Bill's Media Watch: 306

I have to say I really hated a movie called "306", written, produced and directed by [to my surprise] an Out filmmaker named Elliot London.What's even more disturbing is that it's being called a "gay" movie.

The film, which runs about ten minutes, has no dialogue. It shows a young man, who lives with his lover, receiving a text message to take over a shift. It's not bartending, but hustling, as the young man arrives at a hotel room where an older man gives him a drink, a blowjob, and then sodomizes him, apparently without using a condom. The young man, looking disgusted and disheartened, goes home and climbs into bed with his lover, to whom he mouths the words "I love you so much" as he hugs -- her. 

The ending isn't really a surprise. What's surprising is that a young Out filmmaker would make such a regressive movie. Yes, one could argue that it looks at all of those sad men out there who are gay but who can't and won't identity as such (don't get me started on "gay for pay") -- call boys with girlfriends, married men who screw hustlers in hotel rooms -- but there have already been so many books and movies and plays about those men who live in the shadows of gay life, do we really need another one in the 21st century that adds nothing to the discussion? And what are we to think of the "hero?" He has unsafe sex for money, then goes home to sleep, literally and figuratively, with his presumably unsuspecting girlfriend.[Bet she'll be contacting Dr. Bill any day now.]

Frankly, most male prostitutes tend to be self-hating losers. The guy in this movie, who is attractive and seems intelligent and upwardly mobile, would probably not be a hustler in a million years, especially if he's so full of internalized homophobia that he thinks of himself as straight. There may be other reasons why he's "acting out" -- insecurity, an attraction to men, certainly -- but the movie doesn't go into them.

"306" presents the outdated image of homosexuality as being something negative, dirty, something to be ashamed of, while the hero's hetero relationship is almost presented as if it were pure and perfect [until she finds out he's given her HIV, of course]. And if the character is supposed to be "bisexual," the contrast between his straight long-term relationship and his comparatively sleazy, casual gay "encounters" is so homophobic as to be mind-boggling! On the odd chance that London meant his film as a cautionary tale for women -- ladies, do you know what your boyfriend is really up to when he's somewhere else? -- it backfires badly; it just doesn't come off. 

What was London thinking? Or was he even thinking? So many things could have been said and done with this little movie and its small cast and settings. 

A muffed opportunity and a complete waste of ten minutes.

Gay or Just Stereotypical?

Dear Bill, I've recently started seeing a guy from my work, let's call him Joe, and I'm having suspicions that he is gay. A few people at work have also thought he was gay including an openly gay man who was surprised when he asked Joe if he was gay to hear that he wasn't and responded by saying he is usually right with his "gaydar." Joe has also admitted to having a good gaydar. In addition to that clue, he also sits with his legs crossed, tries to give me fashion advice when we go shopping (but also complains that I take too long in the store), he was the lead in his high school musicals, he watches dancing shows on tv, he refers to his best friend as his heterosexual life partner (his friend is married to a woman), and when I told him that he and his friend look like a gay couple, he said that a lot of people say that and they've just accepted it. He also says "I'm so gay haha" when he does something gay, such as give me fashion advice, he also is close friends with a gay man who he used to work with. He admits to thinking certain men are attractive, but he says that more about girls; he's been in two long term relationships with women and has no trouble having sex, and is actually constantly horny. I have not asked him about any gay desires or relationships. But I asked him why he thinks people think he is gay and he responded "because I don't care what other people think of me and I'm flamboyant and I sit with my legs crossed." I don't know if I should confront him on a more serious level, because it's all been joking so far, and he is ok with joking about being gay, and I am uncomfortable with looking through his messages. Please give me your opinion, I don't know what to think.

