Intervention requested: Manly Gay

Straight Gay is no more subjective than any other character personality trope, really. Also, we can't completely divorce Straight Gay from Camp Gay, since Straight Gay is essentially defined by its relationship to that trope. Straight Gay is currently defined on this wiki, in short, as a homosexual character that has no camp mannerisms or affectations. While that trope's page makes passing mention to Manly Gay (and later calls it a subtrope near the bottom), the main point of Straight Gay is being the opposite of Camp Gay.

Similarly, trying to divorce Manly Gay from Straight Gay would essentially make it also encompass Macho Camp, which returns it to being Hard Gay and defeats the purpose of the split, bringing us back to square one.

Also, yes, character examples should only be put on these pages if they're clearly defined as homosexual by their work's canon. I would assert that "gaydar" shouldn't matter at all, since Straight Gay and Manly Gay are (or at least should be) defined by their relationship to Camp Gay.

The whole point of Straight Gay is that it's a gay character who demonstrates no stereotypical homosexual traits of any sort, not even the "overcompensating" kind.

And I'd argue that some characters with exaggeratedly masculine traits who aren't explicitly gay do come across as Ambiguously Gay. A good example is Armstrong from Full Metal Alchemist. (To be clear, those characters don't belong under Manly Gay; I'm just mentioning them as a counterpoint to something you've said earlier.)

edited 4th Apr '11 7:39:02 PM by silver2195

Currently taking a break from the site. See my user page for more information.

I think that's the sort of thing that Gil is getting back to. The defining characteristic of Straight Gay is that if they weren't kissing another guy, no one would think they are gay. Manly Gay tends to come off as gay, but it's not camp in any way.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

As a side note, this statement,

regardless of its context, invites the response "NO U!"

Currently taking a break from the site. See my user page for more information.

Yes, but hypermasculinity is not a sign of homosexuality in and of itself. That's what's being argued here, whether very masculine characters, like FF 7's Barret or the like, are automatically assumed gay by their masculinity alone or not. Masculinity can be considered a sign of gayness to viewers, but only in the presence of certain tropes like Mustache Of Failed Heterosexuality, at which point I think the idea moves on to being a bit camp anyway. If masculinity was always considered gay, then tropes like Mustache Of Failed Heterosexuality and Armored Closet Gay wouldn't exist in the first place.

Though maybe this will never be resolved if we continue debating this particular point.

What is a problem is, again, redefining Manly Gay to something that was not the original, agreed upon definition, as well as setting it up as a trope that not only blurs with Macho Camp, but defeats the purpose of the split. If we're defining Manly Gay as being decidedly not Straight Gay, then someone's going to need to go in, clean up the examples, and fix the wicks to Manly Gay that refer to masculine Straight Gay characters. That was the reason for the split, so that the Straight Gay examples didn't mix in with the obviously gay/Macho Camp examples, and there were enough of both.

Edit: Let me try something else.

Near as I can tell from reading his posts, Gilgameshkun's point of view is the following: Hypermasculinity is a sign of homosexuality to viewers. Hypermasculine characters are considered gay unless proven otherwise. Therefore, Manly Gay can not be a form of Straight Gay by default, because hypermasculinity is an obvious sign of homosexuality.

If my above interpretation is correct, then I think we've proven in this thread that this particular viewpoint is not universal and the trope description should not be written solely in that viewpoint, as it is now.

If it is not correct, then I fail to understand why it was felt necessary to alter Manly Gay from a legitimate trope into something else.

edited 4th Apr '11 10:36:21 PM by Grakor456

I removed a bunch essay material from the trope. What's still there defines a legit trope.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

The question of this thread is not whether it is a trope, but whether it is the trope it is supposed to be. I still say it smacks heavily of "all sufficiently muscular men are actually gay," which seems to not be what this trope was supposed to mean. We already have a trope for hypermasculinity == gay, as mentioned upthread.

Everyone Has An Important Job To Do

Well, since I realized there can be so much disagreement, I proposed that audience and creator interpretations alike can vary. You see, you can't presume that Camp Gay characters are not Straight Gay either. You can't. Determining Straight Gayness seems to be entirely subjective. Viewpoints can predominate depending on region or culture, just like mine predominates in my circle. I would have taken it as a given. But if my interpretation is not universal, than neither is Grakor's. Unless invoked in-universe, Straight Gay has to be subjective. Manly Gay may or may not be Straight Gay to the audience or in-universe. Camp Gay may or may not be Straight Gay to the audience or in-universe. Of course the latter overlap is increasingly forgotten, but someone as old as my dad (in his late 60s) remembers when no one assumed that anyone was gay, no matter how camp they were. (That's part of why the Kinsey Reports of the 1950s were so nuclear then — they used science to convincingly address a topic that was absolutely taboo at the time, and it directed psychological consensus to collide head-on with the culture of the day.)

