Masc gay sex
Reflections on Gay Masculinity
By Justin Natoli, JD, MFT
If market price is a function of supply and demand, then my advice is to start investing in masculinity. That stuff is flying off the shelves. For a variety of reasons—innate and learned—masculinity is like catnip to a significant percentage of same-sex attracted men, and it appears to be in short supply. The appeal of masculinity isn’t breaking news. A rapid glance on Scruff reveals one masc/musc man after another seeking masc-only sexual connections. What sparks my curiosity is the role masculinity plays in our sex lives and what our longing for and fetishizing of masculinity says about the lgbtq+ experience.
I sat down with some ‘masc-only’ gay men recently to understand superior what they touch like when connecting with men they judge to be masculine. These conversations suggested three different but overlapping roles masculinity plays in sexual relationships with men. One community is drawn to masculine men because they feel protected. Another group says they enjoy feeling dominated by masculine energy. A third group reveals that connecting with masculine men validates their own masculinity and helps them touch more masculine. Period and tim
Taking off the ‘Masc’: How Gay-Identifying Men Perceive and Navigate Hyper-Masculinity and “Mascing” Culture Online
INTRODUCTION
The proliferation of gay online spaces and the opportunity they present to experiment and explore one’s retain sexual identity have made online platforms increasingly significant in the social, lovey-dovey, and emotional lives of male lover men.[1] For many gay men, online spaces serve as sanctuaries to meet other gay men, experiment with their personal identity construction, and cultivate gay communities. Some scholars have researched how the internet, specifically social media platforms, have helped to normalize lgbtq+ identities.[2] The anonymous and disembodied world of online engagement has created new opportunities for individuals who are questioning their sexual identities to explore and experiment with their own identities.[3],[4] Online platforms that provide social networking opportunities for gay men have transformed from simple forums and websites into sophisticated and highly popular apps like Grindr, Scruff, and Jack’d.[5] These modern apps have been called “hybrid media” because they mix the offline and online trial of
Illustration by Sarah MacReading
In this day and age, it’s almost old hat for gay characters on popular TV to trend more toward Homer Simpson than Waylon Smithers. From Happy Endings‘ Max Blum to Looking‘s Richie Ventura, the “masc” gay dude has gone from an easy punch line to the new norm, and it’s far from a huge leap to claim that in 2016, certain ideas of gay masculinity have finally become firmly entrenched in mainstream Western pop culture.
Masculinity is, indeed, something that homosexual men obsess over and have obsessed over since the 1970s and the rise of clone customs. It’s an obsession often manifested in derisive and self-loathing ways, because queer men often fetishize masculinity to the point that they look down upon and subordinate their feminine peers. The same pattern is evident among direct men—sexism and misogyny, after all, are alive and well—but this same type of anti-effeminacy often goes unnoticed among gay men themselves.
The parallels between how anti-effeminacy plays out between the two groups—straight and gay men—is too-little studied. So while completing my master’s degree in sociology at Louisian
Photo credit: Shed Mojahid
Article by Hugo Mega (edited by Alyssa Lepage)
I used to think that “coming out” was going to be the hardest part of being gay. That, being free to be me, I could finally interrupt pretending. I would be able to drop the heteronormative disguise that I used to wear, to ensure that I belonged and that I felt safe. Little did I know that in the years that followed, more often than not, I would detect myself butch-ing up, trying to be more masculine than what I naturally was. How did I find myself here again?
Like walking on thin ice, any false advance I made, could easily throw me back into a loop of elderly patterns that condition my ways of being and behaving without me even noticing it.
Tired of this self-limiting pattern, I decided to confront my views around masculinity. Since then I’ve been engaged in deconstructing my conditioning and notions of what it means to be a bloke. In the process of deconstructing my beliefs it was difficult to elude one’s own toxic masculinity. I used to believe that being gay absolved me from creature toxic like many straight man can be, but I was wrong.
In this article I will be reflecting on personal experiences and different p