LGBTQ, abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bi sexual, transgender, and questioning. I remember being called gay lord – which I’d gladly take that title now – and faggot – the gays have now reclaimed this word. The bullying continued until high school, gradually getting better, that’s when kids tend to mature. It’s also during this time that I blossomed into the doll that I am today. I had my first boyfriend sophomore year, it was young love, it didn’t last, I didn’t know what I was doing back then. After that relationship ended is when the “straight guys” started to holla at me and it’s been that way pretty much my entire adult life. I’ve often wondered how many of the straight guys I’ve been with were actually closeted rather than just questioning.
During my 4 years of high school I was in the GSA club, short for the Gay Straight Alliance. This tight knit, close, safe space environment is what really helped shape me and form the standards of how to have compassion with each other as gay people, how to integrate within our community, with our allies, and how to treat each other. The overall take away I have from our club is unity. Just the basic treating each other with respect and having acceptance for all the colors of the rainbow. A lot of the conversations we had as a club were about minorities sticking together and equality for all. We would link up with GSA’s from other schools and have fundraisers, discussions, and trips to Hillcrest – that’s the ‘gay’ city in San Diego.
Three years after I graduated from high school I turned 21 and started drinking at gay bars. So the first two years were fun, drunkingly kissing guys at the bar then grinding on them at the club. I was 23 when I started to realize the cattiness, segregation, and labeling within the gay community. Some of those labels include twinks, otters, bears, queens, and jocks, I’m sure there are various other labels but these seemed to be the ones most used in a dividing way.
I’ve always had a positive body image of myself. I’ve volunteered for the Pride festival probably 5 times or so. They would put us into groups and we would work on setting up the festival. One year they put me with a guy who was talking about different labels within the gay community, he told me I was too big to be a twink but not big enough to be a bear and I felt like my body had just been insulted. That was the only time someone said something so direct like that to me. Then I realized he was projecting his negative self image onto me.
After this I noticed I would have conversations – or attempt to have conversations – and hear things like, “no honey, bears only play with bears.” Or ” I have a type and you’re not it.” And I get it, there are people you will meet in life that you don’t vibe with or have a connection with, but this was something I was encountering on a regular basis. I would bring this up to friends, guys I was talking to or interested in, and they would have similar experiences with regards to the labeling and segregation they felt and encountered in the gay community.
During this time I was realizing the spectrum of labels and body types within the gay community. Muscular men flaunt their physiques and if you don’t fit a certain ‘image’ you’re meant to feel as though you don’t exist. The ‘dad bod’ phenomenon hasn’t yet been extended to the gay community, but why though? I like extra meat on my men! I couldn’t help but compare my body to others and I found out that in fact, I loved my body. And of course I was dating and they were dating other people too and inevitably I was being compared to other guys; my personality, my body, my financial status, and this made me love my body and myself as a whole even more. Because I already had a positive image/body image of myself. I discovered straight men and closeted men were more attracted to me than the gay men I was dating/encountering.
The year was 2016 when I downloaded the Grindr app. I had heard of it and was told, “it’s a great place to meet men!” They just left out the part about 97% of the users being f^ck boys or spam accounts. Men are very visual, we want who we’re with to fit a certain image and this was very apparent. It was nudes galore and basically a very toxic, and at times, degrading environment. It took me 4 years to realize this. There is also cattiness in the gay community, which is why I shared my story of being bullied because I think it’s something that most gay people can relate to. You develop a thick skin early on to protect yourself from getting emotionally hurt and unfortunately, more often than not, that thick skin turns into a diva like demeanor that follows you everywhere for a long time. And this diva like demeanor is what you encounter a lot in the gay community, it’s perceived and eventually turns into cattiness. I know firsthand because I had that diva demeanor when interacting with other gay men early on.
It wasn’t all bad though, I dated dozens of guys that year. I’m still friends with some of them on social media. It was December 2017 when I moved from SD to Oregon. The gay dating pool is significantly smaller, the spam accounts are double – even triple in some areas, and guaranteed you’ll only find the same 10 accounts within a 20 mile radius. And then it hit me, the same divisions, labeling, and segregation that I was experiencing in SD was the same in Oregon, in an even smaller gay community. As gay people we need to uplift and support each other.
Then came 2020 and I had a boyfriend for a small part of it but it didn’t last. It was during this time when I realized guys will come and go from your life, a love interest will appear when the time is right, you don’t need to be in a relationship or dating to matter. Being single and fabulous is just as much fun – if not more fun – than being in a relationship or dating. These were things that I already knew in the back of my mind, it just took 2020 to bring it to the forefront.
In conclusion, gays be nicer and more accepting of each other. We’re very fortunate to be Americans living in the USA. There are places in the world where it is not safe accepted, or even legal to be a gay person. So our community, no matter how dysfunctional, I believe can be kinder and more inclusive. If a guy happens to approach you and you’re not interested, you can politely decline and consider it a compliment that they were interested. Don’t try to force a relationship or chemistry with someone, and above all else, trust the process of life, and trust that the time will come for you to find love.
The Takeaways:
◙ Gays be nicer and more accepting of each other
◙ We have more things in common than not
◙ Love yourself
◙ Love the skin your in
TheRealJayyyy 