Is the gay community becoming more puritanical?

[starlads]

Just something I've noticed over the last couple of years and I wonder if anyone else has, too. Historically speaking, the gay community or, should I say, some of its communities, have been reknowned for their sexual freedom and absence of any form of judgement when it comes to the private lives of others. Indeed, if you look at such historical figures in the gay movement, such as Jean Genet, they revelled in the title of being referred to as "sexual outlaws", so I guess many of our folk would have found it somewhat hypocritical to cast pronouncements on the sexual mores and tastes of others.

However, just by speaking to some gay friends and by reading a number of articles and comments in the gay press, I've noticed a cultural shift in gay circles where the homos seem to be clammering to be more puritanical than the last! Bareback fucking is a definite taboo for many of the gays that I speak to but, more than that, I'm noticing a general intolerance emerging to those who use hook-up sites such as bbrt and Grindr; check out some of the comments to this article: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/04/10/comment-addicted-to-grindr/

It would appear that those who sit in judgement of us MANY users of such facilities see us as shallow and an underbelly to be castigated. These judgemental homos seem so keen to become assimilated into the wider, heterosexual theatre that they are all too willing to tread on their fellow gays that don't want to comform, that don't want to apologise, that want to take cock and fuck arse and want to feel nothing other than pride in doing so. I think we, as a community, need to reclaim that identity in being different from heteros, to refuse any equality that might come our way so long as we pretend to be like the other "nice" straight automatons out there, stop referring to our parades as generic "Mardis Gras", but return to the title of "Pride", and, like Genet, jealously guard out title as "sexual outlaws". If others don't like the way we fuck, then fuck them! Rant over - apologies, but needed to get this off my chest, lol!

[einathens]

i don't think there is a gay community per se anymore, if there ever was. demographically speaking, we're a cluster of niche markets. right now the 'we're just like everybody else and we want the same rights' people are getting most of the attention.

i do not wish to denigrate the work that any activists are doing, but i do have a problem with self-appointed watchdogs and spokespeople. i'm a gay professional, as opposed to a professional gay.

subgroups have and will always sit in judgment of other subgroups. some just do it more quietly than others.

[hungry_hole]

I know some men feel they are different from the "normal man" so they call themselves gay. This is not my case because I just think of myself as a being horny man and sex with men is more fun. But, what is the gay community?

[slowfuck]

Thanks for raising this starlads. No, I don't think it is becoming MORE puritanical within the gay world or the wider world. It always has had puritanical elements within it. I have not noticed an increase in general self-opinionated bullying within the gay world, and the disparate communities within that. I think however there are now more opportunities for it to surface and be broadcast. It seems that the targets change depending on what opportunities are presented to the vocal minority to use to achieve their aims. Grindr comes along and they see that it gives them something they can hang their need to berate others who practice any behaviours of which they disapprove. Just look at Manhunt Daily and the constant anti-barebacking and anti-twink and anti-tattoos and it seem anti- anything-apart-from-toned-hunk comments that pervade comments for many of the postings. However these negative comments tend to come from a few people every time. There will always people who berate barebacking - they feeI the need to protect us from ourselves, most likely from their own insecurities and fear of being tainted with the general disapproval of gay people having unsafe sex within the world at large. A popular group to pillory. Rant away, you're welcome here!

[einathens]

therre are those who want mainstream acceptance, and those who don't care. right now the people who don't want to be left out are getting more notice than those who just want to be left alone.

[bearbandit]

Any minority group needs its hate figures, people who, though members of the same minority group, they can point at with an air of "we're okay, but what those guys do is gross". It's a desperate struggle on their part for acceptance, whereas I think most of us here have the guts to be ourselves and screw what other people think. When I attend meetings or do talks for THT (the UK's main aids service organisation), I deliberately wear my bike gear, partly because I'm too lazy to carry a change of clothes with me, but also because that's me.

I tend to be unacceptable to the establishment, I call a spade a fuckin' shovel. I ask the questions that people would prefer weren't asked, and I answer the awkward questions people would sooner avoid. Life isn't all fluffy bunnie-wabbits. I've sat through Gay Switchboard meetings with the knees of my denims leaving no doubt what I'd been up to the night before, and if you were slow enough not to figure that one out then the fresh bruises elsewhere doubtless helped. I had a well-respected member of Switchboard tell me, in front of a room full of people, that she found my sexuality "ugly". That was 30 years ago and I doubt she's changed her mind.

I think we've always had those who would sell out the rest in return for a bit of conventional respectability. We've always been out on a limb and some have always wanted to crawl back to the comfort of the main trunk of the tree. I look back at society as a whole and it isn't a pretty sight. Anyone who wants equality with that lot lacks ambition!

[einathens]

political correctness keeps a lot of honest discussion from happening.

[RawCumPig_Slut29]

HYPOCRISY GAMES: Most people who speak negatively about "us" are just playing in a Game of Hypocrisy. I've seen it time-after-time: ones who speak out against us end up one day getting caught with their pants down in a Men's Room bent over a toilet with a strangers cock in their mouth. It seems that men who proclaim to be straight or even gay-men who elevate themselves "above" slutty behavior are voicing these views for more reasons than appear. Most guys who try to put us down are just trying to make themselves look better, but they're also projecting on to us the attributes within themselves that they wish to keep hidden in the dark (which is one reason to suggest to them to try hooking up in a "backroom" . Let me prove my point with an example. I was chatting online in a gay-hookup site w/ another young male who saw my profile and said he was in to the same stuff I was (kink/pigplay). The other dudes on this site, which is strictly a site for cruising for sex, all act prudish and won't openly admit things like barebacking, pigplay, or hiv status on their profiles. It's a popular hookup site, you might know which one I'm talking about. I chatted w/ this dude for a bit, then met him. We had a hot fuck, and a few days later I was on the site again being harassed by his roommate. Either the dude I met told his roommate about me or this kid happened to see our messages back and forth, but he found out what we did and exposed me to others after calling me a "slam pig" and a "cum slut." A friend of mine, who I was kind of dating at the time, was also dating the same kid who happened to be the guy that bitched me out. So this guy I'm seeing says to me that his other boyfriend told him that "I'm a slut who likes to brag about all of the men I let fuck me bareback and how I like to take cum from anonymous and poz men." I lied and said none of it was true. But the interesting thing that happened was a few days later I was on that same site again but this time under a different username (totally different account and profile) when that same kid who "exposed" me hit me up, but this time HE was the one bragging about being a cum-whore and wanted to get piggy w/ me!

[einathens]

it never ceases to amuse me how many men say 'safe only' in their profiles, but when they see 'no condoms, no pullouts' in mine they confess that they play bare but don't want anyone to know.

any time you set yourself up as being superior, you're begging for the universe to knock you down.

[evilqueerpig]

The gay community has been split into varied subsections, i.e. :twinks/bears/leather/drag and it's no longer the united front of the Stonewall days. Even back when I first came out, Summer of 1977, there were those who'd chastise bathhouse SLUTS, such as myself, so a puritanical streak is really nothing new. I live my own life on my own terms, and if there are consequences, so be it!

[NegVirgin]

I think you will always find that. As a group in society becomes more acceptable and outspoken you find that they begin to sit in judgement disaproving of others. It has happened time and time again. Any group persecuted seems to become the thing they hate the most.

[seaguy]

It has become easier for those who hold puritanical views to feel comfortable expressing them with the internet. In the past they might not have felt comfortable doing so because they would have been attacked and labeled a prude. But overall I don't think that the community has become more puritanical.