My fathers attitude towards Gays, I'm confused.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just looking for some feedback, I talk with my father a lot about politics and things, and he has a pet theory about gays and all.

Lemme just say he does support full equal rights / marriage and all that, so I don’t think he’s very prejudiced, but I don’t know how well educated he is

First of all, he believes gay men are more feminine than hetero men (I have no cite against this), and that gay men are promiscuos more than hetero men (it sounds right).

His theory is basically that gay men have some kind of thing psychologically where they act effeminent, and are therefore attracted to men, and the whole appearance thing ties into this, he talked about how women are constantly fussing over how they look, and how about men usually don’t care how they look. Since gay men care about how they look, its a sign of femininity.

I know, there are tons of stereotypes here, but when I tried to tell him that “all people aren’t like that” he told me I was being naive, and that while not ALL people are like this, most people are.

Can someone please help me out here? I don’t know where to go on from this, and I’m feeling a bit lost. How can I convince him that gay men aren’t all hissy drama queens or fuss constantly over their appearance? Or is this true?

[On preview : not sure if this should be in IMHO or not, guess I’ll post it here]

2

I think your father is merely falling victim to not knowing a wide enough variety of people, no more and no less. My brother used to think I was, in his words, “the least feminine woman ever” because I wasn’t a lying, manipulative hose-beast. Pretty much all the women he knew were as described above, because he didn’t know that many women from a range of backgrounds and personalities. He had a skewed sample, and that led him to make some incorrect generalizations.

I get the distinct feeling that your dad simply doesn’t know that many gay men, or a wide variety of straight men. I’d also bet that he knows more gay men than he thinks he does, and that he never considers they might be gay because they’re too butch. (Can you use the term butch for guys, or is that strictly for lesbians?) If he had more experience with different types of people, he’d realize pretty quickly that trying to make generalizations about a huge, diverse group like men, women, gay people, straight people, etc., is a fool’s errand.

3

You probably can’t. It’s not really possible to convince someone that he is being a numbskull unless he’s willing to listen. I can’t find anything in your post that your father is correct about, but good luck clueing him in to that.

4

I’ve heard “gay men often sleep around more” from a couple of actual gay guys. The explanation is that there’s twice the testosterone floating around than with heteros, so things tend to happen more and/or faster. This isn’t universal, obviously, but it does make sense.

What I don’t understand is the whole “effiminate” thing. I’ve never known a woman who acted like a gay man who is said to be acting feminine. ??? It seems to be a different sort of behavior entirely to me.

5

Hey, if he’s on board with the whole equal rights thing, I don’t really care that much if he thinks I’m queeny.

6

Glad to hear your father at least doesn’t fall into the “all queers should burn in hell” Republican Party rant. “My 4 ex-wives and I all agree we should protect the sanctity of marriage.”

However, to the OP…I have been to dozens of Gay Pride festivals. The one in West Hollywood has upwards of 300,000 people attending and 98% of them all look and act like everybody else in the world. However, it NEVER fails that the one photo that makes it in the news will be that of two bearded guys in glitter drag kissing on top of a dildo float.

I too think your father is simply going from his limited experience. He would probably be shocked to find out his garage mechanic, the UPS driver and his doctor were Gay - because they don’t talk with a lisp and skip to the loo. Take his theory with a grain of salt. If I had listened to my father, I would think all black people sit around eating watermellon when they are not tap dancing or running away from de’m bones.

As far as Gays being promiscuous, well…two horny hetero guys will spend hours talking about women, what they would like to do with women, what they have done with women and what they would someday like to do with women.
Two horny Gays guys, like the Nike ad says, “just do it.”. I think in other threads, most straight guys admit that if they could have sex once a day for 20 years, they wouldn’t hesitate to sign the dotted line.

7

There are gay men on both ends of the spectrum. There are straight men on both ends of the spectrum. He probably tends to NOTICE gay men who are also effeminate, and probably assumes that effeminate straight men are gay, while not knowing that non-effeminate gay men are gay (he wouldn’t “know” it from a glance).

Promiscuity is an entirely different ballpark. Good luck finding data either way on that one. You’re going to find some men who say they’ve had sex with thousands of different partners and some who’ve only ever had sex with one man. As with before, it’s a spectrum, and the ones with more experience with more partners have been, IME, more vocal about it. ::shrug::

Ooookay. So, IOW, how you act determines who you (want to) fuck? So I guess it follows, then, for him, that boyish/butch men want to fuck women, since butch men want same.

