What Do It Mean to Be a Gay Man? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?
• BOOK REVIEW: ‘STRAIGHT TO NORMAL: MY LIFE AS A GAY MAN’ IS A TALE OF BURNS AND RENCILIATNS
• HOW I FOUND MY VOTN TO THE SGLE LIFE AS A GAY MAN
• FR. JAM ALISON PUBLISH NEW PERSONAL ESSAY ON LIFE AS A GAY MAN RELATNSHIP WH GOD
• AT 60 YEARS OLD, I BEME VISIBLE. GETTG OLD AS A GAY MAN STKS.
• KEV SPACEY APOLOGIZ, OUT AS GAY AFTER ALLEGATN OF SEXUAL ADVANCE ON 14-YEAR-OLD
• 'DID I EVER REALLY KNOW HIM?': THE WOMEN WHO MARRIED GAY MEN
• ACTOR KEV SPACEY CLAR HE LIV LIFE AS A GAY MAN
• I’M A GAY MAN. HOW DO I FD PURPOSE LIFE?

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

So many gay men grow up believg there is somethg “wrong” wh bee we are different om other supposedly “normal” mal. It’s not surprisg that a term like “straight-actg” shows up so often gay men’s onle personal ads. It prumably means the advertiser nsirs himself a “real” man—real, that is, acrdg to a standard of masculy he don’t attribute to other gay men.

So many gay men learn we are different om other boys by havg the fact poted out and ridiculed by bulli durg our young, most imprsnable, years. As every gay man knows who has been sulted or asslted for his actual or perceived sexual orientatn, there are steep penalti for vlatg the Boy Co as there are for anyone who is “different” om the prumed (typilly whe, heterosexual, middle-class) standard.

How do a gay kid survive the trma he suffers for beg different a culture that still nmns his difference as somethg bad or “ls-than” and wants to mold him to the same shape tri to mold every boy? Robert Pollack says the most important thg a fay n do to support their gay son is to keep lovg him, “to nvey to him, as soon as he shar his feelgs, that he is still loved through and through, that his sexual orientatn will not any way dimish how much he is admired and rpected.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘STRAIGHT TO NORMAL: MY LIFE AS A GAY MAN’ IS A TALE OF BURNS AND RENCILIATNS

He needs to know that ’s okay not only to be gay if that's what he is, but to be a man who choos what beg a man means for himself. Fortunately there is a long history of gay men who bucked the accepted fns of masculy and created liv that exprsed their unrstandg of themselv and how they choose to exprs their inty as men who don’t necsarily f tradnal molds. The late Harry Hay often lled "the father of the morn gay movement, " found the Mattache Society Los Angel the fall of 1950 for gay men to gather and ponr the qutns Hay had long been askg: Who are gay people?

Where do gay people e om? Where have gays been throughout history?

HOW I FOUND MY VOTN TO THE SGLE LIFE AS A GAY MAN

Hay didn’t tend the Mattach to be a polil anizatn per se, but a group that would e together to enhance their self-unrstandg and explore the ntributns gay people had ma to the human race through the ag. In a 1987 say tled “A Separate People Whose Time Has Come, ” Hay scribed homosexuals as “spir people, ” who, throughout the ag, had served society their rol as “msengers and tercers, shamans of both genrs, prits and prits, imagemakers and prophets, mim and rhapsos, poets and playwrights, healers and nurturers, teachers and preachers, tkers and tkerers, searchers and rearchers.

Hay believed that gay people had somethg special to teach nongay people about human life, and for that reason should be nurtured, rather than reviled, by society.

FR. JAM ALISON PUBLISH NEW PERSONAL ESSAY ON LIFE AS A GAY MAN RELATNSHIP WH GOD

He postulated that “gay people reprent a geic mutatn of nscns whose active fosterg is now required for human survival. Hay believed that gay men are different om heterosexuals and that those differenc go much eper than mere sexual attractn to other men.

