June 15, 2026 • 39 mins
Pop culture tells us gay men and straight women make the best of friends, but why? In this classic episode, Cristen and Caroline dissect the sociology, culture and evolutionary psychology of these relationships to figure out whether these presumed besties are a product of nature or nurture.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny Anne Smitha and Welcome to Stuff
I Never Told You a protection of iHeart ideo and
today we're bringing back another one that Kristen and Caroline
did for I think it's gonna still be Pride Month
by the time this comes out.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
But we'll see.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
About the gay best Friend again. I can't believe we
haven't already re ran this.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
One at all. Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Had a happy hour recently where I talked about how
I may or may not have been in love with
a gay man at one point and people's opinions on
that and my thoughts on it, So you know, why
not bring this one back. Please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from howstufforks dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and this week we're talking about themes on friendship and
the last on the podcast we talked about shine theory
and success and competition in women's friendships, and now we're
(01:27):
gonna switch our focus to the gay best friend, both
the trope and also these actual relationships between straight women
and gay men and other kinds of cross sex and
cross orientation friendships.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Yeah, it's been super interesting looking at these sources and
just charting the evolution of not only the perception of
gay people in our country and what that meant for
friendships at the time, but then seeing how they are
now when you look at those like Will and Grace
or Sex in the City, and how the leading ladies
(02:05):
had their gay friends who were almost treated like pets.
They were completely sexually neutered and expected to just be accessories.
And then you move forward in time and look at
a show like Girls where Hannah and Elijah are super bff.
Granted they did date back in the day, but it's
it is very interesting to look at how this has
(02:25):
evolved as the perception of gay people in America has
evolved as well well.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And when it comes to sort of a pop cultural
timeline of it, the late nineties is when this gay
best friend trope really gets claws into film and television,
starting in nineteen ninety seven with My best Friend's Wedding.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I remember watching my best friend's wedding when I was
a younger girl. I don't know how old I was,
but I was.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Old enough to look at Rupert Everett and be like,
I screw that straight guy.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Julia Roberts, Can you.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I really wanted Rupert Everett and Julia Roberts at the
end of the film to.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Leave the wedding and then make a life together, because
he just is to say they didn't.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
I know, it just wouldn't be that kind of life
that you were hoping they would have.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
An unconventional life vs. But to be near him a okay.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And in the following year, in ninety eight, you have
the premiere of not only Will and Grace, also Sex
in the City, as well as The Object of My
Affection starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, who it plays
the gay best friend in that one.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And yes, I've also seen that movie. Apparently I really
enjoy these kinds of films.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
And that's almost become its own mini genre of the
straight single or recently broken up with straight girl pining
away for her male gay best friend. Because then in
two thousand you also have The Next Best Thing, which
is a similar kind of setup.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And Thomas Rogers over at Tolon did point out that
Will and Grace had many positive effects for him as
a gay man coming out during that era, and also
for many other gay men who were kind of looking
around at how to be, how do I act?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
What do I do? And so Will and Grace had.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
The benefit of being like, hey, you can be accepted
by people in society and not be shamed. But the
downside he was saying was that, like I pointed out earlier,
the gay characters in that show.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Were totally neutered.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
He's I think he said, they were as sexual as
a pastel cardigan.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
And the friendship has become a trope essentially.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
But I did think it was interesting when a few
seasons in they bring in this sexy young boyfriend for him,
which maybe I don't know, maybe was their effort to
make him into more of a human person, an actual,
like three dimensional, farmed human.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Who was desirable.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
But that was the whole joke too, of like this
guy's going for Stanford.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh is that possible?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But anyway, this whole trope, though, even though it seemed
to blossom in the nineties the late nineties, it's been
around for a long time, just that very basic assumption
that straight.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Women and gay men are essentially made for each other.
And this also jumped out to me when I was
researching for this podcast and I was on the side
reading Catlemarans how to be a woman, and she writes
at one point at eighteen, I'm discovering with generations of
women have long known that the natural ally of a
(05:33):
straight woman is the gay.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Man, because they are other losers too, which I mean
that kind of sums up our assumptions about this relationship.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Yeah, they are both outside the noirm and the dominant
social construct being, you know, the white man, the white
street man. When we found some interesting points about the
origins of what would become this major trope in this
paper called Fast Friends and Queer Couples Relationship between Gay
Men and Straight Women in North American Popular Culture from
(06:03):
nineteen fifty nine to two thousand by James Allen.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And Allen points out that since the late.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Nineteenth century, a lot of researchers have seen commonalities, as
we just said, between gay men and straight women in
terms of being the other. So when did these relationships
really start to pop up on screen. Well, in the
late nineteen fifties we get the weakening of the Hayes Code. Now,
the Hayes code preceded like the rating system for movies,
(06:31):
which is like rateed R, rated PG. It was basically
a set of moral guidelines for the film industry that
was in effect from nineteen thirty to nineteen sixty eight,
but when it started to majorly weaken in the fifties,
Hollywood began showing these relationships between straight women and openly
gay men more prominently on screen.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And if they weren't openly gay, they were kind of
wink wink, nudge, nudge gay.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Right. They're always like the.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
The interior designer man friend who can be playful with
this woman who has a boyfriend, and her boyfriend won't
get upset. And Alan categorizes these kinds of relationships into
mother and son, the perfect couples, kind of like Will
and Grace, and also the gals and pals, which is
a little more Carrie Bradshaw and Stanford blatch. But they've
(07:19):
always been so steeped in stereotypes because underlying a lot
of this historically are bigoted assumptions that gay mens secretly
want to be women, that they identify more with the
female experience, and that women who associate with gay men
simply aren't sexy enough to get straight men to fall
(07:40):
in love with them find them attractive, and that they
derive their self esteem from gay men's compliments.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So I mean, this trope has a lot of baggage
and has a lot of negative things to say about
everyone involved.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Basically, Yeah, And I want.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
To clarify that we're talking about the trope, We're not
talking about these actual relationships that do exist in the
real world offscreen between gay men and straight women.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
But I mean, speaking of that, let's dive into those real,
actual human relationships and find out what researchers say, because
I mean, obviously, yes, these friendships do exist, they do happen,
They're not just a pop culture television phenomenon. And research
support that these cross sex and cross orientation friendships do
(08:26):
happen from a young age.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
There is a.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Paper published in Social Science Research in twenty ten called
Patterns of Cross Orientation Friendships in high school and it
confirmed that among all gender combinations in cross friendships in
other words, boy girl friendships quote those between straight females
and sexual minority males, which is perhaps the most clinical
way of saying gay guys have received a great amount
(08:52):
of attention in previous research. The scholarly interests perhaps reflect
the high rate of friendships in the gender combination, and
they point to a two thousand and two study which
found that gay boys tend to have more female friends
than straight boys, although lesbians, younger lesbians do not necessarily
(09:12):
have more male friends than.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Straight females do.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And we'll come back to that in a minute, because
that was a big question in our research of well,
we have this focus on this cross sex, cross gender
gay men, straight women, but what about like gay women
and straight guys, and straight guys and gay guys. What
about all the other combinations.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Right, And so they point out that these sexual minority students,
so to speak, seem to be largely cut off from
one another at school. They're not only small numbers, but
there's also a concerted effort to reduce visibility. I mean,
middle school is hard enough, you know, without feeling like
you're about to be bullied because you are of that
(09:52):
sexual minority.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
As they talk about, and.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Kristin, you mentioned all of the different basically combinations of
these different friends. And they also found that straight girls
are more likely to have cross orientation cross sexual orientation
friendships than straight boys are. And so if we look
to another study which is called Beyond Similarities, Cross Gender
and Cross Orientation Best Friendship and a sample of sexual
(10:16):
minority and heterosexual young adults in the journal Sex Roles
in twenty fourteen. They also pointed to the differences in
straight girls friendships and straight boys friendships with people of
cross orientations. And so they found that gay men reported
more cross gender friendships than lesbians did, while straight girls
(10:38):
reported a higher percentage of cross gender best friendships than
straight boys did. So it's basically confirming what the previous
study found.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, girls are just
likelier to have.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Strong friendships with gay boys and boys are likelier to
have strong friendships with girls.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Yeah, I mean it seems like straight boys are friends
with straight boys.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, I mean kind of, there is that isolation.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
And yeah, as we'll talk about, like you know, the serios,
lesbians are gonna be friends with lesbians, straight boys are
friends with straight boys, and then gay boys are friends.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And then there's the rest of us, right, and we
mixed and mingle.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
And I will say that that pattern was very much
reflected in my high school. I mean, I had a
pretty small graduating class, so it was easy to see
and there was only one out gay guy in our class,
and he only really hung out with girls.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I mean, he would hang out with the guys sometimes,
but they were merciless. Yeah, yeah, it was the same.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
In my high school, I had a gay friend who
actually got chased out of school by the popular boys.
