When I was growing up in Yosemite almost all the media I consumed came from San Francisco. My parents had a strong connection to the Bay Area because they both went to Berkeley and then stuck around when my dad went to dental school as UCSF. I grew up browsing through the San Francisco Chronicle and listening to KQED. I’m not entirely sure why, but a lot of the Bay Area stations were somehow magically rebroadcast in Yosemite Valley. My dad would play the San Francisco rock station KFOG in his dental office. I have memories of getting my teeth cleaned while Ten At Ten, KFOG’s daily collection of ten songs from the past, played on speakers throughout the office. To this day, I feel a strong connection to the Bay Area even though I’ve never lived there. I grew up with Bay voices in my ear.
Another odd reality was that a few television stations were broadcast via radio (so just the audio). My parents didn’t believe in television back then (though they did get on board once quality improved after streaming became a thing). Sometimes my siblings and I would listen to TV shows on the radio. It was kind of like living in the pre-TV era when families would sit around the radio and imagine the world being described. I think in so many ways that was part of what gave me the wild imagination that I have.
To this day, my dad has a My Strange Addiction to reading the entire newspaper. Like if he gets a paper he has to read the whole thing. He got so overwhelmed by this strange disease that he stopped subscribing to the Chronicle after my parents relocated to Sonoma County. But then I decided to get a digital New York Times subscription that came with the Sunday paper (which I sent to my parents to torture my father).
Growing up, I remember the Sunday edition of the Chronicle strewn all over the living room floor of our little Yosemite living room. My three favorite sections were the funnies (cartoons - did anyone else call them that?), Parade Magazine (fun celeb news), and the personals section. For anyone too young to know, the personals was basically Tinder from the olden days, people seeking partnership on newsprint. People would write what they were looking for in a partner then other people would respond.
Being a little gay boy, I obviously was fascinated with the Men Seeking Men section. These listing had no pictures, so people were really just going off descriptions. One term was listed in almost all of these personal ads: masculine.
This was in the mid-nineties. And what I learned from reading those ads was that in order to be considered desirable, gay men had to be masculine. Many of the ads took that masculine qualifier a step further. Many of the men who placed personal ads listed themselves as “straight acting.” So basically what I learned from reading these ads was that in order to be considered for partnership one day, I’d basically have to pretend to be a straight man.
In hindsight, they nineties and early 2000s have revealed themselves to be an oddly problematic period. But I do remember being a little mystified even then by the incessant obsession with masculinity.
Flash forward twenty years to the advent of dating apps. I thought by that time things would have progressed, but I still see a cliche repeating itself over and over on dating apps: gay men describing themselves as “masc.” Sure, it’s not as self-hating as “straight-acting,” but it feels like we’ve moved beyond all that. Or at least we should have by now. Whenever I read the word “masc,” I’m transported back in time to being a kid reading the Chronicle’s personals section.
I see nothing wrong with someone presenting in a masculine way. My issue is the pressure to be masculine when maybe that is not what comes naturally. I have a voice that ranges from mildly gay sounding to pretty dang gay sounding, depending on my energy level, mood, and the context of what I’m saying.
When I went off to college, I really wanted to start over after an uncomfortable experience going to a very conservative, very gay-hating high school where I learned to internalize a lot of hatred and shame about my more feminine attributes. My response to that was to want to erase my gay accent and affectations.
Some of the first people I met in college were a couple, Nate and Stephanie. They lived in, Risley Hall, the same beautiful castle-like ivy covered dorm where I lived and they were extremely cool. I was obsessed with them. I idolized them. They were both in the architecture program and they were just effortlessly chic in the most early oughts way: vintage t-shirts, shaggy 60’s British hair, corduroy pants. They introduced me to Belle & Sebastian and whole host of other indie bands (Kid A, anyone?).
I spent a lot of high school honing my social skills. I was a very shy kid and high school was really where I learned how to be outgoing. It never came naturally to me and it was work, but I got good at it because I had really dynamic, funny, popular friends to guide me. So my goal in college was to be a lot more proactive socially and build on the skills I built in high school. I remember meeting Nate and Stephanie on the front steps of Risley on a sweaty Upstate New York August day. It was really the first time I ever remember feeling humidity in my life being that we don’t really have it here in California.
