spoke- , there is a pretty big contingent of gay men who don’t have anal sex at all. There are also some like Flinx aka Snark, who are completely abstinant because the idea of sex is an abomination for him. So to answer your question, not all gay guys are into anal sex.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Sqrl understood my point better than Poly did, but maybe I could explain a little further.
Suppose you’re in a room with lots of people, say at a bar, restaurant, party, whatever, or even just stopped at a traffic light. A guy’s eyes will wander, and just might happen to stop and stare at something or someone. It might be an interesting style of shoe, or a cool power drill, or an attractive person who he starts undressing with his eyes. In that last case, a friend of that person may whisper to her/him, “Hey, that guy is looking at you.” Nothing overt, nothing intentional, but just staring with “that look”.
Like I said, depending on a lot of factors, some people will get offended by being “looked at”.
Now, as I understand the definition of homosexuality, it means that there is genuinely little or no sexual attraction for people of the opposite sex, and instead, one is genuinely attracted to people of the same sex. If that is accurate, then gay people would find themselves “looking” at people of the same sex even without knowing if that person is gay or not — just like I might catch myself ogling at a woman without knowing if she is straight or not.
So a big part of my question is: Do gays do this sort of absent-minded staring or not?
Another way of phrasing it: Imagine the way a stereotypical man might watch a tv show like Baywatch — would gay women ever watch such a show that way? Or would a gay man watch the male characters in that manner?
(Sorry to check out – gotta go home soon – see y’all on Monday.)
“Your gay, fine, you can stop raising awareness now.”
"As long as we are not accorded all of the rights, privileges and protections of human beings and citizens, then we can’t stop “raising awareness.”
Otto, right, I agree that something needs to be done, but I’m not the Supreme Court and most importantly, I already agree with you. I argue that they make it an issue with ME. I don’t care if your gay, but I do care that you make it a problem. I also hate it when people can’t get past their Christianity for a minute…which, is a twist of irony, go hand in hand.
OK, I’ve got one.
As a kid, adolescent, teenager, and young adult (and occasionally even nowadays), I’ve often had it brought to my attention that, as the attention-bringer variously puts it, I’m more like girls/women than other guys / than I oughta be, or that I am apparently / obviously / probably gay.
Given that assumption on some other people’s part, I was subjected to being treated the way they treat folks they assume to be gay, so I have been “gay-bashed”, including violently.
Also, among those who have thought these things about me have been (two categories here, some overlap): male people doing very knowing “insinuendos” and flirting in we-both-know kinds of ways that give me a real case of the squirmies; and gay or lesbian persons either outing me or expressing a certain degree of contempt that I’m not out.
I would like to acknowledge to gay activist types and openly gay people that I share a vehement hatred for homophobia and have common cause with y’all, and would like to open dialog and compare notes and so forth. Can’t do that if I can’t “come out” as a hetero sissy or whatever you want to call it. How the hell do I do that without it coming across insultingly and/or making me look silly as a defensive person saying “Just in case you thought I might be gay too, I just want you to know I’m not or anything”.
Also, how best to generate a discussion of “sissyphobia” as a separate but related thing which is also aimed at gay guys a lot by people who know they are gay even if they aren’t at all “sissified”, if you know what I mean?
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I see your point, Keeves. Typically, gay men don’t do too much staring in a situation that isn’t safe (i.e. amongst the straight population in general) but of course there are a few exceptions. They are more akin to the construction workers stereotype where they would whistle at all the women who walked past and make various wolf calls. I honestly can not tell you that I have never seen or heard of that with a gay man “ogling” that way towards a straight man. If anything like that happens, I can assure you that 95% of the time it is in a safe situation such as in a gay bar, a gay parade, etc.
Back on the issue at hand. If a gay guy is staring at you it is more likely that you are hideously clashing or something like that rather than being ogled. As I stated earlier, cruising/gay flirting is significantly more subtle than that. If you are in the DC area, I would be happy to take you out somewhere and show you the difference. (I am not flirting right now.)
I can not speak for gay women watching Bay Watch or shows like that but gay men don’t really have that type of television outlet with all the scantily clad beefcake type men. (I wouldn’t call the twinkies on Baywatch beefcake.) Actually, personally, I wouldn’t watch that type of show anyway for ogling pleasure, but that is because that shape of person I don’t find appealing.