He said gay men look at the world differently, are uniquely nonaggrsive, nonpetive, oriented toward sharg and cled to velop what Hay lled “subject-subject” love relatnships of equals. In a 1990 terview for the Washgton Bla, Harry Hay told me our llg as gay men “is not only to accept our uniquens, but to affirm , make joyo.

For gay men, learng to accept our “different” sexual orientatn as a posive aspect of ourselv is only part of our “g out.

AT 60 YEARS OLD, I BEME VISIBLE. GETTG OLD AS A GAY MAN STKS.

You see, there a pot when gay men like me realize our youthful charm won’t last forever, and, at some pot, we’ll have to build up mcle.

To help him and all the other gay men the world, I cid to pile this handy gui for the life cycle of every gay man. 0: Birth[iame allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ ameborr="0" height="201" width="480"]I've said once and I'll say aga: You don’t choose to be gay. One of gay men’s favore past-tim is tellg each other how our parents got on the bad si of the lol sorcers or warlock.

KEV SPACEY APOLOGIZ, OUT AS GAY AFTER ALLEGATN OF SEXUAL ADVANCE ON 14-YEAR-OLD

”0-8: DevelopmentOnce the gay is born, there is ually a long perd where he appears jt like a normal kid.

Durg the first eight years, ltle gaylets will suck as many nutrients as he n manage om the roots of shbs and maple tre. Gays more tropil climat will feed on h us that have fallen to the ground—hence the anti-gay slur, “uk.

” Many gay men remisce about tim their youth when they wore the cloth of their sister or their mother. No: gay men play drs-up to prepare for their pupal stage. 8-13: Gtatn[iame allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ ameborr="0" height="270" width="480"]Around his eighth birthday, or whenever he disvers the disgraphy of Nicki Maj, the gay will beg to secrete a vis substance om his mouth.

'DID I EVER REALLY KNOW HIM?': THE WOMEN WHO MARRIED GAY MEN

13-26: TwkThe new twk will seek out others of his kd to form a shoal or a school of other gay men. Or Boy Sut summer mp, the gays of this shoal will clter together to give the illn that they are not actually hundreds of dividual gays, but rather, a sgle giant gay. This is also when the gay man velops antlers.

But life isn’t all smoked salmon and Maria Callas for the gays: In certa parts of Alaska, native gay bears have been hunted almost to extctn. The thg about gay men is that we never tly die.

And somewhere, another gay baby is born, and the gay's life has e full circle. Rangnekar’s memoir, Straight to Normal: My Life as a Gay Man, spoke to this reviewer as a iend. Rangnekar’s book, which is about g to terms wh and acceptg his sexualy and g out as a gay man a homophobic society, is also about the var burns that he rried through his life and the renciliatns he ma.

ACTOR KEV SPACEY CLAR HE LIV LIFE AS A GAY MAN

There was a lot of prsure on him om his fay and iends to nform – they were unaware of his sexualy as he had not e out – and like many gay men takg on a veneer of heterosexualy to f , Rangnekar too had agreed to a marriage to a woman. He realised that unlike his own privileged posn as a salaried profsnal, few gay men Delhi “had permanent jobs or job secury as such.

” They had to fend for themselv apart om stgglg to survive a homophobic society, and that “was a huge stggle as Delhi was a cy of works that weren’t easy to crack. ” There was also class discrimatn on gay platforms.

While gay men were allowed gay parti, “[cross-drsers] and trans-genrs had no place at such parti” and Rangnekar “wasn’t aware of anyone who raised a voice agast such l. Straight to Normal: My Life as a Gay Man serv praise for exprsg the upheavals of a remarkable life an engrossg May Like. By hman year, I had a very negative self-image bee of my belief that I was gay.

I’M A GAY MAN. HOW DO I FD PURPOSE LIFE?

Where I’m om, the early 2000s, there was a wily accepted prupposn that to be gay meant flamboyant, promiscuo behavr and a nial of tradnal value systems, other words, a liftyle diametrilly opposed to that of a ral Christian farm town.