Women are not, FWIW, always/constantly fussing over how they look. It is more the norm than the exception, to be sure, but this is far from being the Way Things Are. Same goes for gay men.

It looks to me, basically, like a self-serving set of constructions that he has no inherent need to challenge, re-think, etc. If you bring him gay men who aren’t effeminate, you will probably not be entirely successful in changing his opinion, and for various reasons it would take some paragraphs to explain.

I’m not sure you can. Fortunately, he is not expressing the viewpoint that anyone he thinks is/might be gay needs to be tarred, feathered and shot at high noon. However, he does not seem to have any pressing reason (to him) to give enough thought to this to possibly be reasoned out of it. It’s similar to fizzy’s father, who simply does not care enough to consider beyond “I just don’t understand why a man would want to sleep with another hairy, sweaty man.” It’s not of enough import to him.

Just don’t tell me he thinks all bisexuals are pansy fence-sitters, unable to make up their minds, or they’re deluding themselves, or something. Because THEN I’ll see Otto’s queeny and raise him QUEENY.

8

Well, you know it’s not REALLY true, so first, stop doubting yourself.

As for your father, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. My father was convinced that he had a more highly developed sense of “gaydar” than any gay I’ve ever known, and that he could spot even the most manly of men if they were gay.

The fact that my sister’s husband, a ruggedly manly man, turned out to be gay, and none of us ever suspected a thing, never stopped my father for a minute.

I’m sure that at some point in your father’s life, he knew a manly man who turned out to be gay, and just rationalized it away by thinking “he’s an exception.”

9

Thanks for the replies everyone

Yep, the people who are gay and not butch or anything in his opinion are either the exception, or “secretly” :rolleyes: think about that on the inside.

I keep trying to argue that all gay people are not like this, and he maintains that I’m simply talking semantics, saying, sure, there are some gays that are just like normal guys, but they’re the exception!

Ugh, it’s difficult to talk about things like that and women to him, because he believes ‘many’ women are like ______, and the ones who arent are exceptions to the rule. Ie: fussy about their hair, obsessed with their appearance, whiny, etc. etc.

Kinda off on a tangent but it drives me nuts having to listen to him go on and on about what women are “really” like, when I have a girlfriend that he doesn’t know about, who is almost completely opposite to what he says women are like. Gah.

10

Off to IMHO.

Cajun Man
for the SDMB

11

I have no reason to believe that guys who are predisposed to being femme are not evenly distributed among the sexual orientations.

That said, IF there are more femme gay guys, it might just be that if you are a femme gay man, once you come out, you might have an easier time allowing yourself to be femme; you’ve already rejected one set of social conditioning, why not another? If you’re straight, this wouldn’t be a factor, and social conditioning favouring butchness among men might have more influence. (Naturally, there are plenty of straight guys who are predisposed to femmeness who DO express it.)

It could also be that it’s easier to be femme if you’re gay because it’s expected, simply. (After all, I’m not particularly concerned that someone might think I’m gay.)

Okay, this was very poorly written, but it’s quarter past three at night.

12

Tell him to check out this guy (it’s me) and see if he thinks I’m not gay.

As said before, the gay guys you can spot are the ones that are easy to spot. The rest of us get asked out on dates by women (which we decline AFAIK) and you will never pick us out of a crowd. I have difficulty finding a boyf and I have GREAT gaydar.

13

boofy_bloke, I read your bio and you are looking for a “tall, straight guy”…

Hmm…

To the OP…and then there are the closet queens your father never told you about.

Beware.

14

makes note to lie about his age and check into US/Australia travel rates…

15

Never mind. I’d have to hide my cigarettes and pretend to like women, apparently…

16

Why are all the hottest men on other continents? <sigh>

I took “straight” in the profile to mean “straight edge” as in no drugs, or possibly as in “straight shooter” or “straight up” meaning an honest person.

17

Thank you for your comments but the point is to point out that not all gay men are clearly gay.
FYI “Straight” means that the only difference between me and a straight guy is who I like to have sex with. If I liked women, nothing else about me would change.

18

Hehehe. boofy_bloke lives in Paddington. Hehehe.

For those who don’t know why I find this amusing, my SN is the phonetic spelling (and a bit more) of my pronunciation of Paddington when I was a much younger person.

I guess now we know the answer to this question: “Is iampunha a top or a bottom?”

Hehehe.

19

I read the above and thought you said “ho-beast”. And it made me laugh.

20

Doesn’t the existence of the “Bear” stereotype prove that there are significant amounts of gay men that aren’t femme?