“I need to piss!” my friend shouts over the screaming music. We’re at a gay club on Oxford Street.
She grabs my hand and, like the last squeeze of toothpaste, pushes us through the crowd. We quickly find ourselves at a frequented crossroad: the gendered bathroom doors.
“Meet out here when you’re done,” she nods to me, then disappears into a portal to a world I’ve always revered.
Waiting for my friends outside the women’s bathroom is my toll for being a man.
The women’s bathroom has often been described to me as a utopia — making friends and complimenting each other, holding a stranger’s hand while you pee. Never once have I struck up a conversation in the men’s bathroom, nor have I been stricken to.
Keeping my head down, I follow the dirty tiles to a graffitied stall. I piss, close the lid and sit, scrolling on my phone. I overhear some friends conversing at the sink.
“She has, like, the biggest tits I’ve ever seen. No, like, cause I swear they were fake. I went up to her and asked to feel them, cause, like, I’m curious, you know? I don’t ever feel tits — but she told me to fuck off. Like, come on, I’m gay. I’m not doing it the same way a straight guy would. It’s not groping if a gay guy does it.”
*
I could count the number of close friendships I’ve had with straight men on one hand. On the other, I could count my friendships with queer men. For women, I’d need to add my toes and maybe a few extra appendages.
We all know one of the major pitfalls of modern male friendships is our inability to call each other out on our bullshit. You know it’s a problem when even the Australian Government curates an ad campaign against it (see: Stop it at the Start campaign). It’s a known, recurring issue amongst cisgendered, straight male friend groups.
But the same issue exists within queer male friendships as well.
*
Walking along the river last week, I phoned my longtime best friend, and after gabbing about all the usual topics, we arrived at a conversation on allyship.
“Women are notoriously history’s best allies. They always show up for others. Look at Princess Diana and Tammy Faye during the AIDS crisis or Hillary Duff in that commercial saying, ‘When you say that’s so gay, do you realise what you say?’”
“Or look at the reason why L is now at the start of LGBTQ.”
“Exactly.” After an uncharacteristically quick pause, she added, “Women are such strong advocates and vocal supporters of queer men. So why haven’t they shown up for us the same? When Roe v. Wade was being overturned, women were the ones marching. From queer men, there was radio silence.”
And it is a devastating, shameful truth.
I was speaking to a fellow queer man about this a couple days prior, whose crass defense for not speaking out was, “Well, I’m never going to have biological kids or deal with a pussy, so it doesn’t really affect me.”
And when I asked him how he could ignore the fact that the majority of his main support systems are women — his mother, sisters, best friend, coworkers, etc. — he just shrugged.
Queer men forget that we are men. And while, yes, men are victims to the patriarchy, with queer men even more so as a minority, we are also the ones who benefit most from the system. We also have the privilege of being let into predominantly femme spaces that straight men are excluded from. As early as sleepovers, we are included in what should be women’s spaces.
But being one of the girls is not our right, it’s a privilege. A privilege that perhaps should be taken away from some queer men to remind them of their place. We hear underground conversations about revolting against the patriarchy — we nod vigorously in agreement — and yet we aren’t the ones to strike the match in fear we will lose our privilege.
*
Pretending to flush the broken toilet, I exit the graffitied bathroom stall and wash my hands next to the two gossiping men. And then left.
In another world I would have called him out. Like Hillary Duff in that one commercial. Told him to shut the fuck up. That groping is still groping, regardless of the groper’s sexuality. That just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he gets to call women sluts or bitches or whores or cunts. Whether he’s joking or not. Told him to check his privilege. Or some similarly woke phrase he’d most likely scoff at.
But I didn’t.
I met back up with my friend outside, who grabbed my hand and said, “Oh my god, Fletch, you need to hear what just happened to this girl I met in the bathroom. We were pissing next to each other and she ran out of toilet paper, so I handed some underneath the stall and she was telling me how these gay guys came up to her and just grabbed her tits. Like — how fucked up is that?!”