A reader writes:
Given your keen eye for the end of gay culture, I’m surprised you didn’t flag this passage from the article:
It's kind of sad, but many gay people are as close-minded about sports as some high-profile athletes are close-minded about homosexuality … Many gay people feel the need to compartmentalize people who aren't like them. So if you're politically conservative or you like sports, many gay people try to push you to the far corners of the community. They felt tormented by sports as children, so it's payback time now that they're adults.
I was drawn to this quote because it explains a lot of the attitudes I’m up against trying to sell what often feels like the majority of my gay friends on Boxer’s, one of the bars reviewed in the article. I assume many folks have similar issues in other gay sports bars in other marketplaces. If often seems that what sustains "gay culture" – and what is even implicit in your countdown towards the end of it – is this generally inchoate sense that out there resides some form of gay behavior more irreducibly "authentic" and less affected than other forms.
Now, I’m the type that tends to tune out anyone who starts lecturing me about "authenticity" (I have too many different identities myself, many working at cross purposes), but I also believe that the reality of gay culture is far more multi-variable: there are many gay cultures, and a large percentage of each such culture purports to claim itself as the most authentic manifestation of gay culture. This is as true of club queens, as it is for bears, pomo queers, DL thugs, and the infinitesimal other gay cultures. I have gay friends who literally will not associate with anybody who is visibly overweight. Conversely, I have gay friends who profess to not knowing a single word of Sondheim and who swam competitively in college. Yet across the spectrum a lot of men seem to put their foot down at gay sports bars.
I suspect that one of the reasons for this is that these types of settings, for many of the reasons outlined in this article, fail to validate for many gay men the same sense of mastery over their lives and identities offered by other more recognizably "gayed" institutions as theatre, culture, fitness, the arts, and the academy. Yet, what’s fascinating to me about places like Boxer’s and Nellie’s is how breezily judgment-free they are compared to most other gay bars. Maybe it’s because the billowing football jerseys tend to desexualize the figures drowning underneath them.
But maybe there’s something else. Maybe there’s something about the testosteronal investment one puts into watching a favored sports team that perhaps neutralizes the vapid alpha male-ness that often permeates gay spaces in large cities (and, oh yes, I’m talking as much about The Eagle as I am about Rockit). And maybe that’s the one simple irony of these settings: that too much play equals not enough game. Just like how I imagine a lot of straight sports bars to be.
Another argues from the other direction:
I read about a bar where the gay male patrons are "indistinguishable from straight frat boys" with some concern. Straight frat boys are not typically the most tolerant people, and in my experience their gay counterparts – self-identified "straight acting" gay men – can be pretty nasty too.
Look, I get that there are gay guys who are naturally, unselfconsciously masculine in mannerisms, interests and attitudes. They're truly "indistinguishable" from straight men. Yay. I also believe that to gain acceptance for all gay people, the straights need to understand that we're not all stereotypes, and "straight acting" can accomplish that. BUT I also notice a disturbing trend among gay men of marginalizing and belittling fem men in public and on hookup apps like Grindr ("Don't be fem!" or "I like guys that act like guys.") I wonder if, with a taste of acceptance, the boys on the knife's edge of straightness – the ones who can "pass" – are seeking total acceptance within straight society by putting other gay men at a distance.
I often hear, "The only thing gay about me is that I'm attracted to guys sexually" and wonder what the implications of that statement are for gay people for whom that's *not* true. (I often wonder what the motive is for the guy who's saying it, and whether he actually believes it to be true or just wants to believe it.) Again, being typically masculine is not a problem, necessarily, but not all of us are. With this "they're just like us" (or "we're just like you") talk, I fear we're just defining a smaller community of gay men to hate.
Or just maturing as a community that has as many nuances within it as it has enemies outside.
The Dish 