Gays againts gays.

[041779]

Hello everyone.

Some history: I am a 30 year old gay male. I have lived in both cities and rural areas. I was in the military and am currently in a Master’s program.

I wanted to start a discussion here because no one is able to do it in person. The content addresses the many posts in "Need your advice" but I don't want advice. I want to see if maybe I am not alone or that perhaps I am wrong. I want a debate on the matter.

Gay persons have a problem and we need help. Gay people tolerate a lot of injustice in the world. It’s not fair to be treated a certain way because of something you can’t control. I’m thankful, though, that in many ways the treatment of gays, at least in the West, is getting better. How gay people are treated by straights isn’t what I want to address. We need to address how gays are treating other gays. Here I’ll speak about gay men, as I haven’t any experience being a lesbian.

Over the last decade I’ve had the fortune and misfortune to meet many people. I’ve come to know exceedingly awesome and respectable persons both gay and straight. Sadly, most of the respectable ones are straight. I’ve always been one to watch people and what they do and I’ve noted a significant character deficit in gay men. It’s possible that I am just unlucky and that I only come across unrespectable people by chance. I don’t think that’s the case though; I think gay men never learned to be “men.” That is, by lacking male figures in their lives— besides other, already tainted gay men —in whom they could confide about relationships, gay men haven’t learned about honesty or respect, or fidelity, among other things. I would like to say that this problem exists in a select few, and that it’s uncommon and not worthy of attention. It is not, however, a few gay men that have this problem. It’s 99.9% of them. I have found that even those who look, act, and most importantly talk the part of a respectable person are the complete opposite. I don’t go on about these problems because I have been hurt in relationships, though that’s certainly what made me take first notice. People I thought were friends behaved in similarly, with dishonesty and other unsavory ways.

I'm a behavioral scientist. I am well aware of “why” these things happen. Gay men lie without remorse because they did so when younger to avoid or remove aversive events. They lied about being gay to avoid ridicule. They pretended to be straight so they would fit it. They left their hometowns for the city so they could “be who they are” and became part of a culture that engenders less-than-respectable behavior in young gay men. The new and exciting environment is full of fun they’d never had, sex on the fly without connection, drug use and superficiality. This, of course, doesn’t happen to everyone but it’s more common than not.

What I mentioned isn’t new. It’s not even shocking to most. We’ve accepted it as the way things are. It’s not healthy, but there’s a worse problem that stems from the same prior deceptions that is of more concern. If you are part of the gay lifestyle, you come to expect certain ways and if you don’t like them you can avoid them. With the other issue, you don’t even see it coming.

I’m talking about the internet and faceless communication. If a man doesn’t want to be part of the “gay community” then they don’t have to be. Guys are easy to find online. The magnitude of what straight people go through because of the internet and pornography is exacerbated by being gay. It’s easy to move from one person to the next quickly in our new electronic world. We can quickly block people online of whom we tire and find replacements. The problem lies, though, in how this has come to affect life offline.
Gay men want the same things everyone else does: love, stability, and the like— or so I hear. They form relationships, both platonic and romantic, and then encounter a problem caused by their history of quick novelty from the history of “being gay” and the internet/wireless communication. Instead of facing a problem in the relationship, likely because they’ve never had the social pressure to man up, they resort to the quick fix of ignore-and-find-elsewhere. It’s so easy to do. Ignore your friend or partner and head online; it’s as anonymous as you’d like, and if anyone asks about what you’re doing then you can clear the browser or text messages.

I want to say that maturity has a role and that people grow out of these things but that’s not true. We need a solution and we need a public one. We’ve spent so much time convincing the rest of the world that we’re not horrible, that we’ve allowed ourselves and others to in fact become dishonorable, dishonest, and disrespectful without question; if we question what’s going on we’re called bitter, or close-minded, and told that we should accept people for “who they are.”

“Who they are” only goes so far. I agree that being gay isn’t changeable, but we can change the rest.

I could go on but won’t.

Please respond: Tell me I’m wrong or right. Tell me why. Most importantly, tell me how we can fix this so future generations don’t have to suffer the trauma that we have.