Straight Men Make Me Uncomfortable

I really don’t know how to start this blog post other than by just coming out and saying it… straight men make me uncomfortable. It doesn’t come from being attracted to every single straight man I see or because I’ve lost the battle to understand my own masculinity. It comes from a long string of traumatizing events involving straight men, my sexuality, and the way I express myself. It had always been my experience growing up that I had to be careful just how Gay, I allowed myself to be around certain groups of people. Most of them being straight men. I remember too many times where I’d been hanging out with one of my girlfriends and some guys would show up, they were always turned off by my prescience. They only wanted to hang out with my female friends alone, and even in nonromantic settings. It was always “Why’d you bring him?” or “Lets hang out another time.”. This pattern would continue to show up in many other situations in my life to a point where I began to question my own value in life. For example, even after I’d gotten much older there was a time where I’d gone out for drinks after work. After only being in line at the bar for thirty very short seconds the guy in front of me unprovoked says he had to leave because he didn’t “F**** with fa***s”. Not because I had done something to make him uncomfortable but because I was simply being Gay at the same bar as him. What did me standing in line behind him have to do with what was being poured into his drink? Why was he paying more attention to me than I was him? All I wanted to do was to grab a drink. I don’t like to admit but its experiences like these that have formed my biases towards straight men. Too many negative experiences paired with a lack of positive ones to counteract them.  Not to mention that my own Dad wasn’t always accepting of the fact that I was Gay either. He never verbalized his disdain for who I was, but I could always tell by the way he treated me in certain situations. The smallest of interactions that always reminded me of where I stood with him.

 It got to a point where I wasn’t just made uncomfortable by straight men. In fact, I became scared of them all together. Every time I looked up there were more stories of abuse Gay men faced at the hands of straight men. It was all very traumatizing for me. Even as I got older and began to have actual guy friends that weren’t Gay, I still felt awkward around them. Too scared that I’m going to say the wrong thing or that my words would be taken out of context and mistaken for flirting. To this day I’m very careful with what I say to them and how I say it because I would never want to make them feel uncomfortable. Them choosing to be friends with me despite what others may think is the ultimate testament of how secure they are within their own sexualities and the level of friendship that we share. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve had to defend us both because someone thought it would be funny to ask us why we hang out all the time or to assume they were Gay just for being friends with me. Besides, the men questioning our sexuality never come back straight. It’s always some time before either the girls or the gays figure it out and it becomes public knowledge. But anyways, I didn’t make this blog post to send shots *AHEM*. I wrote it to say that if you have a gay friend who is kind of reserved when they’re around you, struggles with eye contact, or always seems generally uncomfortable it’s probably because you make him nervous. It could be because like me, he simply isn’t used to straight men being nice to him. He could still be adjusting to having masculine presenting relationships after years of only being accepted by women and other gay men. Take it easy on him and be nice real straight men don’t care.

Until next time

 Your Favorite Hot Mess,

XoXo