Do you feel any shame about being gay?

I don't think it's shame as much as, even if straight, I wouldn't talk about my personal life to most people. It feels weirdly intimate to discuss such things to me. Like saying, "Hey, guess who I like to fuck?" to people. I don't want other people randomly telling me about who they are attracted to either. Context would be everything in these situations but I'd rather not hear about anyone's love or sex life. If you are talking about your family, etc., and say husband or wife, gay or straight, in context about something happening in your life, that's fine but leave your love lives out of it otherwise.

Nope. Not once. Not even when I was closeted. I didn't tell people not because of shame, but because I didn't want to deal other people's nonsense.

I am a very flawed person. But one thing I do like about myself? I have always been beyond content being gay.

Defacto thread

I am ashamed to be an inferior femmy chubby bottom faggot. But I embrace the shame. It excites me.

[Quote] Like saying, "Hey, guess who I like to fuck?" to people.

No one thinks that when they ask, “Is this your girlfriend?”

Yet, we think people think that when we introduce a boyfriend/partner

It’s a very thin layer of shame we all still hold. It’s tough to completely wash off the dirt society has thrown at us

I enjoy verbal insults and the frisson of an imminent assault from mascular jacked straight bros. I don’t actually want to be queerbashed though.

I could care less about being gay. I just don't like the negative attention from straight and bi assholes that knowledge of me being gay attracts.

Christ, when are these pointless threads going to fucking stop?

We could live quietly if the right didn’t keep trying to rip our rights away

[Quote] Christ, when are these pointless threads going to fucking stop?

Christ, when are these pointless comments going to fucking stop?

They'll probably stop when bigot OP ODs on its psychopathy medication.

R12, you first

No, but i think age has something to do with it. I'm in my early 40s and after I hit 35 I just stopped giving a shit about other people's opinions. It's actually quite liberating.

It was about 30 years ago. I was standing outside the Strand disco in Rehoboth Beach, waiting for it to open. This was right out on Rehoboth Avenue, the main drag in town

A car sped past and the young men inside screamed out "fags!"

The crowd I was standing with fell silent. That was my instinctive reaction, but, instead, I threw my fist into the air and yelled "yeah!" This was actually no big deal, but it was the sum-total of spending years in the mode of "fags? not me." Then a bunch of others in line joined in yelling yeah!"

That kid I was drew the line for me. He felt no shame and I don't understand why I should ever.

R15, I love that!

R7- I'm glad that new dl word MASCULAR is being put to use.

No, I got over that decades ago. Also ran out of shits to give

No, but the acceptance has taken a battering of late because the trannies have someone hijacked the cause and we find ourselves caught up in their gender hopping nonsense in the wider public view. We should go back to just LGB and let all the other freaks start up their own letter salad organisaions and leave us out of it!

Only that I'm not on "the winning team". That is breeders, for whom the whole world seems to be set-up for. Babies, Jesus, sports and dreary jobs.

OP, you can't expect people to sensibly answer questions like this. The answer is in our subconsciousness and it's been there for decades.

A psychologist might attempt an objective assessment but I wouldn't trust people who think they analyse themselves.

No, OP. I don't begin every sentence with "I'm gay and...", "My husband and I...", or "As a gay man..." but I'll set things right if someone asks if I have a wife or if I'm married and have a family, or plants me in some heterosexual context. It's simple, you just say "I'm gay and Nick over there is my husband, but yes we do like to travel." I treat it as a simple and honest mistake (not a dig) and respond accordingly, easily. There's no reason to feel hurt or insulted or defensive, but I do think gays and lesbians have a role in representing themselves, not just waiting for someone to figure out that I'm gay or use such all inclusive language that no one is ever left out.

The fact is, it's something there's rare occasion that it comes up, no more often than a straight person might clarify whether he is single or coupled. No one is asking if the straight guy's dick is wet with the juice of the woman he is with, no more than the old woman who asks your grandmother if she is married is asking if granny got any dick lately (more likely it's an way of asking if he's still alive.)

It's not so complicated and it's almost never anything to do with the mechanics of sex.

I don't talk about being gay with people who don't ask, but I always tell people if they ask. I'm more self-conscious when people ask me about not being partnered. I'm not young, and while reasonably attractive, I'm no model, but to a straight person over 50, I would appear to be a catch, especially to middle-aged women. It's very hard to explain that being partnered was more of a rarity in gay culture prior to the possibility of gay marriage, and some of us never sought it when we were young and at our most attractive because it seemed "unsupported" by society. Furthermore, beyond the general rarity of gay partners, an agitation to find a mate for a gay man once he is over 50 seems almost like desperation. In my day-to-day existence, I don't think about being unpartnered in any negative way, but I can tell that for many women, being unpartnered seems like a lonely and unfulfilled life. I suppose if I didn't have a number of close gay friends my age, I might feel lonely, but my friends feel like family to me, and provide some of the emotional benefits of a mate. (They are available to talk to, they are willing to go out to a play or a film, that sort of thing).