It was just a sad, unfortunate situation because he was
part of the popular boy group. They found out he
was gay, they bullied him until he left school. But
up until then, while he had been part of that group,
the core of his friend group had been girls, and
(12:04):
so it was horrible to see that the one boy
who was able to try to come out just it
was not successful.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
And while I have a feeling that for people who
are in high school today that kind of outright bigotry
and homophobia is not as bad as it used to be,
even when you and I were in high school.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Not so long ago.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
But this study, i mean it's from twenty fourteen, supports
that those kinds of patterns still exists, which is interesting.
And one thing that further studies have suggested is that
these friendships between gay men and straight women are also
mutually beneficial. And this was something that Thomas Rodgers was
(12:49):
pointing out over at Salon. Speaking more too, in this
instance of gay straight friendships and more of the pre
Stonewall era saying quote, men got the appearance of heterosexual
legitimate I see an intimacy free of sexual tension. Women
got a touch of glamour and performance and exoticism.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And so when it comes to that.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Glamour and performance and exoticism and this mutually beneficial relationship. Supposedly,
this was something that a study publishing the journal Body
Image looked into in two thousand and nine study title
the Relation between Women's Body Esteem and Friendships with Gay Men,
and its results supported the hypothesis that women's body esteem,
(13:32):
specifically feelings of sexual attractiveness, was positively associated with friendships
with gay men, but correlation causation not clarified.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Right, as Jesse bearing over its Scientific American pointed out,
there was absolutely no link between a woman's relationship status,
the number of times she'd been on the receiving end
of a breakup, or her body esteem, and the number
of gay male friends in her life. Still, the longer
that a woman has been friends with her closest gay
male friend, they found, the lower her perceived sexual attractiveness.
(14:06):
But this, I mean again, this is all correlation. Because
also you could think and this is the first thing
I thought, Well, like, okay, the longer a woman has
been friends with someone, the lower her esteem body esteem. Well, like,
also that means you're getting older, which means that you
might naturally feel bad about things that are sagging.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I don't know exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, I mean that is why it is so important
to read studies when you can, because I mean it's yeah,
especially in the case of this, it's like, who knows
if the reason why they felt greater sexual self esteem
was just because they had a circle of gay men
all just like doling out compliments all day long.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
But one study though in twenty ten, publishing a journal
Evolutionary Psychology, essentially went viral when it came out. Its
title is friends with Benefits but without the sex.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Straight women and gay men exchange trusted dating advice, and
it suggests that these relationships flourish because there is no
sexual threat.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So that's good for straight women. We can have these
relationships with these men who do not want to have
sex with us, and so that makes life so much easier.
And meanwhile, straight women offer the benefit of possibly providing
access to other gay men for their gay friends to meet,
and also swapping, as the study title implies, or what
(15:35):
it doesn't imply, as the study title states, we can
swap dating advice because we're all we're all going for men,
so we're all, you know, but not the same men,
so we're not in competition. There's no sexual threat. There's
no competition. I mean, what more perfect relationship could you get?
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Right, basically that we both love getting dating advice from
each other. Because there are no ulterior motives. You can
get a male perspective without any sort of buy. You know,
you can get a male perspective, but he's not trying
to date you and keep you from the other man that.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
You like, yeah, and vice versa, and he wouldn't be
able to try to date the straight guy that you're
going for exactly. But there were also some experimental limitations
with this study design as well, because essentially the way
they set it up was through Facebook profiles, setting up
these fake Facebook profiles for I think it was an
(16:25):
obviously straight guy, obviously gay guy, and an obviously straight woman,
and they set up this scenario of having to go
to a party and you don't know anyone, so.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Who of these three people? And these fake Facebook profiles
would you like to go to this party with the
most and women.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Were like the gay guy, and then they did the
same thing for the gay men, so it's not I
would be more curious to get a.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Little more real world interaction.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Well, so obviously what this is showing us is that
there are a lot of benefits for these for the
people in these relationships, and that the pop culture phenomenon
that is the gay best friend is based in something
real that actually happens. But not all of these relationships
are always super healthy, and we're going to get into
(17:17):
that when we come right back from a quick break.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
And now back to the shop.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
So in the first half of the show, we established
the fact that yes, indeed, gay men and straight women,
as you and I can both personally attest, do exist.
And there have been studies on these relationships because they
seem to fascinate us endlessly, I think, because I mean,
people are constantly puzzling.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Over this question of can men and women be friends?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And this is the one cut and dried situation where
it's like, oh, yeah, absolutely, because there is none of
that sexual tension. And then when it comes to female
female friendships, there's a question of competition and jealousy if
you're ever both going from a flame guy, unless, of
course she's a lesbian.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Where are the lesbians? We'll get to them.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
But yeah, and before we talk about the different combinations
of all of these friendships and the dynamics and what
they mean and are they positive, we do have to
talk about some of the downsides of the stereotypical gay
man straight woman relationship. For instance, the idea that straight
women get to use gay men as this accessory, this
arm candy, this party favor to feel better about themselves,
(18:32):
exercising a lot of privilege along the way.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, and this is more speaking to these relationships as
are reflected in pop culture and to almost that trope extent.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's something for instance, it comes.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
Up a lot on shows like Real Housewives, where you
have the rich woman who loves to trot out her
quote unquote gay husband because he's so cute and fun
and her husband doesn't pay attention to her.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Anyway, So thankfully there's this one guy.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
And Thomas and Rogers, who we've cited a number of
times now, wrote all about this in Salon, at the
headline of his piece being I'm not your gay boyfriend.
