Do gay men REALLY ‘sexually assault’ women?

If you are a member of the LGBTQIA community and/or a feminist on the internet, you have undoubtedly heard a bit of talk about ‘gay male misogyny.’ Many feminists express on social media that they believe gay men to be even MORE misogynistic than straight men. Many gay men claim to completely agree that this is the huge problem that feminists make it out to be, and do everything they can to ‘virtue signal’ to the rest of their social network about why it should stop (trying to indicate that they clearly aren’t part of this problem).

But is this REALLY as bad as they make it sound, and are the examples they use to prove it completely accurate?

This conversation was widely kicked off by a Jezebel article at the beginning of 2014 titled ‘The Myth of the Fag Hag and Dirty Secrets of the Gay Male Subculture’, which was a rambling, redundant, grim and one sided account of the gay male author’s experiences with his female friends mixing in the community. In brief, he made gay culture sound like a barren wasteland of woman hating, in which any female who enters will not just be somewhat unwelcome, but subjected to a torrent of insults about their appearance, and even unwanted physical touching from gay men. Often times when discussing this subject, references to dated media like Will And Grace, or Queer as Folk are given, as if television from over a decade ago is a good barometer for the misogynistic levels of the gay community.

Now, I have never once heard a gay man deny that there are aspects of misogyny within the gay community and within gay men. There is definitely a certain ‘group mentality’ that happens when people are hanging out entirely with people who are just like them. When gay men hang out primarily with other gay men at gay bars and other such functions, it is easy to express animosity towards women, because there aren’t any women around to take it personally or defend themselves. Sometimes under these conditions, the spite towards women likely grows; gay men begin to get annoyed by the drunk straight women that come into gay bars, for example, and begin to forget that all women aren’t that way. But do these guys ACTUALLY hate women? Very unlikely; I’m sure most of them have wedding pictures with female friends from high school or college that they are still close with, if you were to look at their facebook profile.

Still, there are a few gay men out there who are sincere, full blown misogynists… though in my opinion, this is extremely, mind-blowingly rare. I once met a guy who had been married to a woman for at least ten years, who was tormented emotionally by her, because she always suspected he was gay during their relationship. By the time he was done with that, he seemed to thoroughly hate women. I can imagine there are also other gay men with ‘mommy issues’, or something, who always primarily had friendships with other men their entire lives, and never learned to trust or get along with women. Still, I think those people are probably fairly exceptional, from my experience, as almost every gay man I know primarily had female friends during school, and usually maintain several in adult life. Perhaps gay male misogyny is on the rise; media figures like Milo Yiannopoulos could definitely bring it out in somebody who already had latent misogyny towards women. I’m not sure, but I think real cases of ‘woman hating’ from gay men are rather uncommon, from my vantage point.

Lesbians, on the other hand… well, I am not one, so I won’t get into the reasons why they might have animosity towards men. Suffice it to say, the stereotype of the ‘man hating dyke’ didn’t come from nowhere, and anybody who is LGBTQIA, a feminist, or has ever even met numerous lesbians can attest that the phenomenon is not uncommon.

Regardless, none of the legitimate hatred from either gay men or lesbians tends to be what is discussed by these feminist authors when they describe ‘gay male misogyny’. The authors who complain about the supposed “rampant misogyny” within the gay community give very different examples than I did.

Like many pieces of the current ‘4th wave intersectional feminist’ narrative, the complaints that the bloggers bring up basically boil down to a bunch of ‘micro aggressions.’ Feminists point to the fact that gay guys say the words ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt.’ They complain about ‘femme shaming’ and the fact that most gay men are attracted to masculine men (as if females have a right to police the dating preferences of gay men). They also complain that they get unsolicited advice about their appearances.

All of these things are rather debatable in severity of offense, and in my opinion fairly trivial. I could go on to explain why each of these details are not worth the effort of really caring about, as I simply don’t think people will ever stop doing those things, no matter how many blog posts come out against them. However, there’s one bigger complaint from feminists, and it has been coming up more and more… to the point where I have to start questioning it.

The idea that gay men “touch women’s body’s without consent” has morphed from what sounds like an occasional annoyance, into what many women are describing as full blown ‘sexual assault’ and even actual ‘rape.’ From what I have seen on social media in comments sections below articles from feminists who are criticizing gay men, it would look like these things happen practically all the time, and that they are extremely traumatizing for the women (usually feminists no older than 23). Practically every female commentator claims to have been ‘sexually assaulted’ by a gay man, though almost none of them give any details.

At this point, I have to take a step back and wonder…

“Really?

How bad was it REALLY?

Are they sure the guy wasn’t straight, or ‘bi’, and happened to go into a gay bar?

What do these people define as ‘sexual assault’?”

I know now is where I will be branded a ‘victim blamer’ and a ‘rape apologist.’ Sorry, but that’s not what I referring to. Of course, I am by no means saying that any form of legitimate sexual assault or rape is acceptable. Forced penetration is an absolute no-no, regardless of whether somebody gets off on it, and nobody should be seriously ‘groped’ if there is no indication that they might enjoy it.

But should gay men touching women (or the reverse), presumably at gay bars, be considered an actual ‘crime’? Here’s where I have to question things. What really happened to these women, and what exactly was going on BEFORE it happened? Allow yourself to question these ‘victims’ a bit with me; it won’t make you a ‘rape apologist.’