I'm 1983, the last year that new things entered this house. The sofa and chairs and rug and tables in the good living room? 1983. And the family room, too. All 1983 excepting the a couple of antiques bought when they married in the 1940s. The kitchen table and chairs, the hutch filled with old blue and white china, the kitchen appliances? All 1983. The bedspreads, the bathroom towels (a little thin), the disused Waterpik, the lamps and clocks, the pictures on the wall...all were bought in 1983 or before, and almost nothing replaced since but for a couple of TVs that gave up the ghost (imagine their surprise that there were no TV repairmen to come out to the house and replace a bad tube!). There's an 8-tracl player/radio under the little table by the wall-mounted Princess telephone with the curly cord that feels soft from age and dust; no one has touched it in well more than 30 years, but there's a basket of 8-track tapes out on the sun porch.

1983 is the terminus point of growth and change, of caring about whether the furniture is what people have today, of listening to music or radio, Whisk away those couple televisions and a framed collage of the grandchildren (now in their 40s) and the pill bottles and organizers and most (but not all) of the packaged foods in the cupboards and there's nothing post-1983, the year they stopped caring about anything but "did I already take the yellow pill, no the big yellow pill?"

Shame? Never, not even a little. Do left-handed people feel shame? Do brown-eyed people over blue feel shame? Do people of color feel shame? Do non-Christians feel shame? The only people who should feel shame are the ones who try to oppress those of us who were born "different" than the stereo-typical blonde/blue/Aryan/Christian/ straight male standard that was set eons ago by I don't know who, the British perhaps?

I know how I was born with all my pluses and minuses and did the best with the hand I was dealt. Do the best with what you've got. The only "shame" anyone should ever feel is thinking that their genetic make-up is somehow inherently better than someone else's or their bad behavior is excused because of who they think they are

Only to the extent that I’m forcibly categorized with trannies and “nonbinary people who menstruate.”

The anal sex aspect does.

No, none. And never did.

I always knew it was right for me, and I wasn't hurting anyone else.

You can always be a side, R27.

R29 The guy at R27 should, when he is presenting himself as gay to someone, add that he is a side. Like, no I don't have a wife, I am gay, Luke over there is my boyfriend and we are sides. Well, as long as some old lady wouldn' t ask: what is a side, you mean cocksucker?

All joking aside...

^ A side, you know, when you lay on your side and someone surprise anals you? 😉

I guess a side is someone who doesn't feel the need to excuse every sex act because it's supposed to be required to be officially GAY.

I used to hate it when gays would constantly say “My husband and I.” Now I realize saying that a lot helps normalize it to people.

I guess my original feelings on it were a bit of shame.

Two husbands is comical, you have to admit. But I guess identifying one guy as the wife would defeat the purpose of gay marriages.

R35, thanks, Vlad

Not everyone respects the institution of marriage, bud.

Probably because you’ve already started on your vodka binge

@r37, Gay marriage was NOT about emulating heterolosers, it was about accessing the same rights, benefits and privileges afforded by the Federal Government to married people. It was about the illegal discrimination that partnered people suffered who weren't male/female. Do you get it now, bud?

Then why call each other husband? Just get the legal rights without telling anyone. Or are the wedding parties supposed to be agit-prop?

I think it's more about greedy vain men (of any sexual orientation) being unable to pass by any monetary advantage handed out by the dominant society, regardless of how repugnant that society really is.

@r40, What term would YOU feel more comfortable hearing, cupcake? Because God knows we don't want you feeling weird and stuff around married men 🙄

I would volunteer to be the wife. Everything shouldn't be so unrepentantly masc.

^ Ok, Trudy, you can be the little housewife... Now, run along and make me a sandwich 😉

That's what I do, but no man will chain me down!

^ 😂 Well, stop chasing them with chains, you're scaring them 😳

From a female perspective—more secondhand shame by association. I’m not at all ashamed to lust other women, but sadly the Trans, bluehairs and the LUGs and various embarrassing pandering iterations of TV lesbians have made the general straight public roll their eyes at w/w.

The times I’ve been stunned into horrified silence while a relative or colleague rants about ‘oversaturation’ and how there’s a ‘lesbian agenda’, ‘everyone’s gay now, it’s meaningless’, ‘queers are so annoying with their pronouns’,and ‘women are selfish, they just want their cake and eat it too’. Yeah, um, the sapphics of the world actually didn’t all have a big meeting and a game plan about how best to frustrate and impede the Heteros (though now I hear myself say it...). And also, most true lesbians can’t stand the T ideology, and oppose it vehemently...but go off..

