Clearly, its implications are far-reaching and play into ill-conceived notions about gender, sexuality and race.
So it's not just a simple black tank with a phrase. A study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that gay men associate Asian men with being feminine bottoms, while black men are aggressive, masculine tops. "In the case of big men, fat amounts to degradable femininity," Whitesel wrote.Īnd, while the tank and the phrase "No fats no fems" does not sound like it would have racist implications, it actually does. On the other end of the spectrum, fats and fems are linked because gay men of size are thought to have feminized bodies - due to their larger hips, breasts and butts, Jason Whitesel wrote in his book Fat Gay Men. As Michael Kimmel wrote in Guyland, "Men perform their masculinity for other men, who are the ultimate judges of it." The study " Reported Effects of Masculine Ideals on Gay Men" showed that gay men often feel "psychological distress" if they cannot be masculine enough for the gay community. The other problem is that, for many gay men, muscularity equals masculinity - which is often prized in the community. And they work: Several studies prove that gay men on average have lower body mass indexes than straight men. Images like these reinforce the importance of a thin, muscular physique. A 2011 study found that the models in gay-centric magazines were both thinner and more muscular than the men in magazines like GQ. In 2005, researchers found that being gay alone is a risk factor for men to develop eating disorders due to pressures to be thin. Here's proof: One 2012 study in the journal Body Image showed that, when it comes to short-term relationships, gay men prize lean, muscular builds the most. And while having preferences against fat or feminine men may seem innocuous enough, putting it on a shirt or even on an app profile speaks to a larger truth about the gay community: We're sexist, racist and discriminatory AF.
If you would like advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to (please don’t send attachments).There is no doubt the shirt is discriminatory - its intention is to separate those you want to sleep with (thin, masculine) with those you don't (fat, feminine). Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist specialising in sexual disorders.
Each of us has a unique design for arousal and sexual connection, and yours is far from “freakish”. Try to be accepting of your normative interest, and avoid objectifying the people you like so much. Your self-description as a “disgusting freak” is way off, and suggests that it may be worth investigating your own relationship with weight and body image. Despite the current fashion for preferring well-toned men, there are plenty of fleshier men around who would love to know that you desired them. It occurs in many forms, with a great deal of cultural variation, and is usually the result of tastes and triggers that begin to form quite normally in childhood.