I think you and "Joe" both need to stop stereotyping gay [and straight?] men. I don't know if this guy is gay but it sounds just as likely to me that he's a straight guy who simply rings some gay-stereotype bells, and I personally can't wait until all of society, gay and straight, has gotten past them. I'm a gay man and I never give fashion advice, don't cross my legs in a feminine manner, can't stand those awful dancing shows on TV, and wouldn't have been caught dead being the lead in a musical in high school. Since this is true of many of the gay men of my acquaintance, it is entirely possible that the opposite is also true and this guy really is hetero. You have to remember that not all male fashion designers, musical comedy stars, or even hairdressers are gay; in fact, most aren't. Frankly, Joe doesn't do himself or anyone else [especially gay men] any favors when he goes on about being "so gay" just because he's giving fashion advice and the like. Most gay men couldn't give a shit about ladies or men's fashions. Most of us are just average Joes -- pun intended -- that happen to be gay. Those stereotypical gay men who are effeminate and go on about fashion and divas may seem to be everywhere, but they are only one small portion of the large gay male community.

That being said, "Joe" could still be homosexual [or perhaps bisexual, if you want to get technical, in that he dates/sleeps with women] but only he knows for sure. Check my post on Asking Your Boyfriend If He's Gay for more advice.

Bill's Media Watch: Recent "Gay" TV Characters

Well, I'm not certain I'd call the characters on the shows Revenge [ABC] and The Following [Fox] gay or sexually ambiguous -- rather they seem to be gay only when the script calls for it.

Revenge, which was created by Mike Kelley and just finished its second season, deals with a young woman, Emily, who ruthlessly gets even with anyone who had a hand in framing and killing her innocent father. He was accused of being a terrorist and of downing a plane with hundreds of people aboard [these people and their grieving relatives seem rarely if ever to be mentioned].

There are no actual out and proud gay characters on this supposedly hip program. There was a nutty, now-deceased fellow who told his girlfriend he slept with another character, Nolan, only as a power play -- he wasn't gay [sure]. As for Nolan, played by Gabriel Mann, it's hard to know what to make of him. I don't know anything of Mann's private life, but he plays the supposedly bisexual character as if he were channeling every soap opera diva he'd ever seen, including Joan Collins. He's not a bad actor, but you have to take his Nolan with a large grain of salt. He acts so swish at times that when they gave Nolan an alleged romance with a woman it was so unconvincing as to be laughable, and the two actors had little erotic chemistry. I don't recall Nolan going to bed with this gal, and the only man we ever have seen him with is the aforementioned psychopath [an ex-boyfriend briefly appeared], but both of them wound up dead, so maybe getting involved with Nolan is slightly dangerous to your health. In the first season the wimpy Nolan allowed himself to be bossed around shamefully by the often tyrannical Emily, whom he calls "Ems" -- isn't that precious [although even some of the straight male characters have followed suit]? During the second season he seemed to develop some balls as regards to Emily -- just as he was falling for a female  -- making you wonder what kind of message the show is supposed to be sending -- assuming a program like Revenge has enough on its mind to send any kind of message. In any case, Revenge  is getting too complicated and moving too far away from its central premise, and Nolan remains an irritating character. Revenge seems determined to avoid any real gay relationships, be they healthy or dysfunctional, and so far the only "queer" characters have been either mentally disturbed or blatantly stereotypical. [We won't even go into the nasty gal, almost an evil lesbian, who claimed she was having an affair with another female character, but supposedly wasn't.] Bad show, Kelley.

