How to find masculine gay men

The Gay Man&#;s guide to creating a profile that speaks to who you are. Plus: two profile red flags to watch out for.

I&#;ve been matchmaking app online since I came out at At that time, online dating was the primary option for gay men to connect other gay men. There may be more options available now, but I still find it to be my go-to internet dating method.

My preference for the online dating pool may be because my social circles don&#;t bring me into contact with an abundance of single lgbtq+ men, or because it&#;s interesting to meet people who are outside my everyday experience. It is, as they say, what it is.

The debut of &#;a website that promotes mindful dating&#;is exciting. I wonder, though, if what we are being mindful about will be open to wide interpretation. To me, mindfulness means being alert of and engaged in the Universe and respecting its laws, and in improving oneself in concord with those laws. To others, &#;mindful&#; may indicate something different. The rendezvous of these minds, though, starts with a profile.

Take mine, for example:

Hi everyone! It&#;s nice to convene you.

My name&#;s Joe (Joseph if you&#;re my Mom) and I am a 31 year old homosexual male, six foot, pounds, and if you

Photo credit: Shed Mojahid

Article by Hugo Mega (edited by Alyssa Lepage)

I used to think that “coming out” was going to be the hardest part of being gay. That, organism free to be me, I could finally end pretending. I would be able to drop the heteronormative disguise that I used to wear, to ensure that I belonged and that I felt safe. Little did I know that in the years that followed, more often than not, I would find myself butch-ing up, trying to be more masculine than what I naturally was. How did I find myself here again?

Like walking on thin ice, any phony move I made, could easily throw me support into a loop of old patterns that condition my ways of organism and behaving without me even noticing it.

Tired of this self-limiting pattern, I decided to confront my beliefs around masculinity. Since then I’ve been engaged in deconstructing my conditioning and notions of what it means to be a man. In the process of deconstructing my beliefs it was hard to avoid one’s retain toxic masculinity. I used to believe that existence gay absolved me from being toxic like many straight man can be, but I was wrong.

In this article I will be reflecting on personal experiences and different p

Many gay men grew up feeling ashamed of not conforming to cultural expectations about “real boys” or “real men.” Especially during middle and high institution, they may have been bullied or publicly humiliated because of their difference—made to feel like outsiders and not “one of the boys.” They may have found it easier relating to women than men, though they didn’t fully belong to the girl group, either.

Every same-sex attracted man I’ve seen in my practice over the years has had a conflicted, troubled relationship with his own masculinity, often shaping his behavior in destructive ways. Writing for Vice, Jeff Leavell captures the dynamic nicely: “Queer people, especially gay men, are known for dealing with a slew of self-doubts and anxieties in noxious ways. Gay men are liable to sense incredibly insecure over their masculinity, a kind of internalized homophobia that leads them to idolize 'masc 4 masc', 'gaybros' and [to] shame and oppress femme men.”

Here we glimpse one of the most common defenses against shame: getting rid of it by offloading or projecting it onto somebody else; in this case, one of those “femme men.” In effect, “masc” men who humiliate “femmes” replay the shame trauma of their

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