MANY YOUNG GAY MEN are perceived by themselves and others as “whores,” but it’s a label that other gay youth are consciously rejecting. An earlier generation of gay men embraced sexual liberation as the driving goal of gay liberation itself, and found it empowering to be a “whore” or a “slut.” “Sexual objectification is a focus of our quest for freedom,” declared “A Gay Manifesto” of the 1970’s (by Carl Wittman). But gay youth culture has changed dramatically since then. Gay young people in general have veered toward a more heterosexual definition of their sexual relations. Few would agree with the sentiment expressed in another manifesto of early Gay Liberation, that of Martha Shelley in her classic essay “Gay is Good”: “straight roles stink.”*
Gay youths are not only rejecting the idea of being whores, they’re also consciously drawing on the straight-sex concept of “virginity.” Claiming some form of gay virginity does not necessarily mean that gay youths want to be virgins—or are—in any traditional sense. It is mainly a reaction against being regarded as a whore. The trouble is, every lesbian, gay, transgendered, bisexual, or questioning youth has a different definition of what it means to be a virgin! How does a gay person lose his or her virginity? What bodily orifices must be penetrated? Is it the giver, receiver, or both who lose their virginity? Do lesbians need a strap-on to get the job done? Do gay men require a penis? These questions stem from the fact that there’s no agreement on what constitutes going too far, or far enough, or “losing one’s V-card”—in other words, having sex. Asked if they’ve lost their virginity, most gay youths will answer with a question on the order of, “What do you consider sex?”
This is a serious dilemma for gay youth, one that’s always existed but has rarely been talked about. Unlike their straight counterparts, gay youths are often unable to define themselves as sexual beings, because the familiar definitions of heterosexual sex and virginity do not apply. And yet, many gay youths are adopting heterosexual terms as part of a new wave of integration with their straight friends. The newest issue of YGA (“Young Gay America”), a new national glossy magazine for and about non-straight youth, focuses on religion and spirituality. Gay youths are seen as attempting to reconcile their religious beliefs with their mode of sexual expression. In so doing, many find themselves simply co-opting terms such as “virgin” in an attempt to make sense of their sexual expression and its inherent cultural difference from the valorized straight sexual pairing. It’s time to ask what it means to have sex as a gay person.
Gay youths don’t have a place in the heterosexual framework because they’re not by definition engaging in straight sex. Since gay people cannot be virgins, they (or at least gay men) are assumed to be its opposite: perennial sex fiends, always out to get more action. Gay youths have thus been “whorified.” The relentless pursuit of sex is the subtext in TV shows like The L Word or Queer as Folk, while the mainstream media tend to show gay young people going to clubs or surfing the Web for sex and more sex. Of course, in reality gay teen life is not all about sex. At the same time, sex is a crucial component of a gay person’s identity. A puritanical, authoritarian straight voice has instilled fear and caution in the sexual expression of gay young people. No wonder many are turning away from demonized labels such as “whore” or “slut” and embracing the notion of virginity.
There is a history of gay sex acts that informs both gay sexual expression and those who judge it. As recently as 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, gay sex acts were illegal in thirteen states. Gays are thought to be whores because in other people’s eyes they’re only looking to have sex. In their own eyes they’re merely trying to find a safe way to express their sexuality and need for intimacy without being judged. The assumption that gay sexual expression is necessarily coercive and exploitative was at work in a 2000 case in which Matthew Limon, a mildly retarded eighteen-year-old, was sentenced to seventeen years in a Kansas prison for giving a blow job to a consenting fourteen-year-old boy in his group home. The case illustrates the lengths to which straight society will sometimes go to prevent gay youths from exploring their sexuality. But even gay youths are vilifying themselves as sluts. A gay male I know was recently feeling bad about not having sex. A gay friend asked him, “If you could sleep with anyone you wanted to, would you do it?” The first man responded, “Yes, immediately.” To which the other guy replied, “Well, you shouldn’t, because I did it for awhile and it made me feel terrible. I just did it because I didn’t respect myself.”
Gay youths are necessarily caught in mainstream culture. Constantly dealing with a new and emerging cultural identity, they have no choice but to figure out their sexual status in relation to their straight friends. Of all the labels and identities that heterosexual teens have, gay teens have two that are also used to define heterosexual women’s only options: “virgin” and “whore.” As the old Italian joke goes: “All women are whores, except my mother. She’s a virgin.” Since there’s no middle ground between these two extremes, gay youths are forced to gravitate toward one identity or the other. And since being gay is typically viewed in purely sexual terms, gay people tend to be marked automatically as whores. Of course, no one is simply a whore or a virgin. However, these two words guide the perception and representation of the gay youth community from within and without.
The problem of gay identity is compounded by the fact that the presentation of gay life in the media is determined by marketing interests that profit from presenting images that conform to popular stereotypes about gay people. The token “gay guy” on The Real World (RW) either has AIDS or is involved in a sex scandal. Pedro from RW San Francisco died of AIDS shortly after filming wrapped, while RW Miami cast member Danny made headlines last year when he was arrested for exposing himself while cruising a porn theater in Kansas City. Why AIDS and sex scandals? Because that’s what most people know about gay life. Gay youths are not speaking for themselves in a world monopolized by blatant consumerism. Many are having great, enjoyable sex, but what the general public sees on a daily basis is that gay teens who have sex get caught, get sick, and will be forever unsatisfied. Meanwhile, network TV tends to present only squeaky-clean images of gay people while pushing gay sex to the sidelines.
