Quick terminology lesson

MLM – man who likes men

Promiscuous – sleeps around

Quick warning: This article includes mentions of sexual references, AIDs, abuse/sexual assault, the F word as well as discussion about fujoshi culture, a subculture some consider to be fetishizing and/or homophobic. If any of these topics I just mentioned are upsetting, you don’t have to read this. No one’s forcing you.

We live in an age where being a gay man means being either strictly masculine or feminine, being promiscuous and sex-starved, drinking iced coffee, watching RuPauls drag race, listening to dance pop, etc. All these stereotypes have been fully embraced by a notable chunk of the MLM community and are considered a staple of the queer experience by those people. However, they’re not, and we’re gonna talk about why they’re not only wrong, but ultimately harmful for LGBT+ members. But to explain this, we need to go way back to the old times here in the good ol’ U.S of A.

Q: How were gay men perceived when you were young?

A: “I was in high school when the AIDS epidemic started, and we heard about this virus that was killing gay men, and it was terrifying. At the same time, there were some really dark movies, there was a movie called cruising where there was a psychopath who would dismember people, and at that point, I was terrified, I was sure I was one of those people who were gonna be dead by the time I was 23, so it was hidden. Everybody did whatever they needed to do in the dark, in quiet places, there were places where gay men would go and they could be who they were in clubs and such, but for most people, you either pretended to be straight or you got beat up.”

Now first, I just want to clarify that there’s nothing wrong with being a gay man and happening to fall into any of the well-known stereotypes. Shaming people for coincidentally falling into stereotypes is wrong, and we need to acknowledge that. However, it IS wrong to try and impose those stereotypes onto other people.

To talk about this, we need to go back to the late 1900’s and talk about how men in both straight and gay relationships were portrayed in the media back then. There seems to be a trope with bad straight relationships in the form of what I like to call the angry boyfriend trope. A dangerous man with anger issues who only starts to become a better person once he gets a girlfriend instead of therapy. This trope is problematic in several ways, but the way I want to focus on is how it reflects the stigma that men were dangerous and had to have their violent urges tamed by women. Which is completely wrong and rooted in misogyny and outdated gender roles but that’s a whole other can of worms. So we have a good idea of what men are occasionally like in fictional relationships. Angry and sex-hungry. You get the idea. Now let’s talk about men in gay relationships and how those were viewed. Back then, the AIDS epidemic was high in rates and was usually found in gay men, so society viewed it as a consequence of being gay. They even called it the “gay plague.” This reflected just how much society looked down on gay men and refused to let them be sympathized with or loved. With the deadly illness and frequent prejudice, fear rose in many gay men as they felt they would quickly end up dead either by AIDS or by being beaten to death. However, things were about to change in small but significant ways.

Q: How did you feel about yourself when you first realized you were gay?

A: “I prayed and prayed and prayed that god would change me, and they never did.

Now, to talk more about how society’s view of homosexual men changed overtime, I’m going to give you a little Japanese media history lesson. Starting in Japan around the 1990’s, a trend started with the intention of bringing MLM into the mainstream… but not in the way or for the people that you think.”

Around this time, straight women were starting to write and share graphic novels or “manga” as they’re called in Japan, revolving around stories of beautiful men in romantic/sexual relationships. These relationships tended to have two roles that needed to be filled by one of the gay partners. The seme or “bottom” which acts as the innocent, submissive one who receives all the flirting and sexual attention from the other, as well as… ahem… being the hole during intimate activities, and is typically portrayed as more feminine than the other. The other is the uke or “top” which acts as the more dominant and controlling one in the relationship, typically portrayed as confident, emotionally distant outside of sex and hyper-masculine. As well as… You know, being the stick during… activities. Basically a sugar-coated version of the tropes we previously mentioned.

Q: What kind of challenges did you have to face growing up?

A: “When I was in high school and middle school, I couldn’t find out why people were always targeting me. I was the smartest kid in class, but I still couldn’t figure out why people harassed me. After a while, you start to hear people call you faggot all the time and you start to figure out why people are harassing you.”

The manga I just mentioned were deemed “yaoi”. Stories of romantic and sexual relationships between men meant to give straight women an opportunity to explore their fantasies and what they want out of relationships through these fictional ones.

Which is basically a fancy way of saying that this is blatant fetishization of minorities.

Q: Did you feel like you fit in with other gay men?

A: “Sometimes. Not always. I was very careful about how I acted because I didn’t want to be targeted by anybody. Probably pretty conservative at that point.”

Now, the issue of LGBT being treated as sexual objects for straight people to project their fantasies onto is already extremely problematic on it’s own, but that’s not what I want to focus on in this essay. What I want to focus on is how the tropes present in these pieces of fiction reflected how society viewed gay men and masculinity in general at the time. in a way, gay men were becoming mainstream, but in a way that kept harmful stereotypes like hyper-femininity and promiscuous behavior ingrained in their identity.

There’s the uke’s typical personality. They tend to be emotionally distant, and the only thing that seems to interest them is sex. Fierce raw sex with an innocent yet submitting creature. This is basically the gay version of the angry boyfriend trope, which doesn’t make it any less harmful to men.

Q: When was the first time you told someone else?

A: “My best friend I talked to and we had a conversation about it and there was a trip we went on with the band and the orchestra. We went to Great Britain and concerts there and a couple of the other kids on the bus that we were on figured it out and said something about it. That was still in high school.”

