If you’re looking for an article that makes fun of women, you’ve come to the wrong place.
However, what you will find here is a critique of young gay men.
Okay, back in my day (which I know was a very long time ago), young men used to go to gay bars by themselves. This will seem like a bizarre concept to all you young ’uns out there, but hold onto your hats. At one time, young men went out to bars for one purpose and one purpose only: to cruise other men.
If you’re under 25 you might not know what cruising is. Well, you know how you flick through Grindr and flirt with guys and chat them up? People used to do that in person.
That doesn’t mean we were anti-social. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t talk with anyone, or laugh, or have fun. And it doesn’t mean we walked into the bar and immediately pulled down some guy’s pants. No — we laughed and talked and did all the things you do now. But we didn’t go to the bar just to laugh and talk — we went there to get royally laid.
Nowadays, it seems like young guys don’t go to bars without a phalanx of women on their arms. But these women are not lesbians, or girls who read Schopenhauer, mind you. These are party girls. Pretty, 19–25 year olds who live in Mississauga and wear low-cut party dresses, high heels and giggle like crazy, ’cause honey, they are out for a wild and crazy night on the town with their outrageous gay friends.
I don’t blame these young women. I mean, who wants to hang out in a sexist straight bar with a bunch of boring, uptight abusive boys and nasty, sexually competitive girls with body image issues?
But what about the young gay men? What do they get out of all this?
It’s all related to his fear of being perceived as cruising and his fear of being cruised. The number of party girls a young man hauls into a gay bar is in direct proportion to his age. Nineteen-year-old gays may come to the bar with five girls or more. By the time they are 25, they only need one — until they get a boyfriend and can blithely intone, “Dude, I’m no longer into the Church Street scene.”
How do I know this? I have certainly observed these frightened young men and their party-hardy girlfriends at Buddies, Woody’s and lining up at Crews. But also, I’ve noticed a glut of YouTube videos, sketches and plays that feature annoying “fag hag” girlfriends. It used to be that gay men were misogynistic because they were forced by a homophobic culture to marry women and pretend they were straight. Thank god that’s over. Unfortunately, gay men still resent women — but it’s now because they have to spend the first 10 years of their gay lives depending on girls to accompany them to gay bars.
Will we ever see the day when young gay men proudly walk into a gay bar alone, with the express purpose of flirting with and ultimately sexing up another guy?
Not in our lifetimes.
Why are young men so afraid of being openly sexual, sex-obsessed, slutty perverts?
The one word answer: AIDS.
The illness may be manageable these days, but I doubt if the social effects will be manageable for a long, long time.
In the meantime, you gay boys try and be nice to your actual female girlfriends. Don’t trash them, or resent them, or blame them for your eternally desperate, co-dependent actions.
It’s not their fault — it’s yours.
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