Gay Male Misogyny
She’s confident. She’s drop-dead beautiful. She’s intelligent, capable, engaging, and frankly she doesn’t really need you or any other man - but you’ve caught her eye nonetheless. She glances at you in passing - then pauses, curious, and looks again. At this point you’ve noticed her looking, and realize that - gasp! - she seems to be interested in you. So when she walks over with a smile and stretches out a hand to introduce herself…
…you sneer at her and tell her to move along, because the kitty litter box is down the hall.
And then you wonder why she thinks you’re a prick.
Sound outlandish? It’s not. That scene took place in a cafe down the street from the Art Institute of Houston in late 2001, and I watched in disgust while my former friend and classmate, Jeff, sent a woman packing just for saying hello…then proceeded to smugly congratulate himself as if he’d done something noble and worthwhile.
It’s a pretty common occurrence. While we aren’t all guilty, gay men can be some of the most misogynistic jerks around. We act as if women are substandard just because we aren’t attracted to them. If a woman flirts with us we think we’re entitled to be catty to her, as if she should have known better even if we’re not walking around with huge “GAY - NOT AVAILABLE TO WOMEN” stickers on our foreheads. We pick at their clothing and call them skanks if they dare to dress like anything other than prudish Victorian schoolmistresses, for daring to subject our eyes to their female flesh. Even if we have close female friends, when they’re not around we make derogatory comments about how disgusting female anatomy is and mock the worst stereotyped traits of female behavior even as we unconsciously mimic them.
My question is: why?
Are we afraid of women? Are we so insecure in our place in society and our own self-worth that we need to somehow make ourselves feel superior to someone? Do we fear that, in entering into relationships with other men, we will be compared to women and thus wish to distance ourselves from them as much as possible? What is the point in acting as if we’re members of some elitist society, a no-girls-allowed club in which our childhood treehouses have been replaced by sprawling art-deco flats?
Regardless of the reasons, it’s entirely unfair. We shouldn’t act like it’s the woman’s fault that we aren’t attracted to her gender, and we shouldn’t treat her as anything less because of it. Straight people don’t treat members of the same sex that way; in fact, I doubt they even think to, as members of the same sex are simply viewed as comrades, potential friends - an attitude we should take more often with women. Women fought too damned hard to be recognized as equal members of society for us to undermine them that way, and they’re still fighting. In fact, they’re fighting the same battle that we are; they’ve just made more progress.
Maybe it’s that we’re jealous of that.
Regardless of that, it’s time to stop. We gripe and moan about the nasty way that people treat us, but sometimes we are the most hypocritical a**holes on the face of the planet. We act like it’s our right, granted by God or self or what the hell ever, to be as nasty to anyone as we want; in fact, we think it makes us cute.
Well, I don’t think it’s so cute. And frankly, no matter what’s been done to us as a group or how many creepy fag hags we’ve put up with, we aren’t owed the right to that kind of behavior as many seem to think we are - not on a daily basis, and most certainly not unprovoked.
Maybe if we weren’t so snotty and discriminatory so often, society in general would make more of an effort to accept us. For every story you hear of that nice gay couple down the street who helped rake the neighbor lady’s yard, you hear three stories about the b*tchy gay guy in customer service who treated a lady like trash for no good reason, about the snotty gay stylist who couldn’t be content with just trimming a woman’s hair but instead launched an all-out personal attack on her skin and clothing, about the hot guy in the cafe who called a woman a skank for smiling at him and told her that the kitty litter box was down the hall.
Enough already.
We erode our own right to equality when we refuse to grant equality to others.
So grow up, guys.
This is real life, and girls don’t have cooties anymore.
misogyny, bad behavior, gay male misogyny
November 20th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Been a while since I left a comment, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still reading. I’m glad you decided to address this topic today. I’ve seen this happen to women and have had it happen to me (via the guy I called my best friend at that time).
I don’t know what the reasons behind this kind of behavior are, but it’s extremely hurtful to be on the receiving end. Speaking as a women who has been put down by a gay man, I don’t know why some gay men feel the need to attack women in such a way.
While I’m sure there are some women that provoke such behavior, not all of us are trying to be mean, horrible people. Don’t be insulted if a women thinks your attractive. Be flattered that someone thinks that way of you, whether or not it’s the intended audience. Don’t attack her for what you perceive to be her shortcomings. It could be that you see her from a different viewpoint than she sees herself. Regardless of the type of attack, please just stop.
