(Picture: Dave Anderson for Metro.co.uk)

A week ago, while walking home after work, I passed a bus station opposite my house and someone called me over.

It was a person I hadn’t seen in 15 years – I was surprised that she even recognised me – and we got chitchatting. She has two kids now and a husband. I mentioned that I got married the year before, and so she asked about my wife.

Thing is, my wife is actually a husband.

I tried not to sound too put out by this confusion – it happens a lot and I’m used to it. When I corrected, her she looked startled. Not horrified, not disgusted, but definitely surprised.




‘Oh wow, I would never have…’

She gathered her thoughts then looked at me sideways, as if reading me.

Then, as if she was complimenting me on the success of a new gym regime or a job promotion, she said matter of factly, ‘Well, you don’t seem gay to me!’

My response was not very well thought out, I think I stuttered something like, ‘Well, yes I am actually quite gay!’

Things got quiet. We did the little awkward shuffle and the checking-your-watch dance that you do when you both want to leave a conversation. Then we went our separate ways.

That interaction may seem harmless, a bit clumsy, but not actually hurtful.

But it was.

I thought about it all the way home; I thought about it all that evening and then I was sat mulling over it the whole of the next morning.

It wasn’t just hurtful, the whole conversation made me feel bad. Bad in a deep down way that transformed me into an anxious 14-year-old all over again.

The main reason was that when this random person said ‘you don’t seem gay’, I felt a funny kind of pride. There was a moment where I knew I was being given a compliment so I had an automatic glow of satisfaction. It was subconscious and hardwired.

Then another voice spoke up and said, ‘wait, why are you proud of that?’

I have spent the majority of my life as an out gay man, and the idea that, even momentarily, I felt flattered that someone could confuse me for heterosexual filled me with self-revulsion.

It was painful to discover that somewhere inside myself was a buried sense of shame.

While I appreciate the pain caused is not intentional, we still live in a society that thinks we are abnormal. Hearing this sort of comment from friends, family or a stranger just goes to prove this.

After guilt there came a third emotion: anger. A burst of it, aimed at myself and society. Why does this still hurt, and why am I still looking to be validated as a ‘real man’ by someone I hardly know?

I left with a lot more emotions than I bargained for when I stopped to chat at the bus stop.

So I did what every self-righteous, millennial keyboard warrior does and took to Twitter. I put my feelings into a chain of messages which began:



‘One of the most hateful things you can do to a gay man is try to flatter him by implying that he doesn’t seem gay. Saying that he could “pass” for straight or that he’s not “camp” or “girly” are equally cruel.’

Over the following few days, my phone kind of blew up. Gay men and queer identifying people seemed to really identify with what I was sharing. They shared their own similar experiences, how well-meaning friends, family and colleagues had said the same kind of thing.

Around the world, gay men felt the same as I did and wanted the world to know that this isn’t an OK thing to say.

Before I am labelled an oversensitive snowflake, let me try and share the summary of a number of the experiences of the gay men who responded online.

For most people who have been told they ‘seem straight,’ this ‘compliment’ was hurtful and brought up a lot of conflicting emotions.

When you spend your whole life fighting just to be you, it is incredibly painful to be told that you could happily pass as ‘normal’. It’s almost as if being gay is a terminal illness but, lucky for you, the symptoms aren’t showing yet.

While I appreciate the pain caused is not intentional, we still live in a society that thinks we are abnormal. Hearing this sort of comment from friends, family or a stranger just goes to prove this.

This experience is hard to explain, but the closest example is that it is like being reminded that you could be part of ‘the club’, but to enter the clubhouse you would have to sacrifice your own identity.


All in all, it’s a reminder to me that while I am lucky to be a gay man in a country that condones my marriage and sees me legally as an equal citizen, there are still barriers and walls to inclusion.

Those who bemoan marginalised people, thinking we are attention seeking or self-pitying, don’t see that there is so much more to equality than law.

We still live in a society that sees white, straight, pretty and young (among many other traits) as the things to aspire to. This means many well-meaning folk think it is OK to try and flatter me by telling me ‘I seem straight’.

Well, let me answer the way I wish I had at the bus stop:

I know you think this is a kind thing to say, but it hurts. It reminds me of the battle I am fighting inside with myself and with society – a battle I am so used to fighting sometimes I don’t even notice it raging.

That is until someone sweet, kind and well-meaning tells me how that part of myself, which I have fought hard for, is actually worth less than pretending to be ‘normal’.

When you say that I don’t seem gay, my reply is that I am gay. Very, very gay.

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