How do you feel about the term "straight acting"?

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It's surprisingly a pretty great film, for its genre. I mean, think about the premise, and think about how horrible it could be. Then, somehow, it's not. I'd recommend it.

 

It's like they wrote it knowing that it'd be a cult movie, and that most people watching it would know basically what the plot was in advance. That really impressed me. We all watched it expecting it to be a "so bad it's good" movie, and it was good in every way we didn't expect.

Kinda off-topic I guess, but there's a lot of decent Lionsgate films that kinda get overshadowed by crappy schlock nonsense like Saw. If you get the chance to see Dead Silence and the Cube trilogy, I urge you to do so.

 

shrug, to me "straight acting" means someone who is gay but you wouldn't know unless they told you, that's all. maybe thinking way too much into it?

 

As for the original post - I agree. The term is actually pretty messed up. It seems to imply that most gay guys are camp or not "straight acting". But yeah - the whole "acting" bit of it and the fact that people actually need to label themselves in such a way says a bit about how badly the gay stereotype has been spread and how much people want to get away from that kinda thing.

Heh and Yarapario, you old curmudgeon - it's nice to see someone using that word

 

i do not like it. it respresents a homophobic attitude displayed in the gay community. we need to learn to accept people as they are. if they are a fem man or a butch woman, who gives a shit.

 

Yeah, it seems like the phrase itself, however innocently it may have been adopted, is ingraining an attitude amongst gays that anyone who isn't what my friend Jack lovingly refers to as "a bit fabulous" is somehow faking it. It's frustrating when I meet a guy at our local bar to go through the looooong list of tedious questions: no, I'm not straight, no, I'm not repressing my sexuality despite knowing fuck all about Bad Girls, no, actually I've been out of the closet for nearly ten years now (usually longer than they have at twice my age). It's frustrating to me that even "our own kind" aren't taking the "how dare you assume I'm heterosexual" line anymore. They should. I want a world where a guy doesn't take offense if I ask if he has "a boyfriend or a girlfriend", and I don't see this retarded notion that homosexuality is visible in the way someone walks or talks as helping to achieve that.

 

Yeah I know what you're getting at, SC. I guess that generally most people do just assume that everyone who is behaves "normally" is straight. Even I do it, but people really shouldn't assume things about other people's sexuality unless it is bleedingly obvious. I actually have a friend who keeps asking me if I'm "maybe just a little attracted to girls" even though she knows that I'm gay. Apparently I just act too "normally" to be gay. Fucking moronic if you ask me...having to literally explain yourself: "YES I LIKE SUCKING DICK, BUT I DONT FEEL THE NEED TO PRANCE ABOUT LIKE A SHIT-HEADED LISPY FAIRY, OKAY!?"...Apparently that's not enough for some =[

 

Straight people act in all sorts of ways, so I don't really get it!

 

Did you coin that phrase? It would look good on a body shirt.

 

I'm a "straight-actor". But I dont' call myself that. I call myself Andrew.

I don't flaunt my sexuality-so what? Does that make me less gay? Nope, cause "gaY' is your SEXUALITY, its WHO/WHAT your attracted to. It is NOT my personality, it does NOT dictate how I act in public.

 

I agree the term is crap and condescending. It implies that you have to be queenie or something similar in order to be authentically gay, which privileges one section of the gay community over another.

In any case one just has to glimpse at the lifestyles of some of those people."twink fags" as you call them to know that they should not be privileged within the gay community.

 

I dont much care for the straight acting thing either. I have feminine Qualitys to my voice and even my face, however, i dont not fashion myself to be a woman. I am simply myself and i recognize these markings of character that i have as inescapable.

I ve dated guys who wanted "straight acting" guys and one even told me that he took speech training class to alter his voice to sound more "straight." I, still to this day, cannot believe he had the stones to ask me to do the same. The fact that many men desire this conceptual state of self presentation has detered me from dating to be honest. I refuse to cover up these parts of myself that have been so much part of who i am and even if i did it would be a lie and i couldnt lie to someone who i loved.

We've wanted ppl to accept us for who we are for so long and now we are seeing pressure from within our own community to be something we are not. This frightens me.

 

Some ppl have posited that there is no such thing as a "gay community." We come to this place because we are attracted to ppl of our own gender, but there are so many variables from tops / bottoms / flexible / butch / nellie / bear / twink etc. that we've all gone into our own little comfort area and kinda poke fun at the others. Oh, I forgot about us bi's who completely skewer the concept of "orientation" since we like degrees of either. Oh, well.

See what I mean about "community." And I just mentioned male because Lesbians (outside to that Greek island) have more in common with str8 women than they do with str9 or gay men. Likewise for gay men and str8 men who have more in common than they do with women str8 or gay.

So, our "community" is actually a weak alliance of misfits whose only unifying objective is our civil rights within the larger community.

 

I disagree, some gay guys, like myself seem to think more like straight girls than straight guys, I have more in common with them than the majoirty of straight guys, I can get on with butch lesbians, lipstick lesbians tend to just hate all guys anyway. I can hang out with straight girls that have no trouble getting guys, or ones with zero sex drive. I can hang out with straight guys that have no trouble getting women, the ones that dont get women are too twitchy to hang out with a gay guy, but I dont really think like they do.

But yeah, all very frigging complicated isnt it

 

There are always exceptions to any generality but I have noticed the dynamic in gay rights groups and AIDS organizations where great numbers of gay men and lesbians were thrown together that there was often conflict because gay men and lesbians were so different in attitude. I've even seen gay rights groups in a college town splinter off because the militant lesbians couldn't separate from their feminist agenda.

My comment was loosely what Camille Paglia said about gay men and str8 men having more in common with each other than either had with women. That male-bonding thing is not about sexuality.

BTW, if some young butch lesbians knew what I was thinking when looking at them, they would kick my ass. Found out I am attracted to their small breasted, boy haircut, unshaved pits because they remind me of twinks.