“I don’t want to be seen as a screaming queen”
When people ask why I chose to study ‘gay masculinities’ for my PhD, I think back to the time my car broke down on the A23, and the rescue service sent along this good-looking, thirty-something man to help: a knight in fluorescent armour. The car was fixed promptly, but as I headed home, I couldn’t stop thinking about my interaction with this guy.
Why had my voice dropped by an octave as I described to him what had happened? Why had I talked about the names of car parts that I knew nothing about? And what was with that feeling of blind panic when he’d asked me to “try and turn her over”?
As I drove home, I realised that I had unconsciously activated a well-rehearsed mode for managing a particular social interaction: a conversation with an unknown (straight) man.
In fact, I don’t know if the man from the AA was straight, but that doesn’t really matter. What interested me was my reaction to my stereotyped assumption about him. I guessed he was straight and, without thinking, I started performing a certain masculinity that I thought he might find acceptable, right there on the hard shoulder.
This was not necessarily about hiding my sexual orientation; rather it was motivated by a wish to avoid that familiar feeling of ‘difference’, or perhaps even inferiority. In Western society, heterosexuality is normative and things that are normative are more socially-desirable. Therefore, as gay men we must negotiate who we are in a cultural context where heterosexual versions of masculinity are more valued. So how do we respond? What strategies do gay men use to construct an identity that they experience as valued in a heteronormative society? How do gay men’s beliefs about masculinity influence their experiences of being men, and being gay?
It was these questions that I addressed in my PhD research, supervised by Dr Richard de Visser at University of Sussex. The research findings suggest that masculinity in its traditional and normative sense is central to many gay men’s identities. Such men value their hairy faces and bodies, their sporting prowess, their muscularity, and their ‘top’ self-labels (or at least, others’ assumptions that they are tops). Masculine behaviours can have compensatory value – for example, men who want to avoid the stereotype of femininity associated with being a ‘bottom’ may find themselves spending a lot of time in the gym, to make up for their perceived ‘transgression’.
A core part of a commitment to normative standards of masculinity is anti-effeminacy: being gay might be acceptable, so long as ‘gayness’ is not too visible. Some might argue that masculine men are simply more sexually appealing, but we need to ask ourselves why. Perhaps gay men have internalised the messages they have been exposed to throughout their lives that set out what ‘being a man’ should look (and sound) like.
Masculinity should look heterosexual; heterosexual masculinity is opposed to effeminacy; anti-effeminacy is therefore normative, and even desirable for some gay men.
However, some of the men I spoke to as part of my research contested the importance of masculinity, claiming that it is too unpredictable and inconsistent to be meaningful. Whether a man is perceived as masculine depends on what he is doing, where he is doing it and who is watching – perhaps it’s just easier to be unconcerned. Other participants in my studies suggested that because straight men seem to be increasingly feminised (hence the rise of the ‘metrosexual’ man, and of the ‘bromances’ often depicted in Hollywood movies), gay men may face less pressure to conform to heteronormative standards of masculinity. Perhaps the gap between heterosexual and gay masculinities is narrowing.
Even men who have a strong sense of masculine identity and traditional beliefs about masculinity may value opportunities to display non-masculine or effeminate behaviours. Some of the men I interviewed described feeling “relieved” when they were out on the gay scene, because certain gay spaces provide the opportunity to “let go” from the masculine gender performance they feel obliged to enact in everyday interactions. Masculinity may be valued in many social contexts, but being camp can have value too – perhaps because it’s experienced as frivolous, irreverent and fun, or perhaps because it’s a way for some gay men to ‘own’ their gayness.
The findings from my PhD research offer some insights to how gay men’s behavioural practices may be guided by their responses to messages about what it takes to be ‘a real man’ in contemporary UK society. As gay men, we may feel that we cannot truly achieve a valued masculine identity, and this could have implications for our well-being. Perhaps instead we need to critique normative expectations of what it means to be ‘a man’ and what it means to be ‘gay’, and simply embrace who we are.
This project was supervised by Dr Richard de Visser at University of Sussex.
James Ravenhill, University of Sussex,
www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/134643
Twitter #JamesElZorro