Does Everyone Think You're Gay?
For some guys, no amount of evidence to the contrary can kill a certain rumor.
-By Mike Albo
-Photographs by Paul Graves
My friend Gary is prime dating material. He's smart, he's athletic, and he has a high-paying job in engineering. On a recent night Gary and I were at my neighborhood wine bar and I introduced him to a sexy, single female friend of mine. Everything was going great: They were laughing at each other's wisecracks and generally hitting it off. We got another round of Rioja. Then Gary (not his real name) got up to go to the bathroom.
"Gary's great, right?" I asked my friend.
"Yeah! So cute! Why aren't you dating him?"
"Oh, no, no, no. Gary's straight," I said.
"Uh, no, he isn't," she said.
"Yes, he is."
"No, he isn't!"
After that night, no matter how hard I tried to convince her that Gary was as straight as an Arizona highway, she refused to believe it. It wasn't the first time this had happened. In fact, almost every time I introduce Gary to a woman—or a man, for that matter—I'm asked if he's gay. "I wore these new Alain Mikli glasses to work, and it was as if I had worn a dress," Gary told me once, explaining the effect he has on his peers. "All the guys kept saying with lisps, 'Oooh, look at your fanthy glatheth!'"
Gary's what I like to call a "stray," a straight guy who sends out gay signals like he's shaking a tambourine even as he proclaims himself—and in fact is—100 percent heterosexual. The characteristics that define a stray as such vary widely. Maybe it's a melodious laugh. Or a fastidious shirt-and-tie combo. Or an effusive signature salutation ("Oh my god! I'm totally psyched to see you!"). But more often the thing about a heterosexual guy that makes everyone assume he's a homo is almost impossible to pinpoint. He may talk up his love of ladies more than Bret Michaels does, he may have a wife and kids, but people always react the same way: "Really? No, wait—really?"
This phenomenon shouldn't be confused with that of actual gay men who masquerade as straight. And we're not talking about the metrosexual, that embodiment of a played-out consumer megatrend that involved slim-cut pants and moisturizer. Every guy in America knows how to clip his nose hairs and make his outfit go from day to night. Those skills aren't what make a heterosexual man read gay. So what does?
Science has tried to figure this out. Researchers have studied behavioral traits like "hip sway" and "voice quality" and even physical traits like hair-whorl patterns and finger-length ratios. Richard Lippa, a professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of Gender, Nature, and Nurture, says that no one trait can be used to determine someone's sexuality. But, he says, "I think the one thing we can conclude from the existing research is that both scientists and laypeople can judge people's sexual orientation at better-than-chance levels based on behavioral traits."
That's not what the perpetually mistaken-for-gay man wants to hear. He wants the word spread that people are often wrong when they play Guess the Orientation. He wants his having a girlfriend or being married with kids to be a sufficient indicator that he doesn't like to sleep with men. But you can't stop the gay rumor once it starts. Strays are often tagged and classified in the workplace, where, out of curiosity and sheer boredom, colleagues pick each other apart with forensic specificity, zooming in on the wedding-ring-wearing guy in sales who likes his limbs tanning-booth bronzed, or the highlighted assistant who claims to be hot for Scarlett Johansson.
Alex (not his real name), a website editor in San Francisco, has watched one of his bosses groom himself into stray territory. "He mixes protein shakes, has lost 150 pounds, wears Kenneth Cole, and is a member of Equinox," Alex says. "He has lots of female friends, and he talks about being attracted to them—but the women think of him as a friend."
Alex's boss is blissfully unaware of his terminal strayness. Nate (not his real name), a film editor in New York who is often assumed to be gay, isn't so clueless. He is unfailingly well-dressed, polite, and soft-spoken. When he was single, his best friend since college, Chris, who is gay, always made a point of meeting him for drinks at hetero bars, where he tried to act as Nate's wingman. "He was never getting action," Chris says. "He is painfully shy around women." The technique almost backfired. "I brought him to a super-straight party once so he could meet girls," Chris recalls, "and everyone at the party thought he was my boyfriend." Nate is now engaged to a woman he met at the party, but the big joke between Chris and Nate's fiancée is that she asked him that night if Nate was gay.
