Why do gay men walk fast
The Gay Art Of Walking Fast
Out of the motion blur, something appears. Someone appears. The first thing I notice is the bag slung across his shoulder: a baby bag, slippery and silvery, glistening under a sudden sunburst. Then his oversized fleece and joggers: a minuscule too crisp, a short-lived too tailored. Less appreciate he had rolled out of bed in sweats and more like he was cosplaying the notion of someone rolling out of bed in sweats. Then his terrifying gait: large, brazen strides led from the hip. He thunders down the sidewalk, matching my pace. I stare at him, awed. He does not spot me at all. We are walking—cantering—gay stereotypes.
For the better part of an hour, we march together. We are two horses escaping the glue factory. We are shivering rats let loose into the bounty and brutality of existence. Side by side, neck and neck, we face our opposition as one. A raucous throng streams from a bus, obstructing our passage. No matter: with practised grace, he parts the crowd like the Red Sea. I tailgate behind him and saunter through without lifting an elbow. Could it all be this easy?
He slows down; I slow down. I speed up, edging past him; he rises to the occasion. We are bound f
On September 03, 2024, I attended an intense grief ceremony in Zurich; it was also my first time leaving my land Ghana as a transwoman. I was assigned male at birth (intersex), and a few months before my trip to Switzerland, I had started the journey to both socially and medically transition. During this ceremony, the facilitator asked us to demonstrate on grief. ‘Why act we grieve? What execute our bodies grieve for?How often have we allowed our bodies to rightfully grieve just like we allow them to be happy?’
Allowing myself to demand these questions, something I had never done before, opened me up to such overwhelming emotions. It was my second hour experiencing this two days after I left Ghana. In Ghana, I had concluded that being gloomy was an emotion I could not afford after discovering how expensive it was. After allowing myself to be sad about an issue once in the past, I cried for days and ended up sick for almost a month- amassing a lot of bills that my friends had to crowdfund to support me with paying.
Now, here I was in Zurich, crying for the second second in front of strangers. Streams of tears I have refused to permit out for a drawn-out time fought for a place out of my eyes
Why do some homosexual men “sound” gay? After three years of research, linguistics professors Henry Rogers and Ron Smyth may be on the verge of answering that doubt. After identifying phonetic characteristics that look to make a man’s voice sound gay, their leading hunch is that some gay men may subconsciously adopt certain female speech patterns. They wish to know how men acquire this manner of speaking, and why – especially when world so often stigmatizes those with gay-sounding voices.
Rogers and Smyth are also exploring the stereotypes that gay men sound effeminate and are recognized by the way they address. They asked people to listen to recordings of 25 men, 17 of them gay. In 62 per cent of the cases the listeners identified the sexual orientation of the speakers correctly. Perhaps fewer than half of gay men sound gay, says Rogers.
The straightest-sounding voice in the study was in fact a gay man, and the sixth gayest-sounding voice was a straight man.
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Is there any reality to the stereotype that gay men walk fast? Louis Staples set out to find the "truth behind Twitter's favorite same-sex attracted stereotype."
As Staples notes, this stereotype is typically embraced and expressed by gay men about themselves. Why would that be? As psychologist Ian MacRae explains, such "positive" stereotypes are an easy way for marginalized communities to affirm their shared individuality. They "form part of the language communities fond of LGBTQ+ people use to understand each other” (Staples, 2019).
Taking a deep dive into the various factors that might influence the particular stereotype that queer men walk fast, Staples concludes, "Ultimately, we don’t know whether gay men actually do walk faster than straight men. But while it might look like a fairly superficial stereotype, the potential reasons why gay men might be keen to embody velocity are anything but shallow" (Staples, 2019).
Take a look at what he learned in this entertaining and informative article from GQ.
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Why carry out gay men walk so fast?