Meanwhile, in the west, yaoi had yet to become mainstream, mainly due to the periodic stigma of women expressing themselves. There was also still a lot of stigma around men being affectionate towards each other, as well as religious bigotry still being a huge thing, which put our gays in a real pickle. How could they express themselves? Many found private places like gay bars to practice homosexuality and be themselves in.

While we’re on the subject, there’s an example of the opposite side of the spectrum that I want to talk about.

Shawn Mendez is a Canadian singer and songwriter who’s married to a woman named Camilla Cabello. He’s gained a following of mostly teenage girls, and is in that Ed Sheeran area of dreamy yet generic male singers. Outside of that, one thing that Shawn Mendez is known for is their occasional moments of sassy effeminate behavior. If you’ve spent any amount of time on music Twitter, you’ve definitely seen his “it’s giving cher” clip at least once. So basically, Shawn Mendez is a man who’s into music and has a sassy side. And what do you think people  thought when they saw it?

Yup, you guessed it. Everyone started calling him gay. 

As I mentioned, toxic masculinity was still a thing. If a man were to show too much compassion or emotion, they’d be ridiculed and called weak. So gay men weren’t encouraged to be genuinely loving towards each other. Instead, other things defined them. Things like a love of drama, a love of iced tea and dance pop, a high and giddy voice, sexy outfits, sexy flirting, sexy sex, you get the idea. Hollow feminine attributes became something that couldn’t be separated from the idea of being a gay man.

The thing is, Shawn isn’t gay. He’s a straight man who has never shown any actual interest in guys and is clearly married to a woman. But people were completely blind to this and said that his relationship with Camilla was staged and that he’s having an affair with Tom Holland, because there’s no way a feminine man can be straight, right? And people would not leave him alone. Everywhere you looked on Twitter, there was at least one joke about Shawn being gay. Even after he publicly stated that he was not only straight, but uncomfortable with these jokes. Everyone said that statement was a lie and kept on forcing this false identity onto him for no other reason than him occasionally acting feminine. This whole thing shows that the MLM stereotype hurts not only gay men, but straight men as well. This whole stereotype just traps men in a box that classifies any non-masculine man as not being able to like women.

Thankfully, the rest of the community has moved on from that mentality and have become more understanding.

Q: What do you do to try and feel validated?

A: “I just hung around with people who cared about me, who I liked and who were similar to me, and eventually I ended up going to a gay church, I met a priest, he came out as gay and he suggested that I go to the place and go to church there and I’ve been going there ever since. As a matter of fact, some of my friends, particularly my lesbian friends, had domestic partnerships in other states and then had partnerships in Vermont when that was available, and when america legalized gay marriage, we were right there in city hall, because those were the only people who could get marriage liscences. Meanwhile there were people across the street, people in leftist baptism and they were picketing the event but we were having a grand time because there were a thousand people there and then there were a couple of people up there with god hates fags signs”

Q: Did being with other members of the LGBT+ community help you?

A: “Oh yeah, absolutely. Those are my peeps. It’s easier to befriend people you feel safe with.”

Now let’s skip ahead to the modern day. We’ve progressed in a lot of ways. There’s way less stigma around LBGT, as well as young men being in intimate relationships. Those things have become mainstream in non-problematic ways, and all is good and happy, right? Well, not entirely. Let’s talk about, in my opinion, the most harmful aspect of the MLM stereotype that has persisted. The sexually-charged aspect. Around this time, most gay men weren’t properly loved by their parents as kids, so a lot of them weren’t taught how to show love to others, and the people around them telling them what they were certainly wouldn’t help. Gay men were said to love sex exclusively for physical benefits as opposed to an emotional bond. According to society, being gay meant hookups, loveless sex, etc. Even if the tropes and stereotypes were mostly outdated by then, aspects of them still persisted. There are still a lot of gay men who tried to fit into those stereotypes in order to be accepted. It’s not entirely gone yet, and it’s still forced onto a lot of people. Toxic hollow hookups have become a trend among gay men, with many of them referring to Grindr, a hookup app for gay men, as an addicting yet miserable place. Gay men often force themselves into and sometimes even used other gay men for loveless sex just to fit into how society said gay men should act. This is what stereotypes can do! They can make people feel like they don’t belong when they don’t fall into them!

Q: What do you appreciate the most about the LGBT+ community?

A: “So much about it. Everybody’s different and most people are very inclusive. You don’t see people like, you know, beating up each other or shooting people or anything like that. It’s just a friendly community.”

Today, we live in an age where being a gay man means being either strictly a masculine top or a feminine bottom, being promiscuous and sex-starved, drinking iced coffee, watching RuPauls drag race, listening to dance pop, yas-queening around, etc. All things that not every gay man does or even likes, as we’ve discussed today. Despite that, all these stereotypes have been fully embraced and considered a staple of the queer experience in a way that implies that there’s only one way to be a gay man, making it harder for many gay men to feel validated and welcome. However, there isn’t. Those stereotypes aren’t true. You don’t have to be promiscuous to be gay. You don’t have to be feminine to be gay. You don’t have to drink iced coffee to be gay. You don’t have to be sexually liberated to be LBGT. The stereotypes aren’t true. They’re arbitrary labels assigned by society with no thought! There’s no one way to be gay! There’s no one way to be a man! There’s no one way to be a woman, and people need to recognize these things and start acknowledging how diverse and unique everyone in the LGBT+ community is! Forcing people into black and white categories is harmful! We’re a rainbow for a reason! And we need to nurture that rainbow. Appreciate the rainbow instead of trying to make it black and white. That’s all I have to say.