It just seems revealing that you’re a female interested in females these days gets so much negative reactionary attention. I don’t want to ranted at by a Petersonian incel, or hit on by a hideous MTF, or treated as if I’m radioactive by a straight woman. So I just don’t tell anyone.

[Quote] Then why call each other husband? Just get the legal rights without telling anyone

You can’t.

1000 rights are linked specifically to marriage, particularly financial rights..

THAT’s what marriage equity is all about. If we pay taxes, we should have access to the same rights

It doesn’t come up very often, and the language is sort of “coded”. Some friends are slightly protective of me, and when someone asks if I have kids, a friend may say “he doesn’t have kids but he does have family”. I appreciate that. Many guys (and gals) who have big and/orpublic jobs like mine do have kids and wives, but I see less emphasis on that right now. Maybe people are getting wiser. I do see some LinkedInl posts by Dads sharing fatherly wisdom, and it’s a little cringe-y. Sometimes people respond with “save that stuff for Facebook”.

If a livery driver or handyman sees me in a suit and looking generally prosperous, they sometimes will ask me “how come you don’t have kids and I wife?”. I might smile and simply say, “yeah...well, I forgot”. I learned earlier in life that the question is sometimes meant to say “you would be a good husband or Dad”. I can appreciate that sentiment. But I am happy the way I am. Feel lucky, actually.

[Quote] And also, most true lesbians can’t stand the T ideology, and oppose it vehemently...but go off..

Sure, Czarina

This thread is unhinged: "Granny, got dick?". I love it.

Poor little R50 with his little obsession that causes him to ignore all the other words in a very non-trollish post. Most lesbians are against this fucking transtapo nonsense but we try to be polite. That will be our downfall. We need some loud-mouthed, rich gay men to start helping us take down this T-idiocy. They won't come after you as vehemently or violently.

Marry me R47!!

It is negative attention and no matter what anyone says, people look at you and treat you differently.

My office full of nosy busybodies and I know they talk about me being a lesbian but I never say anything and kind of play along to keep them guessing, but it's really none of their damn business.

I have shame. Certainly not as much as I once did, but my childhood peers did a pretty good job damaging me during my formulative years. I have many mental issues (anxiety/depression/neuroticism/mood disorder) and I often wonder how many of those stem from growing up with this homo affliction which I never wanted. Sometimes I'm amazed that so many things could go "wrong" with one person! I see so many examples of normal, well-adjusted gay men out there...I'm just not one of them. Better luck in my next lifetime, huh!?

Most FTMs do, imo.

They are too cowardly to face that they're lesbian or bi women, in a world that hates women.

R54 No, friend. You must push back against the shame and the conditioning. The first thing would be to actually come to terms with being gay. It's not an "affliction," FFS. Life is long enough to get some counseling and explore yourself and find a better quality of life. Find a therapist who can help you weed out and purge the false beliefs that keep you in a self-loathing headspace. Surround yourself with good friends. Kick abusers to the curb, even if they are your family. Don't you want to be free? You still have time. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and do the work.

I only feel shame when I fail myself, and do bad things. Being gay isn't bad. Any feelings of discomfiture ended back in the '80s one afternoon in a train station, when my lover impulsively grabbed me and kissed me goodbye, full on the mouth before leaving. People stared, and I felt proud.

I think it's ridiculous the way people to this DAY, still reflexively equate being gay with being promiscuous or amoral.

Growing up in Flyoverstan the 80s, the most boozy, promiscuous whores were the douchbag jocks and the cheerleaders. HANDS DOWN. The frat bros and the sorority sluts. THEY were the ones who were getting DUIs constantly. THEY were the ones getting rushed to the ER on weekends to get their stomachs pumped from doing too many jello shots and beer bongs. THEY were the ones who were constantly date-raping/getting date-raped. And THEY were the ones having unprotected sex resulting in unplanned pregnancies and secret abortions. (Not that abortions are wrong, but the hypocrisy that most of these girls were out of control Friday and Saturday nights and then went to church on Sundays, always filled me with disgust).

No shame here, I just fuck my brains out with no apologies. You have to live your life freely, people need to mind their own business. Freedom or Death. :-)

I am sure it's better now (hoping it is?), but very few of my gay friends had truly supportive families. Many of us religious upbringings, and we carried varying degrees of trauma around that. But honestly, I don't recall much "shame" per se. Just a ton of frustration, invalidation, and so much hurt.

R27 You wouldn’t be ashamed if you cleaned out first.