Things are even stranger on The Following, which was created by openly gay screenwriter Kevin Williamson. The premise of the show, which is intriguing, is that a certain charismatic serial killer named Joe Carroll has developed a cult of equally sociopathic sycophants, who have infiltrated society and the police force and will do anything he tells him, including murdering his enemies. It would have been nice had Williamson included a gay FBI agent [not a white bread character, necessarily, but at least someone heroic], but he probably thought he was being unpredictable by going another route. Two of "followers" are assigned to keep watch on Carroll's ex-wife by pretending to be a gay couple next door, only neither are gay. [Apparently playing gay will make them seem less threatening or something.] Only it turns out that at least one of the two guys is attracted to the other, and is becoming accepting of his homosexuality, while the other one, who also seems to be attracted to his "partner," is in denial [or could be another supposedly bisexual character]. Anyway, as the show wound up its first season earlier this year, the conflicted partner murdered the gay one [his first kill was of the man who loved him], supposedly to keep him out of the hands of the police, but is also on the outs with his former girlfriend. The trouble with The Following is that many members of the following seem much too intelligent and together to be members of a cult, as such groups mostly attract utter losers. Another problem is that the "queer" characters on the show are all seriously disturbed or full of old-fashioned self-hatred. Admittedly, their sexual orientation may not be responsible for their sick psychology, but even so. . .  Flawed human beings are one thing, psychos another. Williamson may be going somewhere with this, but I won't be around for the second season to find out. Plenty of drama could have been worked up by having a gay FBI agent; substituting a couple of murderous freaks is hardly the way to go. Bad show, Williamson.

BILL'S MEDIA WATCH: Stormwatch

Stormwatch is a comic book from DC Comics that features two prominent gay characters: blond, super-strong Apollo, and the leather-clad, dangerous, somewhat-psycho Midnighter. These two characters have actually been around for quite awhile, and they originally appeared as a gay couple with an adopted baby daughter in a series called The Authority, first published by Wildstorm [an imprint of DC Comics] in 1999 and written by Warren Ellis. [DC also briefly published a Midnighter series.] When DC decided to reboot its entire line of comics last year from Superman on down, the new Stormwatch book incorporated these two characters, erased their long history with the Authority, but kept them gay and attracted to each other. When I read that an amazon-like heroine was going to come between them in issue 18, I was afraid it would be some kind of cliched nonsense about a gay man and a straight woman fighting over the same allegedly bisexual guy [a la that crappy play Cock], but it was more about the hunky if naive and insecure Apollo's paranoia than anything else -- although how he could believe even for a second that Midnighter could be straight after all the flirting going on between the two is beyond me. Anyway, they share a hot kiss [see scan] at the end of the issue. It will be interesting to see how their romance plays out in the stories ahead. Stormwatch 18 was written by Peter Milligan and very well drawn by Will Conrad. Early issues of the comic have been somewhat confusing, but maybe Milligan will -- pardon me -- straighten it all out -- but not Apollo and Midnighter, please!

Weighty Matters

Dear Dr. Bill:

I'm a longtime reader of your columns; usually they're helpful and they are always interesting. Thank you. But I was pretty stunned at the level of contempt and blatant meanspiritedness you showed in your reply entitled, "Blubber Belongs On Whales Not Men." Sometimes my irreverence gets the better of me but it is never my intention to be blatantly cruel. (More on this below.)

In my view any advice columnist should show empathy and kindness, and you did neither. Not everyone shares your view. I find the best advice columnists cut through the crap, don't take excuses, and say what needs to be said, no matter how terrible.  I was taken aback by how condescending and arrogant your reply sounded. I haven't seen this before in your posts, so I can only guess it was a really bad day. Could be. I've had my share.

Sure, being tremendously overweight is a serious health problem for anyone. And sure, the great majority of gay men in bars (conscious as they are about visible appearance and looking fabulous) likely have no attraction to very obese peers. But I think using phrases like "manatees," I didn't come up with that term, and I guess whether it's derogatory or not depends on the user, same as with, say, "chubbybear." "stuff their faces," "utterly repulsed," "blubber," "humongous man boobs," "revulsion," "sloppy fat," and "frequently effeminate" mainly have one effect: they highlight YOUR insecurity about this topic and spotlight your need to denigrate an entire subgroup of the gay male population...possibly because you fear that you could become like them if Fate frowns on you.Anything's possible, but I can't imagine having such a level of self-hate that I'd let that happen, but who knows? [Don't over-react to that until you read the rest.]

