🏳️‍🌈 THE GAY SCENE HAS A TOXIC MASCULINITY PROBLEM 😉

“Why do they have to come here? Can’t we have one place that is just for us?”

They are a group of young guys, early 20’s, dressed in bright colors, one carrying a purse and wearing high heels, dressed in a leather Tom-of Finland style hat, carrying a leather paddle, another in a skirt and a leather harness.

“They’re making a mockery out of the leather scene, out of being a man.”

“They’re just having fun, it’s no big deal.”

Many of us have seen how gay nightlife can internalize some of our most negative and unhealthy tendencies. Growing up in a hetero-normative world that often demands men to act and behave according to strict societal rules on “masculinity”, a world where any deviation from these guidelines will get you called a faggot or sissy, or rejected for not being “male” enough, it is easy to feel insecure over our masculinity, to fall victim to internalized homophobia that leads to idolizing often repressive and toxic versions of masculinity, and to shame and oppress femininity and “femme” men.

We label ourselves as Bears and Otters, Dads and Boys, Tops and Bottoms, Masc and Femme. We try to fit each other into these clearly defined boxes that do nothing but limit who we are.

What does our masculinity or feminity have to do with our sexual preferences? Why can’t we just enjoy bottoming, or topping, regardless of who we are as a human beings?

When someone labels us as fem, they often make assumptions about who we are sexually based on looks. Just because we are feeling like a bottom today doesn’t mean tomorrow we won’t be feeling like a top. If you want to wear a dress and a leather harness to a leather night at your local gay bar, I think that’s awesome. If you want to go in full pup gear that is also awesome. But when did dressing like a puppy become more socially acceptable in our community than dressing in drag?

Being attracted to masculine attributes is not a bad thing, and being masculine doesn’t make you toxic. It’s when we use these concepts to judge each other’s worth, to make ourselves feel better than, or to make others feel less than, that there’s a problem.

I’m not here to tell anyone who to be attracted to or who to hook up with. Hook up with whoever you want. That’s none of my business. But what is my business, what is all of our business, is how we treat each other as a community.

When we start refusing people entry to gay or queer Spaces based on physicality, race, gender or their position on the masc/femme continuum, we have a real problem.

Did we really survive the AIDS crisis, political and religious intolerance, hate crimes, and homophobia just to write “masc only” on dating apps?

Are we, as men, as a community, so afraid and insecure that someone else’s masculinity or feminity is a threat to who we are? The world can be a hostile place to queer people, and the only way any of us survive is together. As a community united and strong.

Be the femme-est dom top out there, or be the most alpha bottom you can. Be whatever you want. No one gets to limit you or tell you who you are or how to behave unless you let them. And why on earth would you do that?

SOURCE: QUEERTY