Original subtitles

(cheering)

(shouting)

(upbeat pop rock music)

- [Narrator] What does it mean to be gay and be a man?

Given all the different types of gay men out there,

there's no straight answer for sure.

- There was no one to go talk to,

like a gay Buddha or gay Yoda and say, "Mm, tell me please."

- I didn't know what a role model meant to me.

- I didn't act the way that the people

that were called gay act,

so I would question sometimes if I was.

- I didn't know what gay was.

I just knew it was something that was not looked upon.

- I didn't feel like I fit in the gay world.

I didn't feel like I fit in the straight world.

- When you think of being gay, there's such a stereotype.

That's why a lot of people tend to stay in the closet.

- I'm supposed to be this dominant man and

I'm still kind of hiding it.

- [Narrator] We'll profile a wide range of gay men

to explore how they define what it means to be a man.

- With a gay man, masculinity is a feature that

they actually think about more often than straight men

because straight men are just basically following a line.

- Homosexul men have a very conflicted

relationship with masculinity.

They put it up on a pedestal and on the other side,

they're afraid that other men are going to make fun of them.

And they will.

- I was physically assaulted many times in school.

I just didn't fit in at all to the rigid standards

for what men and women do.

- Being labeled as a faggot before

I even knew that I was gay.

- Learning to look through a magnifying glass at

how we're performing masculinity,

there's a potential feeling that we have of "I've failed."

- There are different ways that people enact

what it means to be masculine.

There's no one category called Gay Men.

- There are extremes to both ends of

masculinity and femininity.

It's just where you end up in that spectrum.

It's who you are.

- Masculinity has to be a special challenge for gay men

because we are attracted to other men

so the question of what makes a man a man

and how I can be the thing that

I desire is a central question about who we are as a people.

(upbeat pop rock music)

- [Narrator] This is The Butch Factor.

(intense rock music)

- To be a man is to be trustworthy, to be genuine,

to do what you say you're gonna do,

to follow through on your word,

be honorable and treat people well.

To put it in a short version, just do the right thing

and we all know what that means.

- [Narrator] When he's not pursuing his favorite passion,

football, Jason Hefley works for a construction company

in San Diego, California.

- Being gay, or being attracted to men,

is a sexual preference and that's just

one part of Jason Hefley, a very small part, quite frankly.

I'm also an athlete.

I'm also an uncle, a great son,

and all these different variables.

It doesn't dictate what I am or what I do

or anything like that.

- [Narrator] Jason plays in a gay flag football

league in San Diego.

The city hosts 10 gay teams and is one of

17 gay football leagues around the country.

- There's a lot of former college athletes.

There are some straight guys in the league that

have good athletic background.

Just some great athletes out there in general.

The dynamics are very competitive.

It's a very competitive environment.

(men shouting)

Flag football is surprisingly physical.

It's definitely a contact sport.

- You don't have any padding on but people are

still running into each other, so it can be pretty rough.

I've had a couple of injuries from it.

My grandfather was actually an All-American

quarterback for Princeton and so I've got the lineage

and I really like the game.

Love football, going to University of Florida,

football is the main thing there.

I won a bronze medal at the Gay Games, played football.

It's become a big part of my life.

- I've always played sports since I was a kid,

so coming out here I was trying to find just a good

community of gay people to play ball with.

I think you have more of a sense of togetherness because

we're just a small gay community,

and for the straight people,

and so on and we play here and

we're off the field, we all hang out.

When I play in the straight leagues,

we don't hang out afterwards.

We don't go grab a burger afterwards

or hang out at somebody's house because,

I mean, I'm gonna guess that would be kind of gay.

(men shouting and cheering)

- Like most team sports, it feels like we're part of a team.

(men shouting and cheering)

But, I also think it's great for the new guys,

especially the guys who've never played,

who come out here and say,

"You know what?

"I can play football."

That just gives me joy because I've been playing all my life

I love football!

(upbeat energetic music)

- It seems to be such a stereotype of

a manly, straight thing.

We need to break those barriers.

We have this league going and it's growing and

we have a lot of people out there who just

want to play the sport and have a good time.

- Team athletics has always been a part of

my upbringing and I think it has a lot to do with

who I am today and my character.

- [Narrator] Growing up in Arkansas and Oregon,

Jason was an all-star football player

in high school and college.

He even played a while for

Canada's professional football league.

- [Announcer] Then he just follows right off the tushy

of the pulling tackle there, plays right off his butt.

- Football teams became my families and

coaches became my ad hoc fathers and that was

a real important part of my growth and development.

I was really shocked to find out that there didn't seem to

be a lot of people like me in the gay community, initially.

Maybe a little rough and tumble,

a construction or blue-collar background.

I've got a two-man auger out here, which is post-hold digger

I have my boyfriend on the other side,

which is kind of funny because he only weighs

about 150 pounds and it was throwing him all over the place.

This is pretty hard soil.

I was finding in the gay community girl talk,

pop culture, Madonna, fashion.

I found myself, oftentimes,

just being a sedentary participant in the community.

