STR8 Bois Are Totes Hawt!!1!

A twitter friend sent out a link last week to a new FCKH8 campaign (you may rember their cathartic "it gets better" video), the STR8 Against H8 calendar. The basic idea is that this is a calendar featuring 13 self-professed heterosexual men who are "stripping down" to promote marriage equality. It's a calendar of guys who like women and also think marriage equality is important and who enjoy the attention of other men. Or at least "don't mind" when gay men appreciate them.

I looked at the site and watched the promo video that's on there (which is really just a behind the scenes showing more man flesh), and while the calendar certainly seems to well-produced and the intent of the project seems to be on the up-and-up ($3 per calendar goes to equality-minded organizations), I just can't shake the feeling that this is all a terribly bad idea and fairly demeaning to gay men.

The Queer Feminista

Maybe this is the feminist coming out in me, but I'm not so sure that fetishizing straight men is very healthy. Let me rephrase that: lusting after a man simply because he is straight is not healthy. Believing a man is attractive whether or not they are a particular sexual orientation is perfectly fine, but placing specific emphasis on a man's sexuality as the source of your lust is troubling.

I call this troubling because what it does it present straight men as something "Better Than" gay men, something to be idolized and prized as if the pursuit of vagina is the penultimate sexual activity. Can you see the problem there? If being straight, in and of itself, is hot, then being gay must be Something Other Than Hot.

So a group of gay men lifting straight men up as the epitome of hotness smacks of self-loathing to me. Self-loathing and a twisted inferiority complex.

I'm not saying finding a guy attractive that is straight is a bad thing. Many straight men are very attractive (see Ben Cohen). But finding a guy attractive because he is straight, or implicating that gay men cannot be as attractive as straight men, does very little to advocate a cause for equality.

But Is It Really Wrong?

All that said, there's nothing wrong with it, per se. If a person decides to purchase the calendar, more power to you. In the video it appeared that all the "straight men" photographed were pro-equality, which is a very good thing. And although I'm not a fan of the means, the end cause is a good one.

But I'd just like to put this out there: how can we as an LGBT community move forward if at the core of our beings we still don’t believe we are equal in every sense? If we believe that straight men are more attractive and worthy of praise for simply being part of the vast majority, how do we expect them to see us as anything other than adoring fans?

How To Find My Blog: Search Gay Chicken

I'm starting to think I need to change the focus of this blog. Well, not really, but I think maybe the focus of my readers has changed. I write a lot of things that are political or quasi-activist in nature, and most times it serves as a venting space for the thoughts in my mind that I find either a) are inappropriate to discuss in the particular social circle I was in that day, or b) are I'm too worked up about to actually verbalize my thoughts (I get stuck and stutter when I'm worked up… writing is easier than talking in those moments). However, I've noticed an interesting trend in this blog that I'd like to share with y'all.

Like any good blogger, I've been running some traffic code to understand and analyze my readership. It's really to get a better grip on what people are reading and how they are finding this here blog, which is important, but doesn't really affect what I write about. That might be the case on my gaming blog, but this here blog is more personal in nature. Since I'm a Google Addict (seeing as this site is a Blogger blog, owned by Google, and my home browser is Chrome, developed by Google, and on and on…), I of course use Google Analytics to do this. So over the past two months, I've been spending some time trying to understand how people are finding the blog as my subscriber numbers have been steadily climbing lately.

And this is what I've found, according to the top ten searches that lead people to I'm Just Gaying...:




Apparently, one post I did a few months back about Gay Chicken, a game straight boys play to somehow clarify their masculinity (which I am totally OK with and wish would happen waaaaay more often in my presence), is the most popular way new readers are finding this blog. And somehow, some readers are parleying that interest in this cultural phenomenon into regular readership in which I hardly mention Gay Chicken ever again. I also found out that post comes up on the 5th or 6th page of Google when you search Gay Chicken.

I'm not going to change the focus of I'm Just Gaying… which hasn't had much of a focus other than serving as a sounding board for whatever is stuck in my mind at the time, which apparently was straight boys kissing each other at some point in when I was drunk. I may or may not post up a another Gay Chicken YouTube video, who knows. But for those that have stuck around after checking out my initial post on this new-ish straight boy bonding/experimenting ritual, I'm glad to have you! And to everyone else, thanks as well.

Macho Is Gay: Why Macho Men Are More Gay Than They Think

I've been tossing around an idea lately: is Macho really just homo-erotic? Originally, the thought was is macho the new homo-erotic, but when I started looking at it, it doesn't appear to be a new thing at all.

Here's what got me thinking about it. Urinals. Most of them are giant troughs, others are holes in a wall with what amounts to a piece of cardboard between the two people at the stall, but in either case, the point is to whip out your junk, do your business, and try as hard as possible to not look at the other dudes. Why not just build real stalls with walls if you didn't want to have the possibility of taking a peek? You see, the "macho" thing to do is stand there with your wanker hanging in the open, unbothered by the fact that everyone can see you in all your glory (or shame, I suppose that depends on you), but also assume that no one would ever look. Ironically, this flaunting of ones genitailia in a public manor with the pretense that no one should look at it, but all are able to, is pretty freaking gay.

Which leads me to men's showers in gyms and such. Very few actually have stalls and/or curtains. Yet again, the "macho" thing to do is shower with abandon, flaunting but assuming no one is looking. Also, very gay.

Add to that flavor that many gay men seem to fetish-ize Macho actions and men, going so far as putting ads out for "str8 acting bois" (penis+man booty=not str8… just sayin…), and you have a pretty curious mix of what it means to be macho and what it means to be homo-erotic. It's a little blurry, if you ask me.