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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3226 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 17, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It is a bit? I would hope that's blazingly obvious my man. Would you prefer I start throwing in "/s"? I find that approach crass.

I think you know me well enough that you should believe me when I say that if I had any real desire to engage in happy fun times with another man, there's nothing stopping me. Why don't I? Because I don't care to.

I am not gay. I am not a bisexual in denial. I like putting penis in vagina. I have the self-awareness to find it rather amusing that I find it fun to hang around gay people. I have been accused of having the musical taste of a gay man, but then again, they're the Jews of the music industry (let's not talk about the gay Jews).

It is a bit? I would hope that's blazingly obvious my man. Would you prefer I start throwing in "/s"? I find that approach crass.

If this is just a bit, it feels a little disingenuous. You frame it in terms of whether you mind being groped, but whenever you tell us about this stuff happening, you are implicitly bragging about your sexual desirability.

Not accusing you of doing this consciously, but that is how it comes across, especially since it is a regular thing (imagine a female poster who regularly makes cutesy complaints about how her male friends keep simping for her)

I am not gay. I am not a bisexual in denial

It was more bemusing than offensive. TBH, I'm not offended at all

I'm not entirely straight myself, but from observing, listening to, and reading the accounts of fully heterosexual men, any kind of sexual contact with another male is gross and disturbing. The fact it was just "bemusing" does not sound fully heterosexual.

I find it fun to hang around gay people

You aren't just hanging out with people who happen to be gay though - you're going to explicitly gay events and spaces, where you expect beforehand to get sexually touched by males, and this doesn't deter you. I'm reminded of how people with weird fetishes often want to just have the fetish dynamic just happen organically, instead of having to seek it out:

  • Oh no - I've been captured by a latex-clad, busty blonde femdom Mord-Sith who tortures me (but also sexually teases me sometimes, to uh, make the torture psychologically worse)
  • My wife caught me looking at sissy porn, so now she is forcing me to become her feminised cuckold slave, thus freeing me from the stress and responsibilities of being a man
  • Fascists have taken over and removed women's right, so now I have to have sex with and get impregnated by Chad be ritually raped in "ceremonies" by "Commanders"
  • I just like hanging around gay spaces, and sometimes this leads to me being sexually touched by men. I'm not into though, I just let it happen as a lark. Maybe I should do some light experimentation with them, for a part 2 to my amateur gay ethnography survey

...if I had any real desire to engage in happy fun times with another man, there's nothing stopping me

Aren't you in a (presumably monogamous) relationship with a woman?

It seems to me that your chief complaint is that I'm too secure in my masculinity. Uh, what am I supposed to be doing about that? No, seriously. I have few qualms about hanging out with gay people or in gay spaces, or both at the same time, because I genuinely don't particularly care how that comes across. It's clearly not affecting anything IRL. God knows most women would prefer their would be husbands be more like gay men in some regards, as long as they don't actually sleep with other men.

I'm not entirely straight myself, but from observing, listening to, and reading the accounts of fully heterosexual men, any kind of sexual contact with another male is gross and disturbing

.... Fellas? Is it gay to kiss your homies goodnight? Oh, only if you use tongue?

I don't really care that a drunk dude, in a gay bar, pinched my ass. I laughed and waved him off. If he'd gone further, I would have made it very clear that his approaches were unwelcome. If he still kept it up, his nose might have a quick date and breakup with my fist. It's never gone that far, because gay men aren't barbarians. A polite "very kind of you to like me, but you're wasting your time" is usually met with laughs and/or apologies.

Some straight men would be more physical and angry about things, but you wouldn't catch them in gay spaces either.

And now, if you're postulating that this is some kind of weird fetish? All I can do is sigh and turn off my phone. Or just go to sleep, because I need the alarm in the morning.

Aren't you in a (presumably monogamous) relationship with a woman?

I don't think anyone has started taking testosterone while I wasn't looking.

...I genuinely don't particularly care how that comes across. It's clearly not affecting anything IRL. God knows most women would prefer their would be husbands be more like gay men in some regards, as long as they don't actually sleep with other men.

I agree, but I'm not talking about how it comes across. I'm saying it actually is a little gay. I don't really care about people's sexual preferences, but I just wanted to point this out for the sake of telling the truth. In the same way I'd point out if someone who claims to totally hate fish kept adding having a little salmon every weekend to shake things up (and I choose this analogy because it is similarly trivial and silly)

.... Fellas? Is it gay to kiss your homies goodnight? Oh, only if you use tongue?