Umm, that turned into a bit more of a rant than I intended. Can we tell this touched on a sore point?
November 20th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Even lesbians get treated like that by gay men. Lord knows I have.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Well, I’ve always seen a lot of “mommy-issues” among my gay friends (lord knows I have them, and a good number of “daddy-issues” as well). They seem unable to form a stable relationship with women on any level, so maybe that’s why they lash out. To this day I’m still convinced that a couple of really neurotic guys I met in college are not really gay, they just hate women so much they think they’re attracted to men. I wonder if my parents hugged me as a child if I would be closer to a Kinsey 3 or 2?
November 20th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I can count myself fortunate that I’ve never come across this to my knowledge — then again, I know extremely few gay people IRL.
It’s truly disgusting behavior, and I agree that all it does is cast further negative color on gay men. One thing I do have to wonder about, though, is on the source of it. I can see how it grows to that behavior — at least straight misogynyst men still want women around to ogle and bed, gay men don’t ‘need’ them around at all — but I’m curious as to starting points. Mommy issues, ‘formerly’ bisexual men who were burned one too many time by ladies they asked out, falling in with bad crowds?
I’m fascinated by the sociology and repulsed by the attitudes.
November 20th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Well, so far for good education and manners.
November 20th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Well put, and certainly worth being said. I’m gay, and it’s an embarrassment to me sometimes the way gay guys treat women. Personally, I came out kinda late and had was married with children for several years, and I still love my ex. Just not in that way. Where would we gay guys be without our women-folk? And, indeed, treating anyone like crap makes one no better than the ones we bitch about who disrespect us.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:20 am
In its own way, it’s like misandrous lesbianism, which is more in popular awareness (thank the publicity of feminism nuts), but uncertain whether it’s more or less common than what you are talking about.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:43 am
…and in other news, you have J-E-N-O-V-A playing on your mix track.
November 21st, 2007 at 5:20 am
[...] wrote an interesting post today on Gay Male MisogynyHere’s a quick [...]
November 21st, 2007 at 4:25 pm
~looks amused~ She says this like I don’t know. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the AC soundtrack. It used to be my ringtone on my phone, but after giving me a few heart attacks from loud late-night phone calls startling me out of sleep…I had to switch it to Black Water.
I don’t know if misandrous lesbianism is more common, but I think it’s more commonly recognized by the simple stereotype of “man-hating lesbian” that’s often assumed. The majority of my friends are lesbians, and while they aren’t man-haters (would make it hard for us to be friends otherwise), many of them are wary of straight men with good reason…usually because straight men don’t really take the “not interested in men” thing seriously and are most likely to try to tell a woman that all she needs is a good man to turn her straight. That wariness can blossom into hatred if it’s aggravated enough. Conversely, women are less likely to tell a gay man that all he needs is a good woman to turn him straight (though straight men will tell us that, hell my own father said that about me), so right there we have less justification for our behavior than lesbians who may have been burned by men in the past.
I can’t really speak of my friends as a decent representative of a non-misandrous lesbian population, though, because it’s a biased test group; people of like minds tend to gravitate together, and such.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:32 pm
:fidget:
Yeah, I figured you’d catch that. I meant to add a heart-symbol at the end to seem less… informative(?) but I keep forgetting that “less-than-three” doesn’t work in this comment block.
By the way, do you have a list of what songs/artists are here? There’s a lot of stuff (especially the C-pop/K-pop stuff, much of which I have not paid attention to since high school)
November 21st, 2007 at 4:35 pm
~chuckles~ I caught what you meant, and just wanted to tease a little. It’s a damned awesome song, ne?
I can put together a list, if you’d like. I was considering it anyway, especially since the stream only displays the publishing point name and not the track info.
Oh, and…I…think you can do something like <3, as long as you have text after it. It only screws up if you do a face like >.< at the end of a sentence right before moving on to a line break. I think. Maybe. I’ll find out when I hit submit.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Sorry, Adri, I’m with your former friend Jeff. Despite your careful editing, the facts of this story can’t be disguised: Jeff is a good-looking young man, better looking than you, Adri, and he’s used to being hit on by people he’s not attracted to; people like you, Adri–people, in fact, that he’s repulsed by–and he’s found a way, with that quick wit of his, to deal with it. The too-confident female who, quite inappropriately and presumptuously, proffered her hand for Jeff to shake, was hitting on him. He recognized that, and responded just as any of us might have if we’d had the mother wit to do so. Usually, when strange women, or born-again Christians offer me their hand in fellowship, all I can think to say is, “Go away.” If this be misogyny, make the most of it.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Um…Anatole, you may want to think before you make assumptions. I’ve actually rejected Jeff more than once. During the time when I knew him, he was attracted to me; I didn’t return his interest - mainly because I 1. had a boyfriend at the time and 2. didn’t find him physically attractive, but also because he was an asshole and I found him rather repellent, causing me to disassociate myself from him after a brief friendship. He, like you, seemed to have a bit of a problem getting over himself.