A closer look at the images presented in the mainstream and gay media reveals why many youths are afraid to talk about their sexuality. Gay kids are beaten up at school, abused at home, and made to feel ashamed. Last year’s major gay teen story was about New York City’s Harvey Milk School, which was created for kids who were physically harassed at their previous school. The Advocate regularly profiles (i.e., sympathizes with and pities) gay youths in its “Generation Q” commentaries by highlighting their hardships after being thrown out by their parents or the like. The message that these stories convey, however inadvertently, is how horrible it must be for gay people to go to school and then back home on a daily basis. Gay youths come to realize that if they reveal their innermost sexual fantasies and fears, they’re likely to be perceived as deviant, wasteful whores. So they end up not saying anything at all and realize it’s much better and safer that way. While many older gay men had no trouble discussing their sex lives when they came out thirty years ago, times have changed. AIDS workers introduced a whole new safe-sex-dominated vocabulary, and the federal government has been pushing “abstinence only” programs for all young people that make sex seem risky and dirty.
Having received all the wrong messages, gay youths tend to look down on peers who are perceived as promiscuous. Gay youths often resist the label of whore by declaring their virginity. I’ve heard many say, for example, “As long as I don’t have anal sex, I’m not a man-whore.” But this denial is rooted in a fallacious application of straight sexual procedures to gay ones. When a heterosexual man inserts his penis into a woman’s vagina for the first time, he proudly boasts to his friends that he’s no longer a virgin. This is not a valid or realistic way of talking about gay sex—even if gays doggedly insist on substituting the anus for the vagina.
Gay youths do not have sex the way heterosexuals do and often use the concept of virginity to explain away an endless amount of wonderful, exciting, and sometimes confusing physical contact. Virginity functions as a code word for “how far” one goes. In a Dartmouth College dining hall recently, a group of gay male friends and I were talking about the previous night. I asked one of the guys how far he went on his date. He pointedly asserted, “I’m still a virgin,” even while admitting to engaging in a wide range of sexual activities. In both gay and straight circles, “virginity” is usually used to distinguish foreplay from the real thing. But while the latter is well-defined for heterosexual men, its meaning is not so clear for gay men. For one thing, gay males are capable of playing both the role of penetrator and penetrated in anal sex—and the same is also true of oral sex.
That many gay youths aspire to be “virgins” is a response to the messages they receive about their sexuality—messages from straight adults (most often their disapproving parents), religious zealots, and puritanical moralists in real life and in the mass media. The latest confusing signal comes from the gay community itself: the fight for same-sex marriage endorses the validity of a strictly heterosexual institution, one that links (however archaically) virginity with being single and sex with marriage. Just as marriage has traditionally been used as a club with which to enforce chastity on heterosexuals, especially women, the push for same-sex marriage seems to enforce a notion of gay sex outside of marriage as whorish. Again we find that if gays cannot be virgins, they’re left with its opposite: whoredom.
Since gay sex and even public displays of affection are forbidden, gay youths have little choice but to conceal their sexual practices or misconstrue them as part of some traditional dream of virginity and marriage. The Internet, as the new cruising space for gay youth, is now the prime means of communication about sex because it is safe and anonymous. A cyber identity on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) allows a young person to fantasize about sex without bodily contact. One can be a whore for talking dirty on-line and be a virgin for not consummating the sex. Since many gay youths have a problem meeting one another in person, the Internet proves a perfect facilitator of a sexual dialogue. And yet, gay youths are looking to be anything but whores. Compared to the older gay male profiles on Manhunt.net, younger gay men are less likely to post a picture of their face, preferring to maintain a fictitious identity that keeps their sexual desires and selves at arm’s length. One of my close friends at Dartmouth doesn’t post his picture with his profile on Manhunt. When I asked him why, he told me that people would think he’s a whore. Even though they are young and good-looking, such guys want to keep the illusion that they’re virgins. They want to get laid but have to pretend to be virgins in order to have sex. If people think they’re whores, no one will want to have sex with them (the traditional dilemma for young women!).
The notion of virginity fits neatly into young gay lives at a time when political and moral agendas promote abstinence for straight people and offer no support at all for gay sex acts. Most importantly, the invasion of virginity leads to the heterosexual imperative to act according to someone else’s rules. Sexual relations among gay youths must be seen as valid forms of sexual expression in and of themselves, without comparison to their straight counterparts. This is not The Real World; it’s the queer world. Gay youths internalize heterosexual relationships and their rules and modes of conduct because that’s what they see in the media and experience firsthand with policing adults. Left with little choice, they must either mold their actions to accommodate “straight” ways of conceptualizing and physicalizing relationships or else invent their own methods.
By buying into the language of virginity, gay youths are allowing the straight majority to limit their options and diminish their integrity. To be a virgin is to be not a full adult, so it permanently infantilizes one who cannot lose his virginity, preventing him or her from growing into adulthood. Gay youths today find themselves either whorified and scared or virginalized and rendered helpless. What they need to recognize is that virginity has no meaning in a same-sex context, while “whore” is a camp word that gay culture had once made its own. Above all, they need to put aside these confining definitions when exploring their sexuality and forming intimate relationships.
* The two essays cited, Carl Wittman’s “A Gay Manifesto” and Martha Shelley’s “Gay Is Good,” both appear in We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics, edited by Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan (Routledge, 1997).
Michael Amico, a sophomore at Dartmouth College, has written for the new magazine YGA (“Young Gay America”).