You're conflating the thing where people (either as a joke, or for activist reasons) read a homoerotic subtext into normal male bonding activities. This (getting ass pinched by a gay man) is overtly homosexual.

And now, if you're postulating that this is some kind of weird fetish?

"Weird fetish" is overly judgemental, I just meant this sounds like an expression of an unusual sexual desire you hold (in this particular case: same-sex attraction)

I don't think anyone has started taking testosterone while I wasn't looking.

No I meant - having a girlfriend is something that would stop you from having sexual contact with men if you desired it.

Like, the actual object level here (the extent to which you are a homosexual) really doesn't matter, but I'm pushing it because there's seems to be a pattern in these sorts of politically incorrect spaces where people claim that [gay thing] is in fact not gay (the standard one being the claim that wanting to top feminine men is heterosexual), and it always feels a little unserious.

I think it's kind of funny to insist on it (I always snigger a little), but this is a space for truth-seeking. It's bad enough when people have genuine disagreements about objective reality, but "traps aren't gay"-style discourse just pointlessly pollutes the epistemic commons.

All I care about is the object level question.

A man can wear pink, listen to Lana Del Ray, and paint his nails while not being gay, if he does not have sex with men given the opportunity, and declines to report any such desire.

I don't wear pink, I don't listen to LDR, and I remain straight. I also think traps are hella gay. You are free to accept or deny this, of course. But you sought truth, and there it is.

It's become enough of a pattern that people are asking questions. It may not in fact be because you are gay, it could be because you've discovered a new subculture that makes you feel at home while you are going through a tough time and helps you connect with your brother (I think you said he was gay?) it could be something totally different. However it's usually because you are gay so even if that isn't it - it is certainly an impression you are slightly giving off.

I well understand why people might suspect I'm gay. I find it amusing, really, since at least to my own satisfaction, I'm as zero on the Kinsey scale as one can get. Adjusting for the kind of floating point error you wouldn't notice on a pride float.

Am I offended when people online suspect I'm gay? Not really. If I cared, I wouldn't supply the material. I'm more annoyed when people take my rather definitive declarations that I'm straight as evidence of denial. Gee, the dude who regularly writes essays about falling in and out of love with women is gay, is all I can say to them. Bisexuality is a harder to adjudicate diagnosis of exclusion, but we've moved past the ICD-10 paraphilia era.

I can only sigh in exasperation. If I regularly defend gay and bisexual subcultures against attack, it would take a particular form of intransigent self delusion to not acknowledge tendencies to join them. I don't acknowledge them because they don't exist

Honestly, there's are plenty of prosaic reasons I hang around with gay people. I started going to a gay pub entirely by accident (I have that essay about the shock of realizing it's a gay pub, I'm not very observant at times), and picked up gay friends. This well predated my brother coming out, but might have contributed to him feeling comfortable doing so. He could see I was more than comfortable treating gay people as human beings, though I can only hope that he had enough reason to trust me before that. Humans are weird like that, he could have told me a decade back and I'd have had his back, that's what brothers are for.

What else? Those environments are, as you suggested, quite novel to me. And there's always some drama going on, I pack my own popcorn. I also appreciate that they're quite understanding and accepting spaces, not that that's for my own benefit. I do not like moral busybodies, not that you can't find them there too.

More recently, I'm seeing a (straight) woman heavily enmeshed in the culture. She dragged me to a drag queen night the first date (I went willingly, I was just curious), and her best friend is a gay influencer. That kinda constrains the option space for me, you know, not that I particularly mind. If there's booze and people to tell me about their mental health issues, I'm content. You only get one of the two at work.

I think the funniest part about this is you're being downvoted

I can see the humor in it. I don't feel very gay about it still.

You're heading full throttle into a lonely existence where you wondered where the years have gone.

What do you want? If you just want a relaxing time with nonjudgmental mildly drunken coevals, fine, but long-term I have serious doubts about that as a path toward fulfilment. Humans need a bit of drama and conflict. If you want a break from women, fine, but then you're not even doing that.

There's big writing on the wall here and that you clearly do not see it amazes and saddens me, not because of you but because it says something larger about human's incapacity for self awareness.

