The epidemic of gay loneliness
Gay Loneliness Is Real—but “Bitchy, Toxic” Identity Isn’t the Entire Story
If you are gay or understand many gays, chances are you saw “Together Alone,” Michael Hobbes’ longform essay on what he calls an “epidemic of gay loneliness,” show up in your feeds overdue last week. After seeing the article shared approvingly by many friends, I skimmed and dutifully posted it myself. It’s unsettling, complete of resonant descriptions of isolation, drug addiction, and self-hatred among gay men; and it’s ambitious in its aim to name, outline the contours of, and prescribe solutions for what it argues is a cultural and social crisis among lgbtq+ men hovering between youth and middle age. But later, as I examine the article more closely, I began to feel uneasy.
Something in Hobbes’ portrait—more specifically, in the words of the group of male lover men he chose to interview—reminded me of a compassionate of conversation that I encountered when I’ve worked in offices with enormous gay populations. The conversation happened frequently enough that I began to be able to predict how it might unfold. An older gay male colleague, typically white and trim and achieving, would set off on a lament about the unachievable meanness and pet
Gay Loneliness and What To Do About It
Gay men are more lonely than straight men.
It pains me to write that. Queer men need positive inspiration and role models, not more negative statements.
However, I am highlighting this proof because I know it is easier to form change when we thank painful truths.
Let’s start by reviewing some of the research on gay people. Academic journals can be incredibly boring so authorize me give you the brief highlights:
Research shows:
Why are we statistically worse off on these measures of mental health? Is it something we ate?
You probably can guess the retort . It’s called “growing up gay.”
Even in today’s more enlightened times we trial more rejection as kids. And that’s especially right for gay men who embrace a more feminine gender presentation gay men who embrace a more feminine gender presentation than other boys.
Many of us grow up expecting rejection and we remain on high alert for it in social situations. Even if you personally hold never received blatant rejection, the negative culture has an impact on you. No one has to call you a fag for you to still fear being seen as a fag.
We don’t just experience this fear of reje
March 02, 2017
The Epidemic of
Gay LonelinessBy Michael Hobbes
I
“I used to get so eager when the meth was all gone.”
This is my companion Jeremy.
“When you possess it,” he says, “you have to keep using it. When it’s gone, it’s like, ‘Oh good, I can go back to my life now.’ I would remain up all weekend and go to these sex parties and then perceive like shit until Wednesday. About two years ago I switched to cocaine because I could work the next day.”
Jeremy is telling me this from a hospital bed, six stories above Seattle. He won’t tell me the exact circumstances of the overdose, only that a stranger called an ambulance and he woke up here.
Jeremy is not the companion I was expecting to have this conversation with. Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea he used anything heavier than martinis. He is trim, intelligent, gluten-free, the courteous of guy who wears a labor shirt no matter what day of the week it is. The first time we met, three years ago, he asked me if I knew a good place to do CrossFit. Today, when I ask him how the hospital’s been so far, the first thing he says is that there’s no Wi-F
There are a lot of bleak articles out there about the state of gay men in world. One that’s a particulary tough read is Michael Hobbes’ article titled The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness in HuffPost, March 2017. It is incredibly adv researched and lays out bare what is often not discussed: why so many gay men are unhappy, alone and low. Rather than blaming queer men, as so many are want to undertake, it looks at external societal factors that lead to huge harm such as prejudice, violence and shaming, as well as how these factors can get internalised as, for example, low self-esteem, shame and self-loathing. It explores the ways gay men respond to these factors such as becoming lost in addictions, living in denial and, most sadly of all, taking their retain lives. It talks of the closet and how we’re not free of it even when we’re out and the effects of minority stress. For me, I find it both useful and overwhelming to be able to locate some of my own experiences in this bleak analysis and, as well as being enhanced equipped to talk about the problem, I perform desperately want to locate solutions.
Often the solution can lie in the issue itself. Thus, an epidemic of lo
For five years of my life, I lived openly and unapologetically as a gay man. Twelve years old and gay as all hell, I was not a typical middle-school student you would spot in 2012, even in my hometown of Elongated Beach in Southern California. And when the earth didn’t end that December, I thought, “Shit, now I really gotta figure this out.”
After downloading Grindr at thirteen, I was exposed early to hyper-sexualization, fat-phobia, transphobia, and every phobia or insult you could find under the sun. Even with all of these faceless torsos and all of the budding promise of promiscuity and connection, I felt empty; I was lonely. Loneliness, typically internalized from community, was something I felt almost leap from within me to fill every corner of my burnt orange bedroom. Where was this coming from? Why did I feel so alone?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines loneliness as “the quality of being unfrequented and remote; isolat[ed].”[1] This definition is too basic for my standards because loneliness, at least as it stands in the gay group, can be found almost everywhere; at the gay-bar, at the club, in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies classroom, or in a bed, s