Sometimes the stray syndrome results in more than inside jokes. Allen (not his real name) is married with two kids now. But back when he was in college, at the height of the early-nineties club era, he used to go out in velvet bell-bottoms and seventies shirts. One night he was gay-bashed outside a bar and had two ribs broken. According to a 2006 statistic from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, approximately 10 percent of reported victims of anti-gay violence are actually heterosexual.
But for the most part, strays are just dogged by speculation—sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant—about their sexual preference. Their identity, and by extension their integrity, is regularly called into question. It wasn't always this way. David Coad, the author of The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport, says society's compulsive need to determine sexual orientation is a recent development. "Sexual categorization was thought up in the second half of the 19th century by German doctors," he says. "They were looking for names to give to pathologies."
So why is it that all of us—the gay, the straight, the bigoted ignoramus—are hung up on cracking the code of any straight man who doesn't look like a beer-chugging NFL fan? Maybe it's because everyone is conditioned to feel threatened by any type of sexuality that can't immediately be categorized. But that supposedly fine-tuned gaydar might as well be a rusty instrument from an earlier century. Because if wearing a scarf around your neck or crossing your legs like a woman were an unmistakable homo signal, then the entire male population of Europe would be out by now. Of course, that's of small comfort to the average stray. "This is the way I am, I guess," says Gary, whom my female friend still doesn't believe is straight. "But I need to meet girls."
Check out these top stories from Details:
ARE YOU IN A BROMANCE? (OR IS IT JUST A MAN CRUSH?)
You gush about how your buddy's funny, smart, and in really good shape. Congratulations, you have a man crush.
THE NEW GAY PROMISED LAND
Unable to come out at home, many rich young foreigners opt for exile in America.
THE GAY BABY BOOM
Using adoption or surrogacy, more homosexual men than ever before are becoming fathers. It's not a novelty—it's a movement. Look for it at a playground near you.
RSS FEEDS & PODCASTS
web sites:
Dear Mr. Albo;
I found the article to be interesting in the personal stories, and yet something is missing--what is the point you want to make? Are you suggesting that "strays" are less likely to have relationships or be discriminated against at work? The latter might be more of a good point about gender expectations and legal standards. Otherwise, your best point was at the end--which might have been better at the beginning--the threat of the "other" sexuality. I think what is missing is another analysis, why there is a homosexual prejudice aside from religious reasoning. Why is "gay" an insult? Why does the stereotype of gay men as weak, ineffectual and less than male still exist? If people could get over themselves and recognize that the stereotype is as due for death and burial as blackface, there would be no need to be concerned over being perceived as gay. The problem is the value judgment gay=weak or gay=female and female=bad. Either way, that meme needs to be addressed. By the way, the article mentions celebrities who have "dealt" with being thought of as gay, yet is missing Keanu Reeves' response. Reeves has long thought to be gay and subject of various urban legends. In print, I believe in Vanity Fair or a similar magazine, he stated he refused to answer the question in the negative because that would have the implication that being gay is a bad thing. His response completely, totally overshadows any of the other responses that are in the side article, and I think is remiss not to include it.
arfiano
Jun 2, 2008 12:21:50 PM
I had to add, what also was the point of the statistics in gay-bashing individuals who were not gay? Are you against it? For it?
Without clarifications of your intention in writing the article as a whole, the point of mentioning such thing as gay-bashing seems to be: men who are mistaken for being gay, you better change your behavior and comport with social acceptance. Only real gays should get the crap beat out of them. Is that really the message you want to send with this article? It goes hand in hand with the article on what behavior is acceptable for women in the same article, at least for "hot" women.
arfiano
Jun 2, 2008 12:40:27 PM
the point of this article is that there exists a group of guys struggling to meet girls because they are believed to be gay. quit reaching for what isn't written.
mbc002
Jun 4, 2008 7:21:44 PM
I have been perceived as gay since I remember. It f--king sucks when you are in your twenties; but I kind of like it now in late thirties. I feel like people are still paying attention. It's actually really funny because every person I have met in my life has brought up the issue to me in one way or another so now when I met new people I kinda relax, wait, and see how they are going to break it to me. I helps me learn a lot about that person.
ferferferfer
Jun 8, 2008 11:32:50 PM
Paul Graves's rock'em-sock'em images in this month's print mag got me to read this sociosexual ditty by Albo, a longtime favorite wit. Whip out your bananas, boys, and let's all guess and gossip!