He said quote, it feels like she's throwing around a
designer label or telling me she knows a celebrity a
kind of social conspicuous consumption. So there is some troubling
(19:22):
factor that can exist in that more in its portrayal
I think on television rather than these well, and I'm
sure sometimes in real life off screen as well, because
people are emulating those kinds of statusy relationships.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
But you know, I mean, it's a two way street
if we're talking about using each other and having privilege,
because he also talks about gay men getting to use
their straight female friends as their own accessories then exercising
their own privilege, but this time male privilege to the
point of outright misogyny.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
This was something that Yolo Achille wrote about over the
Good Men Project and got a lot of conversations started
about this question of gay male privilege, which might sound
like it cannot possibly exist well in the way Yolo
wrote about it quote, the unique way our entitlement to
women's physical bodies plays itself out is only the tip
(20:22):
of the iceberg when it comes to gay cis gender
men's sexism and privilege, and goes on to talk about
how in a class he was leading. He was asking students,
female students whether they had ever been touched by a
gay guy, like non consensually, and a lot of them
raised their hands, and a lot had stories about, say,
(20:45):
going out one night and having their breast grabbed, or
the infamous incident on the Red carpet in twenty ten
when Scarlet Johansson was talking to Isaac Musrahi on the
red carpet at the Oscars and.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
He grabbed her breast and she was not happy about it.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I can't imagine a scenario when
she would be But that whole thing has to do
with the idea that gay men, you know, aren't real men.
The societal perception of gay me in being again totally
neutered and safe, and so it's not assault. It's not
offensive to have your personal self, your physical self grabbed
(21:28):
by someone else because it's just.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
A gay guy. And Achille was.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Talking about how a lot of gay meen see it
as their right to somehow be able to grope or
offer advice on women's bodies, like women's bodies are just
an unfinished painting that they can come in and critique
and give advice on and I have a.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Feeling too that this also is a two way street
in the sense of there are gay men who don't
really appreciate it when a pack of drunk straight women
walk into.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Gay bars and want to take over the.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Centers of attention and grab their butts and their crotches
as well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
So I mean, it becomes a.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Complicated sort of dynamic, which I attribute to this portrayal
of this kind of newter toy for straight women to
play with, when in fact, I mean, in real life
there are such strong and powerful and intimate and important
relationships between get between gay me in and straight women.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
There is, however, also these other factors that.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
We need to confront too, even though I mean I'm
personally kind of seizing up a little bit because it's
a little uncomfortable to talk about.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Frankly, Yeah, and.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Rowan Goua over at jazz Abel did an incredible job
talking about it. I mean, he wrote this incredibly long, detailed,
very personal piece about his life as a gay man
and his relationship with both other gay men and with
straight women, and the fact that he basically no longer
refers to himself as a gay man that he calls
himself queer, because he says that the term gay is
(23:03):
way too loaded now that a gay man is like
will on Will and Grace, or like someone who's older
with a ton of privilege, and he's wealthy and he
has all these material needs and desires and obsessions, whereas
the queer guy isn't the one in his assessment who's
going to go out and grab women's boobs and give
them all makeovers. But basically he talks about kind of
(23:26):
the same stuff that Thomas Rodgers at Salon did that
for young men looking for role models, looking for an
example of how to come out and how to be yourself. Really,
the examples you have are from pop culture. And so
then he gets in from there to points about his
perceived experiences with what he perceives to be mistogyny that
(23:49):
exists between gay men in his life and straight women
in his life, and that he feels like many of
his female friends have been made to feel unwelcome in
his own culture, what he calls his own culture, and
says that hey, guys, we need to empathize with women,
not just use them as props as arm candiate parties.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
That we're all humans. Let's start treating each other like it.
Oh and vice versa again too.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I mean, just even using remember the at least to
me in my perspective, and I'm going out a limb
and inserting my own opinion here. I think that people should,
at this point, before gay marriage is legal in the US,
maybe think twice about what a privilegy, insulting kind of
statement is to call someone your gay husband, you know,
(24:35):
if that person doesn't have the right to marry and
get his own husband.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I think that's maybe I'm making a mountain out of them.
Mole Hill.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Well, yeah, but basically I yeah, and I mean going
off of what Rohan was writing in terms of empathizing,
and hey, gay guys don't treat women like props. I
mean absolutely, it goes both ways. None of us should
be treating anyone like props. None of us should be
leaning so on our privilege that we treat another human
being like a pet.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Or a prop or some kind of arm candy accessory.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Well, and isn't it fascinating too, And that these kinds
of conversations are coming up right now when we have
had a lot of progress in terms of gay visibility,
LGBTQ rights and recognition, as well as a lot of
resurgence in terms of women's rights gender equality. It's interesting
(25:30):
that before all of that, when both women and gay men.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Were sort of shoved off into the corner, they were
the others.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
As callan Marian put it, we were considered because.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Of that natural allies.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
But now as both groups are coming into more rights
and recognition and equality on their own, we're now having
to take a closer look at some of the skeletons,
perhaps in this friendship closet.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Well sure, because.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Both straight women and gay men are hitting points where
they're feeling empowered.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Enough to step up and say, hey, I am not
a prop.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Yeah, I'm not just Jack from Will and Grace or
I'm not just Karen from Will and Grace. As much
as those characters are great fictional television characters, plenty of
people now are stepping up to be like, can we
perceive or depict anyone as like a real human?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
That would be That would be wonderful And one thing
I would like to see more of too. And and
there is a little bit more of this on TV
and film, but more exploration of other cross sex and
cross orientation friendships.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
What about the gay men straight men friendships.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
That have historically just been hampered by homophobia.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But knowing some of I know some guys who are.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
You know, gay straight guy friends, and they're wonderful relationships
to watch.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Yeah, But unfortunately, and this is coming from a New
York Times story in two thousand and nine, they talk
about Jammie Price, who's an Appalachian State University professor who
studied forty six pairs of straight and gay male friends
for her book. And while that's a lot of pairs,
she concluded that just thirteen of them could truly be
(27:18):
called close friends, often because of the barrier that straight
men would put up because they're not so willing to
hear or want to hear about their gay friends personal
life slash you know, wait, wait, nudge, nudge, sex life.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
But I wonder though that was in two thousand and nine,
not so long ago, But.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
It feels like so long ago in terms of where
we are as a culture with homophobia. But maybe I'm
also looking at the world through rainbow colored glasses.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
The New York Times also interviewed Professor rich C.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Savin Williams, SUSIP, professor of developmental psychology at Cornell, who
talked about how, in a similar way that straight women
might be drawn to friendships with gay men because we
can get dating advice and maybe talk about things we
can't talk about to straight guys. Savin Williams says that
straight men also feel like they can talk to gay
(28:11):
men about fashion and ask them if they're looking okay,
and talk about more emotional relationship at issues, which made
me think, oh my god, are straight people just always
looking for us to sassy a sassy friend because they
can't communicate with each other?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So is this just another version of the shine theory?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Like instead of like, hey, women, position yourself next to
powerful ladies that you can help you along in your career,
is this just like hey, straight people, position yourself next
to a gay man so that you can get advice
whenever you want.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, do you not like talking to you? You're a
straight partner, Well, do we have a sassy friend for you?
Speaker 4 (28:51):
It's exhausting, But the whole gay straight bromance thing does
seem to be becoming at least a.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Little more visible.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Writing in Gawker, Brian Moylan talks about hell there should
be a contract for friendships between straight guys and gay
guys like, hey, talk about your sex life, talk about
your romantic life.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
But can we both agree that neither.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
One of you will go into much detail because you
don't want to hear about penises and you don't want
to hear about vaginas. So let's just kind of give
the general gist of things and bond that way, but
not get into the nitty gritty.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah. And also, of course, the is some like accepting that, hey,
your gay friend doesn't necessarily want to have sex with you.
