Relax, bruh.
The Gaybro. Is it a thing?
If it is, then what is it? Where does it go, what does it do, what’s embroidered on its baseball cap and 3/4 sleeve bicolor shirt? Also: is the Gaybro getting gay hate? From other, less brothsome gays?
Slate posted a piece yesterday that posed the question: Gaybros, what are they and why do other gays hate them?
The online mag defines the gaybro as guys who “talk about, well, guy stuff. Sports, video games, military issues, grilling, gear, working out, gadgets, tech, TV, movies, and more.”
Actually, that’s cribbed from the Reddit Gaybros group. Yes, the Gaybros are on the internet’s most beguiling website. And there seem to be a lot of them.
Threads in the Gaybros group (the logo for which features the name of their group with a baseball cap slung over the ‘G’) include “Wow, bros! I went to a gay bathhouse” and “Gaybro domestic life: home improvement, cooking and no decorating?” and also the “Thank God I’m not a woman.”
So, this Gaybro thing involves specific headgear and a predilection for home improvement. But nothing too frilly! Got it.
Another thread: “If You Were To Create A Gay-Friendly Bar…” highlights another determining factor for Gaybros. They go to Gaybro bars.
The Slate piece follows some bros who met through Reddit and are together IRL and are going out to party. At a Gaybro bar. The Bostonians head to Fritz, a bar where “the decor is classic pub, all dark woods and vintage trophies, but with a decidedly gay twist.”
And largely, it seems, sports themed.
“Look even briefly at the house-made baseball and football player posters decorating the walls,” says the article, “and more than sportsmanlike appreciation for the athletic male form quickly becomes apparent.”
Actually, the gay sports bar is a thing in and of itself, and possibly created the Gaybro or at least exists because of them. Gayborhoods from coast to coast boast these homoerotic Bennigan’s. From New York’s Boxer’s, to DC’s Nelly’s, to West Hollywood’s GYM (there’s one in NYC, too), the theme is butch and the clientele is Gaybro.
So, are these butch boys who like butch boys hatefully eschewing other gays? Are they hating on femme boys just because they’re femme? According to the backlash from this Buzzfeed interview with Gaybro founder Alex Deluca, the answer may be yes and that may be the reason, says Slate, that the “gay community” is mad at them.
But what do we think? We at NNN love drag queens. We also love butch boys and boys with beards and boys who know how to take it like a man.
We think there’s room in this world for gays of all colors, shapes, sizes, preferred hobbies, and wrist limpnessesses. We think we should all–femme, butch, and gaybro–just get along.
