What is something you think straight people will never be able to understand about gay people?

having no real difference from str8 people. . .

We don't want children. We didn't peak in middle school and have the need to go back there. We don't want to spend our lives being thankless chauffeurs and nannies.

That we love, hate, fear, worry about the same things they do. That most of us work hard for our money and that Gay people want a safe clean world for future generations just like they do. In other words we're people, just like they are

[quote]We don't want children.

The number of gay people adopting and raising children would indicate your perspective is not universal. And there are plenty of straight people who don't want children.

That reading books about gay people doesn't make kids magically turn gay. Or watching movies with gay characters in them. Many older gay people grew up with zero gay movies or books and we still turned out gay

This is a good topic for a thread, btw!

In my experience, most think being gay/homosexual is a choice I made. I have to ask if they chose to be straight. When they say no, I tell them that’s the way it was for me.

^ I always ask for the exact date they chose to be straight

Thankfully, I don't think this is universally true anymore, at least in the West, but the fear that your family will reject you if they know who you really are.

How GRAPHIC and GRIM and GRISLY were the AIDS years in USA. Lack of safety net, lack of medical insurance, lack of human dignity accorded.

I don’t feel overly different to my straight friends now, aged 34. I think they understand me as much as anyone else. I have a mortgage, I’m married, I have a kid. I work 9-5. I guess I feel that sometimes straight people don’t get the struggle it was a teen to realise I was gay. How much I wished I wasn’t, how much it impacted my life aged 14-18. The genuine terror of rejection by my family & friends. That I couldn’t hook up with my crush because they were probably straight. And I was so far in the closet, I didn’t kiss anyone until I was almost 19. It looks pretty easy to realise you are straight & have a straight teenage-hood.

Our sense of humor. Our appreciation of the arts and female artists.

The different life we live, especially as gay men, allowing for much more self-reflection, development, making aspirations come true, etc.

You got that right, Dutchie.

They never have to listen to people on tv debate whether they should be around kids or not. They never have to hear that they're sinning or going to hell because they're straight. They never get to have natural disasters blamed on them. They never have to listen to adults speak about "sick perverted" heteros, and then grow up a bit to realize that they are in fact a sick perverted hetero themselfs. They don't have to worry about people finding out that they're straight, or the physical danger they'd be in if their secret gets out. They don't know what it's like being at the mercy of the majority.

I’m 38 and haven’t felt much different from my straight friends for probably like fifteen years? Every day life for my partner and I doesn’t seem qualitatively different from any of the double-income no-kids straight couples in our circle of friends. Adolescence is where I felt the big gulf.

One thing I will say is don’t think straight people understand is what it’s like to not to have their orientation and love lives incorporated in a completely “naturally, of course!” sort of way everywhere all of the time.

One thing I don’t think gay people understand, or maybe I should say something this gay person doesn’t experience is what it’s like to build a life with someone who continuously baffles you. I’ve never felt like the guys I’ve been with have been from some complete other planet, whereas even the happiest straight couples I know are routinely flummoxed by the man-woman stuff.

The proper way to suck COCK 🍆

The fact that we like to tea ☕️ bag low hangers.

That we lead the charge in fashion, decor and assplay 😜

We worship and despise women, just like they do. But for different reasons.

Straight people may not have the empathy I, as a gay man, have for other people who experience prejudice or worse.

Although, we've come a long way, the level of acceptance of us is only so deep. It's more tolerant than true acceptance.

That I started out life being squeezed through a pussy and that I have zero desire to go back in 😳

r11 types eldergay.

R22 I’m 36

I'm 42!

I'm... I'm... Older and wiser 🙄

The anal sex. Some straight guys will never understand because of all the hygiene involve. They just won't and hence the it's a one way street type jokes.

Our love of dick

I was molested. :-/

That we grow up without social training wheels and have to - each and everyone of us - find our own way to become a member of society.

Sex is not transactional.

R22 so fucking WHAT?! that R11 types Eldergay? Go back to Snapchat if you can't deal with a multi-generational forum, you twat

That we aren't attracted to every single person of the same sex we meet.

I'm not being "so sweet" to you because I want to be your friend and that's just what women automatically do, Straight Woman.

Such a yawn inducing thread.

They will never understand that we're offended when you ask us if we're a "Top" or "Bottom"!

IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!!!

I’ve had straight male “feminist sympathizers” lecture to me about how gay men are just as misogynistic as straight men

Straight people think that all gay people have sex with all other gay people constantly.

They also think all gay sex involves anal penetration, which it so very often does not.

