Yolo Akili explores how gay men’s sexism and male privilege shows up in relationship to women.
At a recent presentation, I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up.
These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.
These attitudes have led many gay men to feel curiously comfortable critiquing and touching women’s bodies at whim. What’s unique about this is not the male sense of ownership to women’s bodies—that is somewhat common. What’s curious is the minimization of these acts by gay men and many women because the male perpetuating the act is or is perceived to be gay.
An example: I was at a gay club in Atlanta with a good friend of mine who is a heterosexual black woman. While dancing in the club, a white gay male reached out and grabbed both her breasts aggressively. Shocked, she pushed him away immediately. When we both confronted him he told us: “It’s no big deal, I’m gay, I don’t want her– I was just having fun.” We expressed our frustrations to him and demanded he apologize, but he simply refused. He clearly felt entitled to touch her body and could not even acknowledge the fact that he had assaulted her.
I have experienced this attitude as being very common amongst gay men. It should also be noted that in this case, she was a black woman and he a white gay male, which makes this an eyebrow-raising dynamic as it invokes the psychological history of white men’s entitlement to black women’s bodies. However it has been my experience that this dynamic of assault with gay men and women also persists within racial groups.
At another presentation, I told this same story to the audience. Almost instantly, several young women raised up their hands to be called upon. Each of them recounted a different story with a similar theme. One young woman told a story that stuck with me:
“I was feeling really cute in this outfit I put together. Then I see this gay guy I knew from class, but not very well. I had barely said hi before he began telling me what was wrong with how I looked, how I needed to lose weight, and how if I wanted to get a man I needed to do certain things… In the midst of this, he grabbed my breasts and pushed them together, to tell me how my breasts should look as opposed to how they did. It really brought me down. I didn’t know how to respond… I was so shocked.”
Her story invoked rage amongst many other women in the audience, and an obvious silence amongst the gay men present. Their silence spoke volumes. What also seemed to speak volumes, though not ever articulated verbally, was the sense that many of the heterosexual women had not responded (aggressively or otherwise) out of fear of being perceived as homophobic. (Or that their own homophobia, in an aggressive response, would reveal itself.) This, curiously to me, did not seem to be a concern for the lesbian and queer-identified women in the room at all.
Acts like these are apart of the everyday psychological warfare against women and girls that pits them against unrealistic beauty standards and ideals. It is also a part of the culture’s constant message to women that their bodies are not their own.
It’s very disturbing, but in a culture that doesn’t see gay men who are perceived as “queer” as “men” or as having male privilege, our misogyny and sexist acts are instead read as “diva worship” or “celebrating women”, even when in reality they are objectification, assault and dehumanization.
The unique way our entitlement to women’s physical bodies plays itself out is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gay cisgender men’s sexism and privilege. This privilege does not make one a bad person any more than straight privilege makes heterosexuals bad people. It does mean that gay men can sometimes be just as unthinkingly hurtful, and unthinkingly a part of a system that participates in the oppression of others, an experience most of us can relate to. Exploration of these dynamics can lead us to query institutional systems and policies that reflect this privilege, nuanced as it is by other identities and social locations.
At the end of my last workshop on gay men’s sexism, I extended a number of questions to the gay men in the audience. I think it’s relevant to extend these same questions now:
How is your sexism and misogyny showing up in your own life, and in your relationships with your female friends, trans, lesbian, queer or heterosexual? How is it showing up in your relationship to your mothers, aunts and sisters? Is it showing up in your expectations of how they should treat you? How you talk to them? What steps can you take to address the inequitable representation of gay cisgender men in your community as leaders? How do you see that privilege showing up in your organizations and policy, and what can you do to circumvent it? How will you talk to other gay men in your community about their choices and interactions with women, and how will you work to hold them and yourself accountable?
