Hatred and discrimination often happen to the marginalized communities and often coming from the majority of stuck up close-minded people. But, what if the hate happens among people in the marginalized community ? Well this happens to the gay community.
Homophobia among gay community is not a new thing. Those hatreds are usually coming from the heterosexual people who still against homosexuality due to religion and societal values. The cause of homophobia from within the gay community itself isn’t as obvious. Despite the fact that gay activists regularly preach about the importance of love during their campaigns, their message of love seems to have gotten lost within the gay community.
Lots of gay men, especially those who are gay men of color, trans men and gay men who aren’t muscular and jacked, have proven to get hate and discriminatory comments from other cis (mostly) white gay men because of their races, and this is often happening through the gay apps. It’s not direct, but subtle through their profile’s bio.The gay community still have an internalized hate among each other, and this is proven by how some gay men still putting ‘no black’, ‘no asian’, ‘no spice’, ‘vanilla only’, ‘no choco’ etc, in their dating app profiles. You may think that maybe those are not their preferences, but is it really necessary for them to put those statements in their profiles? Not only hateful, those statements could be considered racist because it shows a rejection towards another race.
Not only race, the gay community often taunt other gays who look feminine, fat, skinny, short, well basically everyone who is under gay men’s general beauty standard (read : muscular, 6 feet, toned). The standard itself is obviously isn’t a real thing, but every gay wants to be on or even above that standard, because they think it makes them more attractive. Well let me remind you, Beauty is a social construct, you don’t need a muscular body or being 6 feet tall to make other guys attracted to you, every one of you is beautiful and attractive for someone else out there.
So why actually this thing happens? The answer is because the fact that gay men, like most of the human are generally pretty narrow-minded creatures. Just because they’re gay, it doesn’t mean they suddenly become an open and accepting people after coming out. The irony of the gay community is the strong notion of conformity. Each gay person has his or her own perception of how a gay person should be like, like how they made up their own beauty standard like i mentioned above, or how they expect every gay men to like this certain ‘gay icon’ or they are not as fabulous as them and excluded from the community and so on. The problem with it, is the fact that there is no such thing as a typical gay person. Just like straight people, gay men come in all shapes and sizes. Some of us are fat, some of us are thin. Some of us are young, some of us are old. Regardless of how each of us turns out to be, the point is that our superficial differences should not be the cause of our animosity towards one another.
In the end, we are all need to open and expand our mindset a little bit. If the gay community want to be accepted by the society for who we are, let’s start with accepting other gay guys first. The only way for us to be comfortable in our own skin is for us to embrace the diversity within the gay community. It is time we all let go of whatever preconceived notions of how gay people should look and behave like.
