To be clear, im queer and im in a relationship with a gay cis man.
Some days ago we were watching a sketch on YouTube about the gay best friend stereotype, where the joke was basically “I can be misogynistic and can walk into female dressing rooms because im gay”. I was trying to gather my thoughts to write a piece about it, personally I have no problem being the “gay friend” to my female friends, but there are a lot of stupid and harmful misconceptions about it. I would like to hear some of your opinions about it.
Being a gay best friend doesn’t mean you can flout misogyny. Even though I am non binary (amab) I respect women’s spaces. The patriarchy doesn’t end just because I identify differently now. Afab are in clear and present danger around amab. When I see women I think “Are they going to respect my gender identity?” But what they evaluate is “Is this person gonna go Ted Bundy on me?”
Yeah, getting into female spaces while still being kinda masc presenting without being explicitly invited first is just an invasion of privacy and violating boundaries.
What’s amab/afab?
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Gotcha, thanks
It stands for assigned male/female at birth respectively. Used in trans circles to specify what genitals someone had at birth (or was forced to have, in the case of intersex people whose doctors just chopped stuff off as soon as they were born).
Afab are in clear and present danger around amab.
This is not accurate.
Leaving aside the fact you were talking about gender in the first half of your post, and then switched over to assigned sex as if they were the same thing, a more accurate statement would have been “AFAB folk, and gender diverse AMAB folk are most at risk from cishet men”
Your statement here positions some of the main targets of aggression as being the aggressors
Afab are in clear and present danger around amab.
Yikes. Not even close.
I love and appreciate you so damn much. 💕
“Can” in this context means nobody is going to challenge him on it.
As with all jokes it matters who the audience is. My friends can make off-colour jokes with me, I can reciprocate with off-jokes. But I would never do this with people not fully aware of my actual opinions. This also counts to clear misogynistic jokes.
My closest female friends they would be fine with it, they’ve known me for years, I’ve supported them in their lowest and they know I would never mean the a horrible thing I say. They’ll happily reciprocate with some toxic male jokes, or some gay jokes. That said, even when I make them they are both clear intended to be jokes, but if they ever looked uncomfortable then it would be my guilt to bear, as at the end, as the audience they are meant to enjoy the joke, not be sad or hurt by it.
Making them to strangers is a big no-no, and if strangers are in the room with you at the time (like a party) you also have to “match the energy” of your friend. That means don’t randomly do something misogynistic that they would understand to be a joke, but strangers would not. I think this is the hardest for most people as they don’t consider that strangers witnessing could also be accidental audiences.
This is a very fine comment.
That it can be a form of ‘tokenism’ that erases or ignores the vast majority of my personal characteristics and reduces me to a cliche.
I hated identifying as a gay cis man after a while. It was in a small US town and the identity came to feel like a straight jacket (ha!). My identity is much more fluid now even though I fit the descriptor of ‘mostly gay’ in a statistical sense.
I’m not your fscking ‘gay’ friend, in a nutshell. If someone doesn’t understand why I might feel this way, well then the friendship is probably doomed.
I think some of this is the safety aspect, like gay men can joke around with women or exist in her personal space because women won’t see that guy as a predator or think “but what if he is actually objectifying me or will turn on me in the future for not reciprocating like he wants?”
I find these sort of behaviors uncomfortable, on a personal level. Like, I don’t want to call any woman a slur, even jokingly. But different people have different thresholds.
However, as a gay trans man (and smaller than most women), I have noticed that some women are much more comfortable interacting with me than they are with other men. I’m not seen as any sort of threat or concern. I think that’s the important part, threat assessment (sounds crazy if you haven’t lived in that world, but women are constantly performing threat assessment as they go about their day - what an awful thing for half of the population to have to just live with).
The most important aspect of any relationship, and this includes friendship, is consent. Like, if a woman and a gay man have a sort of relationship where they have mutually agreed this sort of stuff is ok, more power to them. But there can’t be assumptions made on this, like a gay man can’t think “it’s fine for me to call women slurs jokingly, after all I’m gay” because not all women will be ok with that, and vice versa. Each person is an individual, there’s no group monolith that makes certain behaviors universally okay.
Sounds more like they’re spouting old gay predator stereotypes from the 80s-2000s
Yeah but in a comedic tone. The joke is like:
- Straight guy she barely knows calls her removed. Gets slapped.
- Gay best friend calls her removed. They laugh together.
Anyway it 100% sucks, but I think the missing piece is that having an inside joke with someone you trust makes the situation entirely different. While the other guy is being a dick and insulting her out of the blue. So the sketch really misses the mark on that one.
Anyway I never called any of my female friends removed. Ever. Like, why?
