Another question answered in Quora. The Cultural Left BS is that gay men are no more likely to be effeminate than straight men. It’s a lie. A flat out lie. Why they say this, I have no idea. I suppose they think associating effeminacy with gay men will lead to homophobia and bigotry. But that’s not a good reason to lie. This is just one more thing the crazy Gay Lobby or Gay Identity Politics faction of the Cultural Left lies about, and this faction tells many a lie.
I would recommend Chis’ response below. It’s not PC but it’s correct. Gay men are vastly more likely to be effeminate than straight men. There’s no contest.
Chris:
Straight men, as a group, are far more likely to fear being considered effeminate if they express perfectly normal variations in gender expression.
They are heavily socialized to this view.
Exactly. Straight men are extremely paranoid of being considered gay. Which ones? Well, just about every straight man I ever met? They will go to incredible extremes so as not to be perceived as gay. This is the main reason for the exaggerated hypermasculine behavior you see in so many straight men. To me, one reason for hypermasculine behavior is a way of screaming at the world: “I’m not a faggot!” The more hypermasculine they are, the louder they are making that statement.
Considering the straight men I have known, one of the worst possible insults would be to tell them that they act or you thought they were gay. Just imagining the straight men I have known and imagining me implying that they act gay, I can see almost every single one of them getting angry about that. Some might get dangerously angry. It’s a real slap in the face. I generally never imply that about any straight man because I don’t want to get hit or killed. To me that’s a good way to get punched. In some places, the person might even try to kill you. It’s not worth it.
I’m not sure why straight men do not want to be perceived as gay but they just do. Obviously it’s all wrapped up in masculinity but there is more to it than that. For one thing, to be a straight man perceived as gay is an endless headache in straight society both with women and men. And don’t even bring up girlfriends. Straight society simply does not accept straight men who are perceived as gay in any way. They’re not ok with it. Period. It’s just one never ending pain in the ass. The best way to not have your life weirded out by this situation is to act as hypermasculine as possible. Problem solved.
Another reason is that if you act hypermasculine, you can often can along better with other straight men. It’s easier to bond with them if they don’t think you’re a pussy. And bonding with straight men is quite difficult if they suspect that you are gay. A close friendship is nearly impossible. Being respected as a fellow masculine man earns massive points in straight society.
One more thing. It sounds nuts, but there is no down side to hypermasculinity. I don’t really act that way as am a bit of a pure androgyne (extremely strong masculine side by also a strong feminine side).
But sometimes I get a complex where I worry about my behavior and I try to compensate by angrily acting in what to me is an absurdly exaggerated masculine way. This behavior seems so odd to me that I am amazed that everyone is not laughing in my face when I act this way. But bizarrely, no one will laugh at you. No one will ever look at you twice. And a whole lot of men who were not friendly to you before show a strange new respect for you. They signal to you, nodding their heads or giving thumbs up. They are saying you are one of us, the hypermasculine guys, oh man do I respect that, Hell yeah.
A lot of these men will be older White men, but others will be “redneck” working class young White men. No one is going to give you any problems for this behavior. Everything is going to go smoothly with every man you meet. Considering that hypermasculine behavior smooths the way so much in straight society, why should we be surprised if men do it.
Another thing is women. Women are more attracted to hypermasculine behavior than you might think and it’s not uncommon that it actually turns them on mentally or physically. Where I live, the women are all Hispanics and they never look at me twice. When I go into hypermasculine caricature mode is the only time they look at me with sexual interest.
There are other reasons too. For instance, if you are straight, the more effeminate you act, the more like gay and bisexual men are going to come after you sexually. So hypermasculine behavior is surely seen as a way of warding off gay advances. I would say that it works pretty well too.
One of the responses to Chris’ answer says that all males have these effeminate behaviors, but the straight men just had it beaten out of them. That’s sad but true. The socialization of straight boys is quite a brutal affair and a lot never really make it out without scars. It’s like Bootcamp for Manhood. Boyhood is training and socializing period for becoming a man. Little boys are quite sissy, sensitive and wimpy. They break into tears a lot. As you get older as a boy, you learn pretty quickly that boys who cry get hit.
There was a boy in 5th grade named DN. He was called “Fig” for short as a first name for reasons I won’t go into. “Fig” got turned into “Fag” awful fast. He was an extremely sensitive boy who always looked like he was going to cry. Worse, he had the habit of always busting out in tears, often at school. My memory is of incidents where people would say, “Look! DN is crying! Beat him up!” Then I would rush over with about twenty other boys to kick DN’s ass.
It was deliriously fun to beat up this boy who cried all of the time. In case you think I am a sociopath, many other boys joined in, and most were quite normal, not the bad bullies at all. Just regular, violent boys. Of course, the more we beat him up, the more he cried, so it was sort of dumb to hit him, but 10 year old boys don’t think like that.
Why did we beat him up? We beat up for crying, mostly crying for no reason, also just for crying way too much. I never thought twice about why we attacked him instantaneously for crying. It was almost a primal thing. The message is pretty clear, right? You cry and you’re going to get your ass kicked. Man up. Boys don’t cry. A man never cries. Get it?
I am actually afraid to cry nowadays because I honestly think someone is going to hit me because I associate tears with fists. When we were boys, we played a lot of games. One of them was called Kill the Man on the Hoppityhop. It’s a violent game, but boyhood for straight boys is quite a violent affair. You either make it through or you don’t. Boot camp. This game involved riding in a gigantic rubber ball with a handle that you could actually travel along on by bouncing it up and down. You could bounce your way all across a yard on that thing.
In the game, one boy would ride the hoopityhop while all of the other boys would try to throw him off. The boy riding the hoppityhop had to stay on the ball and at the same time fend off all of the attackers. The attackers were pretty violent about throwing you off the ball. Another name for Kill the Man on the Hoppityhop was Smear the Queer.
Think about that. The boy on the hoppityhop was the “queer.” You know what queer means. The job of all of the other boys was to basically destroy the queer riding the ball and throw him of the ball. Whoever was the queer got smeared. Everyone tried to destroy you and throw you off the ball. What’s the message here? Queers get smeared. Queers get attacked and destroyed. If you are a Queer, all of the other boys will attack you with violence. It’s pretty obvious the message that gets internalized with such games.
And that was not the only homophobic of femininephobic game that was played in my youth. It was only one of many.
Are you speaking of effeminate behavior or feminine behavior? Because they are very different. Effeminate means acting like a woman. Feminine is very different. A feminine man might be soft, sensitive, pretty, like to cook, gentle, passive, quiet, like to read or write, and maybe do some other stereotypically feminine stuff. He’s just in touch with his feminine side. e 73% – 3%. That is a pretty extreme difference.
I would estimate that 70–75% of gay men are obviously effeminate or very wimpy in some way or another. The figure may even be higher. I have only encountered two stereotypically hypermasculine gay men in my life. Both were on Youtube videos.
There are indeed some effeminate straight men, but mostly they only act effeminate some of the time and not all the time. I would estimate that no more than 1% of straight men are obviously effeminate. The number of very wimpy straight men must also be small. Perhaps 1–2%.
So the figures are like 73% – 3%. That’s a pretty extreme variation.