AHunter3: your situation is not that unusual within the gay world. As stated earlier, there really isn’t a single trait that typifies all gay people. Overall, one can not spot a gay person from a heterosexual person. If you aren’t interested in someone you should simply tell them. Most gay people will accept the fact that you are straight and leave you alone. If they don’t just tell them to shove off, or say, “No, really, I am just a sissified hetero.” 
I do have to say that any decent person would accept the first dignified response of you being straight and not interested.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Cub –
If a guy is overt, it is easy (I’m not offended and I’m capable of being at least adequately diplomatic ); the “squirmies” I speak of are when it is all in the form of body language and double-entendre if you know what I mean.
But actually the focus of my question has less to do with how to handle being mistaken for one of the few and the proud (or even the insufficiently proud) and more to do with how to openly discuss things like homophobia and sissyphobia with gay guys, because I’d like to be more politically involved, and so it is in that context that I need to be able to explain my situation elegantly.
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M. Hunter, you explain it elegantly on the board. If I may hazard a guess, is it that you feel insecure explaining it in a social situation, face to face? If so, relax; your gay eyer is probably feeling as insecure as you, and he won’t bite (at least unless requested to!)
Poly –
See what I said to Cub above. I’m not worried about being, uh, “preyed upon”. I want to get involved and have found it mutually awkward to enter into such discussions.
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What do you gentlemen think of outing a public figure who has previously concealed their homosexuality? And if you think that your view differs from the general gay public, how so?
IIRC, there were some pretty “militant” gays who felt it was their duty to make such announcements, the rationaliation being that if more people knew how many public figures were gay, tolerance might increase. To me, however, outing someone against their wishes is a violation of their privacy, and is disrespectful of their right to live as they chose (inside the closet or not).
Also, do you think that past “outings” have really changed the straight public’s perception of gays?
Hey, what happened to Gay Guy?
Poly:
How about, and this is just off the top of my head, “experimenting with gay sex”?
Or “had gay sex” or “had sex with a (fill in the gender)”?
Keeves:
I can understand why anyone would feel offended and degraded when subject to “ogling” (which I interpret as a thoroughly unwelcome ‘sexual stare’). This is not an excuse for the kind of violence that str8 men sometimes commit with this supposed “ogling” as their excuse. It’s called the “homosexual panic” defense, predicated on the notion that the masculinity of a man is so compromised by another man’s finding him attractive that the only appropriate response is to attack.
Spoke-:
Then for heaven’s sake, don’t do it.
There is as wide a variety of sexual interests among gays as str8s. If anyone’s grossed out at the possibility of coming in contact with fecal matter during sex, they simply refrain from doing things which would bring them into such contact. The receptive partner is certainly capable of eliminating feces either through defecation or enema, if it’s going to be that much of a hassle. I’m not an anatomist, but it has not been my experience with my own body that fecal matter is poised right inside my anus 24 hours a day.
Keeves:
Sure there are, although most of the staring done by gay men in bars is anything but “absent-minded” (it’s called “cruising”). Funny thing about cruising is that those who aren’t doing it are usually oblivious to it.
Occam:
See, I think you found yourself confronted with an extreme case. I don’t know any gay people who find it necessary to open the conversation with “I’m gay, nice to meet you.” Most of the out gay people I know, when asked a question about their personal lives, will simply answer it with the appropriate pronouns and be done with it. Although I have to admit I had fun at a job once devilling a woman who asked if I was married (at the time I was, to a man) and then answering “I don’t have a wife” when she asked me about “her.” And right, you’re not on the Supreme Court, but you still have an impact on those around you. You can vote in favor of our issues and you can help educate others (even by something as simple as “I have many gay friends and I don’t think that’s funny” in response to an anti-gay joke). The people who are most likley to support us are the paople who know us personally. By putting a face on “gay” by coming out, we make it more difficult for str8s to dismiss us or to believe the lies told about us.
(blush) Ok, well, there’s only one way to answer this and that’s with perfect franchise. Before I have anal sex with my boyfriend I insist that he go to the bathroom and then wash. And anyway I wear a condom (duh) so I don’t have anything in particular to fear from “fecal matter”.
Oh Mighty Gay Guy:
“My hovercraft is full of eels.”
I’m in favor of outing if the person has worked against the interests of gay people. If I could ever prove Jesse Helms had ever had mansex…
People with political or social power who use their power to harm others deserve to be called on it, and if they happen to be a member of a group their actions damage, they deserve to be challenged all the more.
