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

Contents:

• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• I SOMETIM FEEL: WHAT'S THE POT OF BEG GAY IF I'M NOT BETIFUL
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE GAY? DEFN AND MEANG OF GAY
• WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT BEG GAY?: PERSPECTIV OM YOUTH

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

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.

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

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?

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. 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.

It very much appears that same-sex sexual attractn is not a choice but actg on is; so if you fe gay as the mere prence of same-sex attractn, then om everythg we unrstand, beg gay is not a choice. We're ALL alone the end, which is why the old bter gay elr isn't jt a stereotype, 's the only do gays reject the ugly, we also reject the old and the poor and the black and the Anonymoreply 13Augt 26, 2016 4:12 AM.

I SOMETIM FEEL: WHAT'S THE POT OF BEG GAY IF I'M NOT BETIFUL

R24 The problem is you adm you are probably a 5 but you are searchg out for the 8 to 10'sThat statement basilly sums up what's been at the heart of so much misery and heartache the gay muny sce time Anonymoreply 28Augt 26, 2016 11:03 AM. Straight people you meet have gay iends and jt might troduce you, which is a lot ls strsful than standg around a club wonrg why no one wants Anonymoreply 29Augt 26, 2016 11:05 AM.

Do thgs you enjoy and that make you feel good about yourself - the rt will fall whole bety standard/fancial stat thg our gay male culture (I'm lookg at you, LOGO and your new "Prce Charmg" show) is fuckg Anonymoreply 34Augt 26, 2016 11:30 AM.

Existential angst om people wh limed mental acuy is a sad thg to 's even sadr is someone whose entire inty revolv around beg gay or, even worse, havg even sadr yet, the lack of self-awarens to regnize that one participat the exact behavr one ris as the source of his Anonymoreply 47Augt 26, 2016 4:26 PM. Every time I see any TV show wh betiful hunks (the new gay bachelor show will be a trigger) I get a sad momentarily bee no matter my level of nfince or whatever, I will never be able to be seen by society as that moment, I wake up and move on. The majory of you people whg about this stuff wouldn't date you if you met yourself at a bar, on the street, or at a party - for the exact same superficial reasons for which you acce other gay Anonymoreply 54Augt 26, 2016 5:17 PM.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE GAY? DEFN AND MEANG OF GAY

Straight people you meet have gay iends and jt might troduce you, which is a lot ls strsful than standg around a club wonrg why no one wants seems to be my pattern -- I generally prefer straight bars, most of my hobbi are largely the provce of straight people, yet my last two relatnships both began gay Anonymoreply 56Augt 26, 2016 5:39 PM. Gay men ma that up to lead the straights to thkg we have higher standards than they do, but we don't, we have lower you guys really gay men, or jt Fren who happen to read a lot of Dan Savage and thk yourselv one of ? You also get a warped view of how gay men should look like (se pot: the dozens of tumblr pag wh imag of perfect but anonymo and unattaable amatr twks/bears/mcleheads/etc., who only seem to exist as JPEGs).

Addnal primary them and sub-them were intified wh each tegory that further illtrate how gay/bisexual youth were able to velop posive nceptualizatns of their sexual orientatn spe experiencg negative societal msag about beg gay/bisexual. Keywords: Bisexual, gay, male, riliency, sexual orientatn, youthAdolcence is a velopmental perd where young people are maturg physilly, emotnally and socially as they transn to adulthood (Erikson, 1980; Hill, 1983). When the fluenc are negative, psychologil distrs among adolcents may rult, pecially for those youth who intify as lbian, gay, or bisexual (Almeida, Johnson, Corliss, Molnar & Azrael, 2009; Hershberger & D’Augelli, 1995; Ueno, 2005).

Th, this article tak a rilience-based approach to examg sexual orientatn inty among gay/bisexual male adolcents by sharg their perceptns regardg the posive aspects of beg gay/bisexual. One study that addrsed this topic prented riliency strategi among lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (LGBT) young people North Wt England and South Wal wh the ntext of hetero-normative environments (Surfield, Roen & McDermott, 2008).

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT BEG GAY?: PERSPECTIV OM YOUTH

The thors assert that even though the young men were livg a hetero-normative Puerto Rin culture wh pervasive homophobia and cultural stigma, they veloped riliency strategi that helped them to overe potential obstacl. This was one of the few studi found to prent riliency strategi veloped by gay/bisexual adolcents to bat negative social and cultural ntug rearch is need on the velopmental challeng faced by LGB adolcents, pecially those who are also members of other opprsed groups such as youth of lor, a parallel le of scientific quiry is also need to explore the strengths and rilienci monstrated by LGB youth.

Such limatns do not allow for a more nuanced unrstandg of the current lived experienc of LGB youth’s inty exploratn procs, as has been seen more recent qualative studi of sexual orientatn inty (Ja, Harper, Fernanz, & the ATN, 2009)The purpose of the current study is to provi sights to the posive nceptualizatns that gay/bisexual male adolcents posss regardg their sexual orientatn inty utilizg qualative phenomenologil and nstctivist ameworks. Although we did quire about the full range of perceptns and experienc related to sexual orientatn inty the larger study om which the data were extracted, we chose to foc solely on the posive aspects of posssg a gay/bisexual sexual orientatn inty for the current vtigatn given the lack of empiril data foced specifilly on riliency-related factors among gay/bisexual male adolcents.