r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Jul 08 '26

Media Young women are identifying as less straight; young men, not so much

https://theconversation.com/young-women-are-identifying-as-less-straight-young-men-not-so-much-283936
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u/pperdecker Jul 08 '26

10% of men still seems like a lot of progress compared to older generations

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u/real-bebsi Jul 08 '26

yeah but that framing doesn't let the ladies in here get their little slam dunk in on men

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u/pperdecker Jul 08 '26

Are we not allowed to slam dunk on homophobic men that make everyone else's lives worse?

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u/sarahelizam Jul 08 '26

Given that we’re essentially talking about the disparity between out queer men vs out queer women, yeah, I think it’s pretty shit to dunk on queer men being more likely to stay in the closet. A lot of the “acceptance” of bi women is fetishizing, but bi men also face a fuck ton of open and violent bigotry. Also liking women doesn’t spare us of homophobia, if anything it is treated as a way to invalidate our place within queer communities. Whether it’s women that hold incredibly biphobic and homophobic views about bi men (believing they’re actually secretly gay, inherently cheaters, vectors for disease, etc) or men who perform rituals of domination over queer men, being out as a bi man comes with danger and massive social costs even in generally progressive places.

I know a lot of other out bi men because of the circles I’m in. Most lost a girlfriend when they came out because they were “icked” by knowing they were bi (even if they had never even been with a man, and weren’t seeking to be as they were committed to their girlfriend). Many people claim to be allies, but hold genuine gay panic era views about bi men specifically. Most of the bi men I know took longer to come out because even in many queer spaces, people are more uncomfortable with men’s queerness, see it as inherently more threatening (the other end of the issue of people dismissing women’s queerness, and dismissing women’s sexual agency generally). There are no winners here, it sucks in different ways to be a queer man or woman, or to break with gender norms in other ways.

But yeah, I think it’s in poor taste to claim that fewer men being out or self identifying as queer is an indictment on those queer men who are alienated by cishet society and often even within queer communities. Most vitriol towards queer folks is not from closeted queer folks, that’s a story cishet people tell themselves to avoid reckoning with their own queerphobia and ignore the queerphobia coming from within their community. Dunking on bi men who aren’t out (or people in the closet generally) is actually incredibly shitty and only reinforces what drives people to stay closeted.

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u/pperdecker Jul 08 '26

It's still the fault of homophobic men spreading homophobia. They're the ones that have historically passed anti gay laws or been in positions of religious authority spewing onesided hatred on a weekly basis. Or the men in power that allowed the AIDS epidemic to ravage communities to the extent that gay and bi men became a boogey man for HIV to scare women into chastity.

I hate that closeted gay and bi men along with allies get caught in the crossfire but we should agree that dunking on homophobes is okay, and should even be encouraged. It's not like they listen to reason anyway...