IT’S HARD BEING A PRETTY WHITE BOY

By Drew

THE SECOND OR THIRD TIME I WENT OUT IN SYDNEY I WAS CHOKED with my own necklace when a beefy dickhead decided to grab the chain and use it to pull me closer to him.

The chain snapped and I ran into the bathroom to cry; It was a good necklace.

It wasn’t a great night – I  ended up having to avoid some other guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

It was a predator/prey scenario.

Everyone tends to freak out a little when I tell them all men are shit-heads, but most of them are. I’m almost twenty-one and every time I go out it still fucking happens. A couple of months ago I let a chubby Italian fuck my thigh gap because he literally would not let me go for a solid hour and his dick was so big it would ruin me. I don’t wanna feel his chubby el dente. It’s just the only way he’d ever let me leave.

All I’m trying to say is that It’s hard being a pretty white boy.

WITHIN THE GAY COMMUNITY, I’M WHAT’S PROBABLY BEST-KNOWN AS A TWINK. I could give the romanticised, politically correct description of what that is, but basically it’s the slutty schoolgirl archetype in the gay world.

We wear sailor outfits to Mardi Gras, and although I’ve never put on the uniform myself, I feel like I could’ve gotten away with it.

That video of a girl walking around New York being told to smile? I cop that when I walk into the bathroom. Guys say that while they’re at the urinal and, holding their dick in their hands, get pissed when I tell them to fuck off.

It’s crazy. Clubs pulse with male entitlement. You can smell it. It’s a mix of unisex cologne, amyl and cum. And I feel like the issue isn’t that gay people can’t take no for an answer – it’s that they assume the answer will be yes. Hands will go down pants or up shirts and it all comes with a goofy smile and a wink. I had a guy try to pull my shirt off at Arq last year. He tried three times and I kept on saying no. I don’t know if he thought I was joking or playing hard to get but both are just irrelevant.

IT HURTS TO WRITE SOMETHING LIKE THIS FROM A PLACE OF PRIVELAGE. Everything I’m talking about comes from middle-class environments between cis dudes. Statistically, I’m at the top of the food chain in the LGBTIQA* community when it comes to being safe, but really, statistics are difficult to trust. I’ve never reported anything. People I know haven’t reported anything. They’re too scared or too embarrassed to feel like it wasn’t anything other than fun.

I know a guy that got raped by his ex. He has trouble believing it was rape himself. Up until 1977 Australia didn’t even acknowledge guys could be raped.

I feel like the gay scene in general tries real hard to stick to that pre-‘77 mentality. I’ll go into a gay bar full of older men and it feels like a locker room in an old cop show. I’m the poster on the wall they like to look at. It’s not a good feeling.

And guys tend to feel safe doing it because there’s no real guilt of it being at all sexist. It’s confusing. They’re stuck in a “boys will be boys” mentality but try so hard to make me a girl. I’ve had people ask me to shave my whole body. My knuckles, arms. I’ve been asked to be daddy’s little girl. A man wanted to fuck (and I really, really hate saying this) my boy pussy. People wanna choke me and hit me, people need to feel like men.

They need to make sure they fit into their role as the dominator, the MALE. It’s just that because I’m a male too they don’t see it as being inherently wrong.

THIS HEDONISTIC TRADITION IN THE GAY COMMUNITY is a massive issue, and the sad thing is that it’s been reduced to a pet peeve. Friends joke about it and say that “tonight’s the night we become a statistic”. It’s ingrained within the gay mentality that yeah, you’re gay, shit happens, take it.

We’re acting like we can’t be gay anywhere else so we have to vent it all out before we go back to our closeted lives. Again, we’re still dreaming like we’re still trapped in the seventies.

The aggression of club culture tends to spill out and make a mess on the streets. I got cat called the night I started writing this. As soon as I turned him down he spat on my feet, looked me in the eyes and said “FUCK YOU BOY GEORGE”. I didn’t play along and he wasn’t playing.

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about how this is “something that needs to be discussed” and “nobody talks about but needs to”. We do though. It is very present and a lot of people are aware. The issue is just that people don’t keep talking about it. Article after article comes into my news feed about queer masculinity or bottom shaming but we just shake our head and move along.

It’s like a senior grandfather telling me to find his glasses when they’re perched on top of their head.

And I know this is joining those millions of articles telling you to take notice but I’m still gonna chuck it out here. I’m gonna shove it down your throat like they do. It can all boil down to opinion articles and footnotes but in the end I just want creepy fuckwits to finally stop touching me.

This article originally appeared in Sneaky