Why Are People Gay? Gay By Choice or Is Beg Gay Geic? | HealthyPlace

Contents:

• I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN
• AM I GAY?
• GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
• I’VE INTIFIED AS GAY FOR YEARS. NOT ANYMORE.
• HER BOYIEND ISN'T GAY OR BI BUT HE IS SUCKG DICKS GLORY HOL
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN

Gay - While this adjective has historilly scribed men who are attracted to other men, the term now is ed to refer to anyone who experienc romantic, emotnal, or physil attractn to people of the same genr. Sce genr inty and sexual orientatn are separate, transgenr people n intify as straight, gay, lbian, bisexual, etc.

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.

AM I GAY?

- 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. What even do mean to say "gay culture"?

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.

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

(Prophetilly enough, Fire Island is where the climax of Faggots — Kramer's exriatn of "gay culture" — tak place.

The panmic sentially shut down all of social gay culture, relievg me of prsur to participate . Gay bars were shuttered and, unls you were beg a horribly irrponsible person, Grdr was no more.

I’VE INTIFIED AS GAY FOR YEARS. NOT ANYMORE.

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.

"Gay culture" should learn the same lson: "back to normal" is not enough. 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).

Which of the gays do you want to be? Rettg "gay culture" will require fightg back agast entrenched social prsur and expectatns of gay cis men — and llg them out when they perpetuate, even passively, any form of discrimatory dialogue.

HER BOYIEND ISN'T GAY OR BI BUT HE IS SUCKG DICKS GLORY HOL

Larry Kramer didn't give a sh what people thought of him, particularly other gay men.

And was large part bee of that attu that he uld lead AIDS activists through a rpt and homophobic system to ga accs to the dgs that ma possible for our generatn to have the liv that we do. So let's thk long and hard about how we've been choosg to live the fuckg bolt cutters, gays. Bulli teased me for beg gay when I was younger, but when a six-year-old boy lls another six-year-old boy gay, he means “weird” or “gross, ” not “has sex wh men.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

Kids are not gay or straight, they’re jt kids. I wasn’t gay or straight.

Why, then, do adults who knew me as a child sist that I was gay all along? I felt prsured to pick a label and stick wh , and for a long time “gay” worked bee I didn’t thk about much. But the last year or two, I’ve started to rethk my relatnship to the label “gay.

I hooked up wh trans and nonbary people and stopped scribg myself as gay, preferrg to e the more clive tchall “queer. Often when I tell some people that I’m distancg myself om gay, they immediately suggt I intify as bisexual, or pansexual. I need somethg that means “mostly gay but not fully mted and open to other possibili, ” but, alas, such a niche label has yet to be imaged.

WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

When I was six, the boys who teased me labelled me as gay. The adults my life labelled me as gay. And for a while after g out, “gay” worked fe.