What's the gay community really like?

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It seems like the standard idea of a gay male's life is frequent partying at gay bars, lots of one-night stands, possibly some drug consumption, possibly some time spent in bath-houses etc. If a couple does develop a long term relationship then I've heard stories of how they continue to sleep around. Now, I'm sure this is true of some segment of gay males, and not true of others. But is this actually how most gay men behave?

It's something I've wondered a bit about for a while now, but last night I (made the mistake of) watching the first episode of Queer as Folk. I was somewhat disturbed by its portrayal of gay life. Surely it's exaggerated for the sake of TV, right?

I have no interest in partying or bars, and strongly opposed to drug use, believe in monogamy. want to wait to have sex with someone special, and want to marry a man someday. I'm sure there are others like me out there, but am really as much of an oddity as I seem?

Last edited by AstroGeek on 11 Mar 2012, 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Gays are like people. Much variation. The gay scene is not unlike as on Queer as Folk, from what I've seen. Perhaps you could avoid large, fun cities.

You're not alone. I've made many posts on this forum about my disillusionment with the gay community. If asked to describe the other gay people I've known in one word, I would say: "vain." If you don't look like a model and have plenty of money, they won't give you the time of day; nine times out of ten, they would rather go to a club than spend a quiet evening at home having dinner and watching a movie or something; their idea of spending time together invariably involves sex; and in my experience, there's about a 105% chance they'll cheat on you, if you can manage to get them to date you in the first place.

It's too bad I'm not straight, because I could make some young woman very happy. I'm everything they say they want when they complain about what all guys are like.

I don't think there is any such thing as a gay community, just like there is no hetero community. There is a subset of heterosexual people who hang out in clubs every evening and try to get laid. The same is true for gays, but in their case, this small club & party scene is misrepresented as "the gay community" or even "the gay lifestyle". I'm pretty sure that there are many monogamous and socially conventional gay people who are looking for long-time commitment.

I fear it's a reasonable portrayal of Canal Street.

In response to that last question, no, not at all. I feel precisely the same, & I suspect that many others here do too, but then, being both gay AND Aspie does make us somewhat of an oddity, no?

As for that standard idea of a gay male's life, that is somewhat of a stereotype - & a very harmful one at that, often raised by opponents of LGBT equality - but as with most stereotypes, it does contain a kernel of truth. "Queer as Folk", the American version at least, is definitely exaggerated for TV sake, but I suspect that its creators were aiming at shock.

I've always had a difficult time in gay bars, & lamented that so much of what passes for "community" is centered around the bar scene. One problem for me is that bars are almost always LOUD, with dance music & so much background noise as to make conversation practically impossible. Another problem is that I've never been good at picking up on non-verbal cues & don't easily make eye contact with strangers, so the flirtation rituals are completely beyond my comprehension. Another thing is that I'm really not much of a drinker - don't like kissing a dude who smells like a brewery, don't like feeling like garbage in the morning.

And then there is the issue of sex. In the "scene" it always appears that the sex comes first, & a relationship (maybe) later. Even worse, that sex seems to have this predatory aspect that I've always found off-putting. I have no moral hang-ups about one-night stands or having sex with a person that one just met, but - perhaps due to my AS - it's something that I just can't pull off.



I've felt this too. Everything just seems so superficial. On top of that, it seems like vain people really love to gossip, another thing that I have a hard time dealing with..

Do any AS people do the gay voice?

To be honest, despite living in the city people mostly associated with the gay community, I honestly don't really know what constitutes the gay community. I mean, could this board be considered a fragment of the gay community, for example? What about the bear sub-culture, which is almost the antithesis to what many esteem as the gay community? Still, I feel that the gay community feels very fragmented, although there is the prevailing stereotypical gay community, which I think most of us have in mind.

Unfortunately, since the gay community is so very fragmented, I feel that this stereotypical gay community ends up headlining most people perceptions about the greater gay community, only because the stereotypical community is what most people (both gay and straight) associate with the greater gay community. The media plays a large part of this, in cases of how they portray Gay Pride Parades. However, what I feel is also important is that a lot of LGBT individuals who live in surburbia or the country often don't see any LGBT community except through the media (e.g. Queer as Folk, journalism coverage on pride parades/other similar events, etc.), which I feel gives them an expectation of what to look for when they actually do enter an established LGBT community, such as a city's gay district. Overtime, I feel this helps reinforces stereotypes, and a lot of people who reject those stereotypes often find themselves into one of the more peripheral communities. For, me personally, I resonate mostly with the anime community when it comes to my sexuality, which itself can be considered one of the more peripheral communities (or can be considered not, seeing as it's not really a gay community as much as a largely gay-accepting community, but still, it's worth mentioning).

Now, this is just my perceptions of things, and so I could be grossly wrong, but I still felt like it would be worth sharing my thoughts of what constitutes the gay community, and how I feel it's a really fragmented community whose image is largely defined by the stereotypical community we mostly see through the media.

