Gay Malaise: Male-on-Male Gaze
As a young gay man, the prospect of approaching other men is often more than just nerve racking - it's dangerous. Deviance investigates...
You’re a gay man. Life’s not been great, necessarily, but you can get married now (though not in Northern Ireland), and society seems to believe that everything is now utterly peachy – equality has been won. In reality, the rainbow of your gay life is now so vast and overwhelming it just looks grey.
Even the simplest of situations are fraught with tension. Take walking down the street. If you look at a guy, perhaps your eyes will meet: maybe you’ll fall in love, move to a semi-detached in Fulham, have a brood of beautiful and academically successful children. Or, if you’re unlucky, perhaps he’ll punch you because he’s uncomfortable that you’re gay and appeared to be checking him out. Depressingly, that man may very well head further down the street and whistle at a passing woman. He will not notice the irony.
In an art gallery this summer, I gazed mournfully at a man, only to write about him in my journal about him rather than asking him out. My friends later asked why on earth I hadn’t asked for his number. Truth is, I could handle the indignity and the humiliation of being rejected (or being told he was flattered but heterosexual) – but honestly, I feared getting a big old slap. A broken nose wouldn’t look good on me.
"Perhaps your eyes will meet and maybe you’ll fall in love. Or, if you’re unlucky, perhaps he’ll punch you"
It may sound hyperbolic, but rates of homophobic hate crime aren’t dwindling (in fact, they rapidly bloomed from 2013 to 2014 according to The Guardian and Stonewall’s report). It is not often safe to be perceived as gay, particularly the further one edges away from metropolitan hubs, but even the cities aren’t safe. Recently, there have been high-profile hate crimes on the streets of major cities across the UK; take, for example the murder of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square, just minutes from SoHo and the most supposedly queer-friendly spaces in the country.
Margaret Atwood once said that men fear that women will laugh at them, whereas women fear men will kill them. A tired adage that floats around the internet is that the true definition of homophobia is that men fear they will be treated by other men as they treat women. As a skinny gay guy wandering the streets, both phrases ring true. As one passes packs of men on a night out, one observes the socially accepted norm – that the patriarchy grants men free rein to leer, ogle and catcall women as much as they wish. But for a man to look at a man is charged in a different way – the voyeur risks becoming a victim. I’ve been sneered at, yelled at, charged at, and those are only the examples where the bark has been worse than the bite.
What’s a boy to do? Acting like the worst of the lads is not an option. At best, it’s aggressive, and at worst it plunges you into danger. Straight men are at liberty to act chivalrously or with gracious vulnerability when approaching women, whereas gay men are unable to emulate that behaviour. A nervous gay man hitting on a straight guy is still too fraught with risk, and perhaps only indicates further one’s precarious position. With few options at hand for gay men seeking lovers, we risk melting into the background, becoming a silent minority in a heteronormative world.
Recommended:
A Guide to Coming Out at University
How Not to Behave at a Queer Clubnight
I do not in any way think that this gay issue rivals the violence and micro aggressions that women face every day. I am concerned, though, that as gay rights superficially advance and provision is made for gay men to have active sex lives and avenues of expression, some basic equalities are denied. Equalities like the freedom to walk round without staring at the ground whenever another man passes by.
Which brings us back to the topic at hand – gaze. Particularly as homophobic crime is disproportionately targeted against the young, it is imperative that young people coming to terms with their sexuality are shown that it is permissible to look around them. Not just to see if there’s someone giving them a saucy wink, but in order to gauge whether danger’s headed their way.