Your gay friend is not just flirting with you and
playing a long game to try to get.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
You to that for the other team, sure, but I mean,
but there is the reality too that just like in
straight man straight woman relationships where the guy is maybe
holding a candle for the girl and the girl's not
aware of it. I mean, it's not like that doesn't happen,
But you can't go into every friendship thinking like, is.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
He just trying to get me in bad?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Is that your it's such your Blanche Devereaux, she's wondering
absolutely in her in one of her nightgown Yeah, and
the answer is yes, yes, yes it is.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Well, and another thing Moyle and uh.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Requests as well with this gay straight bromance contract is
no jokes about effeminacy and homophobic nonsense.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Which is just a good rule of thumb in general. Right,
oh man, whatever.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Whenever I still hear it's it's it's like nails and
a chalkboard when you hear those kinds of jokes today,
especially because it's like, seriously.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
You're making that you really so and funny? That is, yeah,
you really so foolish?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, used sound, But I do think, I mean, I
think that these relationships are becoming more normalized, and it's
been a byproduct of just the generalized embrace of the bromance,
which I think is fantastic. I am all for guy
friendships because they are adorable.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well yeah, and they're necessary. They're so necessary. We've talked
about the health benefits of.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Having very close friends before, so we won't.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Get into all that.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
But let's talk about another cross sex, cross orientation friendship
dynamic here. Where are the straight men and the lesbians
in this conversation?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yes, there is actually a term called lesbro's. No, we
did not coin it.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
There was an article about this not too long ago
in Details magazine.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So grain of salt, but all about this lesbro person
who essentially, to me, read like the gay version of
Gillian Flynn's cool girl in Don Girl.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Because the way that this author was pitching straight guys,
you need to become friends with lesbians, which.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Sure, I think that's totally fine.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, may make friends with lesbians, absolutely, but the benefits
were dudes, she did love to watch football, You can
go to strip clubs, you can go out to abuse,
and you grew up a whole mind.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Because she'll find out you with lesbian she won't care guys.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And I that was I'm just mocking the overall tone
of this article.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, I mean, but just like with any friendship, you've
got to worry about some potential sexual tension because I mean,
just think about chasing Amy.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Oh was chasing Amy. Chasing Amy was one of the worst.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I mean, Chasing Amy just put a nail in the
coffin of street men and lesbian relationships because it it
lit a candle for some or some fellas out there.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, I'm ben.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Affleck the idea that you're going to turn a woman
so that.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
She just hasn't met the right guy yet.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
She hasn't met the right penis yet. As soon as
she meets this penis, she'll become a straight woman.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
And we're not just talking in trope either. This was
something that came up from the Stuff Mom Never Told
You YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
I got a question about out from a lesbian of
why do straight guys never believe.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Me when I say that I'm a lesbian? Why do
they need proof for that?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
And I talked about it on the show and got
so many comments from so many other lesbians too, saying
that even if they are approached by a straight guy
at a bar and they say, hey, thanks, no thanks,
I'm a lesbian, even though thanks, so things should should suffice,
that doesn't suffice. They don't really believe it. There is
(33:29):
this assumption that that can happen. And for that reason,
Lee Clara le Berge, who's an assistant professor of gender
studies at the University of Chicago, told Details magazine quote,
for a straight guy, there's probably some disavowed sexual excitement.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
He knows perfectly well sex would never happen.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
But still so it's not to say that these friendships
don't and can't exist, but I do think that they
are rarer perhaps because of that dynamic a little bit
of sexual baggage.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And there was a post about this at after.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Ellen dot com as well, a lesbian asking the question
of like, why are we never the gay BFA and
then explaining it she was like one of the things
she was saying was, well, I guess we don't really
want to hang out with shrake eyes all the time,
So I don't know that's one person's opinion.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Well.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Yeah, And in that same post, the blogger Chloe contends
that part of it might just be that there's this
stereotype of lesbians just being aggressive, that they're not your
like glittery, cuddly, unicorn like stereotypical best gay guy friend.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Well, and it also.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Reflects those studies that we cited earlier looking at friendships
in middle and high school, and lesbians are likelier to
essentially like make friends with each other, they aren't necessarily
as as likely to have those cross sex friendships.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Off of that, Tyler Curry, writing at Huffington Post, talks
about the whole dynamic of gay boys and then eventually
men and lesbian girls and women, and talks about how
early on in life, especially when you're younger, you're sort
of pushed together because it's like, oh, well you're gay,
so just go be going together.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, go in the gay corner. Yeah you're the others,
so go be other together.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
And he talks about how it's like being different animals
in the same cage. There assume to be natural allies
when really it's more like fraternal twins. You just don't
have the same struggle.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And ironically, of all of the cross sex cross orientation combinations,
the one that at least in the research we did
for the podcast, so one that seems to get the
least amount of in depth research is gay lesbian friendships.
There are actually stereotypes that.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
They don't get along really at all.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, when really it's like, okay, we're fighting similar fights.
It's not that they don't get along, but it's just
that it is a different fight, and so we automatically assume,
kind of in a stereotypical, assuming fashion, that well, they
must be best friends. It's like when Harry met Stally,
(36:21):
it's like the perfect combination. It's men and women, but
they want completely different things. Of course they should get along,
but you know, anecdote doesn't always bear that out.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
To be true.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah, and even even looking back at TV. One thing
that jumped out to me when I was reading all
this stuff was how on the HBO show Looking, which
is all about gay guys in San Francisco, the sort
of token lady pal is straight and she not only
is straight, but is the ex wife of one of
(36:52):
the super dreamy gay guys.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
As far as I can remember, there is really been
very little lesbian interaction, but people who are better versed
on Looking correct me if I'm wrong. But there was
something that also jumped out.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
In the book A Companion to LGBTQ Studies, it's said,
quote queer friendships between women and men disturb the mechanisms
of homosocial cultures and force us to quote deconstruct the
forms of relationality that are imposed upon them. So, in
other words, maybe one of the reasons why were there
(37:32):
has been at least so far, so little focused on
those friendships is because they sort of defy all of
the possible norms, and maybe we're at a loss to like, well,
how well, well then what do we do? Right?
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah, we're concerned that we won't be able to make
a hit sitcom based off of that.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean well, and there's also two very little.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Focused on straight so we'll even less focused on street
women and lesbians friendships than on straight dudes and lesbians friendships.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Probably because we as humans seem really.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Obsessed with the concept of men and women being friends period.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
So now, with all that.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
We have talked about about friendship dynamics, sexual orientation, romance,
all of these things, I'm sure our listeners have so
much to share with us, and I'm very curious to hear.
