PieFed.caStraight men don’t have enough friends—could gay men be the cure?
return2ozmawww.out.com/voices/gay-straight-friendships
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sp3ctr4lI am... mostly straight (heh), and I have had multiple gay dude friends who were just platonic friends.
Yes, absolutely this can work, why would anyone think otherwise?
Lotta straight guys could probably get some decent fashion and grooming tips, I know I did, hahaha!
Also, entirely serious, gay dudes can make some of the best wingmen ever for their staight buds.
You can just actually do this.
BalerionSome people think you can't be friends with people of a gender you're attracted to. And as a bisexual, I can confirm that I have never seen anyone as a friend, only prey.
Yeah I've never understood that (first sentence) way of thinking.
I had more platonic gal friends than guy friends growing up, because most of the guys were insecure, boisterious, idiot assholes.
Simple as.
As for the second sentence, well, if we ever meet st the same bar, I'll make sure to be coy at first and then stern, but polite, hahahaha!
gidAnd as a bisexual, I can confirm that I have never seen anyone as a friend, only prey.
Bravo! you made my morning coffee go up my nose.
Of the Air (cele/celes)We're ace-spec and find the concept of attraction difficult for most people, except if we have a strong emotional connection to them.
However we also find the deliniation between like and love difficult too, we don't really understand the desire or ability to split feelings and what we'd like to do with a person based on a mere label such as 'friend' or 'partner'. This is part of the reason we chose to identify as relationship anarchists and discuss explicitly with each person what they and us are okay with and do so ocassionally over time too.
We also, not based on attraction but societal values and ideas, don't see any relationship we have with anyone or anymany automatically important or successful. For example 'familial' relationships, like any relationship, if the others connected to us wish to have such a relationship go well then they have to work at it as much as any relationship, regardless of label or assumed worthiness to a certain type of connection or things they are allowed or not allowed to say and/or do.
So yes, we can be 'friends' with anyone or anymany, but the label alone means very little.
ThotDragonIt's always someone else's job to fix straight men's problems.
Tbf, the article is written by a gay man. So this is more men trying to fix problems nobody asked them to fix. (Which doesn't seem to be influenced by sexual preference).
I have a very straight guy friend. his two best friends are a gay trans man and me a bi trans woman
I have far more straight than gay friends. I think it is purely because of my hobbies. I like cars, computers, and a bunch of these things that someone once decreed are "heteronormatively manly" and as a result, my friends happen to be straight.
I couldn't care less who they have sex with, because I don't choose friends based on what they do in bed.
In my experience, the more straight a person is, the dumber they are about anything computer, broadly speaking.
Since about 1990ish onward, yeah its still a hetero male dominated field, but the farther away someone gets from heteronormative man, chances get higher that they're actually extremely gifted/talented at doing actual software dev / it / academic research.
Don't forget Alan Turing, essentially the inventor of modern computing, was a gay man, and if you look through the history of notables in the actual field of comp sci, not the business of it, you'll find it has a lot more woman and non straight dudes in it that many other fields.
In my experience, the more straight a person is, the dumber they are about anything computer, broadly speaking.
Wow, really hot take here. Who people have sex with has nothing to do with their capabilities or intellect. That's just as bad as staying "the gayer someone is, the worse they are at sports, broadly speaking".
The rest I agree, as someone who works in the field yes, many of us are LGBTQ+ folks, but still not a majority. Which still results in people like me meeting, and engaging with more straight men than gay peeps.
You missed the 'in my experience' part of my sentence.
Its an anecdote.
That's what 'in my experience' means.
But again, broadly speaking... statistically valid correlations can and do exist between people's sexuality and many, many other aspects of themselves, their lives.
Like you can say oh, sexuality has no impact on who someone is or what they are capable of or what their life will look like... but this just assumes society is totally materially and morally neutral, and it treats all sexualities with statistical invariance, and it also precludes the possibility that to any extent, innate, complex biological differences exist.
You're basically saying sexuality is just an arbitrary choice, that society respects totally, thats the only way you could thoroughly believe that 'sexuality has nothing to do with ... capabilities or intellect.'
(You're also confusing outcomes with capabilities in that particular line, but w/e)
LQBTQ+ people are certainly statistically more likely to:
Experience physical violent crime against them,
Become homeless,
Commit suicide.
The idea that someone's sexuality doesn't have any influence on I guess seemingly unrelated aspects of their lives, their experiences, their outcomes, is just objectively false.
But if we do want to talk about actual data and studies, irt to sexuality and human intelligence, here's a fairly recent meta analysis:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7031189/
Without going into it in too much detail, there do actually seem to be some statistically significant differences between different kinds of intelligence per homo/hetero male/females, and the paper does go into some proposed theories as to the actual biological mechanics of why these differences may exist.
