Misogyny among straight men is nothing new in our culture.
It’s existed for as long as straight men themselves have existed.
But what if I told you that there’s misogyny among gay men?
“What are you talking about?” you might say. “Gay men love women.”
That might be true, but there’s a dirty little secret in gay male subculture, one that we have kept for years under a thin shroud that I like to call gay male privilege.
Typically, it’s understood that gay men don’t have any privilege.
We’re still persecuted in many parts of the world, including our very own United States.
So privilege is usually not a word floating around us.
Mainstream culture likes to focus on the victim narrative of GLBT individuals, never addressing some obvious ?discrepancies.
First of all, and perhaps most disturbing to me, is the blatant prioritizing of gay men instead of lesbians in, not just mainstream culture, but even GLBT culture.
Go to any gay bar and you’ll see it. Lesbians are treated as second-class citizens.
You don’t even have to go to a gay bar to see it. Just look at, for example, the gay and lesbian category on Netflix.
The overwhelming majority of films feature gay men.
But it’s not just the gay male subculture’s treatment of lesbians that’s troubling. Its treatment of heterosexual women is just as shameful.
I’m sure you’ve heard the term “fag hag” before. The straight woman who attracts a plethora of gay men is a cornerstone of popular culture.
Gay male privilege thrives on this idea. Gay men with female friends consistently use these female friends as objects with whom to assert ?dominance.
“It’s OK cause I’m gay,” we say after hurling an insult or making an inappropriate comment about her body. “Can’t you take a joke?”
“If I were straight I’d totally bang you.” The average person would be appalled and disgusted and immediately and rightly defend the woman.
So why is it OK for a gay man to say it?
I’m not for a second saying we have more privilege than our straight male counterparts. That is most certainly not true.
But we have a different kind of privilege, a strange dominance of women that we get away with “because we’re gay.”
But it isn’t really because we’re gay.
It’s because we’re men, and we’re products of a culture that objectifies and degrades women. It’s an inherently sexist society.
Let’s make it so it’s not inherent anymore. Just because we’re gay doesn’t make it OK.
Women support gay men, so, as gay men, let’s support women.
Let’s stop objectifying them and dismissing it because we don’t want to have sex with them. There’s no logic in that.
zipperr@indiana.edu