I wouldn't know what straight men really think about us since I'm not straight. But I think they may think being gay is only about sex and not about an affectional orientation, since many of us think that too.

How much we loathe Andy Cohen.

Why do we care what they understand?

[quote] We don't want children.

I think that's always been a gay male thing. I'll bet it approximates straight male desires if straight men were honest about it.

As a kid, when you heard a news story about a priest or teacher molesting boys, you wanted to see if priest/teacher was cute.

That we can fall in LOVE with the same sex.

[quote] Our appreciation of the arts and female artists.

Thanks for promoting stereotypes. We don't all live in your mental ghetto.

I find that lots of straight people, including my own supportive straight friends, always look at gay people from the point-of-view that we are some kind of variation of straight-people. We are straight people that have some switch thrown the wrong way. It's like we're chocolate and they're vanilla, and that chocolate means some kind of substitute making up for the lack of vanilla.

when you hit your 40s, straight people don't bother trying and gay people don't bother wanting them to.

Just because I am gay does not mean I want to go to see a drag performance with you, a straight female. Hell, I don't like drag, period. Not all gay men love drag!

That all of us are not lisping, hissing queens.

That we’re not LGBTQ.

We're the G in LGBTQ. Only overly sensitive conservabot gays have a problem with the term LGBT.

Fuck off R50.

the vicious humor

This exchange made me lol.

R51, sane liberals don't freak out over the term LGBT.

R53, I wonder if that 36 year old has ever posted on DL before? If they did, they would know that 36 is really 63 in gay years.

taking a hit from a fresh bottle of poppers as his dick first enters your ass

That not all gay men are diva worshippers who turn into screaming queens the minute someone like Gaga's voice can be heard.

In the Reddit thread OP cites, there is another post that I think is very accurate - how we have to decide to come out of the closet on a regular basis, e.g., when the Uber driver asks about your wife do you tell him you have a husband or say you're not married, and if you do tell him you have a husband, does that chill what had been a previously friendly conversation.

Those sorts of encounters.

At some level it's no different than deciding whether to tell an Uber driver who is listening to Fox News Radio that you are a liberal Democrat or just saying "I don't really follow politics" because you don't want to get into a debate with him.

But for gay people it's pretty constant. especially if you are not flames from space gay.

I don't think straight people get that part.

A number of points mentioned they've got better at understanding. I might still say a lack of role models if you grew up pre-internet.

R58, one thing I think a lot of straights don't get is how many of us are not 100% out or 100% closeted. You can be out to some people but closeted to others.

Also - the difference between "glass closet" celebs and ones who are 100% closeted

That we don’t care what you think about us. We will have threesomes with our partners or play with others, and we don’t care if you don’t approve.

Gay men are not masculine

That we do n’t want them in our spaces.

That sexual orientation is inherent and interchangeable. It seemed like people were getting it for a while. The fact that so many straight people who pretend to be allies think that the gender identity of others dictates our sexual orientation shows that it never really went away.

If a gay man doesn’t want to have sex with a woman, it doesn’t mean he hasn’t met the right girl. If a gay man doesn’t want to have a biological woman who identifies as a gay man, it doesn’t make them transphobic.

I don’t know how we got back here.

Not interchangeable, it doesn’t change is what I meant.

They don't get what being a minority is like. Oe that you're never allowed to forget it even for a minute. Two, that it's not being singled out for violence all the time, but it is that when someone does attack you for being gay, they and not you will get support from others. Nobody will defend you even if they know that person is liar or a violent crazy.

After reading the Reddit thread, I think the answers are mostly similar/relevant to posters here. It seems the challenges and joys of being gay are pretty universal.

What you think they will never understand or what you wish they could understand. Or both?

Representation is a big sticking point, still.

Like my Dad, who despite being a hillbilly by origin grew up and travelled the world in the more accepting 60s & 70s, yet still resents that ‘the Gays & Lesbos’ have to appear in his media. According to people like him, sexual & racial minorities should be seen but not heard or centred. In his ideal world, can stand off quietly to the side and observe, inert, nothing more.

It just doesn’t occur to these types of bigots to use empathy, and understand that LGB people have to accept an onslaught of Hetero media day in and day out, without complaint. Even if you try to avoid it and surround yourself with gay-centric content, something in the outside world will accost you.

[quote]They don't get what being a minority is like. Oe that you're never allowed to forget it even for a minute. Two, that it's not being singled out for violence all the time, but it is that when someone does attack you for being gay, they and not you will get support from others. Nobody will defend you even if they know that person is liar or a violent crazy.

