The One Question Men Need to Stop Asking on Gay Dating Apps

Discussion in 'Dating and Relationships' started by OckyDub, Oct 14, 2019.

  1. OckyDub

    OckyDub is a Verified MemberOckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50
    Site Founder The 10000 Daps Club

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2015
    Messages:
    6,691
    Daps Received:
    15,036
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    The planet of Memory Corpses
    Orientation:
    Homosexual
    Dating:
    Married
    Smh....fem bloggers are still writing about this faux shaming / discrimination on dating apps? Here's an idea, we need more articles and blog posts about TEACHING GAY MEN HOW TO HANDLE REJECTION and stop playing victim to these supposed online trolls.

    [​IMG]

    It’s well past time to burn the masc4masc era down.

    Anyone who’s spent time on gay dating apps on which men connect with other men will have at least seen some form of camp or femme-shaming, whether they recognize it as such or not. The number of guys who define themselves as “straight-acting” or “masc”—and only want to meet other guys who present in the same way—is so widespread that you can buy a hot pink, unicorn-adorned T-shirt sending up the popular shorthand for this: "masc4masc." But as dating apps become more ingrained in modern daily gay culture, camp and femme-shaming on them is becoming not just more sophisticated, but also more shameless.

    “I’d say the most frequent question I get asked on Grindr or Scruff is: ‘are you masc?’” says Scott, a 26-year-old gay man from Connecticut. “But some guys use more coded language—like, ‘are you into sports, or do you like hiking?’” Scott says he always tells guys pretty quickly that he’s not masc or straight-acting because he thinks he looks more traditionally “manly” than he feels. “I have a full beard and a fairly hairy body,” he says, “but after I’ve said that, I’ve had guys ask for a voice memo so they can hear if my voice is low enough for them.”

    Some guys on dating apps who reject others for being “too camp” or “too femme” wave away any criticism by saying it’s “just a preference.” After all, the heart wants what it wants. But sometimes this preference becomes so firmly embedded in a person’s core that it can curdle into abusive behavior. Ross, a 23-year-old queer person from Glasgow, says he's experienced anti-femme abuse on dating apps from guys that he hasn't even sent a message to. The abuse got so bad when Ross joined Jack'd that he had to delete the app.

    "Sometimes I would just get a random message calling me a faggot or sissy, or the person would tell me they’d find me attractive if my nails weren’t painted or I didn’t have makeup on," Ross says. "I’ve also received even more abusive messages telling me I’m 'an embarrassment of a man' and 'a freak’ and things like that.”

    On other occasions, Ross says he received a torrent of abuse after he had politely declined a guy who messaged him first. One particularly toxic online encounter sticks in his mind. "This guy’s messages were absolutely vile and all to do with my femme appearance," Ross recalls. "He said 'you ugly camp bastard,' 'you ugly makeup wearing queen,' and 'you look pussy as fuck.' When he initially messaged me I assumed it was because he found me attractive, so I feel like the femme-phobia and abuse definitely stems from some kind of discomfort these guys feel in themselves."

    Charlie Sarson, a doctoral researcher from Birmingham City University who wrote a thesis on how gay men talk about masculinity online, says he isn't surprised that rejection can sometimes lead to abuse. "It's all to do with value," Sarson says. "This guy probably thinks he accrues more value by displaying straight-acting characteristics. So when he's rejected by someone who is presenting online in a more effeminate—or at least not masculine way—it's a big questioning of this value that he’s spent time trying to curate and maintain."

    In his research, Sarson found that guys seeking to “curate” a masc or straight-acing identity typically use a "headless torso" profile pic—a photo that shows their upper body but not their face—or one that otherwise highlights their athleticism. Sarson also found that avowedly masc guys kept their online conversations as terse as possible and chose not to use emoji or colorful language. He adds: “One guy told me he didn't really use punctuation, and especially exclamation marks, because in his words ‘exclamations are the gayest.’”

    However, Sarson says we shouldn't presume that dating apps have exacerbated camp and femme-shaming within the LGBTQ community. "It's always existed," he says, citing the hyper-masculine "Gay Clone or “Castro Clone" look of the ‘70s and '80s—gay men who dressed and presented alike, typically with handlebar mustaches and tight Levi’s—which he characterizes as partly "a response to what that scene considered to be the 'too effeminate' and 'flamboyant' nature of the Gay Liberation movement.” This form of reactionary femme-shaming can be traced back to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, which were led by trans women of color, gender-nonconforming folks, and effeminate young men. Flamboyant disco singer Sylvester said in a 1982 interview that he often felt dismissed by gay men who had "gotten all cloned out and down on people being loud, extravagant or different."

    The Gay Clone look may have gone out of fashion, but homophobic slurs that feel inherently femmephobic never have: "sissy," "nancy," "nelly," "fairy," "faggy." Even with strides in representation, those words haven't gone out of fashion. Hell, some gay men in the late ‘90s probably felt that Jack—Sean Hayes's unabashedly campy character from Will & Grace—was "too stereotypical" because he was really "too femme."