Do you think my "jokes" about feeling like it's time for me to settle down and have a wife and kids are just jokes? They aren't.

I am acutely aware of the risks of pushing these things too far. I only need to look at that uncle of mine for a good example of the worst case scenario. By his accounting, a lothario in his 20s and 30s, then turning 50 and feeling awfully fucked and lonely (not mutually exclusive things). To his credit, he did try. He was married to a woman for a year, and she had BPD.

To my credit, while I was with my ex with BPD, I had the brains to not marry her. Despite being intensely in love with her, and seeing a future together. If she hadn't been crazy, I would have been married with kids.

In other words, if you're telling me to settle down, you're preaching to the choir. That's been the plan for several years. The hard part is finding someone who I think fits the bill. The good news is that that's going well. I'd like to be a good husband and father, and not just in possession of more than my fair share of dad jokes. If I need examples, I just have to look at my dad and my grandpa.

You might ask where the delay arises? Well, you try marrying when you're in such a transitional stage of your life, rather unmoored geographically. It's not easy. I met someone I could see myself marrying last year, and as predictably as I had feared, geography ended things.

Not too get even more Ask George here, but I think possibly the routine of hanging out in bars with homosexual men is not the ideal environment to meet women. Now it may be true that you do not wish to meet women in bars--and if this is your viewpoint, you are probably not entirely unwise. But I suspect that, with your job, social hours are limited. Why not find spaces where you are at least more likely to run into a woman free of emotional baggage? (cough, choke, wait, hang on, let me get some water...) I mean a woman who might have less emotional baggage than the types who frequent gay bars in their attempts to get the hell away from straight men.

Gay pubs are absolutely not the right venue to meet women, but I don't really go there to meet women. I go there for for the booze, and because that's where a few of my non-work friends live and try to die.

I meet women the old-fashioned way: on dating apps or at work. Well, at least one of those is lindy. I will ignore the monthly arranged marriage my dutiful elderly parents drop on my doorstep like a mouse missing a head.

Women without emotional baggage? Where does one find one of those? They clearly aren't looking for psychiatrists.

Jokes aside, I am dating someone with just enough to fit in the carry-on allowance. And we go to places other than gay clubs. I just had a lovely day with her at Loch Lomond.

I had to look up lindy. It is a word I shall never use. I didn't know you were dating anyone other than seeing the lesbian sometimes. I hang my head in shame for not being up-to-date.

I forgive you for the unforgivable sin of not knowing the ins and outs of my dating life, particularly aspects I haven't written about before. I do appreciate the concern, I just wanted you to know that I have about the right degree of concern myself. And that instead of simply sitting there being concerned, as would be tempting to some, I'm taking action.

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A true extremely-online person uses the all-comments "firehose" page, so that he never misses out on consooming comments as they are posted.

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Hmm. Can people more au fait with what is current tell me if "Fag Hag" is still an acceptable term or is now a disgusting slur?

Okay, you like girls, you're straight, you're just metrosexual. All good.

I told the lady whose sleep I interrupted by typing away furiously defending my sexuality at 3 am that I was furiously defending my sexuality at 3 am.

She looked at me knowingly, and declared "SMH, you're a bit flamboyant."

I told her: "that's not the same thing as being a singing man, Kathleen" and took away the duvet. She took it back. I can never win. If I do win these things, I must go join the other men.

I have heard people use the term "fag hag" in online discourse, but I've only run into "hag" and "fag" and "packets of cigarettes" IRL. I have no idea if that's a slur, but gay people have never shied away from calling themselves things the straights can't call them without offense.

I'm not going to question your sexuality, but do you just want to brag about the sexual attention you're getting from gay men? Bait em, lead them on, and then switch to "oh I'm 100% straight btw"? It's coming across as performative like... you're seeking some sort of validation? Idk

I find it modestly amusing, until someone like @Amadan comes in and misses the running joke. It's been known to happen.

More importantly, ego boosts from male compliments can be real, but should be downscaled. To quote myself:

As wise men have said: if you're struggling on the local dating apps, it might not be your fault and there's hope for you yet. But if you go to a gay bar and don't get hit on, it might be time to see if monasteries are recruiting.

If I wanted to brag about women, I would brag about women. I'm too busy doing other things to them.

I didn't miss the joke, dude.

We just think it's funny that you doth protest too much.

Don't you start growing a sense of humor on me. It's upsetting and unnatural.

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