Being involved in the flag football league has helped me

come to terms with my identity because before,

I didn't have any outlets and camaraderie

experiences within the gay community.

I've always viewed myself to be

a very strong man, very confident.

I didn't care what other people thought of me.

That probably wasn't as true as much as

I like to believe myself,

so I found a lot of people who still, typically,

wouldn't be perceived as strong as me.

They were more confident in themselves and

they were being themselves through sexuality and

comfortable with their sexuality.

So, it ws kind of a wake-up call.

I'm supposed to be this dominant man and

I'm still kind of hiding it.

What does that really say about me.

So, I think being around those guys over and over

and over again and seeing their comfort level

had a large part of me saying hey,

you'd better take a look at yourself in the mirror.

(upbeat intense music)

- I have been in this department for almost 14 years.

These are my original cuffs.

The interesting thing about these handcuff is they have

been on Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker.

I hold them on as friendly reminder of what

everyone in life is capable of.

One of the greatest things about being a deputy sheriff

and working for the Sheriff's Department are

the challenges that you face every day.

The leadership skills that you possess, you bring with you.

The inherent qualities that you have, you bring with you.

They are utilized at any given moment.

It's very difficult when you walk down a tier and

you're called faggot-ass bitch,

you try not to take it personal,

that it doesn't really matter what people think,

whether you're gay or not.

The inmate population, the criminals as a whole

begin to respect you, it's on the fact that you're honest,

you have integrity, you say what you mean,

you're fair and impartial across the board.

I think, sometimes, there's this underlying feeling

that because you are gay, that somehow you're less than

and that could just be preconceived,

something that I carry with myself,

but at the same time, I do work with individuals that

at times, feel that because they're heterosexual and

I'm homosexual, somehow they're better than I am.

It's gotten a lot better because, time and time again,

especially in the San Francisco Sheriff's Department,

you have leaders that are lesbian and gay and

bisexual and questioning who have continued

to make a difference.

- I think there were many gays and lesbians who

paved the road for myself and including Vince.

I was hired through a gay recruitment 22 years ago.

I have 178 sworn here.

Most of them are men.

I'm pretty well respected in the department

as well as Vince is and he's great with taking

command of situations and the people respect him,

gay, straight or whatever.

- He's very open with his lifestyle but he's not

forcing it down anyone's throat.

It's just who he is.

There is the stigma of being gay.

Law enforcement can be a very macho kind of thing and

a lot of times the gays may not be seen as being macho.

Although, look at Vince.

I mean, no one's gonna say no to Vince, just from his size.

There are other gay or lesbian employees in this department

that are not as big and forceful.

They're seen as weak, sometimes, by the staff,

because they are not afraid to show their emotions.

There's this facade you're supposed to put up,

the big, tough, or at least the unflappable professional.

You get it done, you know, Joe Friday, just the facts,

et cetera, et cetera.

I think it's slowly changing.

It takes a long time.

- I've had grown men, both deputy sheriff and convict,

and inmate, collapse in my arms in tears.

Straight.

And they've felt comfortable to do that.

Why that is, is it's not so much about this

as it is about this.

I have a heart.

I like to use it a lot, not just for pumping muscle,

but I think people trust in me and they know

that I'm gonna do the right thing.

I'm a very fair person.

I can walk around, I can bust heads all day long.

I could just bust through walls, metaphorically speaking,

but I'm not gonna get any respect.

I always wanted to be in law enforcement.

I always wanted to be a firefighter.

"But, you?

"You can't be a firefighter.

"You can't be in law enforcement."

There were no gay role models.

There was no one to go talk to,

like a gay Buddha or gay Yoda, and say, you know,

"Hmm, tell me please!"

You know, there was none of that.

I applied with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department

and they hired me and then I didn't think I could make it.

Because I was gay, I didn't think I would be accepted

and that it would be a horrible experience and that

eventually I would have to leave or I would be ousted

or I would be made fun of or I would be ridiculed.

So, here I walk onto a tier, a housing unit,

with these convicts, people who had murdered and raped

and stoled and it frightened me to death every day.

They all knew I was gay.

I was totally open about it.

They nicknamed me The Savage because I wouldn't give up.

I mean, I was getting guys turning on me with their fists up

like these convicts ready to fight me.

Not my experience.

Thank God, I have the support of all my deputies

and after about nine months, I just wasn't afraid any more.

There's not too much today that I'm afraid of.

A man is someone who looks adversity straight in the face

and faces it head-on with courage and fortitude.

Masculinity resides in here.

You could look at me and people say,

"Oh, my God, he's the epitome of masculinity,"

and the next moment you could see me and I'm just

chatting it up like the little Chatty Cathy with people

but I'm comfortable with that.

I don't think that qualifies like,

"Oh, he's so feminine."

No, I'm everything.

(upbeat energetic music)

(crowds cheering)

- The people that were called gay, I didn't act that way.

(crowds cheering)

So, I would question sometimes if I was,

(upbeat energetic music)

even though I had that attraction.

