"I'm not going to say that what I've encountered on dating apps drove me to a space where I was suicidal, but it definitely was a contributing factor," he says. The experiences of Nathan, a 22-year-old gay man from Durban, South Africa, illustrate just how damaging these sentiments can be. After all, in 2019, downloading Grindr, Scruff, or Jack’d might still be someone’s first contact with the LGBTQ community. If they weren’t the one getting bullied for ‘acting gay,’ they probably saw where ‘acting gay’ could get you.”īut at the same time, Sarson says we need to address the impact of anti-camp and anti-femme sentiments on younger LGBTQ people who use dating apps. “But many of them may have been raised around people vilifying queer and femme folks. “I don’t mean to give the masc4masc, femme-hating crowd a pass,” says Ross.
Hell, some gay men in the late ‘90s probably felt that Jack-Sean Hayes's unabashedly campy character from Will & Grace-was "too stereotypical" because he was really "too femme." The Gay Clone look may have gone out of fashion, but homophobic slurs that feel inherently femmephobic never have: "sissy," "nancy," "nelly," "fairy," "faggy." Even with strides in representation, those words haven't gone out of fashion. Flamboyant disco singer Sylvester said in a 1982 interview that he often felt dismissed by gay men who had "gotten all cloned out and down on people being loud, extravagant or different." "It's always existed," he says, citing the hyper-masculine "Gay Clone or “Castro Clone" look of the ‘70s and '80s-gay men who dressed and presented alike, typically with handlebar mustaches and tight Levi’s-which he characterizes as partly "a response to what that scene considered to be the 'too effeminate' and 'flamboyant' nature of the Gay Liberation movement.” This form of reactionary femme-shaming can be traced back to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, which were led by trans women of color, gender-nonconforming folks, and effeminate young men. However, Sarson says we shouldn't presume that dating apps have exacerbated camp and femme-shaming within the LGBTQ community. The abuse got so bad when Ross joined Jack'd that he had to delete the app. Ross, a 23-year-old queer person from Glasgow, says he's experienced anti-femme abuse on dating apps from guys that he hasn't even sent a message to. But sometimes this preference becomes so firmly embedded in a person’s core that it can curdle into abusive behavior. Some guys on dating apps who reject others for being “too camp” or “too femme” wave away any criticism by saying it’s “just a preference.” After all, the heart wants what it wants.
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“I have a full beard and a fairly hairy body,” he says, “but after I’ve said that, I’ve had guys ask for a voice memo so they can hear if my voice is low enough for them.” “But some guys use more coded language-like, ‘are you into sports, or do you like hiking?’” Scott says he always tells guys pretty quickly that he’s not masc or straight-acting because he thinks he looks more traditionally “manly” than he feels. “I’d say the most frequent question I get asked on Grindr or Scruff is: ‘are you masc?’” says Scott, a 26-year-old gay man from Connecticut. The number of guys who define themselves as “straight-acting” or “masc”-and only want to meet other guys who present in the same way-is so widespread that you can buy a hot pink, unicorn-adorned T-shirt sending up the popular shorthand for this: "masc4masc." But as dating apps become more ingrained in modern daily gay culture, camp and femme-shaming on them is becoming not just more sophisticated, but also more shameless. Anyone who’s spent time on gay dating apps on which men connect with other men will have at least seen some form of camp or femme-shaming, whether they recognize it as such or not.