Incisive Redneck

Sup.

I grew up in a small Southern town where football was worshiped and the only thing that was more important than being Baptist or Methodist was Ford or Chevy. I was a sensitive and artistic boy, and I skewed feminine. But I was big, lord was I big. Since I was larger than my peers, I was lucky enough to avoid getting bullied, but sports just weren’t my thing.

I ended up embracing comic books, which my older brothers (one a jock, the other a nerd) both loved, and because they loved them, I loved them. I loved reading Spider-Man the most, but I dug on the X-Men too. I found myself gravitating as well to video games, and fell down the rabbit hole of fighting games and RPGs. I was also addicted to Sim City 2000 and obsessed, planned, and dreamed about making the perfect city.

Still. The waters weren’t clear. My family has this wonderful tradition where we give a baby doll to each child, male or female. We feel it cultivates their nurturing side, and children love to play parent. Rather than getting a baby doll, though, I specifically requested a Barbie, which my family obliged. I had been expelled from a gender-exclusive group of girls at school who believed that boys weren’t supposed to play with Barbies, so a friend of mine and I started our own group which was boys who played with Barbies.

The thing is, we aren’t those little girls. The gays didn’t kick you out of the group. I’m not entirely sure why, but you felt inclined to start your own group–and to be honest with you, you’ve just gone and reinvented the wheel. A big homophobic wheel.

What’s odd to me is that you started up in Boston. I hate to check your credentials but did you even step foot outside your door? I lived in Boston. I partied in Boston. It’s kind of a weird town to be gay in because you’re either an in-college kid fucking your dorm buddies or you’re a twentysomething who got stranded by accident or you’re a married couple. At the same time, I had literally no trouble at all finding nerdy gays like me. Like, at all. Harvard, MIT, Tufts, all the little tech startups, Guerilla Queer Bar, all of them provided me a great circle of friends. Did I run screaming from Boston eventually? Yes, but that has more to do with Boston’s blue laws and the fact that Landsdowne Street was sacrificed for House of Blues, not because I had trouble finding dudes. 

Then I moved to New York City. Have you met the Chelsea Boys? I suddenly realized where the character Jack came from on Will & Grace. NYC’s also a fashion capital, and I was critiqued by a brand-new friend for wearing an H&M t-shirt out to drink. And then after ditching him, I made a group of friends who don’t give a shit what I wear, and who play tabletop games and D&D and love Battlestar Galactica and jizz over The Walking Dead and are just generally the nerdiest dudes you’ll ever meet.

Oh yeah and the weird thing is they don’t quite conform to this odd little gaybro definition you cooked up. I have a couple of friends specifically in mind who Facebook each other back and forth with photoshops of each other as Anita Morris or some other Broadway grand dame, but who then knocked me on my ass with their extensive knowledge of mid-‘90s RPGs and zombie/horror trivia.

Thing is, if I didn’t ask my friend about video games, I’d never have known his knowledge. Funny how the reality you end up creating is the one you perceive to be the only one.

When I think about it, I’m probably a gaybro myself. Looking at my bookmarks on Chrome, I see my little self-taught course in Ruby on Rails and I’ve bookmarked the Mario wikipedia so I can write this little story I’ve concocted on the Nintendo universe. I am a hardcore gadget geek, I basically eat/sleep/shit tech, I’m a former Tim Ferriss cult member, I love to swing the kettlebell, and I can argue with you for hours about the merits of Star Wars versus Star Trek.

Here comes the slapdown.

According to Buzzfeed, you’re 24, and I get this pretty distinct impression that you’re a latecomer to the gay scene. I’m not. I was hardcore and grizzled, an early out-comer who came out in high school. It was scary. I was suicidal. I was 16 in a town that barely contained a stoplight, and if it weren’t for the internet I’d be convinced I was the only gay dude on the planet. It was very different from elementary school where my femininity was just a quirk. Being gay meant something–namely, a threat to the boys who felt being gay meant being feminine, weak, and wussy. I was menaced by classmates, and yet I started the Gay/Straight Alliance with a couple awesome women. It also means I’ve been out for so long that I really don’t remember what it’s like not to be gay. So I’m sorry about that.

Up in Boston, my friend Carl was much like you. Having come recently from the South himself, he wasn’t quite comfortable in his own skin. He owned three t-shirts (but five duplicates of each), jogged to country music, and decorated his apartment more like a frat den than a well-appointed gay bachelor pad. When I met him, he was still describing himself as bisexual and had a tough time with himself and the gay world in general. He was careful to point out how he liked sports, cycling, and beer.

