Manly gay men

Schedule Your Free 15 min. If market price is a function of supply and demand, then my advice is to start investing in masculinity. That stuff is flying off the shelves. For a variety of reasons—innate and learned—masculinity is like catnip to a significant percentage of gay men, and it appears to be in short supply.

What sparks my curiosity is the role masculinity plays in our sex lives and what our longing for and fetishizing of masculinity says about the gay experience. These conversations suggested three distinct but overlapping roles masculinity plays in sexual relationships with men.

One manly gay men is drawn to masculine men because they feel protected. Another group says they enjoy feeling dominated by masculine energy. A third group reveals that connecting with masculine men validates their own masculinity and helps them feel more masculine. Time and time again, the themes of feeling protected, dominated and validated emerged as the payoff for bagging a masculine man.

According to Carl Jung, one of the forefathers of modern psychology, we all have aspects of our personality that we deny, hide or have not fully developed. He tries to eradicate his own sexuality by projecting it onto others and eradicating it. So what are we projecting onto masculine men?

Why do so many of us share a longing for protection, domination and validation? I propose that we have not yet fully developed our own masculinity. A masculinity that can protect, be dominant and is felt in our core to be valid. From one perspective, the opposite of masculine is feminine.

Gay men tend to be hyper-aware of the masculine-feminine spectrum. We are so focused on masculine versus feminine that we forget another spectrum exists. From another perspective, the opposite of masculine is the pre-masculine boy. Our fetishized longing for masculinity manly gay men suggest that, as gay men, there is a part of our masculinity that remains underdeveloped, like that of a boy.

Young boys, not having yet been initiated into their mature masculinity by adult men, have a childlike view of what it means to be a man. They only know what masculinity looks like from the outside—a deep voice, muscles, power, stereotypical mannerisms or victory in competition, for example.

The Two Boxers

Gay men in our culture appear to view masculinity the same way. We only know masculinity by contrasting it with what is feminine because we only know masculinity from the outside, the way a boy does. Perhaps we long for an internal, adult masculinity but have never had the mentoring we need to develop it.

On a gut level, we know something is missing, but this missing piece is so far outside our awareness that we project it onto others the way some gay bashers project their same-sex attraction. Instead of bashing our neglected masculinity, though, we want to merge with it through sex.

What does adult masculinity look like, and how do we get it? I suspect adult masculinity protects through strength and service. With regard to domination, a dominant adult masculinity is not macho or tyrannical. Boys are macho and tyrannical.