Preaching to the Converted: That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

Recently I was at the gym when a situation developed that allowed me to see in real-time something that's nagged at me for a while.

There were two groups of clearly gay work-out partners. The first: average age 45. The second: average age 30. The older group referred to one another in the feminine the entire time and made one dick joke after another. Sex and gender swap were their conversational motifs, and nelliness was their language.

While neither pair was demonstrably more masculine than the other, the younger pair of workout buddies consistently rolled their eyes as they â┚¬â€œ unintentionally I'm sure â┚¬â€œ followed the older group around the gym.

When I came out in the late 1980s, my group of friends — and frankly most others I saw — had feminine names ascribed to us. We even referred to each other using female pronouns. There was something almost political about it. We were engaging in classic gallows humor, taking the words of oppression and turning them into sources of empowerment.

Plus, it was funny.

The March on Washington in 1993 felt like the penultimate moment of empowerment. We were there, we were queer, and we weren't going to take it anymore (girl).

I didn't necessarily know why â┚¬Å”readingâ┚¬Â someone else and finishing up with â┚¬Ëœgirl-lady-princess-mary-queen!' followed by a snap was hilarious, it just was. Such things felt like three-dimensional punctuation back then.

Not anymore.

When I hear gay men referring to each other exclusively in the feminine, or ending every other sentence with â┚¬Ëœgurrrlll,' I'm not embarrassed. I don't flinch in the way I perhaps once would. I don't look around to see who else is listening. Mostly I'm bored.

Like a song played on the radio hundreds of times too often (think â┚¬Å”Rolling in the Deepâ┚¬Â by Adele), the whole â┚¬Å”gay guys are girlsâ┚¬Â joke has lost its punch. On the treadmill at the gym, I found myself asking, â┚¬Å”Is that joke really still funny?â┚¬Â

The whole super-girl thing feels like a minstrel show these days. There's something so jewel cases and ecstasy about it. I mean honestly: isn't calling a bald, 6'1â┚¬Â, 305-pound computer programmer â┚¬Å”Donnaâ┚¬Â more than a little silly and undignified?

Gay men under the age of 30 don't remember (and hardly seem interested) that we have made gigantic strides since that March on Washington 18 years ago. And for that I'm glad. True acceptance means we don't have to think about the ramifications of being gay so damned much.
Gay men and lesbians are simply more integrated into society. There is less need to ghettoize ourselves in gay-specific enclaves to feel safe, comfortable. Most of us are creating the lives we choose in the locales we prefer, with no worry about being ostracized. If there ever was a legitimate political reason for calling a man â┚¬Ëœlady,' it's in the dustbin of history at this point.

I'm certainly not advocating the opposite: that we feel pressure to conform, to be something we're not. We have comfortably enough of that coming from within our community as it is.

For the record, calling someone â┚¬Ëœbro' instead of â┚¬Ëœgirl' doesn't make you a man. Manliness is a reflection of the content of your character. You may not â┚¬Ëœlike' the Facebook Project Runway page, but I have yet to find a single gay man who doesn't have some sort of â┚¬Å”tell.â┚¬Â

Certain subsets of gay men present themselves as superior because they're not as openly effeminate as other gay men. They say things like, â┚¬Å”I'm gay because I like men not because I like [fill in the blank].â┚¬Â They aren't more manly than anyone else. They're posers, and I deplore it.

Not to get all Oprah on your ass, but what I am advocating is that we be authentically who we are.

Look, I'm a 45-year-old gay man. I feel like a 45-year-old gay man. I'm not Brenda, or Louise. I'm Ken. I feel exactly like a middle-aged man, for better and worse. There is nothing much â┚¬Ëœshe' about me these days, if I'm being honest.

I get why 20 years ago it felt funny or cool or somehow right to celebrate the feminine in our lives, but is that really still a joke that makes anyone laugh? Gay men are pretty good about staying on the cutting edge of cultural trends. I say we â┚¬Ëœcut' that habit out of our diction and start referring to each other as what we genuinely are.

Men.