- [Narrator] Kevin Reed plays for both gay and straight

softball teams in Dallas, Texas.

- I would look at guys longer than I would look at girls,

you know, in a certain way.

I tried to suppress it, I tried not to be that way

because I have a very religious background.

I just felt out of place on both sides of it.

Growing up, being African-American, people stereotype

and judge me just from the color of my skin.

It's just like being gay.

They judge you without even knowing you.

A lot of my peers, a lot of my friends,

guys that I play ball with,

I wouldn't want them to know just because they automatically

think that you like them or that you're after them.

They forget about the guy that they know and

that they grew up with and automatically think, you're gay,

so that's what's in front of me the person is me being gay.

It's still kind of rough for me right now.

I'm still dealing with it but this kind of stuff helps a lot

Being able to play something I like and still be

competitive with gay guys because I always felt that

they probably wouldn't be as good.

I don't know why I thought that because of myself.

I don't care for attention to show and

prove to everybody that I'm gay.

I'm just a regular guy.

They had other guys out there that were the same as I am.

It just kind of helps me accept it a little bit more,

be able to deal with it a little bit more.

But, I still keep it away from my family.

(melancholy piano music)

I have some good friends that are straight but

just from having conversations with them,

they just can't, seems like they can't handle it.

They can't see a masculine guy being gay without

putting the DL tag on him as well.

I've never been on the down-low where

I was with guys and girls and if you're masculine,

lately a lot of people have been putting that on guys

that they're on the DL, black guys.

(crowd shouting)

The reason I didn't date women and pursue that is

because I knew that's not what I really wanted and

I have a sister and I have a mother and I wouldn't want

anybody to do that to them just to cover up whoever they are

- [Narrator] Marcus Nunn and Dalph Johnson

are Kevin's teammates.

They faced similar challenges growing up as gay men.

- It's not well-accepted in a black household,

because African-American men are raised to be very macho.

- I think in the time when I was actually trying to come out

it was a little bit more harder and more tougher

to be gay and be masculine.

- When you think of being gay, there's such a stereotype.

A lot of people don't look at the big picture.

We are just like everybody else.

Society is so judgemental.

That's why a lot of people tend to stay in the closet.

- I got married and tried to cover the thing up and

forget about who I really was.

I don't regret the marriage.

It was a learning process and the learning process I learned

to be true to who I am.

Being who I am is just being Dalph.

It's not about me being gay.

It's about me just being Dalph.

- I was so afraid to tell certain people, even this year.

My job?

I would never tell anybody at my job.

But, I've gotten to the point now,

my grandmother, who raised me, she means a great deal to me.

She knows.

I could care less who knows.

I'm not gonna change my life to appease anybody.

As long as I get the acceptance from my family,

I'm fine.

- Whether you're masculine, whether you're just feminine,

you're not free until you're just for yourself.

(upbeat energetic music)

- I always thought that being gay meant you were a pussy.

I didn't want to be a pussy, you know?

- [Narrator] Bil Yoelin plays for the Los Angeles Rebellion,

one of about a dozen gay rugby teams

across the United States.

- It's provided a place for me to be comfortable

but now we're like a brotherhood.

It's great.

I didn't come out until after I left home.

So, I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa and

I left Des Moines on my 19th birthday.

I came to California to come to college and

I didn't consider myself to be gay at all.

For me, there wasn't any identity there of anyone who is gay

It wasn't an option for me.

It wasn't until afterwards in my 20s that I really felt

like I came out and I had other masculine gay men

that I was attracted to and that I had a camaraderie with,

I could hang out with and be friends with.

- We also have a lot of straight guys on our team.

I'd say 40% of our team is straight and one thing that's

been sort of eye-opening for me is I had to sort of

get over some of my heterophobia.

I assumed the worst of a lot of these guys.

I thought, you know what?

As soon as they find out we're a gay team,

they're gonna be out of here and they were like,

"I don't care where you put your dick.

"Let's play, let's go, let's play some rugby."

- A lot of good guys there, you know?

I can bring the girlfriend, you know.

I don't have to worry about all the drunk guys.

A definite plus.

- I'm straight as an arrow.

I always have been but it just, I don't know,

I guess I have an open mind.

In a lot of ways, they're a lot less obnoxious than

hanging out with a bunch of straight guys can be just

crude and rude too, so, I don't know

the difference is all that much.

- I never have like an imaginative thought that

gay guys played rugby.

I had no idea.

I never seen even a gay team in any sport, let alone rugby,

so when I came out here, it was a little different but

it definitely met my expectations.

We play as well as any other team.

- I think I had been conditioned for so long

to think that the straight world is not gonna

like me if I'm honest.

I was taught a lesson.

- [Narrator] Bil grew up in Colorado.

The revelation that he was gay came from a superhero.

- I particularly remember watching the Incredible Hulk on TV

and thinking, yeah, that's what I like.

I think I was probably about six.

The problem was I didn't know if it was really

muscular guys that I liked, or green people.

- [Narrator] But, as a teenager, Bil didn't know

anyone who was gay except for who he saw on television.