NickwithaC"As long as they don't come on to me..."
🤮
Says every "100% straight" man as they trim their fingernails, brush their teeth, and put on their nicest shirt before going out on "platonic" date with their gay friend.
I don't care who you like to fuck. Can you play Warhammer?
They gays aren't really big into Warhammer, now the furries, they have all that disposable IT money to spend on some respectable units.
Fake. The furry and LGBTQ+ overlap is huge. I was originally gonna say "almost a circle", but that would imply that almost all gay people are furries. So instead, here's my 5-min Joplin 100% scientifically proven graph.
Now show furries in IT, it will have the most overlap with straight and then bi and trans will be the minority.
I am willing to deal with a cheesy lisp if you play a good game of Terraforming Mars or Gaia Project.
I was confused at first because I thought you meant LISP the programming language, not lisp the 1990s stereotype.
I don't know anything about warhammer, but I agree to your first sentence. I really don't care how people spend their free time or how they look under their clothing. And I really wished all the people would think this way.
So what I'm hearing is you can't play Warhammer.
We'll start you on Kill Team.
I don't know if I'm able to learn this. I'm a nerd, you know?
Bro, the demographics don't matter. Just make friends with the people that you mutually enjoy the company of. If they're not a horrible person, then you should be friends. Expanding the demographics you're willing to accept as friends can only really expand how many people you have as friends. Unless some of your friends have some sort of hatred for some of your other friends.
A partner of mine had many fay male friends. She relayed a story once about one of her gay male friends hanging out with a straight person he was trying to be friends with. She showed me the texts he'd sent her on their hangout and they contained things loke: "what the fuck do straight people like?" and "what the hell are we supposed to talk about?" and "we are just kind of sitting here silently and I feel awkward".
I don't have a point with this anecdote but I always laugh when I think about it.
Good questions. Uhhhhh, some common interests include video games (gay people too), there's sports sometimes. Cars I guess. That's the vague shit at least. I feel like most straight guys have to like at least one of those things. Most have other interests that are more niche. Honestly, fair enough question lol, hope he found a couple out!
As a completely straight man myself I find the gays to give the best blowjobs.
Boy, do I have news for you...
You can absolutely be straight and have gay sex. A hole is a hole. I've known a few straight men who have done it and still don't seek out men or find them attractive. Conversely, I know gay men who have fucked women and don't actively seek out women to this day.
A circumstantial fuck is just that: you getting your rocks off when given the opportunity. We don't need to be questioning people's identities as if we know other people's minds like our own. That's not our place and we don't need to be prescriptivists.
Imo if you fuck a dude in any way, you lose straight as a title forever and you become at minimum heteroflexible.
Source: Gold Star cishet who wishes to be even slightly gayer cus damn it looks fun
I knew straight women were a myth!
I’ve never been a mushroom fan, but every 5-10 years, I taste them again to see if my tastes have changed, though they never do. Does that mean I do in fact like mushrooms?
Actually scratch that question - it’s not a decision that anyone but the person in question can make. Correcting someone about their orientation is a major overstep.
(I know you weren’t the person who initially did that, I’m just speaking generally)
If every few years you taste mushroom again, you seem to be quite open to the concept of potentially liking mushroom.
Well, yeah, I’m not a bigot.
I don’t like mushrooms though. Like the person I responded to wishes they were less straight, I wish I did like mushrooms, in my case because it would be more convenient to be able to cook with more ingredients.
Fair enough! 😂
Don't let your dreams be dreams. Hop on grindr and you'll have 20+ offers in a few hours.
Don't think I haven't worked through this in my head lol
No, no, he's saying the lesbians give the best BJs...
Instructions unclear, initiated affair with gay coworker.
Seems like an absolute win
It's been a solid team building experience.
Wife isn't super thrilled, though.
Damn, weren't gay men just teaching us empathy last week thanks to Obama?
I can't wait to see what hetero deficiency the media drops in your lap to fix for us next week.
Thank you so much, and I'm sorry?
Honestly I just want friends. I don't care who you are, who you love, how you identify.
Why can't I find other people to sit around, drop acid, and argue about good music?
No shit eh?
Gay couple? Do both like classic LAN games, some board games, etc and have an appreciation for sarcastic humor? Cool, it's a 2-for-1 friend special! Why not?
Hello friend.
Living in San Francisco, if I met someone with no lgbtq+ friends I would probably steer clear of them.
Isn’t a decent chunk of San Francisco part of one massive polycule by now, anyway?