These are just some of the questions we need to be asking ourselves so that we can help create communities where sexual or physical assault, no matter who is doing it, is deemed unacceptable. These are the kinds of questions we as gay men need to be asking ourselves so that we can continue (or for some begin) the work of addressing gender/sex inequity in our own communities, as well as in our own hearts and minds. This is a part of our healing work. This is a part of our transformation. This is a part of our accountability.
Read more from the Gay & Bisexual Men section
Photo—Bringo/Flickr
About Yolo Akili
“Gay men” are no more monolithic than any other group. They do not all have monolithically the same attitudes toward women than all black men do, or all Asian men do, or all Latino men do.
Just saying. The road to better awareness is not through stereotyping base on your personal anecdotal experiences. It’s possible there are entire circle and subcultures of gay men who don’t go to the same night clubs as the author. Or, imagine this, don’t go to any night club.
As a gay man, I don’t relate to this problem because I don’t think it’s right to touch anybody coercively. But I see this problem happen often, and I simply don’t identify with it as a gay problem but as a problem for men who need to rely on false ways of relating to women, flat roles that have been prescribed in the media. In other words, the problem is not sexual assault or sexism per se, but the development of a weak sense of self in many gay men.
However, I was attracted to this headline for a different but related issue: gay (and straight) men’s disgust with female genitalia. It’s sort of an odd problem. On the one hand, denigrating female form without reason but with appeals to emotions like disgust strikes me as idiotic. After admitting disgust, a gay man will justify his disgust on the grounds that it is a natural emotional response. On the other hand, worshipping body parts or focusing on particular body parts strikes me as equally problematic and fetishizing. How can gay men learn to appreciate female form beyond affective responses that they believe require no rational justification?
I’m guessing you’ve never heard lesbians talking about penises, then.
Handy hint: whenever you feel a feminist thought crawling into your brain, always flip the genders and see if there’s a male equivalent before sharing.
Actually, I have. What I find some lesbians emphasizing is the size of the male phallus, that large penises are good. I think that merely reiterates a broad social obsession with the penis.
But if you’re suggesting lesbians do associate the penis with disgust, as surely many men and women of any sexual orientation do, we’re still in the same problematic space of resorting to faulty emotional responses that actually create distance between humans. My question holds in reverse too: how can lesbians come to appreciate male form beyond prescribed emotional responses (whether it be a utilitarian appreciation of size qua size or disgust)?
Glad someone else noticed the violent and disproportionately repulsed attitude a lot of gay men seem to have towards female genitalia! I have overheard several of my gay male friends say really misogynistic things about how repulsive and disgusting and smelly they are (how would they know?)–really vulgar attacks!! It was awhile ago and I just thought it was really weird and that maybe they felt entitled because they had experienced prejudice from straight men who enjoy female genitalia?
So you never noticed Antia Brtyant or feminist and atheist leader of Australlia Julia Gillard, and many other women and feminist attacking and trying to remove rights from gays. Oh, I see its all about you, and what happend on one saturday night with a drunk friend. Straight women from Maggie Gallagher to Jan Brewer, and so many I do not have time to list the distruction straight women have done to gay men and especially targeting gay men and you want to whine about a nasty comment with a trashy friend, You are a professional victim that needs to get a life, you are pathetic.Llay off the booze and get around some educated nice men and women and leave the bar scene.
@Rachel – sorry to have to point this out to you, but there are quite a few women of any sexuality who make very unpleasant comments about the smell of male genitals – and then they advocate mutilation called Circumcision on the grounds of smell. I admit it seems to be a US centric issue, but it is disgusting and sexists globally.
You complained about gay men saying female genitalia are repulsive and disgusting. And us? We, men, also heard how male genitalia are disgusting and repulsive all the time. Who said that? STRAIGHT WOMEN. Again, I tell this again, STRAIGHT WOMEN. See? You heard “misogynist” thing about female genitalia from gay men, who dont have any sexual interest in you, while we heard it from straight women, who supossedly find us attractive physically, not just emotionally. I really dont mind with lesbians saying male bodies and genitalias are ugly, but hearing it from females who claims they are straight is make me sad. Not just any women, even my own mother said male body and male genitalia are ugly and repulsive and disgusting. And you complained about gay men saying female genitalia are disgusting and repulsive???? Every time you heard it from your gay friends joking how repulsive and disgusting female genitalias are, remember how many times you said how male bodies and genitalia are disgusting and ugly.