- I guess then it was Boy George or it was, you know,

you see drag queens.

- [Narrator] Bil stayed in the closet until his early 20s.

- I had some girlfriends.

Didn't really, you know, it didn't work out, obviously.

All my friends were straight from high school and college

but then, on the side, there was a club in my neighborhood.

It was called The Metro and it was you know

(imitating club music)

It was sort of like, okay, this what I kind of expected.

I kind of just didn't really feel like it was for me,

but it was like, it's a hard pill.

You gotta swallow it because this is you.

So, I didn't feel like I fit in the gay world,

I didn't feel like fit in the straight world.

I think it's important for young gay guys to have

that place where there's camaraderie without it being

about body image or dancing.

There's something really masculine about

hanging out, being raucous.

I relate to men better.

I find them easier to joke around with and laugh.

I have sort of a raunchy sense of humor.

It doesn't always go so well with women.

(chuckling)

Sometimes, I will get people asking me if I'm straight,

not believing that I'm gay.

Women, sometimes, will hit on me.

I'll be at a gay bar and someone will say,

"You know, this is a gay bar,"

and I'm like, "Yeah, I know."

I'm enjoying the porn, you know?

Even within the gay world,

guys don't always realize there's a real variety of gay men.

Being gay has made me more of a man.

Certainly being honest with being gay

has made me more of a man.

Had I not been honest with myself,

I think that I would have been what

I would describe as a pussy.

I decided not to do that, not to live in the closet

til I'm 60 years old.

So, yeah, definitely it's made me more of a man.

(upbeat energetic music)

- [Narrator] Gay men face the challenge of defining

masculinity on their own terms.

However, the issue of what it means to be a man

can be a very divisive one.

Dan Cullinane writes for a number of gay publications

and recently completely a special report on gay masculinity.

- When you say that someone is not masculine,

you are essentially saying they are not a man,

so I think that is why it is controversial.

- [Narrator] Dan found a lot of recurring references

on social sites catering to gay men.

- You are seeing an increase in

"I am a masculine, straight-acting man

"and that is what I am interested in."

There is also no femmes, no nellys, no queens.

There did seem to be this sort of schism opening

within the community.

- [Narrator] Keith Harris is a professor of cultural studies

at the University of California Riverside.

- Even though you have these guys

who are gay involved with men,

one way of maintaining a certain kind of

idealized masculinity is, indeed,

distancing yourself from this effeminate male.

- [Narrator] John Campbell teaches communication

at the University of Minnesota.

He's also written a book about gay sexuality online.

- If you identify as masculine, you understand yourself

as sort of fulfilling these traditional gender roles

but that doesn't fit with your sexuality,

you have a tough time reconciling the two

and negotiating the two.

- [Narrator] Don Romesburg is an archivist with

the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.

- Many people expect to come out into the gay community

and find their gender expression, whatever it is,

embraced and accepted and often you find just the contrary,

that there's this mandate to be more masculine.

- What does masculine mean?

Who is masculine and who gets to determine

what those traits are?

Are they real or are they fetish or are they fashion?

What are they?

- [Narrator] Peter Nardi, a professor of sociology

at Pitzer College has written books

on masculine relationships.

- Some people say masculinity is that what which men do

and whatever men do is considered masculine and so

that can have a wider range.

- [Narrator] However, there are some very traditional

ideals of what it means to be a man.

Gregory Cason is a psychologist in Los Angeles.

- Masculinity is often only identified with strength

and fortitude and conquest.

For some people, it could be a hypersexuality and

for some people it could be a very macho appearance

or, for some people, being the head of the boardroom

or being a leader in some way.

- Media seems to reinforce this notion that to be

masculine is to be heterosexual.

The crisis of identity many gay men have is they may have

attraction to other men and therefore,

they think they can't be masculine

and they wrestle with this.

- I often look at the people who are more feminine

and can not hide it as the ones who really learn early

what it is to be a man.

If they don't have sports ability, they can't pass.

If they don't have the masculine voice, they can't pass.

So, they're gonna be the ones who are subject to bullying.

They are gonna be the ones who are marginalized

and they learn what it is to stand alone and be strong.

- My tattoo is sissy.

It's my first and only tattoo.

I wanted to make it something that made people think

and show people that I can fight back and

be myself and reclaim some things.

- [Narrator] Mark Snyder has been fighting straight

stereotypes of masculinity his entire life

with sometimes dangerous consequences.

- My femininity, especially when I wear my big sunglasses,

in particular, I don't know why,

it totally sparks a violent reaction in some straight men.

They look at me and immediately they react violently

and they yell and they get really angry at me.

My boyfriend and I had beer bottles thrown at us

just a couple weeks ago.

And it's in San Francisco.

- We were waiting for the bus and then, all of a sudden,

this car zooms past us

(glass shattering)

and a beer bottle was thrown at us and

then the guys were laughing, saying "faggots."

- Sometimes, the more masculine, the more straight-acting

gay guys are shocked to hear what we go through.