It was a wise man who said we only hate things in others that we detect in ourselves. Honestly, I'm about five pounds overweight currently. No real danger of becoming morbidly obese and not really a fear of mine. Not to say I don't have my issues, being human.

And all the psychobabble about how people attracted to really fat men are insecure about their looks or are wanting to climb into a mother's womb was just laughable. Where are you getting this stuff? It may sound like psychobabble, yes, but just why do some people find fat sexy? It's just beyond me and I was searching for answers. If you have the answers I'll be happy to hear them. Clearly there are people who have a fat fetish, just as there are those with a bald or hairy or beard fetish and so on. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with any of it.

Full disclosure: I feel strongly about this, in part, because I'm overweight. Not by any means as overweight as the guys described by your writer and by you, but I need to lose weight. I weighed 180 in high school and was skinny (I'm tall) and now at age 48 I'm at 230 and the clinical BMI charts classify me as obese.I once weighed nearly as much.  In my case, part of the reason for the steady weight gain is medication for depression that I've been on for many years. These medications can and do affect metabolism, and also make people remarkably hungry. But on balance the weight is better than debilitating clinical depression. I know a lot of gay men and lesbians in my shoes, too. Okay, this is a good point and I'm glad you raised it. But you do realize I was not commenting on people who become obese due to physical ailments and medication but to GLUTTONY  and absolutely no exercise at all. I can feel sympathy for the first category but not so much for the second. And they do exist. [And you are undoubtedly aware that not everyone who takes anti-depressants experiences weight gain. Is the extreme hunger caused by the medication or by the depression itself? I know several people who are on or have been on anti-depressants and none of them experienced rabid hunger or weight gain, but perhaps every case is different.]

You are definitely right that very overweight people should lose weight. It's obvious. In my case, the extra poundage pushed me into the diabetic range for a while but my blood sugar gets a lot better when I manage to lose weight.  What I really take issue with is your total lack of kindness in the tone of your writing, as if you decided that you could be as nasty toward very obese people as you wished because they're the one minority that's generally seen as OK to malign. I don't see obese people as being a minority, especially since obesity is a major problem in the U.S. In the past week alone there have been several programs on the subject from Dr. Phil to 20/20. Obese people are not in the minority. Morbidly obese, maybe. But they have their admirers, so they're not doing so badly are they? And while I may not be attracted to very obese men doesn't mean I don't recognize that they can be perfectly nice and worthwhile human beings. But they'll probably live longer if they lose some weight.

Talking about your own struggles with weight doesn't counterbalance the cruelness of your comments, nor does tossing in a line about how it seems there's suiters for all types of gay men regardless of appearance in this wonderful, diverse world of ours. But isn't that good? Every other sentence in your response showed you're paying lip service to this idea. Every time I go out to a bar I see middle-aged men who are simply in terrible shape, be they bears, chubby bears, manatees, whatever you want to call them. It is a struggle [for me and everyone else] to stay in shape, but as long as we in the gay male community make obesity "sexy" it is not going to encourage anybody to take care of himself. The purpose of the whole bear movement was to address the fact that not all of us are young, thin, handsome etc. and that was great. But if it makes being obese and unhealthy a good "sexy" choice it's going too far in the wrong direction. Am I being cruel, or is the guy who tells a morbidly obese man that he's "hot" and encourages him to stay that way the really cruel one? Worse, some "chubby chasers"  want to have sex with some guy because of their fetish, but when it comes to long-term relationships, forget it. That can be pretty cruel to the big guy they're going after, too, who thinks that the chaser likes him for himself and not just his fat.