Have you been on the receiving end of being considered
someone's pet.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Have you been treated a.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
Certain way or dragged along on social escapades for a
certain reason just because you're somebody's gay best friend or
gay husband.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Or do you have one of those awesome, super healthy
cross tex cross orientation friendships that you cherish and you
love and.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
You are each other's people.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
We want to know all of your stories, good, bad
and ugly. And just one note about the whole gay
best friend thing.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I really hope that we are also to the point
sort of in what we were talking about with our
episode on gay weddings. Gay best friend, that phrase can
just be shortened to just best friend.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Yeah, right,
Hey, this is Anny Anne Smitha and Welcome to Stuff
I Never Told You a protection of iHeart ideo and
today we're bringing back another one that Kristen and Caroline
did for I think it's gonna still be Pride Month
by the time this comes out.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
But we'll see.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
About the gay best Friend again. I can't believe we
haven't already re ran this.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
One at all. Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Had a happy hour recently where I talked about how
I may or may not have been in love with
a gay man at one point and people's opinions on
that and my thoughts on it, So you know, why
not bring this one back. Please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from howstufforks dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and this week we're talking about themes on friendship and
the last on the podcast we talked about shine theory
and success and competition in women's friendships, and now we're
(01:27):
gonna switch our focus to the gay best friend, both
the trope and also these actual relationships between straight women
and gay men and other kinds of cross sex and
cross orientation friendships.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Yeah, it's been super interesting looking at these sources and
just charting the evolution of not only the perception of
gay people in our country and what that meant for
friendships at the time, but then seeing how they are
now when you look at those like Will and Grace
or Sex in the City, and how the leading ladies
(02:05):
had their gay friends who were almost treated like pets.
They were completely sexually neutered and expected to just be accessories.
And then you move forward in time and look at
a show like Girls where Hannah and Elijah are super bff.
Granted they did date back in the day, but it's
it is very interesting to look at how this has
(02:25):
evolved as the perception of gay people in America has
evolved as well well.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And when it comes to sort of a pop cultural
timeline of it, the late nineties is when this gay
best friend trope really gets claws into film and television,
starting in nineteen ninety seven with My best Friend's Wedding.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I remember watching my best friend's wedding when I was
a younger girl. I don't know how old I was,
but I was.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Old enough to look at Rupert Everett and be like,
I screw that straight guy.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Julia Roberts, Can you.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I really wanted Rupert Everett and Julia Roberts at the
end of the film to.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Leave the wedding and then make a life together, because
he just is to say they didn't.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
I know, it just wouldn't be that kind of life
that you were hoping they would have.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
An unconventional life vs. But to be near him a okay.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And in the following year, in ninety eight, you have
the premiere of not only Will and Grace, also Sex
in the City, as well as The Object of My
Affection starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, who it plays
the gay best friend in that one.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And yes, I've also seen that movie. Apparently I really
enjoy these kinds of films.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
And that's almost become its own mini genre of the
straight single or recently broken up with straight girl pining
away for her male gay best friend. Because then in
two thousand you also have The Next Best Thing, which
is a similar kind of setup.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And Thomas Rogers over at Tolon did point out that
Will and Grace had many positive effects for him as
a gay man coming out during that era, and also
for many other gay men who were kind of looking
around at how to be, how do I act?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
What do I do? And so Will and Grace had.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
The benefit of being like, hey, you can be accepted
by people in society and not be shamed. But the
downside he was saying was that, like I pointed out earlier,
the gay characters in that show.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Were totally neutered.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
He's I think he said, they were as sexual as
a pastel cardigan.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
And the friendship has become a trope essentially.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
But I did think it was interesting when a few
seasons in they bring in this sexy young boyfriend for him,
which maybe I don't know, maybe was their effort to
make him into more of a human person, an actual,
like three dimensional, farmed human.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Who was desirable.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
But that was the whole joke too, of like this
guy's going for Stanford.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh is that possible?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But anyway, this whole trope, though, even though it seemed
to blossom in the nineties the late nineties, it's been
around for a long time, just that very basic assumption
that straight.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Women and gay men are essentially made for each other.
And this also jumped out to me when I was
researching for this podcast and I was on the side
reading Catlemarans how to be a woman, and she writes
at one point at eighteen, I'm discovering with generations of
women have long known that the natural ally of a
(05:33):
straight woman is the gay.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Man, because they are other losers too, which I mean
that kind of sums up our assumptions about this relationship.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Yeah, they are both outside the noirm and the dominant
social construct being, you know, the white man, the white
street man. When we found some interesting points about the
origins of what would become this major trope in this
paper called Fast Friends and Queer Couples Relationship between Gay
Men and Straight Women in North American Popular Culture from
(06:03):
nineteen fifty nine to two thousand by James Allen.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And Allen points out that since the late.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Nineteenth century, a lot of researchers have seen commonalities, as
we just said, between gay men and straight women in
terms of being the other. So when did these relationships
really start to pop up on screen. Well, in the
late nineteen fifties we get the weakening of the Hayes Code. Now,
the Hayes code preceded like the rating system for movies,
(06:31):
which is like rateed R, rated PG. It was basically
a set of moral guidelines for the film industry that
was in effect from nineteen thirty to nineteen sixty eight,
but when it started to majorly weaken in the fifties,
Hollywood began showing these relationships between straight women and openly
gay men more prominently on screen.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And if they weren't openly gay, they were kind of
wink wink, nudge, nudge gay.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Right. They're always like the.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
The interior designer man friend who can be playful with
this woman who has a boyfriend, and her boyfriend won't
get upset. And Alan categorizes these kinds of relationships into
mother and son, the perfect couples, kind of like Will
and Grace, and also the gals and pals, which is
a little more Carrie Bradshaw and Stanford blatch. But they've
(07:19):
always been so steeped in stereotypes because underlying a lot
of this historically are bigoted assumptions that gay mens secretly
want to be women, that they identify more with the
female experience, and that women who associate with gay men
simply aren't sexy enough to get straight men to fall
(07:40):
in love with them find them attractive, and that they
derive their self esteem from gay men's compliments.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So I mean, this trope has a lot of baggage
and has a lot of negative things to say about
everyone involved.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Basically, Yeah, And I want.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
To clarify that we're talking about the trope, We're not
talking about these actual relationships that do exist in the
real world offscreen between gay men and straight women.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
But I mean, speaking of that, let's dive into those real,
actual human relationships and find out what researchers say, because
I mean, obviously, yes, these friendships do exist, they do happen,
They're not just a pop culture television phenomenon. And research
support that these cross sex and cross orientation friendships do
(08:26):
happen from a young age.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
There is a.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Paper published in Social Science Research in twenty ten called
Patterns of Cross Orientation Friendships in high school and it
confirmed that among all gender combinations in cross friendships in
other words, boy girl friendships quote those between straight females
and sexual minority males, which is perhaps the most clinical
way of saying gay guys have received a great amount
(08:52):
of attention in previous research. The scholarly interests perhaps reflect
the high rate of friendships in the gender combination, and
they point to a two thousand and two study which
found that gay boys tend to have more female friends
than straight boys, although lesbians, younger lesbians do not necessarily
(09:12):
have more male friends than.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Straight females do.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And we'll come back to that in a minute, because
that was a big question in our research of well,
we have this focus on this cross sex, cross gender
gay men, straight women, but what about like gay women
and straight guys, and straight guys and gay guys. What
about all the other combinations.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Right, And so they point out that these sexual minority students,
so to speak, seem to be largely cut off from
one another at school. They're not only small numbers, but
there's also a concerted effort to reduce visibility. I mean,
middle school is hard enough, you know, without feeling like
you're about to be bullied because you are of that
(09:52):
sexual minority.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
As they talk about, and.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Kristin, you mentioned all of the different basically combinations of
these different friends. And they also found that straight girls
are more likely to have cross orientation cross sexual orientation
friendships than straight boys are. And so if we look
to another study which is called Beyond Similarities, Cross Gender
and Cross Orientation Best Friendship and a sample of sexual
(10:16):
minority and heterosexual young adults in the journal Sex Roles
in twenty fourteen. They also pointed to the differences in
straight girls friendships and straight boys friendships with people of
cross orientations. And so they found that gay men reported
more cross gender friendships than lesbians did, while straight girls
(10:38):
reported a higher percentage of cross gender best friendships than
straight boys did. So it's basically confirming what the previous
study found.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, girls are just
likelier to have.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Strong friendships with gay boys and boys are likelier to
have strong friendships with girls.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Yeah, I mean it seems like straight boys are friends
with straight boys.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, I mean kind of, there is that isolation.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
And yeah, as we'll talk about, like you know, the serios,
lesbians are gonna be friends with lesbians, straight boys are
friends with straight boys, and then gay boys are friends.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And then there's the rest of us, right, and we
mixed and mingle.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
And I will say that that pattern was very much
reflected in my high school. I mean, I had a
pretty small graduating class, so it was easy to see
and there was only one out gay guy in our class,
and he only really hung out with girls.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I mean, he would hang out with the guys sometimes,
but they were merciless. Yeah, yeah, it was the same.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
In my high school, I had a gay friend who
actually got chased out of school by the popular boys.
