'Gay Bar' Tracks The Wave Of A Whole Culture — And One Life : NPR

Contents:

• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
• WHY I REJECT POPULAR GAY CULTURE (OR: WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE SETTG ME UP WH YOUR OTHER GAY FRIEND)STEPHEN MILTI
• GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
• THE TOP LGBTQ+ DATG S AND APPS: 14 BT GAY DATG S
• HOOK-UP APPS ARE DTROYG GAY YOUTH CULTURE
• HOW GRDR, A POPULAR GAY DATG APP, POS EXPLOATN RISK TO MORS
• BT GAY DATG APPS FOR HOOKUPS, RELATNSHIPS, AND EVERYTHG BETWEEN
• AGE DIFFERENC GAY COUPL
• LBIAN, GAY AND BISEXUAL ONLE DATERS REPORT POSIVE EXPERIENC – BUT ALSO HARASSMENT
• 10 FRH SPRG DATE IAS FOR GAY COUPL

'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE

Intrigugly, this percentage is a lot higher than those who report beg lbian or gay the general populatn, where the figure is jt below 4% (Datg Sut. The profil of gay men show them more lightly drsed than straight men, which is nsistent what was mentned above about the emphasis on cloth. However, parison to straight men, gay men tend not to illtrate and show off about strength, but rather show themselv performg activi such as yoga or dance.

Atherton L's book starts off a crowd room a gay bar where he's gone cisg wh his partner, whom he refers to throughout the book wh the Leonard Cohen-spired nickname Famo Blue Raat. That kd of gay bar — all kds of gay bars, really — are danger of closg, Atherton L wr, due to the populary of datg apps and risg property sts. He wr betifully about his llege days Los Angel, where he went to his first one, though he n't rell the name, wryly notg, "Of urse I n't remember my first gay bar — I was dnk.

WHY I REJECT POPULAR GAY CULTURE (OR: WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE SETTG ME UP WH YOUR OTHER GAY FRIEND)STEPHEN MILTI

" That history clus the famo 1969 uprisg at the Stonewall Inn New York, but Atherton L also div to other, lser-known bars, cludg on that endured police raids meant to put gay people their place.

GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET

" Atherton L explor topics like archecture and urban geography, as they relate to gay bars, betifully; he wr wh a real knowledge that's more than jt tellectual dilettantism.

About the changg looks of bars before the turn of the century, he observ, "A new type of gay bar began to appear London's Soho the neti — airy, glossy, ntental. " Along the way, Atherton L dips to other topics related to the gay muny: the appropriatn of gay culture by straight people, mic, drkg, and the valu of the younger generatn of LGBTQ people.

THE TOP LGBTQ+ DATG S AND APPS: 14 BT GAY DATG S

And while succeeds on many levels, perhaps the most remarkable one is Atherton L's nstant qutng of himself, and the realizatns of how he's changed sce he walked to his first gay bar years ago: "Maybe, I thought, I'm a dis ball.

HOOK-UP APPS ARE DTROYG GAY YOUTH CULTURE

It's easy for me to tell when people are settg me up wh an OGF, rather than wh their CGF (olt gay iend), HGF (hottt), or SGF (smartt). It seems everyone where I live New York has an entertag gay officemate and water-oler nversatns revolvg around datg, where the OGC routely livers the wtit bs of terpersonal disaster. You know your gay lleague is lonely; he jt don't tell you that he is lonely bee he has seasonal affective disorr, or a Madame Alexanr doll llectn.

HOW GRDR, A POPULAR GAY DATG APP, POS EXPLOATN RISK TO MORS

This affects my datg life bee the person I date may or may not unrstand my gay-culture separatism, and may or may not be a part of that culture themselv.

In se you don't, 's the one where you have to buy certa stuff and act a certa way to sashay past the velvet rope to gay�A-lister-media-darlg�dom. � The implied msage is that gay men had better buy this stuff lt they fail to be the kd of �gay� that is regaled by the culture at large. And I need to know that my iend's OGF is a siar Gay Separatist, otherwise the date might as well be between a bulldozer and someone chaed to the bla.

BT GAY DATG APPS FOR HOOKUPS, RELATNSHIPS, AND EVERYTHG BETWEEN

I'm not only a separatist om mercialized gay culture, I also don't want to be a part of the gay social �scene, � a big part of which is known as the �circu. For further evince of how self-limg gay culture n be, click-through the ancillary lks of You fd that self-exprsn is fe, but only wh a strict of physil and psychologil parameters. Of urse, fns and hot guys-of-the-day aren't a bad thg, and of themselv, but they bee a bad thg when paired wh Out's proment, proudly displayed verle, �Gay Culture Defed.

AGE DIFFERENC GAY COUPL

Well, first dat are like diagnostic exams for patabily, and if a matchmaker don't know their OGF well, then they don't know if the guy is a believer gay culture�and if he is a believer, there won't be any patibily for me. Or by listeng refully: do all the iends they talk about seem to be gay men, or do they gab excsively about gog to the gym to get f for Saturday night?

LBIAN, GAY AND BISEXUAL ONLE DATERS REPORT POSIVE EXPERIENC – BUT ALSO HARASSMENT

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. 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.

- 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.

10 FRH SPRG DATE IAS FOR GAY COUPL

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? 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.