If you're going to style yourself as a counselor, be sophisticated about it and do what counselors do: Be courteous [me?], be as open-minded as you can [I do try],  and "do no harm" with the words you choose [The trouble is -- and forgive the cliche -- you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet]. Gay people have experienced the pain of stigma and discrimination and not fitting in their whole lives. Don't lash out against any segment of them under the guise of being helpful and spurring them to improve themselves. Advice columnist, heal thyself. If you knew me you'd know that I'm a blunt, no bull-shit, politically incorrect person and while it may make people mad at me at times [you should hear what certain bisexuals and asexuals have to say about me] at least no one should feel patronized. I'm not a touchy feely kind of guy, I say what I mean come hell or highwater. Actually that's one of the things people seem to like about the blog.

As for "manatees," we should feel sorry for them because of any health issues they have that are a.) caused by their obesity or b.) have caused their obesity. Otherwise, they're doing just great. I've seen many a "manatee" strutting around with admirers in tow, so let's not feel too sorry for them. I mean that was the whole point of the post, that there at least seem to be many more chubby chasers in the gay community than ever before. I have encountered a great many guys who are scratching their heads over it all. The thing that worries me is when all is said and done will obese men's admirers just fuck and forget 'em , or encourage them to get in shape?

 

 P.S. A manatee is a marine mammal, not a fish. Check your facts. --Bob

Well, I simply meant big fish as in "swims in the ocean" but I will double-check. 

I know there are some nice people in the gay community who happen to be morbidly obese for one reason or another. I don't exactly go around being nasty to them or anyone else. Just as they have to deal with the fact some may find them unattractive due to their weight, so, too, do other gay men have to deal with the same thing because they are hairy, smooth, HIV positive, bald, old, lame, infirm, poor and so on and so on. But we all do deal with it,  largely because there are people who find us attractive in spite of what others might find dismaying. A big difference is that being bald or hairy etc. doesn't represent a health risk as extreme obesity does.

What's strange about this whole situation is that we are not talking about cases where, say a man's lover puts on a great deal of weight over time [which can happen of course], and while that man's partner may no longer find him as attractive, he will still be in love with him and tactfully urge/help him to lose weight. No, what we have today is a completely different situation: men who are specifically out there looking for obese and often morbidly obese men. It is one thing for someone to look past what others might find repulsive [and we're not just talking about fat here] and appreciate the person's inner qualities, but being turned on by obesity is another matter entirely. 

And if you think this is bad, wait until I answer a recent question on "daddies" and cubs next week!

What a Drag!

I am a masculine gay man in my thirties and I can't understand why there seems to be this incredible preoccupation with drag, or at least this perception that all or most gay men are into wearing dresses. I've never had the slightest desire to dress up as a woman and neither do any of my gay male friends. Why does this stereotype persist? A character came out on a TV show and his mother started asking his dress size! Perplexed.

Some time ago an actor on a soap opera was giving an interview. He had just been told that his character was going to turn out to be gay. He said: "I guess I'll have to go out and buy some dresses."

Huh?

Yes, you would think that this tiresome confusion of homosexuality with transvestism -- or of equating gay men with women -- would have gone out the window long ago. I don't think most gay men are preoccupied with or have any interest in drag, but the media makes it seem otherwise. As for TV shows, we've got stupid writers who can't come up with anything original. We all know that there are "queens"-- in and out of drag -- in our community, and I'm certainly not suggesting they should be put down in any way, shape or form. Our world would certainly be a little bit duller without them. But the whole world already knows that there are femmes in the gay male community. It's time we saw more portrayals of gay men as most of us are: non-stereotypical -- not to mention the bears, leather hunks, super-butch types and all the rest. It's gotten to a point where if you see a bear-like or just masculine gay guy in a movie it's considered a big joke-- how could somebody like that be gay?

Drag queens seem to be a disproportionate part of the gay community because whenever there's a march, parade or event, the cameras instantly capture the more colorful members of the community -- which includes drag queens. This has in part created a feeling among people that there are many more drag queens than there really are, and that drag is an inherent part of every gay man's life, while nothing could be further from the truth. Hopefully TV people and filmmakers will eventually explore the gay world in all of its diversity.

But I'm not holding my breath.