How Do You Find Other Gay Men?
No, seriously, can somebody help me with this?
I recently wrote about the enormous amount of privileges that straight people benefit from on a daily basis and forgot the most glaring one that I envy as a gay man: the ability to find a potential mate. When you’re straight, you get to pick from as many fish in the sea as you desire (as long as you are presentable and humane and not predatory, obviously). You hardly ever have to worry about being told no because the person you’re flirting with is a different sexual orientation; you’ll get told no on the merits of your personality, looks, etc.
Us gays also have to worry about this once we find the rare LGBTQ person in the flesh, compounding the original issue at hand. Let’s stick to one depressing prospect at a time though, shall we? How do I find gay people around me without actively searching with the proclivity of a bee pollinating flowers during the early spring?
Let’s debunk a few of the typical starter suggestions and why they don’t work.
Apps
Dating apps have been a life saver for people of all sexual orientations who struggle to put themselves out there in the real world, but they are especially important for the LGBTQ community because they solve my original query at the beginning of the piece. When you are browsing Scruff or Grindr as a gay man, you never have to worry that you will offend an insecure heterosexual that can’t just be flattered that someone is hitting on them; seriously, why can’t they just take the compliment and move on? Anyway, everyone on here is interested in the same thing you are.
Because it is so accessible, it becomes a toxic wasteland of horny, sweaty fantasies and torso pics, sexting galore and cruel judgements and labels of others bodies. On here, you aren’t a person, you’re a bear, a twink, or a leather. We all know the drill. I’m not sure half of these profiles are even real people, perhaps just bots or a cat fisher hoping to masturbate to someone they know is alive on the other line, like a real-time version of a porno.
There is the rare time when you meet someone from the real world on Grindr and find out a little too much about them. Take my local barista for example. I knew he was gay because he…