The common complaint is that gay men start touching women’s boobs and say “It doesn’t matter that I am groping you because I am gay.” The posts on the internet act like this happens constantly, but truthfully, I can’t remember the last time I saw such a scenario unfold. It was probably in college, 15 years ago, between two people who were friends. I personally don’t remember ever doing this to women, because I don’t like touching breasts.

Regardless, while I know this type of behavior does happen, it was not nearly so cut and dry in every instance that I can remember. It was never that a gay guy just went up to some girl he hadn’t even introduced himself to at a party, grabbed her boobs, and when she told him to stop, he just said “I can do this because I am gay!” and proceeded to keep doing it, while she had to fight him off. Again, I am not saying this has never happened, but not in my experience of being out of the closet for 20 years have I witnessed it or even heard about it soon after it happened.

Every time I remember touching like this, it was mutual. Usually it was some drunk girl that entered into the social interaction with the intention of flirting with a gay guy. Often, she sits on a guy’s lap, or grabs his arm to compliment his muscles. I can’t remember the last time I saw a legitimately gay man begin touching a woman out of nowhere, but I cannot even count all of the times women have touched me in a clearly sexual manner at gay bars, or even athouse parties… and truthfully, it very often annoyed me.

But would I call it ‘sexual assault’? Absolutely not. I would call it a drunk girl at a party who will likely not be invited back until she learns how to interact with gay guys more appropriately.

When I read a paragraph long testimonial from a seemingly college aged girl below a video posted by the feminist blogger Kat Blaque, who claims that she has been ‘sexually assaulted by gay men numerous times,’ my immediate reaction is to be extremely skeptical. Part of me wants to either not believe them at all, or at least to assume that the female is drastically exaggerating what happened.

I want to ask them: Were you already invading the guy’s personal space at a gay bar (a place he went to socialize with other men)? Were you drunkenly dancing like a stripper and a gay guy slapped your ass as a joke, or something similar? Were you legitimately bothered by it at the time?

I can’t help to think that usually, the answers would be ‘yes, yes, and no.’ I can’t help but to assume that often, the woman initiated flirting or even full on sexual contact with a gay man (something the woman might actually enjoy, while the gay guy does not get pleasure from it). I can’t help but feel that the woman probably enjoyed her evening with the gay men, even if the ass slap wasn’t exactly a ‘thrill’ (unless it was; I have seen numerous women ask to be spanked by gay men). I can’t help but to imagine that most of these interactions were just good drunken fun between people who were comfortable around each other, due to the fact that there was no risk of having it escalate to a severely violating level, so a few silly things happened.

But of course, as many authors describe, we are now living in an age where ‘victimhood’ is becoming a cultural norm. People define their self worth based on ‘oppression,’ and are looking for new targets to accuse of being ‘oppressors.’

Straight white men were the first target, obviously… but the attacks have spread. Now, gay men have been facing immense scrutiny from 4th wave intersectional feminists. We are accused of having ‘male privilege’ (despite being numerous times as likely to suffer a violent hate crime than cisgender lesbians), we are accused of being ‘misogynists’, and now we are even accused of frequently ‘sexually assaulting’ and even ‘raping’ women… the very people who our lack of attraction to defines our sexuality.

I truly believe that many of the women who are making these claims are being flagrantly dishonest. Again, I don’t doubt that inappropriate touching happens towards women with clear boundaries occasionally, but in my 20 years experience of being gay, I have never once heard a legitimate complaint from a female friend of mine at the time that it happened. I know that is anecdotal, but it is the truth.

I believe that this is a narrative that has largely been deliberately manufactured by career feminists. Remember, there are more than a handful of women who make their living primarily by writing articles about ‘feminism,’ and probably the most common topic tends to be some form of complaining about men… including gay men.

Once they had the idea that they could attack gay men, they began cherry picking for examples of it, and overemphasizing what truly goes on. If they had stuck to a simple “Lack of respect of personal boundaries,” I could have swallowed it. But the accusation that gay men frequently ‘sexually assault’ and even ‘rape’ women, and then somehow constantly ‘get away with it because they are gay’, strikes me not just as deceitful, but damaging to the greater community (and some would say homophobic).

I’ll say it simply:

In general, gay guys don’t touch women… THEY TOUCH US.

Does that mean I think more gay guys should press charges? Well, that obviously depends on the severity of the action, but generally, no. I don’t think gay men usually care all that much when casual touching happens at parties or gay bars, and if they do, they can communicate their discomfort. I trust that gay men can do that.

But for women to simultaneously touch gay men very frequently without our consent, and then to go around the internet claiming they have been ‘sexually assaulted’ by gay men, because they happened to occasionally get touched in return, sounds simply dishonest in the vast majority of cases.

I want people to be respectful of each other. I want people to be mindful of boundaries and listen to one another when they say that a specific behavior is bothering them. I want legitimate sexual assault and rapes to happen less, and I want people to be aware that they can happen in unexpected circumstances.

What I don’t want is a world where everybody is terrified of touching each other, or expressing their sexuality in any way… especially in gay bars, where gay men go to touch each other and feel open about their sexualities. I don’t want our female friends to worry that they might be ‘sexually assaulting’ us when they get a bit frisky at a club. I do not want to live in a world where gay men are persecuted both for touching men (by the heterosexual norms of society), but then also accused of criminal acts by feminists for supposedly touching women.

That sounds very depressing to me.