An open letter to my fellow whe gay cis men: there should be no "returng to normal" after this.
Contents:
- GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
- GAY MEN DIRECT THEIR RAGE AT THEIR SELFISH, NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS
- ANGRY GAY
- MY TEEN SON SAYS HE'S GAY
GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
* gay angry *
But nsir my posn: As someone om “the Rabow State” (Hawaii) who is now the edor--chief of this gay se, I have always been surround by rabows and expected to not only embrace them, but have them on my driver’s license, my cloth, all manner of accsori, and pecially my Zoom background durg every panel I do.
— Cáne LópezPraisg Straight People as “Gay Ins”I mean, I get , but now that we’re movg to a time when more and more celebri are out, let’s retire the need to praise straight women for makg mic to bump gay bars. Sometim cishet women’s relatnship to queerns n be toxic and jt downright weird — you know, “the gays love me” kd of women — and I feel like the “in” label fuels that fire. But I have also noticed that the Venn diagram of people who are nstantly sayg “be gay do crime” and people who would ll the ps on a shirtls guy a pup hood at Pri is almost variably a perfect circle.
But even though the nversatns that muted this lumn for six weeks are nowhere close to beg over, I do feel like some thgs that me up durg that time of ntemplatn are worth sayg now — particularly to my fellow whe gay cis out more stori on LGBTQ+ ins and activistsHowever, the ghost of Larry Kramer very much remaed my own head as I ma my way through a Pri month unlike any other. I spent a few quiet afternoons readg his 1978 but novel Faggots, a satiril (yet clearly tobgraphil) look at the liv of gay men 1970s New York Cy that he wrote jt before AIDS ma him a figurehead of Amerin activism.
GAY MEN DIRECT THEIR RAGE AT THEIR SELFISH, NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS
Homosexual inti n be scribed as closeted, homosexually self aware, gay/ lbian and non-gay intified. This classifitn privileg the role of self-fn. In g out, gay people tegrate, as bt as they n, dissociated aspects of the self. As gay people mt ci on a daily basis whether to reveal and to whom they will reveal, g out is a procs that never ends. * gay angry *
Followg a man his late 30s (based on Kramer himself) who is seekg out a lovg, long-term relatnship a sea of hedonism, the novel has a clear msage: gay men need to start lovg each other stead of beg so obssed wh gettg fucked up and (lerally and figuratively) fuckg each other.
ANGRY GAY
An tertg thread on The Data Lounge webse is attractg attentn for s subject matter: gay men who hate their abive, selfish, narcissistic mothers. The thread starter, who is openly gay, seems to imply that his homosexualy is a direct rult of his angry, domant, narcissistic mother. He wr: "My mother was always toxic, selfish, * gay angry *
- Larry Kramer his but novelUpon publitn, Faggots was dismissed by many as puranil and self-loathg for s cricism of gay men's obssn wh vany, promiscuy and recreatnal dg e.
And while, on one level, the book is a wild (if at tim problematic) wdow to an era of gay culture 40 years the past, also felt like had a lot to say about gay culture today. In mastream gay media, the phrase almost always refers to a fairly specific subset of the LGBTQ "muny" largely ma up of whe gay cis men — even though many of the battl won around queer rights were fought by people of lour, trans and genr-nonnformg folks, and queer women, and fact the morn Pri movement self was large part iated by Black trans women. If an imprsn of a monolhic "gay culture" fed by such a homogeneo mographic exists, is bee whe gay cis men have until very recently domated mastream reprentatn unr the LGBTQ umbrella and have, general, been hand a level of privilege the last that is wildly disproportnate to any other mographic unr said umbrella.
When was the last time I actually had a good time at gay bar full of people I have fely spoken to on social media or apps but who act like I'm pletely sane when I se or say hello person?
MY TEEN SON SAYS HE'S GAY
One of the most dangero thgs nature. Sce gay people are often kr than their straight unterparts they tend to bottle up their emotns, pecially their anger, most of the time they succeed hidg how they fell but but sometim they n’t hold back." name="Dcriptn" property="og:scriptn * gay angry *
In analyzg the show's pictn of young gay men livg San Francis, wrer Daniel Wenger diagnos what he terms the "new gay sadns": an entire generatn of urban, privileged gay men who seem to have no clue what they're lookg for or who they are. Largely born the 1980s, they are the earlit wave of a "post-Stonewall, post-plague, post-activist" generatn of gays — "too old to have brought a boy to the prom and too young to have nursed a fantasy of nng away to an urban gay utopia, " Wenger explas. Queeri5 pneerg LGBTQ Canadian films you n watch for ee right nowI've seen many of my fellow whe gay cis men seemgly rise to the ocsn by retweetg Black and Indigeno voic, gog to ralli and vowg to te themselv on how to tly be anti-racist (though how performative that is some s is unclear).