Straight men don’t have enough friends—could gay men be the cure?
https://www.out.com/voices/gay-straight-friendshipsOpen linkView original on lemmy.worldhttps://www.out.com/voices/gay-straight-friendshipsOpen linkView original on lemmy.worldhttps://www.out.com/voices/gay-straight-friendshipsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
I am... mostly straight (heh), and I have had multiple gay dude friends who were just platonic friends.
Yes, absolutely this can work, why would anyone think otherwise?
Lotta straight guys could probably get some decent fashion and grooming tips, I know I did, hahaha!
Also, entirely serious, gay dudes can make some of the best wingmen ever for their staight buds.
You can just actually do this.
Some people think you can't be friends with people of a gender you're attracted to. And as a bisexual, I can confirm that I have never seen anyone as a friend, only prey.
Yeah I've never understood that (first sentence) way of thinking.
I had more platonic gal friends than guy friends growing up, because most of the guys were insecure, boisterious, idiot assholes.
Simple as.
As for the second sentence, well, if we ever meet st the same bar, I'll make sure to be coy at first and then stern, but polite, hahahaha!
There are simply those I have and have not conquered
Bravo! you made my morning coffee go up my nose.
Yeah ever gay guy I have met, especially when I was in my teens always asking to suck my dick, or telling me you don't know you might like it. Though I am still straight think I have bit of the gay in me. At least they thought so. Also all three of my sons are gay sooo they got that gene somewhere. But I like tits, but I totally date a trans woman if I waa single.
We're ace-spec and find the concept of attraction difficult for most people, except if we have a strong emotional connection to them.
However we also find the deliniation between like and love difficult too, we don't really understand the desire or ability to split feelings and what we'd like to do with a person based on a mere label such as 'friend' or 'partner'. This is part of the reason we chose to identify as relationship anarchists and discuss explicitly with each person what they and us are okay with and do so ocassionally over time too.
We also, not based on attraction but societal values and ideas, don't see any relationship we have with anyone or anymany automatically important or successful. For example 'familial' relationships, like any relationship, if the others connected to us wish to have such a relationship go well then they have to work at it as much as any relationship, regardless of label or assumed worthiness to a certain type of connection or things they are allowed or not allowed to say and/or do.
So yes, we can be 'friends' with anyone or anymany, but the label alone means very little.
I'm a gay guy. Most of my male friends are straight.
Yeah, its kinda weird that people think any kind of sexual orientation is any particular basis for friendship.
Though I will admit, as a straight guy, I can't think of any friends I have who are gay men... I have lesbian friends, queer male friends, and lots if bi female friends. I think I could chalk this up to the fact that I'm fairly handsome and in shape, so when I meet a gay guy he'll usually want to sleep with me, and his interest will make me uncomfortable, and then he'll either pick up on my discomfort and then avoid me, or he won't pick up on my discomfort and will keep flirting with me, which will eventually make me actively dislike him. Unfortunately, it seems difficult to break this cycle by saying "Hey are you gay and into me, because if so, please stop flirting with me. It fills me with a visceral sense of disgust.", as this seems rude on a number of different levels.
Agreed on that.
Thats because that last part of that is immensely rude.
Look I'll freely tell you I've been in basically that situation before, and actually worse than that.
Continuing to hit on somebody who has politely told you you aren't interested in them is rude, but you can always uh, be the bigger man so to speak, and politely, continuously refuse them, and then leave if you need to.
Or punch somebody in the face if they really will not take no for an answer.
But anyway..., apparently all the gay men you meet are interested in you?
I... uh... mhm.
You sure about that?
Maybe try meeting gay men in a non... potentially sexually charged context?
Gay men exist in more places than just gay bars or nightclubs?
Like, I've been hit on by plenty of gay men, and I've also not been hit on by plenty of gay men.
The whole 'gay men are sexual superpredators' thing is a bit of an extremely harmful self perpetuating stereotype, you sure you aren't maybe projecting a bit of that into your encounters?
Gay dudes also like... go shopping st the grocery store, work in cubicles, wait for the bus or train, walk their dog in the park, etc.
That's why I don't say it.
I mean, I think I've been explicitly hit on by a gay man once, and I liked that because I was like "thanks, but I'm straight." I'm referring more to the sort of plausibly deniable flirting or subconscious indications of interest, like holding slightly prolonged eye contact, giving excessive numbers of compliments, making sexual jokes but holding the punchline a second too long, somehow ending up standing or sitting nearby me. The sorts of things many straight men do with women.
Also, I'm not going to gay bars or nightclubs. I don't usually go to nightclubs in general, and I have little interest in gay bars as, well, I'm not gay. The gay guys in my life tend to arrive via social hobbies I have or through friends of friends, and I typically only determine for sure that someone is gay after I have asked another person, because I was wondering if they were hitting on me after all the prolonged eye contact and weird compliments.
I mean, as a guy myself, I have complete empathy for a healthy male sex drive. I wish them the best in their sexual predations, and hope they support me in mine. Good hunting, sirs!
I certainly have met gay men who I didn't get a flirtatious vibe from. And I am, of course, friendly to them as much as I am with anyone else. But for whatever reason, I rarely have multiple encounters with the same gay man. I'd say that the gay men I've met probably split about 70:30 in the flirty/uninterested categories.
Are you suggesting I meet people like this? I have to say, that is quite weird. I'm not going to go to the park or grocery store and start introducing myself to strangers.
