Straight Women and Their Gay Hbands | Psychology Today

Contents:

• JAQUELE WILSON COM OUT GAY, CONFIRMG 18-YEAR SAME-SEX RELATNSHIP
• CALL ME BY MY PRONOUNS: WHY GAY MEN CALL EACH OTHER "GIRL"
• SHE/HER GAY
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• STRAIGHT WOMEN AND THEIR GAY HBANDS
• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR SPOE COM OUT AS GAY

JAQUELE WILSON COM OUT GAY, CONFIRMG 18-YEAR SAME-SEX RELATNSHIP

Sexual orientatn refers to the endurg physil, romantic and/or emotnal attractn to members of the same and/or other genrs, cludg lbian, gay, bisexual and straight orientatns.

As GLAAD not, "Transgenr people may be straight, lbian, gay, bisexual or queer. A person who transns om female to male and is attracted solely to men would typilly intify as a gay man. Jaquele Wilson, the ternatnally renowned thor of Tracey Beaker, has nfirmed she is gay an terview wh The Guardian.

CALL ME BY MY PRONOUNS: WHY GAY MEN CALL EACH OTHER "GIRL"

Commentg on how her long relatnship wh her partner Trish is ‘old news’ to those who know her, she has shared wh rears she is gay as she lnch her new same-sex love story Love Frankie.

Tracey Beaker thor publilly out as gay and says her mum was "appalled" when she told her. She tells The Guardian the reason is her stori, were often about sharg plex problems a way children n unrstand them and she didn’t see “any problem whatsoever wh beg gay”.

“I don’t thk that girls would ever want a grey-haired, wrkly wrer as a role mol if they were wantg to feel good about maybe beg gay, ” she said. The e of she/her pronouns by cisgenr gay men, along wh words such as "girl" or "honey, " is a long-standg and creasgly visible practice.

SHE/HER GAY

For many gay men, g the words wh their iends is a way of embracg femy and showg vulnerabily or affectn to others who share their inti. Creatg a shared culture — cludg language — around femy n be a way of reclaimg the bas for opprsn many gay men have experienced, as well as disptg the harmful genr few if any lguistic practic are all one thg, all the time.

It may be time to reevaluate cis gay men’s e of words like "she" and "girl" to make sure they align wh ongog efforts to rpect nonbary genr inti, and avoid makg assumptns about people’s pronouns. Lguists, social scientists, and crics have observed and studied cis gay men’s e of “she, ” and their asssments pot to the multiple and often nflictg dimensns of the practice.

So for even to make sense for gay men to e ‘she, ’ we have to have some kd of associatn wh ‘she, ’ and ually that associatn is femy, whatever that might mean to or our culture. “Men g women’s pronouns, and women g men’s pronouns, has got an enormo time pth Amerin lbian-gay English. It’s not a recent formatn at all, ” explas William Leap, an emer profsor of anthropology at Amerin Universy and pneerg expert on queer men llg each other "she" or "girl" was historilly a way of protectg themselv as well as buildg muny the ntext of homophobic and vlent mastream culture.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

In the 1940s, ary censors were on the lookout for evince of homosexualy, which uld provoke a ary vtigatn. ”Usg words like "she" and "girl" n be a way for cis gay men to bond and embrace femy.

STRAIGHT WOMEN AND THEIR GAY HBANDS

”Yet some women have experienced gay men g words like “girl” toward them ways that don’t feel all that different om the misogyny they have experienced om straight men.

“I also saw beg negatively ed when whe gay men would say, like, ‘Oh girl, what are you talkg about, ’ and they would be talkg to a woman of lor, pecially a Black woman. ”Consirg misogyny wh gay men’s language practic rais the qutn of how g words like “girl” or “honey” is nnected to their e of other, more ntroversial words that have historilly been ed to mean women, such as “bch” and “cunt. ” Multiple terviewe referenced RuPl’s Drag Race as a show that has popularized the e of words associated wh femy among cis gay men.

”“Gay men are a large group of people wh a lot of different kds of relatnships to genr, and I thk there are absolutely gay men who operate relatn to feme language that really is a reflectn of their male privilege, whether ’s through g ways that nigrate or stereotype women, or whether ’s jt feelg license to e the language how they see f, ” says Zimman, the lguist om UC Santa Barbara. “Of urse, gay men are men. Paris Is Burng, the 1990 documentary on Harlem’s drag ball scene, as well as Drag Race, have brought the e of words like "she" and "girl" between Black and Latx drag queens to a wir gay (and straight) dience; today this is somethg employed by gay men of all rac.

HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR SPOE COM OUT AS GAY

Wealthy whe gay cis men llg each other "girl" may be drastilly different om Black or Latx gay cis men who ntue to be margalized very different is visible a film like Paris Is Burng, a few s ago there were more shared spac, language, and culture between cis gay men, trans women, and genr-nonnformg dividuals. “This is the mastream gay ia of beg jt like straight people, except for whom one is attracted to. That kd of rejectn of genr nonnormativy also giv the suatn we fd today, where we have more of a spl between gay men and trans women, for stance, than we might have seen prev s.

“Wh ‘girl/she/her, ’” they say, “if I’m socializg wh cis gay men and that’s what they’re g to scribe each other and to scribe me, there is a ltle b of dissonance there, bee I’m not really sure if they’re g that to validate my genr, or if ’s beg ed as ’s ed wh other cis gay men. Gay men’s tradn of playg wh pronouns and refg to abi by the genr bary n be a part of this effort.

A she/her gay is an inty specifilly scribg a gay (turian, or vcian) dividual who she/her pronouns eher exclively or alongsi other pronouns. Someone who intifi as a she/her gay may also intify as multipronomial, if they e other pronouns, or pronoun non-nformg, if they see the e of she/her pronouns as not nformg to what is expected of their genr inty tradnally. Most she/her gays do not intify as a woman, though some who are multigenr, genrfluid, a turigirl, or otherwise may.