    “I don’t mean to give the masc4masc, femme-hating crowd a pass,” says Ross. “But [I think] many of them may have been raised around people vilifying queer and femme folks. If they weren’t the one getting bullied for ‘acting gay,’ they probably saw where ‘acting gay’ could get you.”

    But at the same time, Sarson says we need to address the impact of anti-camp and anti-femme sentiments on younger LGBTQ people who use dating apps. After all, in 2019, downloading Grindr, Scruff, or Jack’d might still be someone’s first contact with the LGBTQ community. The experiences of Nathan, a 22-year-old gay man from Durban, South Africa, illustrate just how damaging these sentiments can be. "I'm not going to say that what I've encountered on dating apps drove me to a space where I was suicidal, but it definitely was a contributing factor," he says. At a low point, Nathan says, he even asked guys on one app "what it was about me that would have to change for them to find me attractive. And all of them said my profile needed to be more manly."

    Sarson says he found that avowedly masc guys tend to underline their own straight-acting credentials simply by dismissing campiness. "Their identity was built on rejecting what it wasn't rather than coming out and saying what it actually was," he says. But this doesn't mean their preferences are easy to break down. "I try to avoid talking about masculinity with strangers online," says Scott. "I've never had any luck educating them in the past."

    Ultimately, both online and IRL, camp and femme-shaming is a nuanced but deeply ingrained strain of internalized homophobia. The more we talk about it, the more we can understand where it stems from and, hopefully, how to combat it. Until then, whenever someone on a dating app asks for a voice note, you have every right to send a clip of Dame Shirley Bassey singing "I Am What I Am."

    The One Question Men Need to Stop Asking on Gay Dating Apps
     
  2. sydney

    sydney Squad Member

    Age:
    39
    Joined:
    Oct 27, 2016
    Messages:
    32
    Daps Received:
    43
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Houston, Tx
    Orientation:
    Gay
    Dating:
    It's complicated
    I do not advocate criticizing or shaming anyone for being feminine. However I do think many feminine men want to make it seems like a Masculine guy wanting another Masculine guy is somehow wrong and I just fundamentally disagree with that. I am still trying to figure out what is wrong with a man who is attracted to other men, expect them to walk, talk and act like a man. To me, it is perfectly normal for a man that is attracted to another man to find his masculinity as part of the attraction.
     
    Lancer, LeMignon, Infinite_loop and 6 others dapped this.
  3. OckyDub

    OckyDub is a Verified MemberOckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50
    Site Founder The 10000 Daps Club

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2015
    Messages:
    6,691
    Daps Received:
    15,036
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    The planet of Memory Corpses
    Orientation:
    Homosexual
    Dating:
    Married
    There are multiple vids on youtube of pre-op transgender females stating that if men don't want to date or be intimate with them it's discrimination and shaming...WTF

    This is maddening to me.
     
    ControlledXaos and I-Stay-Woke dapped this.
  4. takeyourmeds91

    The 1000 Daps Club

    Joined:
    Apr 27, 2016
    Messages:
    774
    Daps Received:
    3,183
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    FL
    I do think there's some truth to "femme-shaming" whether blatant or inherent but we're not going to use gay-dating apps as the barometer for mistreatment within the gay community. Anonymity brings out the worst in all humans.
     
    Lancer, mojoreece, Infinite_loop and 4 others dapped this.
  5. ControlledXaos

    Squad Veteran Most Valuable Player The 1000 Daps Club

    Age:
    48
    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2015
    Messages:
    2,551
    Daps Received:
    7,196
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Atlanna
    And the chutch sayd "Ahmendt."

    If Xbox Live has not taught me anything else it's definitely that.

    If masculinity wasn't so desired then why do these femme gays not chase after other femme gays? "I don't bump purses" is what I have heard a few say. But there are femme tops and verse guys out there. As are masc bottoms.

    It's such a gauntlet to date.....

    Masc Femme or In Between?

    Positive or Negative?

    If Positive is the body hot?
    If so are they undetectable?

    If negative is the dick phat?
    If no is the body hot?

    Is he in the gym working on his body to become hot?
    If not End Chase.

    If so is the Ass phat?
    If no then that's OK.


    Etc etc etc.

    I just don't understand why guys don't get that everyone has their own things that are attractive to them. And they are using the exact same shaming and preferences themselves. It's madness.
     
  6. takeyourmeds91

    The 1000 Daps Club

    Joined:
    Apr 27, 2016
    Messages:
    774
    Daps Received:
    3,183
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    FL
    It's a hell of a decision tree lmao
     
    ControlledXaos dapped this.
Loading...
Similar Threads - Question Need Stop Forum Date
Anthony Mackie Questions Why ‘Black Panther’ Needs Black Director Movies and Shorts Oct 22, 2015
Been Asking the Same Question Gym and Workouts Feb 18, 2022
Questions that can't be Answered Group Discussions Nov 30, 2021
QUESTION: Which Iterations of Mortal Kombat's Jax Is Your Type? Gaming and Technology Jul 26, 2021
Adult Performers Answer Questions You've Always Had Sex and Adult Jan 9, 2020

Share This Page

Loading...