He’s come into his own in the time I’ve known him, and I’ve never seen him more comfortable than he is now. Of course, he had to go through this phase of feeling like he’s an atypical gay because all gays feel that way at some point. Even the Chelsea boys have a phase where they pretend that sports are awesome or that they can use a jigsaw when really they’re grasping for straws at what they think society will tolerate. We have to straddle this vicious wooden horse wherein on one side we feel beholden to the gay community to be gay enough and on the other side we feel like we have to Be Men and spit and cuss and drink and fight and scrap.

What makes you a man is your Y chromosome, and that’s about it. Beer is not manly. Steak is not manly. Neither are military issues (what the fuck does that mean, brosef?) or TV or movies or guns or knives or gadgets. What makes you male and masculine is a set of unspoken rules that society invented and, worse yet, they’re rules that no one can agree on. I guarantee that in the same breath that you’re proclaiming your masculine gaybrohood, there are men who feel they’re TRUE MEN who reject your notions. I have run in circles of manliness that would make you look like a lisping, mewling puke. At the end of the day, these are all made up games of dress-me-up with gender roles we’re playing.

What Gaybros is highlighting is a nasty division in the gay community, one that’s existed before the word/concept homosexual even existed. Back before there were tops and bottoms, butches and femmes, gay hoes and gaybros, there were men, and then there were men who were fucked by other men. These men weren’t considered masculine, and were derided as such. They were maligned, mocked, and attacked. They were the lowest of the low. And despite the fact that you feel marginalized by the mainstream gay community, bro, you are actually throwing your hat in with the assholes who keep the gay community down. They’re the ones who describe us as fashionistas and hairdressers and fairy godmothers instead of the varied culture we are. They’re the ones who feminize us because femininity is, to them, something to be feared and reviled and rejected.

And you’re buying that shit hook, line, and sinker. You’re being a good little lapdog to an oppressive system that wants to keep gays as second-class citizens. And you’re being the worst kind of gay man–one who keeps other gays down too.

[I specifically used the verb tense I did because I honestly think you can change. And I think you probably will change. And I don’t cast judgment on you for being this way. I just think you need to change your thinking.]

I’d encourage you to look at what your gay brothers and lesbian sisters did before you. You’re obviously new to being gay, and you’re committing an arrogant sin of youth, which is thinking that you know how to fix the way things are. Brother, you need to understand things before you can fix them. And maybe you’re fixing something that doesn’t actually need to be fixed. Maybe you’re fixing the wrong thing. No, in fact, I’ll tell you straight up, you are fixing the wrong thing. The issue with the gay community isn’t that there's not enough space for dudebros, because there totally, totally is. If you don’t think so, look at all the club events, gay porn, gay-themed movies…I could go on. In fact, I will. Fritz is one of the longest-established gay bars in Boston. Guerilla Queer Bar has been mixing gays and straights since 2008. There’s a gay Olympics, gay gun clubs, gay hunting clubs, gay ex-military groups, gay tech groups, gay gamer groups, gay geek groups, I really could go on, but it’s clear to me that you’ve done painfully little research and you’ve addressed an issue that got addressed long ago, except in an insultingly misogynistic and homophobic way. I’m sorry if you feel like there were some members of the community who think you didn’t have the qualifications to hold a gay card, but the answer to that is not to pretend to be a straight guy by choosing some of the most facile, laughably stupid stereotypes you can think of to embrace. I’m still tripping over what your Facebook page says: MILITARY ISSUES? Guns? Knives? Grilling? Dude, does Art Smith not know how to run a grill because he’s a feminine gay man?

The issue with the gay community is our perpetual shame and shunning of the feminine, of our aversion to embracing the genderfucking we do as gay dudes, the fetishization of straight boys, the pedestal of the masculine while ignoring completely the feminine. Ask yourself why it’s an insult to be a bottom, bro.

And here’s the punch to the face that I want you and the rest of your Gaybros to feel: you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be in the closet or freshly out of the closet or actively shun the gay community and at the same time critique gay men for being what in your mind is too gay or too stereotypical. You aren’t putting your nuts on the line, and you don’t get that right. No one gets that right, but coming from people who should be supporting each other, you have especially lost that right. If you want to march in the parades and actually put some skin in the game, fantastic. But there’s no easy answers here.

If you want to be ushered into gayhood by someone who’ll let you have space to speak your mind, those people exist. They’re called your friends. But I’ll put myself out there as a friend and a seasoned gay community member, if you really need one. But you really need to rethink the message and the direction this club of yours is heading. Because it’s not good for us as a people, or for you as a gay man.

Peace, bro.