It was just a sad, unfortunate situation because he was
part of the popular boy group. They found out he
was gay, they bullied him until he left school. But
up until then, while he had been part of that group,
the core of his friend group had been girls, and
(12:04):
so it was horrible to see that the one boy
who was able to try to come out just it
was not successful.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
And while I have a feeling that for people who
are in high school today that kind of outright bigotry
and homophobia is not as bad as it used to be,
even when you and I were in high school.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Not so long ago.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
But this study, i mean it's from twenty fourteen, supports
that those kinds of patterns still exists, which is interesting.
And one thing that further studies have suggested is that
these friendships between gay men and straight women are also
mutually beneficial. And this was something that Thomas Rodgers was
(12:49):
pointing out over at Salon. Speaking more too, in this
instance of gay straight friendships and more of the pre
Stonewall era saying quote, men got the appearance of heterosexual
legitimate I see an intimacy free of sexual tension. Women
got a touch of glamour and performance and exoticism.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And so when it comes to that.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Glamour and performance and exoticism and this mutually beneficial relationship. Supposedly,
this was something that a study publishing the journal Body
Image looked into in two thousand and nine study title
the Relation between Women's Body Esteem and Friendships with Gay Men,
and its results supported the hypothesis that women's body esteem,
(13:32):
specifically feelings of sexual attractiveness, was positively associated with friendships
with gay men, but correlation causation not clarified.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Right, as Jesse bearing over its Scientific American pointed out,
there was absolutely no link between a woman's relationship status,
the number of times she'd been on the receiving end
of a breakup, or her body esteem, and the number
of gay male friends in her life. Still, the longer
that a woman has been friends with her closest gay
male friend, they found, the lower her perceived sexual attractiveness.
(14:06):
But this, I mean again, this is all correlation. Because
also you could think and this is the first thing
I thought, Well, like, okay, the longer a woman has
been friends with someone, the lower her esteem body esteem. Well, like,
also that means you're getting older, which means that you
might naturally feel bad about things that are sagging.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I don't know exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, I mean that is why it is so important
to read studies when you can, because I mean it's yeah,
especially in the case of this, it's like, who knows
if the reason why they felt greater sexual self esteem
was just because they had a circle of gay men
all just like doling out compliments all day long.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
But one study though in twenty ten, publishing a journal
Evolutionary Psychology, essentially went viral when it came out. Its
title is friends with Benefits but without the sex.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Straight women and gay men exchange trusted dating advice, and
it suggests that these relationships flourish because there is no
sexual threat.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So that's good for straight women. We can have these
relationships with these men who do not want to have
sex with us, and so that makes life so much easier.
And meanwhile, straight women offer the benefit of possibly providing
access to other gay men for their gay friends to meet,
and also swapping, as the study title implies, or what
(15:35):
it doesn't imply, as the study title states, we can
swap dating advice because we're all we're all going for men,
so we're all, you know, but not the same men,
so we're not in competition. There's no sexual threat. There's
no competition. I mean, what more perfect relationship could you get?
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Right, basically that we both love getting dating advice from
each other. Because there are no ulterior motives. You can
get a male perspective without any sort of buy. You know,
you can get a male perspective, but he's not trying
to date you and keep you from the other man that.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
You like, yeah, and vice versa, and he wouldn't be
able to try to date the straight guy that you're
going for exactly. But there were also some experimental limitations
with this study design as well, because essentially the way
they set it up was through Facebook profiles, setting up
these fake Facebook profiles for I think it was an
(16:25):
obviously straight guy, obviously gay guy, and an obviously straight woman,
and they set up this scenario of having to go
to a party and you don't know anyone, so.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Who of these three people? And these fake Facebook profiles
would you like to go to this party with the
most and women.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Were like the gay guy, and then they did the
same thing for the gay men, so it's not I
would be more curious to get a.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Little more real world interaction.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Well, so obviously what this is showing us is that
there are a lot of benefits for these for the
people in these relationships, and that the pop culture phenomenon
that is the gay best friend is based in something
real that actually happens. But not all of these relationships
are always super healthy, and we're going to get into
(17:17):
that when we come right back from a quick break.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
And now back to the shop.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
So in the first half of the show, we established
the fact that yes, indeed, gay men and straight women,
as you and I can both personally attest, do exist.
And there have been studies on these relationships because they
seem to fascinate us endlessly, I think, because I mean,
people are constantly puzzling.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Over this question of can men and women be friends?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And this is the one cut and dried situation where
it's like, oh, yeah, absolutely, because there is none of
that sexual tension. And then when it comes to female
female friendships, there's a question of competition and jealousy if
you're ever both going from a flame guy, unless, of
course she's a lesbian.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Where are the lesbians? We'll get to them.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
But yeah, and before we talk about the different combinations
of all of these friendships and the dynamics and what
they mean and are they positive, we do have to
talk about some of the downsides of the stereotypical gay
man straight woman relationship. For instance, the idea that straight
women get to use gay men as this accessory, this
arm candy, this party favor to feel better about themselves,
(18:32):
exercising a lot of privilege along the way.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, and this is more speaking to these relationships as
are reflected in pop culture and to almost that trope extent.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's something for instance, it comes.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
Up a lot on shows like Real Housewives, where you
have the rich woman who loves to trot out her
quote unquote gay husband because he's so cute and fun
and her husband doesn't pay attention to her.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Anyway, So thankfully there's this one guy.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
And Thomas and Rogers, who we've cited a number of
times now, wrote all about this in Salon, at the
headline of his piece being I'm not your gay boyfriend.
