🙋‍♂️ in defence of the 'pick-me gay' 🙋‍♂️

QUEER WORD
PICK-ME GAY

What It Means:

An adaptation of the more commonly known ‘pick-me girl,’ a pick-me gay is a gay man who distances himself from queer culture and other gay people in order to gain approval from straight people (or, I suppose, from other gays who consider themselves ‘normal’ 🤮).

The defining trait is the phrase ‘I'm not like other gays’, which is usually delivered with a mix of pride and disdain.

Let’s Use It In A Sentence:

My cousin Vinny came out last year and immediately became a pick-me gay, posting things like ‘why do gays have to make it their whole personality?’, seemingly unaware that this had become his entire personality.

The Curious Case of the Pick-Me Gay

I'm going to tell you a story about Barry.

Barry is one of those people who opposed equal marriage.

He spoke loudly about these views, posting frequently on social media and writing bafflingly long screeds he was convinced would change hearts and minds. He had arguments with friends and family, burned bridges, dug in his heels. The mere mention of marriage equality would send him into a fury.

And it wasn't because he was against the institution of marriage. He didn't view it as archaic and outdated, a union that doesn't quite work in our modern society. He wasn't opposed to its patriarchal origins or its historically sexist nature.

No, no, no. He was against equal marriage because he vehemently believed that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

A man and a woman.

Which, so far, so familiar, right? We’ve all met a Barry or two in our time.

But the interesting thing about Barry is that he is a gay man.

So, why, you might ask, would someone so vocally oppose something that is seeking to give them and people in their community better rights?

The long answer is… it's complicated.

The short answer is… Barry is a pick-me gay.

He’s a person who seemingly acts against their best interests in order to appeal to a swathe of the population that will never truly accept him, no matter how much he distances himself from the rest of us.

So, Where Did This Term Come From?

Before there was the pick-me gay, there was the pick-me girl, a term coined in the 2000s to describe a heterosexual woman who seeks male approval by distancing herself from anything stereotypically feminine and subtly (or not-so-subtly) putting down other women in the process.

'I'm not like other girls,' she'd declare.

‘I don't do drama.’

‘I'm basically one of the guys.’

‘Other girls are so bitchy and mean.’

And, though it was ostensibly meant to make her seem laidback and cool, it more often came across instead as a desperate plea for male attention and acceptance.

The ‘pick me’ element of the term is about desperately seeking validation: pick me, approve of me, love me.

The term really took off in 2016 when the hashtag #TweetLikeAPickMe started trending, and the kind people of the internet gave us some deliciously cruel and absurd takedowns of the stereotype.

Before too long the queer community got our grubby little hands on it, and adapted the term to describe the kind of gay man who rejects even the faintest whiff of campness or queerness or femininity in what appears to be an attempt to position himself as an ‘acceptable’ kind of gay.

So Why Exactly Am I Out Here Defending The ‘Pick-Me Gay’? 

Well, ‘defend‘ might be too strong a word. I tend to give pick-me gays (and those that are pick-me gay adjacent) a wide berth, refusing to engage in any type of debate or conversation with them.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have sympathy for what has made them that way. 

Because… well… I think I kind of understand the forces that create a pick-me gay. And once you consider all of these ingredients, it becomes harder to write them off as simply self-hating or stubbornly contrarian. There are real, powerful reasons why some gay men end up like Barry:

• Internalised homophobia runs deep. Ooof, does it ever. Most of us have it drummed into us from a young age that being queer is wrong. So who can really blame the pick-me gay for never moving beyond that sentiment? They absorbed it so thoroughly and then, for whatever reason, never got the chance to de-programme those poisonous, acidic thoughts that dance around in the back of their minds

• The tribal instinct is real. Humans are social beings. Our cave-people brains demand we conform at least somewhat in order not to be shunned from the tribe. Most everything we do is shaped by a desire to belong, to be accepted, to not be cast out. So when you grow up in a world that tells you your very being is wrong, it's natural to want to deflect. To say 'okay, I might be gay, but I'm not that kind of gay.' To be meek and apologetic in the desperate hope that you'll be spared.

• Unrequited love is intoxicating. As anyone who has ever been a lovesick teenager will tell you, there's nothing more delicious than pining for the love of someone who will never love you back. Pick-me gays seem to still believe that if they just perform heteronormativity well enough, straight society will finally accept them. Even though... well... we all already know how that story ends.

But, I guess, ultimately, the reason I’m encouraging you to show a smidgen of sympathy for the pick-me gay is because… well…

• We’ve all been a pick-me gay at one time or another. Ok, so maybe not to Barry's extreme, but we've all had our pick-me gay moments. Whether it was after a disastrous first date, an awkward gay bar experience, or just a period where we felt isolated and ashamed and disconnected from what they call the ‘queer community’. We've all felt the urge to distance ourselves, to stop striving for connection, to go hide in a cave somewhere.

  The difference is most of us didn't make it the hill we die on. Most of us did the work, found our people (or adopted a cat), and realised that straight approval isn't worth abandoning our sense of self for.

So, yeah, I have some sympathy for the pick-me gay, even if they're working against the rest of us and being completely insufferable about it.

Now, tell me. Does any of this ring true for you? Have you had a pick-me gay phase? Do you know a Barry (or two)?

Answer in the poll below (or just hit ‘reply’ and let’s have a chat!).