Congrats on combining these twin powers in this piece. I can imagine Graves's ever-ready-made illustrations sparking the reader of Albo's more literary work, such as his grungy, hysterical masterpiece Hornito: My Lie Life.
This article reminded me of a recent fun take on celebrity "gayface" in a recent issue of Radar. I pray the publishing world will take the world to a more progressive place by covering our current blurring of stereotypes and science's obsessive categorizing of the arbitrary. Though I know one Ivy Leaguer working on a PhD about facial shape and its relation to homosexuality, I just don't see the point. Using such a "method" boomerangs us back to the 19th century. We are all more than the sum of our parts. We just are.
johnr
Jun 10, 2008 2:04:09 PM
I just read the gay article and I find it amusing.Being a blackman first then gay I wonder how you come to your conclusions.The list of things on pages 164,165 is funny,I don't know not one 'blackgay "male whose favorite piece of jewelry is a 'cockring'and who is "Matt and Ben"?.But I do love the term'Stray",I know plenty of stray guys and people think they are gay.or the term "US" "under suspcious",its quite funny at times even I am taken aback buy these guys in many cases that I have known they usually come out years later.I think you should change the ride catagory of the stray to the 'mini cooper'I know alot of gay guys including myself have own or drive VW"s,I had three of them and they weren't 'cabriolet's either,but that is the choice car for some gaymen in the 80's and 90's. I would never wear a fedora,I eat dannon yogurt I love relaxed fit and boot cut jeans. I never wear a hat either I have hair.I could go on thanks for the laugh,,cause it is very clear that a 'white guy wrote that article..Peace brutha.
blaquehawk
Jun 10, 2008 6:47:53 PM
Another lousy/homophobic potshot from Details. Too bad that those seeing on this "article" line can't see that classy first page with the vertical full "GAY" and where it's trying to go. Are you kidding us with this song and dance about poor straight guys who can't get laid before they sugger from the horrible perception of posibly beign gay. Maybe next time you'll have one about the horrors of being a gay man always mistaken for straight and assuming that the object is his affection maybe be straight too.
I am also curious about the sexual orientation of the writer as his chick friend with th flawed gaydar, suggested that she date his buddy "Gary." if she felt that strongly about Gary, maybe she thinks/knows that Paul Graves is gay. Care to kill a certain rumor buddy?
BillM
Jun 20, 2008 11:52:03 PM
I think many of you are missing the point. I have dealt with this for years. Trust me-- psychologically it's devastating. This has nothing to do with prejudices against gays. If you're gay, you should be proud of that. But for straight males, our sense of identity is rooted in our masculinity. And when people assume you're gay (especially women), it shatters that for you. For a lot of us, it's caused serious self-confidence issues.
Not to mention, it can make it very difficult to meet women. You're constantly worried that they think you're either gay or feminine.
Reading this article at least let me know that other people out there are dealing with this.
rob987
Jul 7, 2008 4:00:05 PM
Having been painfully shy around women myself for my whole life, I've dealt with this situation to. You think it's bad coming from strangers? Your friends? Try your family, cracking jokes asking why you aren't bringing your "boyfriend" over for holiday dinners. It's not fun.
Ironically enough, I met a girl last year who I dated for about 9 months. Athletic, lacrosse player, foul-mouthed and beautiful. She told me that many of her friends thought she was a lesbian because of certain behaviors. I was instantly relieved, and got to make her feel better by telling about the time one of my friends stunned me by actually asking if he could suck me off. The offer was flattering, but it just wasn't me, so it was completely useless.
mredder4
Aug 21, 2008 8:02:12 PM