Recently I read the article “Together Alone: The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness” by Michael Hobbes. It’s about the physical and mental health issues gay men face, even in absence of overt bigotry. Based on personal stories and talking to researchers, Hobbes identifies two causes. The first one is “minority stress”–we’re made aware of our marginalized status constantly. And even if we’re in a friendly environment right now, the minority stress was already pounded into us as kids.
The second cause, says Hobbes, is gay culture itself. Well, you get a bunch of people together, all of whom have dealt with minority stress, and it turns out they don’t form a big happy family. Hobbes talks about meanness, often in the form of racism, body policing, and masculinity policing. He laments that for many gay men, hookup apps are the primary way they really interact with other gay people.
I am mostly sympathetic to this article. I’ve long thought the health disparities suffered by gay men (and by other minority groups as well) are an elephant in the room. Instead we talk so much about same-sex marriage, bathroom bills, job and housing discrimination, and bullying. And while these are all important issues, it seems like they were chosen not on the basis of being important, but on the basis of being amenable to public policy changes. Health and economic disparities are tougher to address, because we often don’t know what causes them, much less how to solve them.
But here I will raise a few criticisms of Hobbes’ article, and also discuss other people’s critiques.
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