That meeting was one of the only times in my life I’ve tried to affect a “straight accent.” It felt weird to do, but I was trying on a new identity. Honestly, my attempt to masculinize my voice was short-lived.
I hung out with Nate and Stephanie all the time and I thought Nate was really sexy, despite the fact that he was straight and unavailable. But what was so sexy about him was his comfort with his own femininity. He wore pants with silhouettes that were traditionally seen as feminine (high waisted, bell bottoms). His hair was long and swoopy. He was sexy in the way that Harry Styles and Lil NasX are sexy. Sexy because there are confident enough in their masculinity to be feminine and swishy.
Months into our friendship I remember Nate saying something like “I remember meeting you and thinking you were so intense. It was a lot. I’m surprised you turned out to be such a nice person!” I think what he was responding to was the phoniness of my masculine performance. It was a good lesson on gender performance in that it showed me just how many different ways there was to express yourself - we don’t have to be all masculine or all feminine. The combination is what makes us truly ourselves.
I credit college for much of my growth, for much of my ability to be okay with myself acting in a way that might be seen as feminine or gay. My dorm had coed bathrooms. We had a number of trans and non-binary students and it felt like a place where it was okay not to fit into a cookie cutter mold of male or female. Since this was my first time living away from home, I thought this was the real world and didn’t really know that twenty years later we’d be embroiled in a bunch of trans-hating bullshit. In the nineties, gay people were the punching bag. Today, it’s trans people and, most shockingly, trans CHILDREN that are the punching bag.
Most of this is misogyny, an innate fear and hatred for women and their traits. A belief that masculine traits are better. Do you like how I just mansplained misogyny to you? LOL.
I don’t think I have this type of hatred for femininity. In fact, I cannot watch any show or movie that doesn’t have enough women on it. My mom tried to show me a movie recently and I was like “TURN IT OFF THIS MOVIE HAS TOO MANY MEN IN IT!”
I’m kind of the same with dating. I’m attracted to men who are masculine but I’m also attracted to men who are a bit swishy, a bit gay acting. The sexiest pop stars in history are a the ones in touch with their feminine side. Andre 3000 and David Bowie are the first two that come to mind when I think about this type of appeal.
So whenever I see a Tinder profile with the word “masculine” in it, I’m immediately turned off. Normally what that means is not someone who is innately, naturally masculine. It normally means it’s someone who is affecting a straight accent (to varying degrees of success). If you’ve seen the movie “Bros,” the Billy Eichner gay rom com that came out in 2022, you’ll hear this type of feigned gay accent brilliantly acted by Luke McFarlane. I’ve seen him in other things and that’s not really how he talks, but the brilliance of his performance is how put-on his straight accent is. It really goes with the character and his own discomfort with being gay.
I always kind of felt like I was in the dark ages growing up. I think because I grew up with pretty aware parents, I was always surprised at how not evolved the things around me were. And I’m glad that Gen Z kids seem to be a bit more fluid with their gender performance. When I look at what young gay guys wear to go out now, it’s so different than the preppy stuff that was popular with gay guys when I was in my twenties (we wore Lacoste polos with a popped collar).
I think there’s a fear amongst people who love and fetishize the gender binary that if gender roles go away they won’t know what to do or how to act. That a system of order they understand is going away only to be replaced by something amorphous, unknown, and therefore scary. But what’s happening now is not about erasing masculinity and femininity. It’s about allowing people to be as masculine, feminine, or non-binary as they want to be. And it’s a breath of fresh air as far as I’m concerned.
I admire kids now for just giving less of a fuck about the gender binary. I wish I’d been half as smart back when I was in high school in the early 2000s - I might’ve beaten myself up less and not imposed limits on myself. It breaks my heart that we still can’t let kids (or adults) be themselves.
I’m a new subscriber and I love reading you in this format- I came across one of your blog posts in like, 2014 when I had just moved to a new country and was going through a terrible breakup and it resonated with so much of what I was feeling at the time, I’ve never forgotten it. Have followed you in instagram since, but you really shine in longer form.
Yes, but< I feel bad I didn't want you to get that wig!