Welcome to the world of women. Been to many rape or domestic violence trials lately?

In other words, you are describing the impact of toxic masculinity on gay men. It does also impact women, and there are a lot of straight men who come off badly against it too (nerds, for example).

rimming

[quote]But I think they may think being gay is only about sex and not about an affectional orientation, since many of us think that too

Good point, R38. Straight people don't understand it's an identity to us, since they've never had to reflect much on the meaning of being straight in society.

The need and ability to snap your fingers and find sex within a few minutes

"Like my Dad, who despite being a hillbilly by origin grew up and travelled the world in the more accepting 60s & 70s, yet still resents that ‘the Gays & Lesbos’ have to appear in his media. According to people like him, sexual & racial minorities should be seen but not heard or centred. In his ideal world, can stand off quietly to the side and observe, inert, nothing more."

You've misunderstood. Dad is just annoyed at the "This Is the Gay Character And You Have to Support It Or You Are A Homophobe" approach that is pretty common now.

That our marginalization persists even as our visibility grows and we become more assimilated.

If I had a dollar for every time a well-meaning but completely oblivious straight person has told me "We've come so far on our gay rights, we're never going back!", I'd be retired and living on an island where I make all the laws. Many of them simply don't understand that right-ring homophobia isn't merely performative.

Oh, dear-ing the unnecessary 'our' and the botched 'right-wing' that evaded autocorrect.

[quote] our marginalization persists even as our visibility grows and we become more assimilated.

And that much of the time, it’s backhanded, tokenistic or offensive visibility we get, designed to rile and inflame the homophobes (cf.R74).

"I don't care what you do in the privacy of your home as long as you don't hit on me."

Why would I want to? You're not even cute.

The concept of bathhouses

R79, my straight friend was shocked when I told her bathhouses are still a thing. She thought they all closed down after the AIDS epidemic.

Women are not a minority. They are a majority. Big difference.

Clear double standards in how hets talk about sex all the time and it's only considered creepy if the guy is ugly and the girl is cute. Gays can't talk about sex or how handsome anybody is AT ALL without creeping everybody out.

Straight women who form little cliques to bully others at work on the grounds they are victims, reagardless of how it happened that the women left the mgt team, , but have never once complained about the lack of gay representation in management.

Not all of them grasp that we are intent on global takeover. Some of them do, but are laughed off.

Then they disappear.

[quote] Gays can't talk about sex or how handsome anybody is AT ALL without creeping everybody out.

It;s because it's flipping the typical dynamic on its head. Hetero men are so used to being the objectifiers that when this dynamic is reversed, they flip the fuck out. They can't handle it. It's pathetic actually.

They don’t understand bottoming.

And they think we all love the smell of poop. I had 2 straight friends tell me that. They assumed we just “like the smell” since we all “do anal.”

😑

R86, yes, I've heard that one. "Man, I have no problem with gay dudes, but the idea of taking it up the ass is nasty." Then don't imagine it then!

R83 thinks men never engage in bullying! 😄 😆

not R83 here but the way women bully others is way more insidious than the way men do it.

Considering that 99% of gay bashers are men....I'll take the women over the men

R79 In NYC I know of CheckMate where hetero couples go to play. It's in the same building as one of the few remaining bathhouses in New York the Eastside Club on E 56th Street.

Anybody who listens to straight men sneering at anal sex just needs to turn round and say, "Oh really? You've never thought of doing it with a woman?" As the "top", it's extremely high on the list of sex acts straight men want more of than they can get.

What they don't want--or are scared of--is to be physically dominated. They regard the "woman's role" as inferior, even in many cases despicable, and they're just projecting that onto gay men.

That for many of us, the first gay people we ever ‘met’ were our own selves.

I agree R92. Straight men's fear/loathing of any man consenting to anal sex is tied to hatred of women and seeing them as inferior IMO.

One thing I think straight people will never be able to understand is how they can assume everyone they meet is probably straight. They're not always vigilant about possibly finding another straight person while existing in the world. I think most LGBT people do live life like that though.

Open relationships.

R58 This one gets my vote too. I don't think straight people will ever truly understand that coming out is a CONSTANT, never-ending endeavor gay people are forced to navigate. They think we come out one time and that's it, but because we live in a heteronormative society, we must always deal with the mental stress of negotiating when (or if) to come out to people. It's exhausting to always have to assess the pros and cons of being open about such an integral part of your identity, for fear of rejection or concern for safety. And that's just for people who are willing to be open at all. The mental strain is ten fold for people deeply in the closet. I don't think straight people will ever truly understand the lasting trauma this inflicts on us and that we carry all the time.