I don’t really understand why comments like this get such vitriolic responses. The original commenter felt bad that gay men had called her genitals disgusting. The responders felt bad when women, straight or otherwise, called their genitals disgusting. Acknowledging that it is a shitty thing that happens across the board, by listening to peoples’ stories, is a far more helpful approach than “this happened to me,” “YEAH WELL WOMEN ARE MEAN TOO” (and, of course, the reverse).
Perfect response, I was just about to say the same thing.
Thanks so much for this article. I have recently been frightened of the thought that I might be inappropriately touching women, and wondered whether I have been ignorant of the oppression women face, thinking that, as a gay cis man, it doesn’t concern me. To clarify, by inappropriate touching, I certainly don’t mean anything as extreme as grabbing a woman’s breasts without consent. But I would do things like rest my head on the shoulders of my friends, or touch their hair lightly, or hug them. These are things which I feel are out of love for them, but also, on introspection, I feel like there are undertones of (1) me wanting to do things to them that gain me social ‘points’, which I think are given to men by signs of their ownership of women (so I would want to give others the impression that I own the women, and could have them, in some way (which sounds awful, right?), and (2) me not knowing how to act around them, and wanting to fulfil a heterosexual male role which I don’t know how to do appropriately, and out of fear and embarrassment of not being able to fill this role, I act inappropriately and possibly over-affectionately. These issues seem slightly different to the ones given above, and I stress that I’ve never touched a woman in an outrageously inappropriate and sexual way, but I have, for example, patted women on the head before, and put their hair behind their ears, in an awkward way, when I don’t really know them! So I need to stop that!
Okay, as a straight, middle aged woman, I NEED advice about what looks good on me. If you know me and you see me wearing something that is not flattering, please tell me. You can tell me nicely, but definitely tell me. And tell me in a not-nice way rather than not tell me at all.
I’ve gotten what I felt was sound fashion advice from straight women, gay men, and a few straight men. Maybe even from some gay women that I didn’t realize were gay. Your sexual orientation or gender doesn’t matter to me when giving me that type of advice; how much effort you put into your own appearance (and my opinion of your results) is what matters to me.
Other people can draw their own boundaries, but for me, I don’t put up barriers against conversations that can help me look and feel my best. In no way whatsoever would I feel that you are trying to assert your ownership over my body by telling me that a tunic with a colorful scarf would look great on my middle-aged body versus the croptop I happened to choose. Oh, please!
And if you know of a new denim store that carries some really great products and see that my jeans look like I brought them with me from the 1980s, give me a gentle hint. Or a non-gentle one. Something should come between me and my Calvins!
Consider it a rescue or an intervention. An act of kindness. Because, believe me, that is how I will view it.
Oh, Norman Gaffer! No one in society is going to give you points for touching a woman. Women are more than half the population. People touch us all the time. Hugging your friends, touching our hair, resting your head on our shoulders, depending on the particular woman’s POV can be endearing. Some people aren’t touchers, just like some people aren’t shoppers. Or readers. Or runners. I’m a toucher. For goodness sakes, don’t do it at work, but if outside work my male buddies, gay or straight, touch my shoulder or my hair or my arm, I am in no way whatsoever slighted. On the contrary, I usually enjoy the intimacy of a friendship close enough for that. Same for female friends.
Goodness! Some days I feel that I am the only person in the world who doesn’t get hung up on the silliest little things! This doesn’t even qualify as First World Problems, people. Oh, please.
WOW!!! i would never approve of that behavior you described and i think it’s bad to say all gay men do that. i don’t my friends don’t and nor do we approve of it.