Every day, I check myself, like am I safe,

every moment that I step out of my house.

I feel a sense of looking around to gauge my safety.

- I feel like I have to watch my back

more when we're together.

We stand out more.

But, we have each other.

We support each other so whatever experience we handle,

we experience it together and that brings us closer.

- [Narrator] Mark works for an advocacy group

in San Francisco helping gay and

lesbian families adopt children.

He grew up in rural Pennsylvania.

- Most of the folks where I am from are farmers

and right-wing Republicans and really into

their fundamentalist right-wing churches.

So, growing up there, I just felt different on

a multitude of levels, not just because of my femininity.

It was very, very challenging.

I knew I was different even before kindergarten.

I just never fit in.

I always wanted to play with the Barbies or the girl toys.

The other little boys were out being rambunctious

or playing sport type things.

Just my appearance was different and the way I talked

was very feminine and expressive with emotion.

I just didn't fit in at all to the rigid standards

for what men and women do.

My uncle always jokes that he knew I was gay

when I was like, four years old, and I wouldn't stop

watching the Bette Midler concert on tape.

I would rewind and watch Bette Midler over and over.

My uncle is gay and that's when he knew,

long before I knew.

By third grade, when I learned the word gay,

I started to try those things to butch up a little bit

because, at that point, the boys are starting to toughen up.

I would play on the swings and play with the girls

but I tried out for basketball and totally failed at that.

Once seventh grade hit, that was high school,

and then I was in building with all the older boys and

they just immediately started harassing me.

The first day of seventh grade,

they started calling me faggot and queer,

pushing me into my locker, kicking the back of my heels,

spitting at me, throwing things.

I feared for my life a lot of times in high school,

not just because I was suicidal,

but people were threatening to kill me all the time.

I would get death threats in my locker, on my locker,

carved in my desk, under the windshield wiper of my car.

People would yell things and just be really violent

and tell me they wanted to rape me and

tell me they wanted to fuck me up.

- [Narrator] Mark said he survived those challenging years

with help from gay support groups on the internet.

Mark went to school at the University of Massachusetts

and started his own website, QueerToday,

to help other kids facing discrimination for being gay.

- I'm really proud of being a sissy now that

I'm not shameful about it.

You're in the area now, right?

I guess I've always felt a little fire burning in me,

keeping me going.

Feeling like I'm making a difference in other people's lives

is the only thing that really kept me going through that

and knowing that once I got out,

I could help other people like me because around me,

I saw people who weren't making it and

the suicide rates will prove that,

even in Massachusetts, which is like, super-liberal,

the gay kids are five times more likely to kill themselves.

I'm lucky to have parents who supported me and

a whole family that loved me and supported me and

without that, I would have definitely killed myself.

(gentle orchestral music)

- [Narrator] Trevor Hoppe also suffered abuse from his

classmates growing up and it lingers with him to this day.

- I still live with, on the one hand,

trying to express my effeminate self and on the other hand,

still feeling this thing in the back of my head that says

"Don't do it.

"You're supposed to act like a man."

- [Narrator] Trevor was raised in North Carolina.

He has fond memories of grade school.

- I remember being sort of a happy-go-lucky,

skipping down the hallway, singing kind of boy,

always with a smile on my face.

- [Narrator] But, when he entered middle school,

things changed.

- From, you know, kicking the shit out of me in the hallway

to throwing rocks at my head to being labeled as a faggot

before I even knew that I was gay.

I didn't know that boys were supposed to sort of act tough,

keep a straight face and beat other guys up.

I didn't know how to be a boy, really.

I just knew how to be me.

There was a short amount of time where

I really just, I shut down.

I stopped smiling.

I stopped skipping down the halls.

I just sort of shuffled from class to class.

- [Narrator] Trevor said one day,

he just quit trying to play it straight.

Going from wearing Abercrombie and Fitch to try to fit in

to wearing four-inch platform heels and spiky orange hair.

If I was going to be a faggot no matter what I did,

I might as well be all the faggot that I could be.

I was going to get called a faggot whether I tried to

hide it or whether I slammed it in their face and

it turned out that when I slammed it in their face,

everybody shut the fuck up because they were too scared

to say anything because I looked like I would cut a bitch.

I mean, you know?

(chuckling)

- [Narrator] After graduating from Chapel Hill University,

Trevor decided to explore the issues of masculinity

from a self-described queer perspective.

He sought out essays and experiences from

a wide range of gay men who did not

fit into traditional stereotypes of manhood.

He launched a website,

Beyond Masculinity:

Essays by Queer Men on Gender and Politics.

- There was nothing really out there about how to be

a queer man, what that could look like,

how to be a progressive, feminist, thoughtful queer guy.

I wanted to refute a little bit the idea that everybody

who looks like me is sort of dumb, out of it,

and really only into fashion, which is bullshit.

I just wanted to show that there are many different

kinds of us and we all have particular kinds of struggles

and issues but we're all thriving.

- [Narrator] Trevor is working on a PhD at

the University of Michigan in Sociology.