I can certainly believe this. In my sociology class we often talk about how people, especially youth, model their behaviour off of the 2 dimensional, stereotyped image that they see in the media. The media will then see even more of this behaviour and broadcast it all the more, so you end up with a vicious cycle.

There's no such thing as "the gay community". There are dozens, hundreds of groups and clubs and trends and who knows what. Sure, there are a load of judgemental queens. I've met them. I've also met gay Christians (not sure how they square that one, but they do...). There are the body builder types. There are chavvy skinheads. There are the gay geeks. There are athletes and builders and actors and scientists and writers and bus drivers. I've met gay guys in wheelchairs. I've met activists and conservatives and drag queens and transexuals. I've met drug users and teetotallers. I've met enormously camp lads in crop tops (including one "lad" in his forties...) who dance to Kylie. I've met butch blokes who'd rather die than dance to anything.

The point is... there isn't a single standard. The gay "community" is as diverse in habits, looks, tastes, activities and opinions as the population at large. Being gay is the only linking factor. So yes, there are some judgemental bitchy gay men out there. They are not representative of us all, any more than Sarah Palin is a representative of American women or Osama bin Laden a representative of Islam. They just happen to be an easily recognised subset that can be easily criticised and caricatured.

Some are straight acting, some are perverts, some are individuals who can't be categorized, some are feme. It's just a little bit of everything like everything else in life.

whatever the orientation, the people who are having the lions' share of all the sex, have no understanding of the celibates/incels, and the latter group have no clue about the former group, either. it is like "east is east, west is west- and never the twain shall meet." the socially successful ones [those who get all the action] see the unsuccessful ones [if they can be bothered to notice them at all], as akin to grotesque creatures from another planet. i can't help but think that maybe the former group sees the later group as contagious, to be avoided at all costs.

I've felt the same disillusionment.

I am not attracted to butch women and am not going to become one so I can find a femme who will date, I'm not saying no femme-femme couples exist but the loyalty that lesbians seem to have to that dynamic is beyond me and frankly it pisses me off sometimes.

I am still pretty closeted but I'm planning a move to (probably) NYC in a few years, I'm not closeted due to overwhelming shame, I think my family shouldn't know for a few reasons I won't get into but also I am just not interested in sampling the very limited and stereotypical lesbian community in my small town.

Hello. Well, I understand where your perception would come from . . . the fluffy, superficial gayness everyone is familiar with is the same one advertised in the margins of gay publications, media, porn etc. as there are only a few domains where uniquely gay money is to be made, and the media has found itself a safe set of gay tropes it uses that are rarely deviated from . . .

But over time I've met enough awesome-sauce gay people that vary so immensely from eachother that the only thing I can say they have in common is a sexual attraction to the same gender. Generalizations are possible, but they will not be True, because accepting them erases everything that deviates from them. And it's true for everyone but you you say. Sheesh.

What I don't like is that you're disapproving of all of these things without any real justification, and also as one big monolith as if 1. the gay population is split between those who adhere to them and those who don't, and 2. all of these things are consuming (define the identities of those who are involved with them) and are obviously interconnected. Well, it's really divisive and judgmental. Also it's not really true, I think. Here's a relevant OKcupid survey:

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/4/

Personally, I work hard to separate the judgmental attitudes of people such as yourself in deciding how to present myself, treat others, what I do etc. There's alot of secondhand Christian, societal, gender binary, intolerant attitudes that have gone into it. At the same time, I'm not actually into most of the gay stuff you describe. But I'm not immensely judgmental of those who do, because i don't think it defines them as a person, and I think this is the healthier attitude.

I don't really know much about the gay community, but this got me thinking about it.

Maybe the gay community revolves around sex because it is the gay community. In other words, it is a community that exists simply because of the sexual preferences of its members. I mean, if you went to a gathering of the "people who like to wear green shirts" community, don't you think that most people would be wearing green shirts and talking about green shirts?

If you want to meet gay people in a context other than people looking for sex, I guess that you need to meet them by accident in a community other than the gay community itself.

Yes, this is exactly it. We are defined as a group by a sexual difference, which was initially identified as a way to isolate a particular brand of 'repeat offender' criminal, and has accumulated a whole slew of negative associations since then. We're also subjected to sexism, under the premise that we're not adequately masculine/feminine, and bear the brunt of morality drives as they occur.

But prettymuch, gay people are a group who share a sexual attraction and deal with the same societal s**t largely due to the semantic tragedy of defining people by their sexual orientation, then using this as a basis to declare them sexual . . . but not other people, who are also sexual but not defined by their sexuality. And any lengths gay people have to go to to define themselves as not sexual generally end up being ineffectual at convincing the mainstream population (who is already defining them on a sexual basis), fairly internalized-homophobic/repressive, and tend to stem from being sexist, homophobic, or morally judgmental on some level. Yes, gay people are not immune to prejudice, against themselves or otherwise.

But yeah, prettymuch. Sex happens to be, linguistically, the common trait between all gay people. Also human beings as a species. But combine this with separation from the mainstream population, and you have vast expanses of homosexual sex. Language sucks.