{"id":7706,"date":"2014-11-05T08:46:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T14:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=7706"},"modified":"2014-11-05T10:24:29","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T16:24:29","slug":"gay-men-straight-women-and-queer-sexism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/11\/05\/gay-men-straight-women-and-queer-sexism\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay Men, Straight Women, and Queer Sexism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember thinking to myself when I first came out, \u201cThank God I don\u2019t have to deal with women like straight men do.\u201d Identifying as a gay man meant I could hold on to the aspects of relationships with women that I enjoy and not have to \u201cdeal with the rest.\u201d I admit this is quite shameful for me to say so publicly. However, the more I pay attention, the more I realize how easy it is to be sexist as a gay man. I learned from Madonna that I knew what it felt like for a girl (here<\/a>). Or so I thought. Because I had experienced homophobia at a young age and realized that being gay was a threat to manhood, I thought I understood sexism. It turns out, I understood more about homophobia and masculinity than sexism.<\/p>\n

My simultaneous dismissing of and identification with women exemplifies what Jane Ward<\/a> calls<\/a> \u201cqueer sexism\u201d. Because some gay men have been denied aspects of male privilege does not mean they don\u2019t still have male privilege, or that they are free of masculine expectations and hang-ups. This type of thinking \u201cobscures the ways that gay men, like heterosexual men, have the privilege of making agentic choices about whether to support or reject feminism, whether to listen to or ignore women, whether or not to leave the party when women arrive, and what to say to the men who do.\u201d (here<\/a>: 158-9).<\/p>\n

Gay men\u2019s well-intentioned yet lopsided relationship with straight women has received a lot of attention in the last few years. Interestingly, they commonly argue for straight women to change their thinking and behavior in order to accommodate gay men. For example, this post (here<\/a>) on the gay guy\/straight girl contract reminds straight women that gay men \u201cdon\u2019t want to go shopping\u201d with you; that we are fine with \u201cgiving sex tips\u201d but not hearing about your \u201clady business\u201d (vagina); that \u201cyour boyfriend drama bores us\u201d; that you shouldn\u2019t come to our clubs; and that \u201cyou are not a gay man in a women\u2019s body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is it easier to recognize when a straight man reinforces sexism than when a gay man does it? This becomes even further complicated considering that gay men have different experiences of race, gender expression, class status, culture, and regional identity where the enforcement and ideals of masculinity and femininity vary dramatically for people in different contexts. As a well-mannered Cuban-Mexican-American man, with a very proud Mom, I thought I stood for women and anti-sexism. But as my confession exposes, I wasn\u2019t really fighting for women; I was fighting for acceptance of homosexuality and men\u2019s diverse gender expressions. I now understand that sexism and homophobia are different<\/em> things.<\/p>\n

Consider a conversation I had with Thomas, from San Francisco. He told me he had few female friends and that they \u201care like gay men in a woman’s body.\u201d (It’s a well-worn trope; think of Mila Kunis\u2019 recent claim<\/a> about \u201cbeing a gay guy trapped in a women\u2019s body.\u201d) Thomas explained that these women are empowered because they have adopted a form of toughness that keep them from accepting the “bullshit” in the world by standing up for themselves. Thomas made it clear that he has no interest in being friends with women weren\u2019t like \u201cgay men trapped in women\u2019s bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate his point, he told me about his co-worker, Jane. \u201cJane likes to touch men, be aggressive, and do whatever she wants at work.\u201d This sort of aggressive, boundary-crossing behavior led to her termination. Though Thomas found her termination to be unjust, more importantly he was disappointed in her for not fighting her termination. \u201cI cannot stand women like that. In fact, I want nothing to do with women who don’t stand up for themselves, especially when it’s because of discrimination [in his opinion]. I only keep women around who \u2018get it\u2019 and don’t take bullshit.\u201d For Thomas, Jane fell short of the gay-man-trapped-in-a-woman\u2019s-body standard. She wasn\u2019t changing for “the better” because she didn\u2019t fully adopt a “gay man’s” \u201cI don’t give a shit\u201d mentality.<\/p>\n

For Thomas, \u201cWomen have to choose to be liberated in order to deal with the \u2018bullshit\u2019 of the world\u201d (sexism). And while he was also dealing with \u201cbullshit\u201d (homophobia) it was clear that he didn\u2019t understand the distinction. For Thomas, it is a women\u2019s \u201csuccessful detachment\u201d from patriarchal confinements that make her worthy of his friendship. In other words, if a woman could adopt a gay man’s perspective, defined and approved by gay men, then she\u2019s living the way a woman \u201cshould.\u201d However, this mentality seems, to be little more than doing what one wants and not having to deal with complaints (a luxury of male privilege). So, while some women are highly empowered and praised for being a “gay man trapped in a women’s body,” those who do not are excluded labeled as women who just “don’t get it.”<\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019 struggles with women are part of queer sexism. His story highlights one way some gay men feel license to define and hold women accountable for what is and what is not \u201cright for women.\u201d While it has the superficial vestiges of a progressive and empowering stance on women, Thomas\u2019 assertions are consistent with what Ward calls \u201cqueer sexism\u201d\u2014a veiled form of patriarchy that privileges gay men\u2019s ideas of how women should behave and based off how gay men experience oppression.<\/p>\n

In order to avoid queer versions of sexism, gay men must be more aware of the power imbalances in their relationships with women, and think critically about the expectations they do and do not have of women. Gay men must be more in touch with how our gay all male contexts often makes women seem invisible or irrelevant to our lives. Fighting for an anti-sexist culture requires more than just fighting for a non-homophobic one.<\/p>\n

___________________<\/p>\n

\"A_Lopez\"<\/a>Andres Lazaro Lopez<\/a> is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Iowa State University in Ames, IA. His research exames the intersections of race and gender in work and culture from a pro-feminist perspective. @alazarolopez<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember thinking to myself when I first came out, \u201cThank God I don\u2019t have to deal with women like straight men do.\u201d Identifying as a gay man meant I could hold on to the aspects of relationships with women that I enjoy and not have to \u201cdeal with the rest.\u201d I admit this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25814],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manly-musings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7706"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7713,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706\/revisions\/7713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}