He plans to teach but Trevor has already

learned a lot about himself.

- The latest phase has been really trying to question

the bitch inside me that I learned through

high school as a defense mechanism but

I carried with me into college.

I feel like many gay men don that mask as a way

to prevent themselves from being hurt by others.

I think the unfortunate thing is that we then carry that

into our communities and turn our ammunition on each other.

♫ I sleep with one eye open

♫ You make love with one foot out the door

♫ I must really like getting my heart broken

♫ I keep jumping back for more

- It's a way to embrace both the sensitive side of myself

and the masculine rock inside of myself in one package.

- [Narrator] It took Brent Calderwood many years to figure

out an expression of himself that was uniquely his.

Just like many other gay boys,

he faced a cruel childhood for not fitting in.

- Well, I was a little sissy-boy.

I had braces and glasses and was overweight.

I think I made an easy target.

- [Narrator] Brent drew strength from his artistic talents.

In addition to his singing and songwriting,

Brent became a prolific writer and graphic artist.

In 1993, at the age of 15, he drew a nationally distributed

comic strip about his coming out.

- I realized that it was a great way to educate kids

because a lot of kids would read the piece and

not even realize that it was about a gay theme and

then suddenly, halfway through, they'd already be hooked.

The media pounced on that because, back in '92, '93,

there weren't a lot of 16 year old who could articulate,

who were out at all,

let alone could articulate what that experience was like.

- [Narrator] Brent's sexuality attracted even more attention

when he shook up one of the most venerable

institutions of high school.

- I woke up and there I was on the front page of

The Oakland Tribune and the first line was

"Brent Calderwood, 17, plans to take

"a male date to his senior prom."

That just really upped the ante in terms of harassment,

getting death threats and people yelling at me,

not only in class and in hallways, but also adults in town.

- [Narrator] Brent is now studying at the University

of California Berkeley.

He plans to become a counselor helping gay youth.

- Whether we're effeminate or masculine by cultural standard

we all grow up as men, and especially as gay men,

learning to look through a magnifying glass at

how we're performing masculinity.

There's a potential feeling that we have of I failed

and then the irony is that once we come out,

rather than create this brave new world or whatever,

we turn to those high school dynamics of trying

to prove our masculinity.

(school bell ringing)

- My masculinity was never a problem for me.

I never thought that I was not masculine.

I always knew I was a pretty masculine guy.

- [Narrator] Wes Adams works as a Teamster truck driver

on film and television sets in Hollywood

and around the country.

Wes met a lot of celebrities over the years.

He also played a part in the Academy Award-winning

Western epic, Dances With Wolves, starring Kevin Costner.

In the film, Wes stars as an unlucky settler

attacked by Indians.

- I work with a different crew on just about every

project I work on.

They talk about their families and their wives

and their kids and for example,

this show that I just started.

This guy says,

"Hey, Wes, are you married?"

And I said no, and he goes,

"Do you have kids?"

And I said, no and I said,

"I'm gay and I've been in a relationship with

"my partner for 10 years."

And that usually takes people aback a little bit

and they always say,

"Oh, I never would have known in a million years."

And I'm like, "What is gay to you?"

You know?

- [Narrator] Wes did not come out until his late 20s.

- I thought being gay was a bad thing because

all I'd ever heard was predators,

men lurking around in parks, preying on children.

If someone was homosexual, it was deviant behavior

and that's just the way it was.

- [Announcer] Public restrooms can often be a hangout

for the homosexual.

Bobby and his friends hadn't noticed the man

who had been in the restroom when they changed.

(suspenseful music)

One never knows when the homosexual is about.

He may appear normal and it may be too late when

you discover he is mentally ill.

- As a kid, we go through so much mental agony.

We start having these feelings that we're told are wrong

and we don't know how to deal with them and

we fight it with every fiber that we have and

try to do whatever we can to be straight and

pray to God to make us straight.

We go through it alone.

There's nobody to talk to and as a child, that's horrible.

The reason I didn't come out was because I was worried

about how I'd be perceived by my co-workers,

my family, my friends, so I just kind of lived

in my own shell for the longest time.

After I came out myself, I started going out and

meeting people and realizing that there are

tons of guys just like me out there.

Who is it to deny anybody happiness?

You're gonna be who you're gonna be and if you're not,

you're not happy.

I think you see drag queens now and that's why

they're so strong mentally.

They don't take shit from anybody.

And the queeny guys, they don't take shit from anybody

because they had to deal with it.

I could hide it.

(bluesy guitar music)

- This is Ty.

Isn't that nice?

(chuckling)

So, Ty and I would go to different events,

any corporate events that would hire us and

we would walk around and people would want to

come up and touch him.

They fear falling so the moment you let go of them,

they start to freak out so the more secure,

that masculine feeling,

they become more comfortable and relaxed.

- [Narrator] David Aguilar has used his physical prowess

to his advantage over the years.

- Here's a picture of me on one of the posters for one of

the events that happened in San Francisco a long time ago.

This was called Superball and I was the cover boy

for the performance.