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I’m a gay cis man and was just on the phone with my best female friend. She was talking to me about an acquaintance that made her feel uncomfortable after she heard him objectifying another woman with a comment about a “slutty outfit” at a Renaissance Faire. She said something to the effect of “and that concerns me because I wear slutty outfits at Ren Faire.” and my response was “Yeah, you’re the queen of slutty outfits!” and then went on to say something actually supportive.
I think every relationship has a certain set of spoken and unspoken rules. I’ve been friends with her for well over a decade. We both poke fun at sex and gender things together and have also had many insightful, non-joking conversations about these things and both know exactly where we stand on them. It was contextually appropriate for me to call her the queen of slutty outfits. Would I say this almost any other woman? Fuck no.
I’ve had friends who are women change in front of me and vice versa to varying degrees of undress but it was always initiated by them and I never barged in or invited the interaction. Gay men engage in sexism, misogyny, etc all the time. We are not immune to it, exempt from it, or capable of being any less harmful. To think otherwise helps no one and maintains existing systems of oppression and power. Men also suffer under misogyny, gay/queer men especially so. We can be powerful allies disrupting sexism in places and situations women typically wouldn’t have access to. That’s what being a real gay best friend is
it was always initiated by them
Did you mention this randomly or do you believe that you have less right to initiate that than they do?
I was just basically saying that I wouldn’t barge into a woman’s dressing room just on my own “authority” as a gay man. I mentioned it because of one of the examples from the OP. Things like that are all about context like if we’re sharing a hotel room and someone is already in the restroom or if we’re getting into costume and need assistance. There’s mutual consent
I thought about this a little more. When you asked do I believe I have less right to initiate that than they do. I actually think the answer is yes.
Taking the situation to a wider lens I am not traditionally a person that is preyed on and victimized for my body nearly as much. I don’t think it would ever be appropriate for me to initiate a situation like that with any woman. Based on cultural and historical context it would be much more likely that a man, if he were uncomfortable, would leave that situation than it would be for a woman to do the same for fear of her own safety. The power dynamic is different whether that’s real in the situation or perceived. I would never want to inflict that on someone else.
Of course men can be preyed on and put into uncomfortable or dangerous situations as well. I’m not saying anything to contradict that. No gender is a monolith but overall it’s probably a safer bet to let a woman initiate that than a man as a general rule. It’s a complicated topic and even more so when you consider it outside of the gender binary. But that’s how I perceive my role in this situation.
Maybe read it again, in context, and decide if there are equal rights to initiate that particular interaction (no matter what the genders or sexualities involved are).
Then have a stern word with yourself about being so incredibly defensive that you end up portraying yourself as a sex pest.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Maybe read it again, in context, and decide if there are equal rights to initiate that particular interaction (no matter what the genders or sexualities involved are).
Are you saying that two people, no matter the genders or sexualities, never have the same right to initiate undressing in front of each other? What?
Then have a stern word with yourself about being so incredibly defensive that you end up portraying yourself as a sex pest.
Defensive? I’m neither a gay man nor a heterosexual woman. This doesn’t affect me at all.
The contrast was between someone who chooses to undress in front of someone else, and someone who chooses to barge in in them in a state of undress.
Defensive? I’m neither a gay man nor a heterosexual woman.
Exactly. Think about it. Look deep inside yourself, find a glimmer of self-awareness, and work out what it is that drives you to post like this.
If it’s OK for the gay best friend to be misogynistic, it’s OK for the woman to be homophobic. Makes just as much sense.
I can imagine that kind of friendships being like, they playfully tell each other to suck a dick.
I’m imagining that as a Will and Grace gag and it’s pretty great
SOILER: the spoilers are for readibility
In the german political party AFD >!(officially right extreme i think)!< one of the people put into the Bundestag >!(main politician meeting room)!<, Alice Weidel* is homophobic and gay
What i think is pretty funny that a gay is one of the leaders of an right homophobic party
*i hope i got the name rightdeleted by creator
Do you believe that the joke was based on a misconception?
I think it’s an instance of self-deprecating humor. Misogyny does affect queer men as well.
But there’s also people who are just gross and take it to heart (to the point of sexual harassment). It doesn’t really matter if you’re the titled “gay friend” as long as the friend group is for queer liberation (no TERFs) and it’s not some weird chaser mentality where the intrigue is objectifying queer men’s bodies and sexuality.
Well, I don’t tell that to everyone immediately and I look and behave like a regular man so nobody would ever guess without at least knowing me for some time. I wouldn’t ever go to female changing room or bathroom expecting it to be fine. It would be just as akward, or even more so when trying to explain that somehow.