Wow. That’s interesting. I’m a gay man and totally do not relate to anything here at all. I think this article is about some sub-culture of gay men, I don’t know, maybe fashion industry, or barflies. I don’t know any gay men who treat women like this.
A lot of people have rightly noted that there are obnoxious people in every subgroup, regardless of sexual orientation and gender, and the gay men mentioned in this article are not a great representative sample of gay men in general, probably not even gay men who frequent bars.
That being said, there is a particular part here that’s kind of distinct to gay men. (Maybe) It’s not the inappropriate touching that’s so specific but the disclaimer. It’s the statement afterwards saying “it’s okay, I’m gay.” There’s nothing like that used by anyone in any other identity, is there? I can’t imagine anyone groping a stranger and then saying, “it’s okay, I’m ____” and filling the blank with: straight, white, Hispanic, dyslexic, a college graduate, a Pisces, extraverted, Presbyterian, etc.
It seems like this is a very special detail not shared by the other cases of universal rudeness. And it’s obviously not a “gay community” thing. I can’t imagine there are nearly as many cases of a lesbian groping a man and then saying, “relax, dude, I’m a lesbian.”
If you think about it logically, then if this disclaimer is acceptable, then it should be appropriate for me as a straight guy to grope a stranger’s breasts and say, “don’t worry, I don’t find you remotely attractive.” I mean, if not being attracted to someone gives full license, then hetero men would have license to fondle women they aren’t attracted to. That doesn’t seem right, does it?
That being said, there is a particular part here that’s kind of distinct to gay men. … It’s the statement afterwards saying “it’s okay, I’m gay.” There’s nothing like that used by anyone in any other identity, is there?
Oh Boy! Well that one’s wrong! As has already been pointed out here by SO many gay men, Hetero women have terrible habits when let out in public and so many use the excuse of “Don’t Worry You’re Queer and I’m Straight” to commit sexual assault. Once is anecdote, twice alarming and the third identifies a pattern of social behaviour which warrants close study, if you can get the funding and ethics approval. It is odd how hard that can be when it’s looking at female as aggressor and not male.
And it’s not even limited to supposed GAY Venues/Environments. It’s been done to me personally in many environments – and the hand slapping has been equally loud in all of them… as has the bitching and name calling after me for not welcoming being sexual assaulted under the guise of Faulty Female Privilege. Having had Vocal training my Operatic Responses, verging on the Wagnerian do tend to drown them out… and get people looking! Never underestimate the power of peers and public embarrassment. P^)
White Female Sexism … or Female Sexism of any colour is unwelcome by any recipient, and it’s strange when the aggressors just don’t get it, and worse when people start to excuse it. Sorry but it looks like your White Knighting and coming up with a distorted view. … and as for lesbians making excuses … hate to break the news to you, but they do naughty and antisocial things too, and also make excuses for wandering hands.
Humanity has just gone to hell in a hand basket – so please turn out the lights when the last one leaves.
This is absolutely true. I am so glad SOMEONE is finally talking about this horrible problem. Gay men who behave this way hide behind a politically correct shroud, crying “homophobia!” whenever anyone tries to criticize their behavior.
Yolo, GOOD FOR YOU!! for being brave, speaking the truth despite the backlash you will inevitably encounter, and for making an important generalization/statement.
Of course not every gay man criticizes women. But MANY, MANY do. So many, in fact, that this problem is now characteristic of the male, gay community, whether gay men like it or not.
SO MUCH LOVE for this article!
This happens more than gay men want to admit to. I am a Transwomen and I have experienced having my top pulled down and told “it’s no big deal we are both gay”????? I slapped his face as he persisted to try and grab my crotch. He was not trying to pick me up, he was just being rude and thought he had the right to do it just because he was in a gay bar. I realize that all gay men are not of this horrible nature, but this cannot be denied that it does happen. When I complained to the bartender I was asked to leave! I never ever go to gay bars any longer as a result. I have lots of gays male friends who were completely in shock when they found out what happened. I socialize now at church groups and in private homes as a result.