I am a queer man and a romantic. Growing up, my favorite book was “I’ll Give You the Sun” by Jandy Nelson. Noah, the main character, was the first (and only) representation of a young queer man in my early adolescence. The book spoke to the deep romance gay men yearn for; I still get excited when I see queer romance. So, when I can, I like to go on first dates, firstly because dating is exciting, and secondly, because I get to practice gay romance as a resistance to the patriarchal binary. It’s a reminder to separate patriarchal teachings from real people with real wants.
Heterosexual gender dynamics—as traditionally socially accepted and thus referred to as the patriarchal binary—dictate that men will be emotionally unavailable and sex-driven while women are to be virginal, exclusively holding the capacity and yearning to be emotionally intimate. As those two caricatures interact with one another, I imagine their relationship as one built on vetoes and compromises. As a by-product, a sexually frustrated and emotionally stiff man coupled with an emotionally deprived and sexually timid woman on his arm form the bedrock of the psychosexual status quo.
In order for patriarchy to sustain such a model, it must produce women who are taught to emotionally yearn and men who are taught to sexually demand, with these traits being mutually exclusive from one another. Therefore, a man cannot emotionally yearn and a woman cannot sexually demand.
However, the patriarchal binary is independent from the traditional family structure, which is created by how woman and man interact with each other under patriarchy. However, many manifestations of the patriarchal binary still exist.
This brings me to a subset of the patriarchal man: the patriarchal gay man. Many gay men grow up absorbing the same patriarchal norms as straight men—expectations of dominance, emotional detachment, and sexual entitlement. But because they don’t fit into heteronormative roles (like being a husband to a woman), they often assume they’ve escaped patriarchal conditioning altogether. As a result, gay men are rarely held accountable for the ways they uphold sexism, misogyny, or other oppressive structures. While the manifestation of the patriarchal binary may look different for them, they do not disappear.
Continuing with the caricatures, a patriarchal man relies on requesting sexual intimacy or booty calling as the socially appropriate avenue to intimacy. By replacing the patriarchal woman, whose role is to keep men’s sexual fantasies at bay, the patriarchal gay man—as men are characterized as sexually driven—produces a model relying predominantly on sex. This model manifests itself in many ways that gay men communicate.
Grindr, for instance, is a gay dating app with a distinct sexual etiquette that differs drastically from what one might expect on Tinder, one of the mainstream, heteronormative dating platforms. I want to be clear that I am by no means suggesting that there is any truth to the harmful stereotype that gay men are inherently more sexual. Rather, I am arguing that Grindr’s culture—and the gendered expectations it reinforces—is shaped by social and structural forces, not biological inevitability. The app’s profile culture often emphasizes anonymity and sexual signaling, enabled by the nature of the grid, which allows any user to message another without mutual consent or prior interaction. This dynamic should not be read as evidence of a “natural” disposition, but instead as a reflection of how platform design intersects with cultural scripts around gender, sex, and power.
Inversely, a patriarchal woman, who, by definition, cannot ask for her sexual needs, relies on requesting emotional connection from their partner as an avenue to reach socially acceptable intimacy. By having two patriarchal women trying to reach intimacy from one another, there is no patriarchal man to “compromise” for, and therefore a new patriarchal manifestation based solely on a request of emotional intimacy/romance is born. This manifestation can be seen in what lesbian subcultures often refer to as “U-Haul lesbians,” a stereotype about lesbian dating referring to the idea that lesbians tend to move in together quickly. It’s a gag on lesbians’ quick-growing emotional co-dependence and a juxtaposition to the sexually-defined patriarchal gay model.
I want to stress the distinction between the caricatures and the people that perform such gender roles within these varying patriarchal models. The patriarchal caricatures are not real people. They are heuristic roles for people to know what is and is not okay to ask for and how to perform such gender roles accordingly. Therefore, people who fit under the male label in the binary may align themselves with a sex-focused demand because that’s simply the path with the least resistance. It does not mean that men do not yearn for care or are innately less emotional than women. Vice versa, those who fit under the woman label in the binary may predominantly search for intimacy through romance, not because women must innately have a lower libido, but because it is most comfortable to do what is deemed acceptable. The role of the caricatures, for my purpose, is not to imply all men and women are like their respective gender roles or to insist on further taxonomizing the queer community via a gendered power structure analysis, but an exercise to recognize where our assumptions of desire are coming from.
Understanding these caricatures as societal constructs rather than intrinsic truths helps us recognize that our desires and behaviors are often shaped by the roles we are expected to perform, not by our true emotional or physical needs. So I let this be a reminder to myself that every time I choose to walk into queer spaces expecting romance, I am posing a necessary threat to the patriarchal binary. And perhaps, in practice, that’s as simple as expecting a coffee without sex.
Xander Lord is a member of the class of 2028 and xlord@wesleyan.edu.
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