He said quote, it feels like she's throwing around a
designer label or telling me she knows a celebrity a
kind of social conspicuous consumption. So there is some troubling
(19:22):
factor that can exist in that more in its portrayal
I think on television rather than these well, and I'm
sure sometimes in real life off screen as well, because
people are emulating those kinds of statusy relationships.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
But you know, I mean, it's a two way street
if we're talking about using each other and having privilege,
because he also talks about gay men getting to use
their straight female friends as their own accessories then exercising
their own privilege, but this time male privilege to the
point of outright misogyny.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
This was something that Yolo Achille wrote about over the
Good Men Project and got a lot of conversations started
about this question of gay male privilege, which might sound
like it cannot possibly exist well in the way Yolo
wrote about it quote, the unique way our entitlement to
women's physical bodies plays itself out is only the tip
(20:22):
of the iceberg when it comes to gay cis gender
men's sexism and privilege, and goes on to talk about
how in a class he was leading. He was asking students,
female students whether they had ever been touched by a
gay guy, like non consensually, and a lot of them
raised their hands, and a lot had stories about, say,
(20:45):
going out one night and having their breast grabbed, or
the infamous incident on the Red carpet in twenty ten
when Scarlet Johansson was talking to Isaac Musrahi on the
red carpet at the Oscars and.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
He grabbed her breast and she was not happy about it.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I can't imagine a scenario when
she would be But that whole thing has to do
with the idea that gay men, you know, aren't real men.
The societal perception of gay me in being again totally
neutered and safe, and so it's not assault. It's not
offensive to have your personal self, your physical self grabbed
(21:28):
by someone else because it's just.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
A gay guy. And Achille was.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Talking about how a lot of gay meen see it
as their right to somehow be able to grope or
offer advice on women's bodies, like women's bodies are just
an unfinished painting that they can come in and critique
and give advice on and I have a.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Feeling too that this also is a two way street
in the sense of there are gay men who don't
really appreciate it when a pack of drunk straight women
walk into.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Gay bars and want to take over the.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Centers of attention and grab their butts and their crotches
as well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
So I mean, it becomes a.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Complicated sort of dynamic, which I attribute to this portrayal
of this kind of newter toy for straight women to
play with, when in fact, I mean, in real life
there are such strong and powerful and intimate and important
relationships between get between gay me in and straight women.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
There is, however, also these other factors that.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
We need to confront too, even though I mean I'm
personally kind of seizing up a little bit because it's
a little uncomfortable to talk about.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Frankly, Yeah, and.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Rowan Goua over at jazz Abel did an incredible job
talking about it. I mean, he wrote this incredibly long, detailed,
very personal piece about his life as a gay man
and his relationship with both other gay men and with
straight women, and the fact that he basically no longer
refers to himself as a gay man that he calls
himself queer, because he says that the term gay is
(23:03):
way too loaded now that a gay man is like
will on Will and Grace, or like someone who's older
with a ton of privilege, and he's wealthy and he
has all these material needs and desires and obsessions, whereas
the queer guy isn't the one in his assessment who's
going to go out and grab women's boobs and give
them all makeovers. But basically he talks about kind of
(23:26):
the same stuff that Thomas Rodgers at Salon did that
for young men looking for role models, looking for an
example of how to come out and how to be yourself. Really,
the examples you have are from pop culture. And so
then he gets in from there to points about his
perceived experiences with what he perceives to be mistogyny that
(23:49):
exists between gay men in his life and straight women
in his life, and that he feels like many of
his female friends have been made to feel unwelcome in
his own culture, what he calls his own culture, and
says that hey, guys, we need to empathize with women,
not just use them as props as arm candiate parties.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
That we're all humans. Let's start treating each other like it.
Oh and vice versa again too.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I mean, just even using remember the at least to
me in my perspective, and I'm going out a limb
and inserting my own opinion here. I think that people should,
at this point, before gay marriage is legal in the US,
maybe think twice about what a privilegy, insulting kind of
statement is to call someone your gay husband, you know,
(24:35):
if that person doesn't have the right to marry and
get his own husband.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I think that's maybe I'm making a mountain out of them.
Mole Hill.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Well, yeah, but basically I yeah, and I mean going
off of what Rohan was writing in terms of empathizing,
and hey, gay guys don't treat women like props. I
mean absolutely, it goes both ways. None of us should
be treating anyone like props. None of us should be
leaning so on our privilege that we treat another human
being like a pet.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Or a prop or some kind of arm candy accessory.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Well, and isn't it fascinating too, And that these kinds
of conversations are coming up right now when we have
had a lot of progress in terms of gay visibility,
LGBTQ rights and recognition, as well as a lot of
resurgence in terms of women's rights gender equality. It's interesting
(25:30):
that before all of that, when both women and gay men.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Were sort of shoved off into the corner, they were
the others.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
As callan Marian put it, we were considered because.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Of that natural allies.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
But now as both groups are coming into more rights
and recognition and equality on their own, we're now having
to take a closer look at some of the skeletons,
perhaps in this friendship closet.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Well sure, because.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Both straight women and gay men are hitting points where
they're feeling empowered.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Enough to step up and say, hey, I am not
a prop.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Yeah, I'm not just Jack from Will and Grace or
I'm not just Karen from Will and Grace. As much
as those characters are great fictional television characters, plenty of
people now are stepping up to be like, can we
perceive or depict anyone as like a real human?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
That would be That would be wonderful And one thing
I would like to see more of too. And and
there is a little bit more of this on TV
and film, but more exploration of other cross sex and
cross orientation friendships.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
What about the gay men straight men friendships.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
That have historically just been hampered by homophobia.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But knowing some of I know some guys who are.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
You know, gay straight guy friends, and they're wonderful relationships
to watch.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Yeah, But unfortunately, and this is coming from a New
York Times story in two thousand and nine, they talk
about Jammie Price, who's an Appalachian State University professor who
studied forty six pairs of straight and gay male friends
for her book. And while that's a lot of pairs,
she concluded that just thirteen of them could truly be
(27:18):
called close friends, often because of the barrier that straight
men would put up because they're not so willing to
hear or want to hear about their gay friends personal
life slash you know, wait, wait, nudge, nudge, sex life.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
But I wonder though that was in two thousand and nine,
not so long ago, But.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
It feels like so long ago in terms of where
we are as a culture with homophobia. But maybe I'm
also looking at the world through rainbow colored glasses.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
The New York Times also interviewed Professor rich C.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Savin Williams, SUSIP, professor of developmental psychology at Cornell, who
talked about how, in a similar way that straight women
might be drawn to friendships with gay men because we
can get dating advice and maybe talk about things we
can't talk about to straight guys. Savin Williams says that
straight men also feel like they can talk to gay
(28:11):
men about fashion and ask them if they're looking okay,
and talk about more emotional relationship at issues, which made
me think, oh my god, are straight people just always
looking for us to sassy a sassy friend because they
can't communicate with each other?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So is this just another version of the shine theory?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Like instead of like, hey, women, position yourself next to
powerful ladies that you can help you along in your career,
is this just like hey, straight people, position yourself next
to a gay man so that you can get advice
whenever you want.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, do you not like talking to you? You're a
straight partner, Well, do we have a sassy friend for you?
Speaker 4 (28:51):
It's exhausting, But the whole gay straight bromance thing does
seem to be becoming at least a.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Little more visible.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Writing in Gawker, Brian Moylan talks about hell there should
be a contract for friendships between straight guys and gay
guys like, hey, talk about your sex life, talk about
your romantic life.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
But can we both agree that neither.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
One of you will go into much detail because you
don't want to hear about penises and you don't want
to hear about vaginas. So let's just kind of give
the general gist of things and bond that way, but
not get into the nitty gritty.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah. And also, of course, the is some like accepting that, hey,
your gay friend doesn't necessarily want to have sex with you.
