us to be dimorphic in nature: feminized or hyper masculinized. To be anything other than these two things is to be more “other-ed” than being gay already is.

I understand Queerclick is seen as a novel source of porn for some (maybe even most) but to me, it’s something more. It is a conglomeration of contributions by gay men for gay men (or those who appreciate the bodies of gay men). Do we objectify and consume these bodies? Yes. But need we be cruel in doing so? No. I think back to when I discovered Queerclick as a high school freshman and I avidly read Steve Prince’s “A Gay in the Life”. For the first time in my life, I was seeing a positive gay influence. He made me laugh, made me cry – but more than that, he made me feel like it was okay to be me. He represented the best of what Queerclick can be, to me. Yes, I love gay porn. Yes, I love getting off. But I also enjoy the history of, stories by, and discussions with gay men.

I’m a senior in college now. I’m very proud of the person I am, but I’m constantly fighting a struggle each day – that struggle is the world we live in, the culture we complicate and REINFORCE and the history we share as gay men. My ideal man is somebody who has hair, a healthy weight and will love me for all the shitty and great things I do. I feel no need to force this ideal on anyone nor do I feel like I contribute anything good to young gay men, black gay men, old gay men, overweight gay men, hairy gay men, skinny gay men, average gay men, JUST GAY MEN when I bash someone else for their characteristics. We get enough of that from the world we live in.

I’m really not trying to preach, I’m just saying – asking, really – that you choose your words more carefully. I fight to censor my own quick mouth. I’m insanely opinionated and when I feel like another gay man is giving me a sideways look, I feel like snatching weaves right and left. But I don’t want to create that kind of world if my future son happens to be gay. I want him to see that while the world and people around him aren’t perfect, love is all around him. Queerclick has a lot of power to do positive things like reinforcing the inherent goodness we each have inside as proud gay men. Our words on this site, our voices, our opinions matter; they can create cruelty or heal with kindness. I hope I’m not the only one who sees this.

Thanks,

MyRecessional

Well first, thanks so much MyRecessional for your extraordinarily heartfelt letter. What do you guys think? This is a particularly important issue to discuss in light of the fact that many gay men, especially in the porn community, are dying at young ages from complications relating to steroid use. [More after the jump.]

Our sneaking suspicion is that we’ve all been on both sides of this pressure. On the one hand, it would be an easy thing for us to just say, “Hey, I can’t help what I’m attracted to!” After all, isn’t this the position we’ve used to seek equal rights in different political contexts? That’s quite a cop out though, isn’t it? Why do we, as gay men, seek to emulate the jocks we feared in high school, and why can we be so cruel to people who fall outside of that standard? Is this some kind of residual cultural Stockholm syndrome? At what point did we decide to become bullies ourselves? Finally, why is it that gay spaces have come to feel less like “safe spaces” and why does this matter so much?
You know, to the casual observer, this issue bears a striking similarity to the kinds of demands made on female bodies in the 21st century. Sexism and misogyny demand that women look certain ways — and like it or not, our world is still an extremely sexist one. MyRecessional is right (and extremely perceptive) to point out how much this issue might have to do with gay culture’s complex relationship to masculinity and femininity. This is obviously not to make any ridiculous claim about how gay guys are inherently more masculine or feminine than straight guys, but instead to point out that I think this conversation is at least as much one about gender as it is about sexuality. Does our world teach us that male desire must take certain forms and that if we want to be the objects of male desire (as gay men obviously do), we must conform ourselves and our bodies to these specific configurations?


This is a complicated issue, and obviously talking about a monolithic gay culture tends to iron out the diversity of everyday experience, but we want to hear from you. Tell us what you think, tell us your stories. We like to think that QC has become exactly the kind of tight-knit community where we can support each other and have a conversation like this.