I don’t think it ever caught on enough as a strategy to change public perception of gay people. I think it did change the perception of whether asking if a public figure is gay is acceptable. It wasn’t that long ago that stating a person was gay was libelous; now I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a jury that would go along with that idea. Str8 people have been asked about their romantic/sexual partners forever and generally no one considers it to be an invasion of privacy.
Absolutely. You’d be lost without us. Or as Fran Lebowitz once said, “If you removed homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with Let’s Make a Deal.”
Otto said:
ROFL! What an image! Even better if he was with someone like Pat Robertson. 
In the event that the outed person was such a hypocrite, I could certainly understand announcing it to the world - that would be no different from Republicans who preach family values openly but privately carry on affairs. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of actors, businessmen, etc., people who have not really been in a position to harm gay interests (and who may not have adopted any public stance on gay rights at all).
Another question for you gentlemen (please forgive my naivete). Do most guys come to realize that they’re gay during their teen years, when everyone’s hormones usually start to gush? Or does the timing vary on an individual basis, depending on familial/cultural influences?
I’m curious because I’ve heard a number of different things at this point. I used to work with a man who said that he knew he was gay while he was “still in the wading pool.” On the other hand, Elton John apparently struggled for some time in his 20’s trying to come to grips with his feelings. Is it more common to figure things out in high school, or is there a much broader spectrum of ages?
I don’t think discussion of a gay person’s sexuality should be treated any differently than that of a str8 person’s. If the magazine profile or whatever would mention a str8 actor’s spouse and/or children, the same standard should be applied to mentioning the gay person’s spouse and/or children. A lot of the opposition to outing (which has been around forever but only acquired that kicky new name around 1991) is rooted in the idea that homosexuality is deserving of scorn, that it’s so damaging for a person to be labelled as homosexual that saying someone is (whether they are or not) is simply not done. It wasn’t that long ago that calling someone homosexual in print was grounds for a defamation suit. hell, Liberace won a couple of judgments after being called gay in print. Milton Berle filed suit last year over an ad in a gay paper that pictured him in Carmen Miranda drag, claiming it defamed him by falsely asserting he is gay (the suit was dismissed last month so perhaps that line of legal reasoning is over). The first wave of the most recent outings was done by the now-defunct Outweek magazine, which published lists of names under the headline “Peek-a-boo.” They were not specifically using outing as a weapon and I don’t beliee they ever advocated using it as a weapon, reasoning that a person’s being gay was not harmful thus revealing it did no harm (politically naive, I think, of them, or at least disingenuous). It was the Republicans who I remember first using outing as a political weapon, when they started spreading rumors about then Speaker of the House Tom Foley. barney Frank stepped up and said knock it off or he’d out every gay Republican congressman. The Repubs backed down, and that exchange is what kicked off the debate on the advisability of outing as a political strategy. Then Outweek outed Malcom Forbes after his death, and during the gays in the military debate the Advocate (which had formerly clucked its editorial tongue at outing) outed then-Assistant Secretary of Defense (now NBC correspondent) Pete Williams to refute the idea that gays in the military are security risks.
What I find interesting is that the language within the gay communities is changing a little bit. Since M. Signorile wrote a book called “Outing Yourself” more publications speak of people “outing themselves” rather than “coming out,” which is the traditional phrasing. personally I don’t like the construction, since “outing” fairly or unfairly carries the aggressive, imposed from outside connotation.
It’s different for everyone. I remember inklings of being “different” as young as 6 (I’d have GI Joe and Robin marry each other) but I had no language for it. I really started recognizing same-sex attraction in myself at about age 12 and first put the label “gay” on myself at age 14. The average age at which people come out to others is dropping, which is why the issue of gay clubs in schools has heated up in the last couple of years.
I’m still trying to keep my lunch down after thinking about Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson together… 
Okay Gay Guy… question here!
It’s been mentioned in this threat that ‘cruising’ is a far more subtle form of flirting, etc.
My girlfriend and I, and a few of our more open-minded/secure friends regularly go to the gay bars and clubs in town. Reason? The best music, dancing, well dressed people, and lack of ‘frat boy’ attitude in town!
In the considerable amount of time I’ve spent in these places, I have not noticed this ‘subtle’ flirting. Can you clue me, and other’s here, into some examples of this?
I hate to think that in conversations I’ve struck up with some really great people while out in these clubs that maybe I was misunderstanding something going on.
Help!
The Sleeper has AWAKEN!