Also, I edited Straight Gay (gay person often presumed to be straight) to say that its opposite is Mistaken for Gay (straight person thought to be gay), which is often Camp Straight. And that Manly Gay may overlap with Straight Gay. I also edited Camp Gay to say to contrast with Straight Gay, with which Camp Gay usually overlapped before half a century ago.

Anyway, I still think the Hard Gay split was appropriate. Macho Camp involves superficial hypermasculinity with heavy camp in personality. Manly Gay has no camp at all and the hypermasculinity is real. Even if neither are required to be Straight Gay, they still withstand contrast. Camp is only one possible way of guessing that someone may not actually be Straight Gay.

edited 5th Apr '11 3:25:13 AM by Gilgameshkun

Exactly.

I don't claim that my viewpoint is 100% universal. I would claim it's the majority, but ultimately it doesn't matter. The only reason why the popularity of your viewpoint even matters because that is the crux of your argument. Your argument is "Manly Gay cannot be Straight Gay by definition", which isn't true by some cultural viewpoints.

In that sense, perhaps it is subjective. That doesn't matter. What the problem is, Manly Gay meant one thing, "Masculine Straight Gay", and you changed it to something else to meet your personal views on the subject. That's a problem, because the original definition of Manly Gay is still a viable trope.

The original intent? Though I recall some suggestion towards that, I didn't have the impression that we had decided on that as consensus, though maybe that could be because it's hard to imagine an instance of Manly Gay that is convincingly Straight Gay to me or my circle, and it didn't seem like the discussion had necessarily excluded that possible interpretation. What you describe would necessarily have to be a culturally-limited viewpoint, which I suppose is allowed in a culturally-invoked trope, but it was not my understanding that the trope would be limited as such — rather, Manly Gay is gay people who are hypermasculine, and as you assumed it's Straight Gay, I assumed it's not Straight Gay, and somewhere along the way this point was lost during the consensus process. In this case, the process appears to have broken and failed us — we all agreed on the split to set aside Macho Camp, but we had fundamentally different understandings of what Manly Gay had to necessarily imply.

As a compromise, I'm willing to set aside the presumption of Straight Gayness or non-Straight Gayness, to encompass the trope to the letter of its name — gay men who are manly. The trope is valid and allows for either viewpoint. If there must be something defined by its relationship to Straight Gay, there may be room for subtropes that do just that. Of course, I'm not entirely sure how to write such a trope because, as I said, it's hard to imagine Manly Gay as Straight Gay, either in personal judgment or as an invoked distinction in works I can think of. (I can, however, recall works that invoked Manly Gay characters guessed to be gay by vibes alone, whether or not closeted. Especially in Queer Media. And works where straight characters were Mistaken For Manly Gay for being so masculine.)

edited 5th Apr '11 4:11:44 AM by Gilgameshkun

As I pointed out, what the tropes would become was clearly spelled out in the first post of the thread that started the split, which is what everyone agreed to without any complaint. I don't know in what way it could have been any clearer.

Regardless, I'd agree to that compromise as long as a note is made that such characters cannot be camp, as that would otherwise infringe on Macho Camp. We could probably get away with a brief note saying that for some audiences (especially Western,) Manly Gay can come off as a form of Straight Gay, whereas for others (especially Eastern) it is a stereotype in and of itself. We can therefore keep it to the letter of the trope while briefly addressing both sides, and not taking one.

Are you going to concede on the image, or are we going to have to go back to Image Pickin'?

I suppose I could browse through Tom of Finland art again, to come up with a picture more obviously gay. And without Raging Stiffie that would render it Not Safe for Work. Another possibility is using the top picture of Bara on Manly Gay also.

And yes, Manly Gay is totally not camp. No one disputes that.

---

Back to Image Pickin'. I think I've found an alternative picture which has less JAPAAC issues.

edited 5th Apr '11 7:17:55 AM by Gilgameshkun

Alright, I removed the image, added the notes mentioned here, made the article more neutral in its Straight Gay vs. not Straight Gay stance, and did some other minor edits. I added back the mention of the trope's use as a means of telling a Gay Aesop since I think it's relevant to its use as a storytelling device, and restructured the paragraphs (since going from a description of what Manly Gay is going into the fact that it's a common porn trope was awkward within the same paragraph.)

Hopefully this is acceptable, now. I'll head over to Image Pickin' and see what's going on there, but hopefully this particular issue is over with.

Yes, this is acceptable. I'm glad.

Everything seems amicably resolved. Are we done with this?

I'll just have to comment...

Whether a trope is used or not can be subjective. The definition of the trope itself is not subjective. There is a stereotype for characters that seem to be gay due to exaggerated masculinity, and there's a trope for Straight Gay muscle men. Manly Gay could be either, it's just a matter of convention. An agreement, that's all. In this case, the correct meaning of the trope should be determined by the way it's more often used.

It's like discussing about whether a concept is "wrong" or "right". It makes no sense. Every concept is right in itself, what can be wrong or right is the application.

edited 27th Jul '11 10:43:51 PM by Teraus

"You cannot judge a system if your judgement is determined by the system."