Aw jeez I wasn't invited
The success of the Greater Portland Polycule cannot be understated
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How about a n NBC sitcom about a Republican racist asshole who moves to Seattle and makes a ton of friends only to find out they are all gay at the nude bike riding parade?
I remember dat phan did a bit like this:
This neighborhood is so nice.
Everyone is holding hands.
O look a Walmart! wait?
Gay-mart? wtf typo?
W/e
Hey that man stole my.... curtains!?
As a straight, married man, sounds good to me.
I don't know what I expected.
People are lonely, everyone could do with a few good friends no matter their sexual orientation. Gay men are people and therefore have people problems, i don't think they have it better or worse in this regard. I personally haven't meet a gay man who has been that much different from other men, so i find this article very odd, or at least built on stereotypes (maybe just me?)
I have a long rant about the loneliness epidemic in me but ill spare everyone. main thing is this isn't as new thing, but that does lite to help and doesn't add value to the conversation.
I had quite a few gay friends growing up. Was neither here nor there for me. They were my friends.
I just made a gay friend from school and it’s honestly great. Were both gamers and he has a ton of cute girl friends that he has introduced me too lol
Are those damn fabulous bastards gonna help rebuild this broken car-centric society?
what now gay men have to solve straight mens' problems too as if they don't have enough of their own caused by the very same group
If I could get over the crippling anxiety of meeting new people, I'd be happy to hang out with anyone regardless of who they like.
Maybe, but honestly I think they should really just focus on befriending good people that they get along with. Any given straight man may find that in a gay man, but plenty of others will find close friendships in people regardless of gender or orientation.
Straight men need to wash their assholes more and stop claiming cleaning their butts is gay. Might make more friends that way.
The only man irl I've met who didn't wash his ass because he thought it was gay ... I found out was raped as a child.
The joke isn't funny anymore. The number of men I've met who were raped as children by other men, is a lot higher than I think people realize. It's traumatizing and there isn't support.
I've read one too many r/AITAH where the guy is like this and the woman is like, "he streaks the couch and bed sheets. Should I leave him?"
Keeping something in your ass, like shit, sounds pretty gay to me
they should try pissing sitting more too
Honestly... overrated unless you are at home and looking to kill time or take a moment to yourself.
I'll take a sauna/bath/sitnpiss on the occasion but the quickie is just easier in most cases and definitely outside the home where you're dealing with public restrooms.
I've done a lot of pissing pre and post op.
Pissing while seated on a toilet sucks if you have a penis.
Penis-havers really should have more access to urinals in residential settings imo, that body configuration is just not built to pee sitting down.
What the living fuck. My gay friends have always just been normal dudes that like to suck cock. Nothing special about them. They aren’t an enlightened emotionally available class of supermen. They like video games, weed, and sci-fi, that’s why we got along. Common interests, not some unacknowledged desire to broaden our horizons.
This article is 90s gay.
Straight men will do anything to avoid having non-surface-level connections with other straight men.
In my neck of the woods, that is changing rapidly. Even the strongest "manly men" are beginning to break down their own barriers and starting to express themselves, and it's transcending age groups. The older they are the more resistant they are, but it's spreading quite quickly.
That's good to hear.
Call me a snowflake, but fuck it, it's not helpful to generalize men this way. From Gen X through Z and kids today men and women are getting the education to speak to each other more open and with clinical "awareness". It takes generational education and you have a political climate activity screeching at them to be hyper masculine or whatever you want to call it.
Statements like this are not helpful and breed resentment.
/End Soapbox
Wouldn't gay women as friends for straight men make more sense?
Anyone befriending anyone is always highly subjective.
It comes down to the personality of both sides. Most of the gay guys in my circle of friends throughout the years have been too high strung I think it's just luck of the draw. The gay women in my orbits are more chill. I'm chill so we get a long better.
Probably more important to find people you vibe with and like doing the same things you do than to specifically seek out token characters from different demographics.
Also if you're excluding people from being your friend because they're gay, you don't deserve to have friends anyway.
Wait I thought gay sex was the point? Is that not what we’re talking about?
, many INSECURE straight men/ or "straight" are quite afraid of potentially gay men approaching, even staring in thier direction freaks them out. plus the insecure hypermasculine communites like, gym/bodybuilders are extra homophobic. on some yt videos people who follow some bodybuilders, they are so afraid that they wear masks so people cant potentially hit on them, someone called them out why they are wearing a mask, are they gay? and another comment tried defending them saying they dont want gay people thirsting over him.(you put yourself in public for viewing thats on you)
If they don’t have enough friends, maybe the problem is them/their personality?
I'm not reading the article. Are these people all born after the year 2000?
What does this comment even mean?
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