“Str8acting”

Abstract

This essay analyses performances of masculinity in the profiles constructed by users of the gay men's dating website Gaydar, as well as normative ideological framings of identity built in to key features of the site. In particular, focus is placed on the self-categorisation “straight-acting”, which participates in reductive typologies of gay masculinity. The apparent heteronormativity of “straight-acting” is complicated by the term's ambiguous relation to passing, especially so in the context of online profiles that may, in effect, act as templates of identity that users aim to embody in their offline performances. In its aspirations to authentic masculinity, the semiotic labour of “straight-acting” confounds its own recognisability.

Keywords:

• Straight-acting
• gay masculinity
• heteronormativity
• Internet dating
• online identity

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the helpful suggestions made by this article's anonymous reviewer, and offers particular thanks to David McInnes and Cristyn Davies for their intellectual contributions to the ideas in this article.

Notes

¹ www.gaydar.com.au

²I am using gender-specific pronouns as this paper will only discuss users who identify as male. Gaydargirls (www.gaydargirls.com) is a newer, female counterpart site to Gaydar.

³All users’ names have been changed; however, the spelling and grammar in their profiles have been retained.

⁴One survey of the chat-room practices of men who have sex with men in Sydney and Melbourne found 49.8 per cent of the sample used sites like Gaydar to meet casual sex partners, 42.4 per cent to meet a boyfriend, and 37.8 per cent to meet regular sex partners (categories are non-mutually exclusive) (Murphy et al. 2004 30–31).

⁵It should be noted that all menus feature a “Rather not say” option, which may offer one of the only means of resisting reductive categorisation in one's profile. This option, of course, reduces the number of search hits that a profile might otherwise receive when specific category searches are undertaken by other users.

⁶See website www.straightacting.com. Straight-acting.com describes itself as a site “for guys that like sports/ Change their own car's oil/ Or just don't fit the effeminate stereotypes”. It is also famous for an online quiz that measures straight-acting on a scale of 0–10. A score of 0 is for “THE ULTIMATE IN STRAIGHT ACTING”: “There is no more straight acting than you. Not one person on the planet would guess you sleep with men. You might want to check to see if you shouldn't be out wrestling with wild animals in the wilderness or jumping out of airplanes right now. You are the ultimate in masculinity and acting in a straight manner in which most heterosexual men don't even achieve.” A score of 10 confers “QUEEN STATUS”: “There is no more feminine than you. You're simply a woman trapped in a man's body. You've made the calls about getting ‘the operation’ and you go to sleep every night thinking how easier [sic] it would be to be a woman instead. Over 50% of your clothes in your closet are designed for women, and life just gets better and better the more level 10 people you hang out with.”