Your gay friend is not just flirting with you and
playing a long game to try to get.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
You to that for the other team, sure, but I mean,
but there is the reality too that just like in
straight man straight woman relationships where the guy is maybe
holding a candle for the girl and the girl's not
aware of it. I mean, it's not like that doesn't happen,
But you can't go into every friendship thinking like, is.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
He just trying to get me in bad?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Is that your it's such your Blanche Devereaux, she's wondering
absolutely in her in one of her nightgown Yeah, and
the answer is yes, yes, yes it is.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Well, and another thing Moyle and uh.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Requests as well with this gay straight bromance contract is
no jokes about effeminacy and homophobic nonsense.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Which is just a good rule of thumb in general. Right,
oh man, whatever.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Whenever I still hear it's it's it's like nails and
a chalkboard when you hear those kinds of jokes today,
especially because it's like, seriously.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
You're making that you really so and funny? That is, yeah,
you really so foolish?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, used sound, But I do think, I mean, I
think that these relationships are becoming more normalized, and it's
been a byproduct of just the generalized embrace of the bromance,
which I think is fantastic. I am all for guy
friendships because they are adorable.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well yeah, and they're necessary. They're so necessary. We've talked
about the health benefits of.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Having very close friends before, so we won't.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Get into all that.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
But let's talk about another cross sex, cross orientation friendship
dynamic here. Where are the straight men and the lesbians
in this conversation?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yes, there is actually a term called lesbro's. No, we
did not coin it.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
There was an article about this not too long ago
in Details magazine.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So grain of salt, but all about this lesbro person
who essentially, to me, read like the gay version of
Gillian Flynn's cool girl in Don Girl.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Because the way that this author was pitching straight guys,
you need to become friends with lesbians, which.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Sure, I think that's totally fine.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, may make friends with lesbians, absolutely, but the benefits
were dudes, she did love to watch football, You can
go to strip clubs, you can go out to abuse,
and you grew up a whole mind.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Because she'll find out you with lesbian she won't care guys.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And I that was I'm just mocking the overall tone
of this article.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, I mean, but just like with any friendship, you've
got to worry about some potential sexual tension because I mean,
just think about chasing Amy.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Oh was chasing Amy. Chasing Amy was one of the worst.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I mean, Chasing Amy just put a nail in the
coffin of street men and lesbian relationships because it it
lit a candle for some or some fellas out there.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, I'm ben.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Affleck the idea that you're going to turn a woman
so that.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
She just hasn't met the right guy yet.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
She hasn't met the right penis yet. As soon as
she meets this penis, she'll become a straight woman.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
And we're not just talking in trope either. This was
something that came up from the Stuff Mom Never Told
You YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
I got a question about out from a lesbian of
why do straight guys never believe.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Me when I say that I'm a lesbian? Why do
they need proof for that?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
And I talked about it on the show and got
so many comments from so many other lesbians too, saying
that even if they are approached by a straight guy
at a bar and they say, hey, thanks, no thanks,
I'm a lesbian, even though thanks, so things should should suffice,
that doesn't suffice. They don't really believe it. There is
(33:29):
this assumption that that can happen. And for that reason,
Lee Clara le Berge, who's an assistant professor of gender
studies at the University of Chicago, told Details magazine quote,
for a straight guy, there's probably some disavowed sexual excitement.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
He knows perfectly well sex would never happen.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
But still so it's not to say that these friendships
don't and can't exist, but I do think that they
are rarer perhaps because of that dynamic a little bit
of sexual baggage.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And there was a post about this at after.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Ellen dot com as well, a lesbian asking the question
of like, why are we never the gay BFA and
then explaining it she was like one of the things
she was saying was, well, I guess we don't really
want to hang out with shrake eyes all the time,
So I don't know that's one person's opinion.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Well.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Yeah, And in that same post, the blogger Chloe contends
that part of it might just be that there's this
stereotype of lesbians just being aggressive, that they're not your
like glittery, cuddly, unicorn like stereotypical best gay guy friend.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Well, and it also.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Reflects those studies that we cited earlier looking at friendships
in middle and high school, and lesbians are likelier to
essentially like make friends with each other, they aren't necessarily
as as likely to have those cross sex friendships.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Off of that, Tyler Curry, writing at Huffington Post, talks
about the whole dynamic of gay boys and then eventually
men and lesbian girls and women, and talks about how
early on in life, especially when you're younger, you're sort
of pushed together because it's like, oh, well you're gay,
so just go be going together.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, go in the gay corner. Yeah you're the others,
so go be other together.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
And he talks about how it's like being different animals
in the same cage. There assume to be natural allies
when really it's more like fraternal twins. You just don't
have the same struggle.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And ironically, of all of the cross sex cross orientation combinations,
the one that at least in the research we did
for the podcast, so one that seems to get the
least amount of in depth research is gay lesbian friendships.
There are actually stereotypes that.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
They don't get along really at all.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, when really it's like, okay, we're fighting similar fights.
It's not that they don't get along, but it's just
that it is a different fight, and so we automatically assume,
kind of in a stereotypical, assuming fashion, that well, they
must be best friends. It's like when Harry met Stally,
(36:21):
it's like the perfect combination. It's men and women, but
they want completely different things. Of course they should get along,
but you know, anecdote doesn't always bear that out.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
To be true.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah, and even even looking back at TV. One thing
that jumped out to me when I was reading all
this stuff was how on the HBO show Looking, which
is all about gay guys in San Francisco, the sort
of token lady pal is straight and she not only
is straight, but is the ex wife of one of
(36:52):
the super dreamy gay guys.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
As far as I can remember, there is really been
very little lesbian interaction, but people who are better versed
on Looking correct me if I'm wrong. But there was
something that also jumped out.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
In the book A Companion to LGBTQ Studies, it's said,
quote queer friendships between women and men disturb the mechanisms
of homosocial cultures and force us to quote deconstruct the
forms of relationality that are imposed upon them. So, in
other words, maybe one of the reasons why were there
(37:32):
has been at least so far, so little focused on
those friendships is because they sort of defy all of
the possible norms, and maybe we're at a loss to like, well,
how well, well then what do we do? Right?
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah, we're concerned that we won't be able to make
a hit sitcom based off of that.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean well, and there's also two very little.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Focused on straight so we'll even less focused on street
women and lesbians friendships than on straight dudes and lesbians friendships.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Probably because we as humans seem really.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Obsessed with the concept of men and women being friends period.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
So now, with all that.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
We have talked about about friendship dynamics, sexual orientation, romance,
all of these things, I'm sure our listeners have so
much to share with us, and I'm very curious to hear.
Have you been on the receiving end of being considered
someone's pet.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Have you been treated a.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
Certain way or dragged along on social escapades for a
certain reason just because you're somebody's gay best friend or
gay husband.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Or do you have one of those awesome, super healthy
cross tex cross orientation friendships that you cherish and you
love and.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
You are each other's people.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
We want to know all of your stories, good, bad
and ugly. And just one note about the whole gay
best friend thing.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I really hope that we are also to the point
sort of in what we were talking about with our
episode on gay weddings. Gay best friend, that phrase can
just be shortened to just best friend.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Yeah, right,
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Samantha McVey
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