COLUMNIST — GARETH JOYNER
“Gold- star” gays
The “questions” feature on Instagram Stories is a laugh, isn’t it? Aside from being an engaging way to pass a train journey, if we look beneath the surface it can be an enlightening insight into the mechanics of social interactions, especially between that of gay men. I’m phrasing it too grandly, but I still stand by this claim.
Watching how people interact through Instagram Story Questions fascinates me! Fascinates and exasperates, because there’s nothing as dreary as rubbish online fl irting. Let’s be honest, social media is a Petri dish for crap fl irting among The Gays. ™ I dare say I’m guilty of it to some extent, but if I’ve seen “Y u so cute tho lol” once, I’ve seen it 50 times.
As I’ve idly swiped through these inane mating rituals, I’ve noticed a theme. One question rears its head repeatedly. It takes a few guises but the implication is consistent: “Have you ever slept with a women?” It always strikes me as being inherently juvenile, and not dissimilar to two giggling schoolboys in a French and Saunders sketch.
( It doesn’t help that perpetrators are invariably thirsty bears on the cusp of their thirties who have yet to grow out of a Pokémon fi xation.) This wouldn’t really be objectional if that were the extent of it. The Gays ™ have always delighted in swapping stories of who’s shagged who, and let’s be honest, the six degrees of Kevin Bacon has NOTHING on the six degrees of sodomy.
However, I can’t shake off the suspicion that the implication is The Gays ™ would really prefer it if the answer is “no.” As if there is some sort of homosexual purity that’s valuable and worth cherishing. This suspicion is more or less cemented with a particular phrase that’s also often repeated:
“No, I’m a ‘ gold- star’ gay. Proudly declared as a tittle, as if avoiding vaginal contact is an achievement, worn boastfully like the badge of a McDonald’s employee who’s best at mopping the toilets.
At best, the term is somewhat pathetic; at worst it’s outright misogyny.
Then there is the gold- star’s cousin, the “platinum- star” gay: a gay man who was born via caesarean, completely avoiding vaginal contact even at birth.
I wonder if this is a reaction to a cis- het mainstream that told gay men they were abhorrent to nature, and that gay men now feel that having sacrifi ced so much to resist this and be true to themselves, there is a sanctity to their perceived status as A Gay ™ .
As we enter a world in which gender identity is releasing itself from a strict binary code, I can’t help notice how entwined our sexual and gender identities are. Yet the online world gleefully shares articles about straight men having more gay sex. As our attitudes towards gender become more fl uid, doesn’t this work both ways?
Sex is an expression of intimacy between two consenting adults — and good fun!
I’m not insisting that every gay man march out and fi nd a women to sleep with, but let’s drop the outdated idea that women are foreign curiosities and encourage a more open approach to human attraction.
“Sex is an expression of intimacy between consenting adults — and good fun!”