This, curiously to me, did not seem to be a concern for the lesbian and queer-identified women in the room at all.Īcts like these are apart of the everyday psychological warfare against women and girls that pits them against unrealistic beauty standards and ideals. (Or that their own homophobia, in an aggressive response, would reveal itself.) What also seemed to speak volumes, though not ever articulated verbally, was the sense that many of the heterosexual women had not responded (aggressively or otherwise) out of fear of being perceived as homophobic. Her story invoked rage amongst many other women in the audience, and an obvious silence amongst the gay men present.
I didn’t know how to respond… I was so shocked.” I had barely said hi before he began telling me what was wrong with how I looked, how I needed to lose weight, and how if I wanted to get a man I needed to do certain things… In the midst of this, he grabbed my breasts and pushed them together, to tell me how my breasts should look as opposed to how they did. Then I see this gay guy I knew from class, but not very well. “I was feeling really cute in this outfit I put together. One young woman told a story that stuck with me: Each of them recounted a different story with a similar theme. Almost instantly, several young women raised up their hands to be called upon. However it has been my experience that this dynamic of assault with gay men and women also persists within racial groups.Īt another presentation, I told this same story to the audience. It should also be noted that in this case, she was a black woman and he a white gay male, which makes this an eyebrow-raising dynamic as it invokes the psychological history of white men’s entitlement to black women’s bodies. I have experienced this attitude as being very common amongst gay men. He clearly felt entitled to touch her body and could not even acknowledge the fact that he had assaulted her. We expressed our frustrations to him and demanded he apologize, but he simply refused. When we both confronted him, he told us: “It’s no big deal, I’m gay, I don’t want her– I was just having fun.” Shocked, she pushed him away immediately.
While dancing in the club, a white gay male reached out and grabbed both her breasts aggressively. What’s curious is the minimization of these acts by gay men and many women because the male perpetuating the act is or is perceived to be gay.Īn example: I was at a gay club in Atlanta with a good friend of mine who is a heterosexual black woman. What’s unique about this is not the male sense of ownership to women’s bodies - that is somewhat common.
These attitudes have led many gay men to feel curiously comfortable critiquing and touching women’s bodies at whim.
In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. At a recent presentation, I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent.Īfter a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up.