Circuit parties and similar events. Risky sexual encounters with the possibility of monkeypox, AIDS, herpes and other disfiguring or incurable STIs.

I'm with them on this.

Straight people think that gay men should naturally consider straight men to be off limits. However, like Blanche, we believe a man's a man. They don't understand that.

[quote]In the Reddit thread OP cites, there is another post that I think is very accurate - how we have to decide to come out of the closet on a regular basis, e.g., when the Uber driver asks about your wife do you tell him you have a husband or say you're not married, and if you do tell him you have a husband, does that chill what had been a previously friendly conversation.

What I find incredible is that you are focused on the gay issue and don't think anything about an Uber driver asking about your spouse. That's not a normal question for them to ask. I would deflect the question even if I was straight.

R96 has it. The overthought and self-armouring necessarily starts in teenage and never goes away. One is facing a world which might at best be tolerant, on top of all life's other challenges.

The plus side is that such psychological alertness and preparedness might enhance intellectual development. We see the world in a way the majority does not. Mental muscle, wit and insight not infrequently ensue. The down side is too much mental strain in a hostile world can of course lead to breakdown and worse.

It's obviously becoming by degrees less bad. Pride events multiply by the year, gay marriage is established, ever more public figures come out. Nonetheless the mindset described by R96, which I understand in full, will take a while yet to become a curio of history.

Bump

That random gays, apart from some shared goals, have as little in common with each other as random straights.

They don't understand how badly you were actually treated. I had parents of friends kicking me out of their house and threatening my life if I hung around with their kids. Any sicko could make any complaint against a gay person and NOBODY would defend you. I had a gym teacher brag to me at graduation that he cut my grades so I couldn't be valedictorian. When it came to being accused of sexual condict, all it took was one bigot who thought they had a right never to be exposed to gay people to bring on all the consequences of generalized hate for you as even your "friends" turned their back on you. In their memories they always accepted you, they were the "good guys" but they definitely never stood up for you, never told you what people were saying about you behind your back, or had your back. And they won't apologize ever unless they think you can give them money: again because they don't understand what discrimination did to your earning potential. It never crosses their mind that it matters at all in your career trajectory. Even if they came out later they act like you don't exist, because they'd rather conceptualize you as a bad gay then admit they were cowards and frauds or deal with someone who knew them back in the day.

R103, that is a terrible experience, I'm sorry that hapepned to you. If you don't mind me asking, when did that all occur (as in what decade)?

It' isn't' a terrible experience. It's a normal one. I'd like to say it hasn't been that way for 20 years, but I don't think gay has been as normalized as people pretend.

Watched a Neil Tennant interview last night. At one point he said he thought a great merit of the excellent drama 'It's A Sin' was that more straight people could now understand how very bad the 80s were for gays.

A quietly devastating remark, as though it's taken a mere forty years for the mainstream to catch up.

[quote]Straight people also think all gay sex involves anal penetration, which it so very often does not.

This is one of the most absurd things I've ever read on Datalounge. During my years on Gay.com, Manhunt, Grindr etc, I had dozens upon dozens of gay men act utterly baffled when I told them I wasn't into anal sex. They couldn't even comprehend what I was trying to tell them, as if they couldn't conceive of sex that didn't involve penetration.

Contrast this with the zero straight people who've ever asked me about any detail of my sex life.

That not every gay man was molested as a child,hence why he's gay. If Ive been asked that once,Ive been asked it 1000 times. Then they act like they dont belive you when you deny it,after all,theres got to be SOME reason why you are gay.

Some straight people don’t understand that some of the nastiest homophobes are gay people.

They sort of get it but they don’t really get it. Of course, if they spent a few minutes on this website, they’d see the horrifying self-loathing for themselves.

[quote] isn't' a terrible experience. It's a normal one.

Sounds like it was both. Unfortunately.

R107, I've had 50/50 experiences. Half of gay men seem completely perplexed if you say you don't like anal sex while the other 50% are fine. I told someone that I didn't like anal sex and their response was "lol too bad you don't know how to use it" and then they blocked me.

We can’t have spontaneous sex.

[quote]What is something you think straight people will never be able to understand about gay people?

That being gay is as natural to us as breathing, as is the shame of being gay.

Shame? This is the danger of assimilation, that we get a bunch of gays who are ashamed and would have kept out of our way stuck in loveless abusive marriages in olden times. In the old days it was only straights and closet cases who didn't get why we weren't ashamed to be seen as we are. Now there are even gays who constantly obsess over what people think of them, as though it matters.