Ok ok ok, that all makes much more sense.
Sorry I jumped to a few assumptions/conclusions there, thank you for clarifying.
However:
I more or less do this all the time, when I am in a decent mood, and I see someone who also looks to be in at worst a neutral mood, and I have some kind of contextually relevant thing to say.
Not like... hey im so and so nice to meet youndo you come here often?
Yeah, that would be weird.
But just like... we're both taking a while considering the same general section of a grocery aisle, hrm, which whatever doohickey/food thing do you think is best?
Or even, damn dude, solid beard/stache, or something like that.
I dunno, I used to smoke cigs for a long time, I think a bit of just... friendly random conversation, especially if its a genuine compliment?
Thats... just a lot more normal to me.
I'd also argue that a general level of this just basically is a measure of a healthy, non atomized society.
I've had so many memorable moments from getting into a convo with randos at a bus stop or what not, to me thats just... a fundamental part of living in a society? Spice of life?
This comment here is exactly why a lot of gays don’t like straight men. God forbid you get hit on. I’m sure you’ll survive as a fairly handsome and in shape heterosexual.
I mean, my discomfort and my reactions to it are basically the same reaction and actions taken by women who are hit on by men. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with hitting on me. I don't think I'm entitled to curtail all social interaction for the sake of my mild discomforts. I'm just providing my personal experience as a potential explaination for a broader observed social phenomenon.
Sometimes signals get crossed and we think you may be gay. Chill out. It's different with men to women.
It's always someone else's job to fix straight men's problems.
Tbf, the article is written by a gay man. So this is more men trying to fix problems nobody asked them to fix. (Which doesn't seem to be influenced by sexual preference).
It's not like matter and antimatter. They don't destroy each other on contact.
"As long as they don't come on to me..."
🤮
Says every "100% straight" man as they trim their fingernails, brush their teeth, and put on their nicest shirt before going out on "platonic" date with their gay friend.
Gaywashing straight people is the weirdest thing. Just accept some people are straight.
It was just a joke about how everyone wants to feel loved and seen. Apologies for the implication, have a good one.
I have far more straight than gay friends. I think it is purely because of my hobbies. I like cars, computers, and a bunch of these things that someone once decreed are "heteronormatively manly" and as a result, my friends happen to be straight.
I couldn't care less who they have sex with, because I don't choose friends based on what they do in bed.
In my experience, the more straight a person is, the dumber they are about anything computer, broadly speaking.
Since about 1990ish onward, yeah its still a hetero male dominated field, but the farther away someone gets from heteronormative man, chances get higher that they're actually extremely gifted/talented at doing actual software dev / it / academic research.
Don't forget Alan Turing, essentially the inventor of modern computing, was a gay man, and if you look through the history of notables in the actual field of comp sci, not the business of it, you'll find it has a lot more woman and non straight dudes in it that many other fields.
Wow, really hot take here. Who people have sex with has nothing to do with their capabilities or intellect. That's just as bad as staying "the gayer someone is, the worse they are at sports, broadly speaking".
The rest I agree, as someone who works in the field yes, many of us are LGBTQ+ folks, but still not a majority. Which still results in people like me meeting, and engaging with more straight men than gay peeps.
You missed the 'in my experience' part of my sentence.
Its an anecdote.
That's what 'in my experience' means.
But again, broadly speaking... statistically valid correlations can and do exist between people's sexuality and many, many other aspects of themselves, their lives.
Like you can say oh, sexuality has no impact on who someone is or what they are capable of or what their life will look like... but this just assumes society is totally materially and morally neutral, and it treats all sexualities with statistical invariance, and it also precludes the possibility that to any extent, innate, complex biological differences exist.
You're basically saying sexuality is just an arbitrary choice, that society respects totally, thats the only way you could thoroughly believe that 'sexuality has nothing to do with ... capabilities or intellect.'
(You're also confusing outcomes with capabilities in that particular line, but w/e)
LQBTQ+ people are certainly statistically more likely to:
Experience physical violent crime against them,
Become homeless,
Commit suicide.
The idea that someone's sexuality doesn't have any influence on I guess seemingly unrelated aspects of their lives, their experiences, their outcomes, is just objectively false.
But if we do want to talk about actual data and studies, irt to sexuality and human intelligence, here's a fairly recent meta analysis:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7031189/
Without going into it in too much detail, there do actually seem to be some statistically significant differences between different kinds of intelligence per homo/hetero male/females, and the paper does go into some proposed theories as to the actual biological mechanics of why these differences may exist.
The gay - cs link seems overhyped to me. I would sooner believe that it boils down to some kind of sampling bias. Or maybe it comes from... I think, Friedman's idea? That the most obviously talented people in any given field would be minorities in the field who the larger population of the field is biased against, since of the discriminated population only the brightest and most truly dedictated would stick around.
I mean, I don't have like... figures, stats, studies on this.
I said 'In my experience' for a reason.
Though it is potentially worth noting my experience is a career in software dev, database management, data analytics, being fairly involved in making mods for various video games, knowing various game devs, and even one individual who actually worked at Los Alamos with their advanced CS degree.
Though, that last person probably does not work there anymore, given that trans people are essentially now officially unpersons.
There are techbros, and then there are people who wear programming socks, entirely unironically.
I'm gay and I'm in CS.
I have a very straight guy friend. his two best friends are a gay trans man and me a bi trans woman