I get a lot of people saying,

"Now, you're what masculine is" and er-er-er.

Like, thank you.

- [Narrator] David also brings brains to the brawn.

He's a successful IT consultant in San Francisco.

- I had really interesting feelings as a young boy.

I've always known that I was attracted to

the masculine energy.

When I was 13 years old, people would ask me who my role

model was and I didn't know what a role model meant to me.

I used to walk to and from school.

On my way home, I would hear this tapping and

I walked into this studio and these girls were tap dancing

and the teacher actually had asked me, did I like dancing.

I didn't know.

I never paid for a dance lesson in my life because of being

a man in ballet, it's a rarity so they'll take boys

whenever they can get them.

I think that it helped me with growing up without

a solid male influence in my life because my dad and my mom

divorced when I was three years old.

So, I kind of grew up basically raising myself.

The ballet, the structure, the repetitiveness,

the security that it gave me inside myself,

it actually helped me install that in my life.

So, I just basically took the discipline that I had from

the ballet and applied that into my working-out schedule.

When people called me Muscle Boy, I was shocked.

I'm not a muscle boy.

I don't think I'm a muscle boy.

I got a ton more attention and that wasn't, again,

my driver to working out harder.

It was, again, just the discipline.

I don't believe that muscles equal masculine.

I think masculine is in the mind of whoever possesses it.

I would describe masculine as a very safe, secure energy

and when I'm in the presence of the person that

I love and I'm with, I feel completely safe with that person

and to feel that is the most amazing experience.

("Situation" by Ex-Boyfriends)

♫ Sell me your arm

♫ It's an emergency

♫ You're waving your arms

- [Narrator] Indie rock band, Ex-Boyfriends,

was bound by some old stereotypes as it tried

to break into the music industry.

♫ We've seen this all before

- It's just this cultural mindset that being gay

means you're feminine and feminine people can't rock,

(upbeat pop rock music)

which is one of the most ridiculous things

I think I've ever encountered.

- Maybe it has to do with the fact, like,

music critics, the majority of them are

just like white, straight males.

They always have to bring up, you know,

"This gay rock group is actually pretty good!"

- Right.

- I'm like, well, we're just a group.

(upbeat pop rock music)

- They have this cultural mindset that if you're up there

doing this shreddy guitar solo or beating the hell

out of a drum kit, you're manly.

(upbeat pop rock music)

I don't think you see a lot of gay men in the world of

rock music becoming really famous.

We all knew George Michael was gay for years.

We all knew The Pet Shop Boys were gay for years,

and Michael Stipe from R.E.M. but it's this thing

that gets danced around for so long.

"Oh, we're polysexual," or

"we just don't like to talk about it."

I think that's managers and representatives being like,

you know what, you'll have more mass popularity if this is

something that's never concretely defined.

- [Narrator] Still, with each guitar riff,

Ex-Boyfriends is making headway for gay rockers and

cracking some of those old stereotypes.

The group released two successful CDs, is working on a third

and has a new music video.

Ex-Boyfriends was also named Best Indie Rock Band

by readers of the San Francisco Bay Area Guardian newspaper.

- And it was Best Gay Indie Band or

Best Queer Band or anything.

It was Best Indie Band.

It's nice to just share that without the qualifier.

(light orchestral music)

- [Narrator] The issue of masculinity stirs passions,

not only in the gay community but

in the straight world as well.

Larry Gross is head of the School of Communication at

the University of Southern California.

- It's a hot-button issue in American culture.

This is a culture in which men seem

very concerned about issues of masculinity.

Gay men aren't part of that culture.

- [Narrator] However, the definition of masculinity

can change over time.

- There are different ways that people enact

what it means to be masculine.

Historically as well as contemporary times,

men were often seen as very gallant,

would have very intimate friends like

Jonathan and David in the Bible or Achilles and Patroclus

in the Iliad and they would go into battle together.

Men would stand side by side to deal with their friendships,

to deal with their intimacy.

Certainly, a lot of notions that we have about masculine

and feminine have historically been tied up in class.

The notion of the working class was seen as

more masculine, more rugged, more brutish where

upper class was more refined and in some ways

more feminine and demure.

You travel to some Mediterranean cultures,

or some Latin cultures and even some Asian cultures

and you notice that men, heterosexual men,

will walk sometimes arm-in-arm.

They will touch each other more,

they will stand closer to each other.

- A man will kiss another man on each cheek.

- Proof again that it's a cultural difference,

not something that's genetic, biological, or DNA related.

That it has something to do with what the culture

allows people to do.

It's really within the United States we have

a very rigid model of masculinity.

Rugged individualism was about conquering the West,

being stoic, being triumphant, facing these kind of odds.

Just two men hugging, utterly non-sexual,

just an expression of affection,

would have been considered unmasculine.

However, it does seem to have brought it out a bit.

We have a bit more space in terms of

what it means to be masculine.

Now, you can express certain emotions although

there is still the notion that you're supposed to be strong.

- Sports figures are on TV and they cry over some problem

or some loss that they've had.

