I wonder if embracing the stereotype is less popular today than it used to be.

I’ll never forget being 18 years old and doing a fundraising job at ACORN, and making my first genuine gay adult friend. John was a coworker, about 30 with a 70s porn mustache and a masculine presentation. Except … sometimes his hips swayed and his voice lilted. Only at the right moment.

After he found out I was gay, he turned on the camp whenever we had privacy. I’ll never forget the time he called me girl and Mary in one sentence while his voice trilled.

He wasn’t flirting, he was taking the opportunity to be himself. Whether his femininity was innate or learned, I don’t know. But I do know that a lot of gay men of that era weren’t afraid to revel in femininity. Stepping into a gay bar in 1980 was often to trip the fey light fantastic, as it were.

I guess a lot of that was culture rooted in rebellion. I still saw femme shaming sometimes by other gay men, but it seemed less pervasive and toxic than it does today.

Today, it feels like more gay men are invested in proving the stereotype isn’t true than in being free to be themselves.