It’s Time for Queer Men to Face the Enemy Within

By Naveen Kumar

Many queer people would agree that we’re used to feeling like we don’t fit in. Every story I was told growing up let me know that I didn’t belong. I was never going to be like the rom-com heartthrobs I was taught to desire in the dark of the multiplex, or the ripped models who excited me in magazines. My body was too amorphous, my skin nowhere near pale enough, and I didn’t like girls, anyway. There were other pudgy kids at school, and a handful of other minorities, too. But as my peers crushed on each other and coupled up, fumbling excitedly through adolescent romance, nothing made me feel more alone than realizing I’d be left behind. 

That recognition of sexual difference became my biggest source of teenage angst. I stopped wearing color for a year. I listened to Fiona Apple on repeat and dreamed of escaping suburbia to a liberal college, and later to New York. When I came out to my friends at age 16, I was fortunate enough that they accepted me. It would take nearly another decade for me to tell my parents, who were supportive in their way as well. I was definitely one of the lucky ones.

LGBTQ+ people are one of the highest risk groups for depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. For a long time, many scientists assumed this was because there was something inherently pathological about queer people. But when researchers first started surveying LGBTQ+ people in the late 1990s, they discovered what had become painfully obvious to me at the time: stigma and discrimination were the main source of mental distress for queer people.

Fast-forward a few decades, and the progress for LGBTQ+ visibility and acceptance has been remarkable. There are still fierce battles underway, but queer people are a more apparent fixture of the culture than ever before. 

It’s a mark of our relative privilege that GBTQ men are now facing a different primary source of stress — each other. A recent study found that when it comes to drivers of anxiety and depression, the calls are increasingly coming from inside the house. Having reached a relative measure of acceptance from the dominant culture, gay and bi men are now reporting that we’re less burdened by sexuality-based prejudice than we are by pressures from our peers. And these dynamics of comparison and competition are only exacerbated by the fact that we’re all men. Studies have shown that men are more likely to feel competitive toward other men, including in the realm of sexual attractiveness. 

Remember those pinups from the Abercrombie bags, with their taut muscles and white skin? Many of us grew up worshiping a narrow vision of masculinity, and chasing it is making us miserable. Participants in the recent study reported feeling stressed by what they perceived as our community’s obsession with looks, status, and sex. They pointed to its exclusionary racism, social cattiness, and discrimination against those who don’t fit the ideal (“no fats, no femmes, drug and disease free”). Most of us have some, or significant, experience with all of the above behavior. Much of this is a result of social conditioning, and the ideals we were fed from a young age about what makes men desirable. And the fact that gay and bi men both socialize and seek sex with each other turns the community into a kind of pressure cooker.

In fact, it wasn’t until I made gay friends in my 20s and 30s that those other concerns I had as a kid, about my body and racial difference, came roaring back to the fore. I understood that fitness and whiteness were especially prized among queer men, and that no matter how hard I tried, I would never feel like I truly fit in with them, either.  

“There was definitely a point when I recognized that even within this community, there isn't safety in belonging,” says Terron, 33, who is Black and lives in New York City. “That’s a crushing thing to realize all over again, that being a minority within a minority has its own set of obstacles.” 

As in so many other contexts, people of color have to achieve an even higher standard to attain what may be perceived as success. “If you are not some hot white guy on Instagram, you have to be in twice as good of shape to be considered desirable,” Terron says. “We see that everywhere in media imagery, including pornography.”

The pressures that gay and bi men heap on each other are evident in both our virtual and real-world social settings. Apps like Grindr and Scruff allow filtering on the basis of traits that determine desirability, and the distance built into digital interactions can embolden people to lose all sense of decency. That kind of sorting takes place in bars and clubs as well, where competition, cattiness, and a focus on sex can take away from the positive aspects of gathering as a community. 

“How people act, and what they want, sometimes makes it difficult for me to enjoy myself in queer spaces,” says Alamin, who is Black and lives in Los Angeles. “People impose all of these value judgments on me that really have nothing to do with who I am,” he says. Body size can be an especially painful cause for ostracization. 

“I've always been a bigger guy, and there's this very specific experience of people looking right past you, or complaining that you're physically taking up more space than they want you to,” Alamin says. “It’s a horrible feeling.”

Spaces where LGBTQ+ people can gather in person have assumed a renewed sense of pleasure and purpose following the isolation of the pandemic. And some people may have used the time we spent apart to reevaluate who we are and what we want, for ourselves and from each other. Lonely as it was, quarantine came with an odd sense of relief — of not comparing my body to other men at the gym, or worrying whether I was attending the coolest parties or having as much sex as everyone else. What developed was a greater sense of who I am outside of all that — and how my relationships with other queer men, whether friends or lovers, can best support me. There’s a renewed need among our community for spaces where we can gather, online as well as in person, to offer each other mutual support and care.

“I've spent a lot of my 30s trying to find spaces that affirm all aspects of my identity,” Terron says. “Not just the fact that I'm gay, or that I'm Black, but where I can be celebrated and loved for everything that I am.”

We may not be able to control how people treat us, or the values upheld by our peers. But we can be kinder and more attentive to ourselves, and mindful about the people and places we choose to spend time with. That’s not to excuse or diminish the harms of racism and other forms of discrimination, but to empower queer people to seek out and seize joy where we find it. 

“I’m more protective of my peace after isolation,” Alamin says. “My priority is to have fun with my friends, because we’ve just been so happy to see each other. I worry about the rest of it as little as possible,” he says. 

Having a support network can ease the stress of social pressures, and help us see that we’re not alone. “Just feeling understood by my friends has been so important,” Alamin says, whether it means venting about a personal slight and moving on, or talking through more persistent feelings of alienation from the community. 

Ultimately, it’s important to recognize that we’re all some version of that glum little kid who feels like they don’t fit in — and that the whole idea of fitting in is an illusion. “Everyone wants to feel belonging and acceptance,” Terron says. We may perceive some people to be more accepted, or more desirable, but we have to work toward separating that perception from the reality of who we are. 

“There are so many of us of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds looking for the same thing,” Terron says. “And we are no closer to finding it than anyone else.”