Insert Witty Title Here

Behind every great gay man, there’s a real desire to have an awesome straight dude (and I don’t mean sexually). For many gay men, having a close straight male friend is akin to capturing the holy grail. It’s something that is fetishized and yearned for on both sides. In the past, I’ve sought out the company of straight men because, in a way, I feel like it validated my masculinity. It made me feel more versatile, like I could pass for “straight” and inhabit a heterosexual world more seamlessly than my other “gayer” friends. I’m not proud of this logic. On the contrary, I think it’s totally screwed up and an obvious indicator of self-loathing. Why does it give me so much pride when I gain the approval from heterosexual males? Am I that eager to not be perceived or defined as gay? I think it’s just another example of gay men’s aversion to be labeled as “femme.” If you go on any gay male dating/sex site, you’ll see a large percentage of men who are looking for “straight acting guys only.” They identify themselves as jock types and make a point to say they’re not into “femmes.” In the gay world, “femmes” have the least amount of power whereas so-called masculine men possess the most. So if you’re the kind of guy who’s never going to be described as “jockish” and you want to feel accepted, being friends with straight guys can often feel like the next best thing.

This obsession with masculinity and, by extension, straight culture, definitely bleeds into the straight guy/gay guy dynamic.

The threat that gay men have long posed to the cultural dominance of straight males has always had a close connection to gender and gender-related behavior. Across most human societies there has historically been social tension arising from the struggle to maintain male dominance. In Western societies, particularly in the U.S. and the U.K., male homosexuality has been seen as a threat to that dominance. It is a failure to conform to expected notions of masculinity. Highly repressive laws and customs forced homosexual men to relate to each other in very secret and clandestine networks. As a result, the general society had very little opportunity to experience the personal diversity of this group of people. The ones who were visible were those who displayed gender-variant behavior, such as cross-dressing. Out of this set of circumstances, there emerged a broadly held stereotype that all homosexual men were effeminate in their taste and behavior.

Yet I can’t help but wonder, does everyone have a preference? Sometimes we as gay men have no choice but to identify with one of the two terms. In the world of online dating, most guys care more about this label than they care about what you do for a living. When guys find out you aren’t a match in this sense, they treat you like you have a vagina. To many, dating someone who identifies with the same label as they do is simply a waste of time.

Somewhere between now and then, criticizing Will & Grace or any person or character on TV who’s the slightest bit effeminate, over-the-top, or remotely polarizing has become the acceptable/cool thing to do. We are, luckily, living in a time when, slowly but surely, a wide variety of gay characters are popping up on TV and in movies, but along with that has come the popular notion that we should tear apart any gay person or character who comes across as “too gay.” “Too gay” has become a common criticism in the gay community, and one with eerie overtones of self-hatred and internalized homophobia. Guys proclaim to be “straight-acting,” as if being “straight-acting” is something to strive for. Since when do gay people hate themselves so much that they want to appear “straight”?

Perceptions and definitions of masculinity vary from time to time and culture to culture. Throughout history, popular concepts of masculinity have been reflected in paintings and sculptures. Some are commissioned portraits, others are created from inspiration.

A bathroom view of two side-by-side urinals is the book jacket graphic for Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s new anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? In a femme and fearless metaphor, one of the urinals is stuffed full of jewelry, flowers, and other colorful, queer-looking flotsam — a nod to the book’s anthological content, featuring “flaming challenges to masculinity, objectification, and the desire to conform,” as the subtitle reads.

In anticipation of the book’s official launch — slated to take place, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day — Ms. Sycamore spoke with me while on her West Coast book tour.

“The book is dedicated to exposing hierarchies wherever they exist,” said Ms. Sycamore of Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? The book was born, she said, out of frustrations with the “gay male” sex scene that she inhabits, and the hierarchies within it: internet cruising, sexual commoditization, and assimilationist culture.