Sucking lots and lots of cock.

I’ll never understand “north”

How empty and unfulfilled most gay MEN are. How gay people want the whole system to come crashing down and for white straight men to be blamed. how gay men despise families so much for hurting them and they want them to PAY! How gay men will never move on from the pain when they were young of being ostracized and taunted by the very people they were in love with.

Fucking with strangers in public restrooms.

Wow, R117, do you even have an inkling of what you said? I pity you.

R116 is that still a thing?

I wouldn’t know since I blocked the “north” people

eating ass

R121, but now straight men are getting their asses eaten.

Identically looking and dressing couples.

They everyone in your social circle has, at some point, fucked every other person in your social circle.

R117 probably raped his little brother who hasn't forgiven him or his battle-ax wife. Alea jacta est.

That gay men are incredibly insecure and shallow

[quote] sane liberals don't freak out over the term LGBT.

R54, there's nothing wrong with a gay person letting someone know they are gay and not an acronym. I am part of the LGBT community and I support evrryone in it. But I am not a lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. I respect people's pronouns; there's nothing wrong in saying what I prefer to be referred to as.

Back in the day, it was the 'GLB Community.' We weren't quite ready for T - and everybody knew that Bi was really just Gay, but we humored them with their own letter anyway. Then the lesbians barged in and rearranged it all, putting themselves first, of course.

R128 I am 59 years old and came out in 1980.

I have never heard the term “GLB” until the last few years when a few politically motivated (anti-trans) trolls started using it.

Your phrase “back in the day” really means what’s inside your twisted brain.

R128, has serious hate for gay women ( and straight women too most likely). Ignore this bigot

Why we like the Golden Girls 👧 so much.

FOLLIES!

That every fat person you see is wrapped in a self induced fat suit of closeted, internalized homophobia.

Every single one in America!

Every thin person you meet is thin because of their dormant gay genes.

Every medium size person is also gay and doesn't know it yet.

Straight people think that all gay men participate in anal sex. We don't.

Heteros may think gays wished we were straight. Not true.

The reason why so many gay men are uncomfortable with being associated with trans women. Many gay men grew up being teased (or worse) for being “too girly” and spent their adult lives being traumatized and trying to butch it up. Now they suddenly are finding themselves forcibly being associated with men who want to wear women’s clothes and/or have surgery to transition.

And no, this does not mean that these gay men are “anti-trans” or don’t want trans women to live their best lives. But it’s really not hard to figure out the psychology of why this makes them uncomfortable.

How quickly we can find someone to get off with. If you don't care what he looks like and you have the apps, you could be ball deep or throat full in no time. Without spending money.

The fact that we have sex with our friends and don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

I thought the following was the most complete and moving answer from the reddit thread: "What a gay man went through as a small child, realizing he liked men's bodies a whole lot but had no interest in getting close with girls. How confusing it was growing up in a time when no one talked about gay people much and certainly not around children, such that the little boy had no concept of two men being together, since all cultural messages around him and straight-up explicit statements instructed that boys date girls and that's just how it is and there is no other way. How he figured his attraction to men would just go away someday and that he would start wanting to be with girls that way all other boys seemed to. Eventually. Somehow.

And how scary it was feeling different and excluded from society as he got older and realized that so many of his culture's expectations didn't apply to him at all, yet he had no role model for what his life might be instead. He knew he felt different, but he had no clue what it meant. He felt lost and alone and wondered if he was doing something wrong by not being what people kept saying he was supposed to be. And then, finally, he did start hearing about two guys being with each other instead of with girls, but it was spoken of as the worst thing you could be. It was used as an insult. It made you a freak, a monster, a thing that everyone was glad they weren't.

And he was terrified. He dreaded that someone might find out. It gave him nightmares. He cried himself to sleep many nights. He had no idea how to handle any of it, and he had so many questions. He desperately needed help navigating it, but he knew that under absolutely no circumstances could he tell another person. Because then someone would know. And there would never be any going back. It had to be a complete secret from everyone. Especially the people who loved him. Because maybe it would make them leave him. Maybe they would stop loving him. So he had to lie. He had to pretend. He had to control and hide many things about himself in order to keep from being rejected and hated and lost from the only life he knew.

And that was how he spent his childhood. That's the thing I don't think straight people get. No little kid should have to face figuring something as complex and harrowing as that out, much less entirely alone. Yet that's how it was. That's how it still is. For many, many, many gay men out there. I think too many straight people--even today--don't look at gay men and see all the survival stories, about a scared little boy, lost in his own home."