I’m not even going to get started on the whole thing with Jeff being better-looking than I, because 1. I possess an ounce of humility, and 2. it’s a pretty ridiculous claim for you to make when you have zero idea what he or I look like, or why that woman chose to flirt with him rather than me.
Oh, and by the way…you just inadvertently flattered my wit, instead of Jeff’s. The kitty litter box line? Mine. What Jeff said was far more vulgar, crude, and clumsy, and not suited for a public blog, so I came up with a substitute that was less clumsy and less disgusting.
Now stop trolling and roll on.
Or did the article touch a nerve, sweetie?
February 15th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Anatole…did someone’s social security check not show up on time this month? Good lord man, that was a bit of a rampage.
For the record, Adri is hot. Very hot. Out of my league, hot. You think I would stop to protect my testicles, but I’m not going to. So hot I dread him moving to Chicago, because all the available men in the city will flock to him and ruin my chances at him, and reduce the pool of available men for me to date. Okay, now I think I’m done. *hides behind Lessa, because Adri looks scary now*
Oh, and I don’t see why you needed to point out she was hitting on Jeff…Adri said she was. However, even being ridiculously hot doesn’t excuse being rude to someone making a pass. I can’t judge, I can never tell when I’m being hit on, but I do know I have the courtesy when I do realize it to return the compliment.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
My point, Adri and Kujo, and Jeff’s point, is that being hit on, “flirted with,” by somebody you don’t find attractive, and who hasn’t made the least effort to find out whether you’d welcome the attention, is NOT a compliment. Gentlemen know this. Women only seem to understand it when they are the recipients of unwelcome attention. Otherwise, not being gentlemen, women seem to have no qualms about inflicting themselves on anybody they’ve a fancy for. And, Jeff’s and my point is, they’re bloody rude about it. I’m glad you’re hot, Adri, and witty–but I still think I like Jeff better.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
And I suppose people who aren’t often flirted on by attractive people might maintain that stance, yes. As a 5.5, maybe a 6, myself, having a 10 flirt with me is one of the greatest compliments. Even a 3 or a 4 flirting raises my spirits, as it proves that there are people who would consider me attractive enough to pursue. What greater compliment can there be?
February 15th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Not all women are rude about showing their interest; I’ve had women approach me rather shyly and rather politely, and have actually made friends with them once they found out that no, I’m not really interested, but I took their interest as a compliment. It’s really sad that you stereotype people that way and think it’s okay to retaliate like that regardless of their method of approach, as if you’re somehow entitled - and I rather feel sorry for you if this is how you approach interactions, and can’t help wondering just how bad your experiences have been to make you so bitter and quick to judge people’s intent and people in general. Look at how quickly you chose to judge me, making assumptions based on a briefly-outlined recollection.
The point of flirting or hitting on someone is to find out if someone might be interested, as long as people aren’t obnoxious about it and practice a bit of subtlety (which, in my opinion, Americans aren’t particularly adept at, but when in Rome…). In my experience, the worst perpetrators of this aren’t straight women, but straight men - although I’ve had plenty of experience with gay men who won’t take no for an answer, either. Obnoxious flirtatious behavior isn’t limited to gender or sexuality, and it’s rather rude to judge an entire quadrant of humanity by the bad behavior of one or two. It’s the exact same kind of behavior that causes homophobes to spread horrible stereotypes about us, just from witnessing one or two bad apples.
What amuses me the most is that after talking to you just this briefly, I prefer Jeff’s company to yours, as well. And considering how well I know Jeff…that’s saying a lot. But at least we’re in agreement on one thing.
Oh, and Hikaru? ~flat look~ Over the top a bit, don’tcha think, darlin’? I mean, I’m not ugly, but jeeeeeeeez. Oi, but I need to go get dressed before people get here, so no more playing around online with you. You, me, dinner, movie?
March 24th, 2008 at 5:45 am
[...] Maybe then we wouldn’t have to deal with attitudes like this guy. [...]