There’s no denying that straight folks have big advantages over queer folks when it comes to everyday life: Never having to explain their sexuality; enjoying a much larger dating pool; and not having to worry about their rights being revoked, to name a few. But gay men are pointing out one way that they have a leg up over their straight counterparts, and wondering if they should feel bad for the less fortunate.
The discourse began on a Reddit post titled, “Do you feel sorry for how hard straight guys have to work for sex?,” where one gay guy asked his fellow queer men that titular question.
“I was out for a Christmas get together in another city with some old college friends (all male, all straight except me), and a couple of them were complaining about going through a dry spell and how frustrated they were going on endless dates that never went anywhere and never ended in sex, and how much money it was costing them,” the poster explained.
“I’d never really thought about it before as sex has been so instantly accessible to me ever since I came out,” he continued, musing on his own relationship with hookup apps. “I never really stopped to think that a lot of straight guys can’t get laid whenever they want and have to go through a lot of effort to make it happen a lot of the time.”
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“Why stay in your safe, committed relationship even if it has problems, if you can be single and not be criticized or ridiculed or anything?”
He went on, saying that his friends’ “minds were blown” when he showed them Grindr. With that in mind, should gay guys take pity on the single straight men who are suffering without an equivalent app of their own?
The short answer, as one commenter put it, is, “Lol no.”
“Why should I feel bad for one of the very, very few advantages we have over straight guys?” they continued. “Also, having gay sex is easy NOW. But for millenia, we had to meet in parks, underneath bridges, or other shady places for sex. Because of straight men.”
Another commenter echoed that last point, saying that apps like Grindr and Sniffies might make hookups easy now, but they don’t make up for queer men’s long history of operating from the closet: “When my straight mates complain about us having Grindr I just point out how they’ve had millennia of being accepted whilst we’ve been persecuted and killed,” they wrote. “Usually shuts them up.”
“They have it way easier in other regards. This makes it difficult to feel sorry for them,” agreed a third.
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“I don’t think she’s homophobic, but she doesn’t mind being with a homophobe.”
Others pointed out that though they did have sympathy for straight men’s struggles, it’s hard to reconcile that with those same men’s treatment of women.
“I do, then I overheard one of their conversations about women and realize most of them don’t deserve to get laid or even be in a relationship,” explained one commenter.
“The reason why there’s no straight Grindr is that women are afraid of being mistreated by straight men, and often rightly so,” agreed a second.
Another commenter noted that though hookups may be more accessible to gay men on average, not everyone’s experience on the apps is smooth sailing.
“Many gays hardly ever get laid either. I for one would love to just fire-up grindr and meet someone within the hour too, but dont seem to ever get it right,” they wrote. “We all have our own mountains to climb and it is by far nowhere near the sunshine and rainbows for many gays out there.”
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