That's also changed.

Sports figures being allowed to cry?

Many people argue that today,

the heterosexual man, who is very emotional,

who acts as if he were more sensitive,

is more tuned to his clothing, to his hairstyles,

has been labeled the metrosexual.

There have also been words called the man-date,

or the bromance, for guys who are really

close to one another, heterosexual guys who get together,

talk about their lives, what their emotions are.

So, something has happened in our society in the last

20 to 30 years that has changed the definition of

what it means to be masculine and one of those things

that it demonstrates is that masculine is not

a fixed concept, that it's constantly variable

and constantly changing.

- [Narrator] The concept of what it means to be a man

may evolve over time, however, there is no more iconic

figure of masculinity than the cowboy.

- The thing that I love the most about being

out on the horse is the fact that you really

have to have communication with that animal.

(upbeat country guitar music)

The definition of a barrel horse is a controlled runaway.

If that horse is running at the speed of some

40 to 60 miles an hour,

if you are not in tune with that animal and

that horse decides to run away with you,

there's nothing that can stop that horse.

That is a huge, huge factor when it comes to training

these horses and competing on them and

that's what I love so much.

- [Narrator] James and his partner, Matt,

could be described as the real-life

Brokeback Mountain cowboys.

The couple own a ranch outside Scottsdale, Arizona.

- We have 15 horses between myself and my partner, Matthew,

and we have two babies on the way.

We have six dogs, we have cats, fish, you name it.

We've got a lot of animals on our ranch.

- What drew me to James, there was, of course,

the initial attraction and then there was

what's kept us together,

what made me realize he could be my partner was just

his values and morals and our mutual goals,

what we want to do with our lives and

what we think is important,

the kind of people we want around us and

the kind of activities and that we want to be

in a monogamous relationship versus an open

and that we value our horses and property.

- [Narrator] James has spent most of his life around horses.

- When I came out in the straight horse community,

it was very jaded, I guess you could say.

You used to be able to go in there and have nice,

easy conversations with people and after a while,

when they found out, they would turn their head.

It hasn't been until probably just the last few years

where it's become more and more accepted whereas

many, many people have one, come out of the closet that have

been in the horse show industry, such as myself,

as well as your top trainers and professional trainers

in the world that qualify and go to the world every year now

have also come out of the closet and

it's become much, much more acceptable.

- [Narrator] James also competes in many of the 20 or so

gay rodeos held across the United States

and Canada every year.

It can be just as rough-and-tumble as any straight rodeo.

(crowds cheering)

(upbeat country guitar music)

But the gay rodeos also include a couple of events

you won't find on the straight circuit.

In the Wild Drag Race, men dress up in women's clothing

and try to mount a young steer.

Wonder where they came up with that idea.

Then, there's Goat Dressing,

where contestants try to put underwear on a goat

in the quickest amount of time.

It's all part of the campy side of gay rodeo

that makes the events, in a word, special.

(upbeat country guitar music)

- They call me Wild Wild Wes on the rodeo circuit.

I'm a little bit on the wild side when it comes to

the spirit and the energy of what makes gay rodeo fun.

It's really cool that we have the camp events.

We are gay and we enjoy fun things.

A new contestant that maybe doesn't have a horse

and never owned a horse but they'd like to be

involved with gay rodeo, they can actually go out

to the rodeo arena and have a good time and actually compete

- [Narrator] James said when he was growing up,

he didn't know of any gay rodeos.

- I didn't know what gay was.

I just knew that it was something that was not looked upon.

Honestly, until I was probably 18 or 19 years old,

I had never met a gay person in my life.

I played the straight role until I was

in my early to mid 20s.

Any of my guy friends that were being chummy,

that were just being good guys,

I would never allow them to get close to me because

I didn't want any interaction to be stereotyped

as being a gay man.

I had a girlfriend for many years and competed in

the junior rodeo circuit and no, everything was hush-hush.

That was not looked upon as something was acceptable

in my family and then I came to grips with myself

in terms that I had to just be me.

When I first come out of the closet, my dad says,

"I hope you don't come home wearing a pair of high heels."

You know?

But, you know, we laughed upon it and I said,

"Dad, you would be surprised what

"I can do in a pair of high heels."

My family is very accepting of it now.

There's a lot of images that are portrayed out there of us

people that are gay and they understand

that we're just people, too.

Some people say it's chosen.

I don't personally believe that.

In my situation, it's something that I've known

ever since I was a child.

- [Narrator] Matt also tried to play it straight for a while

but knew at a pretty young age he was gay.

- Well, I grew up in a very rural town out in the middle

of beautiful rural Oregon, and then I went on to date women.

To me, it was just playing the part.

I was doing what my parents wanted me to do.

If they had their way,

I would have gotten a degree in agriculture and

been running a successful ranch

up there with them, which they do.

I just couldn't do it.

I felt like it was a lie to the girl.

It's too much of a show for me with women.

I remember I had to be the big stud and do all this

and put on this big man act and now I want that back.

I want that, too!

(chuckling)

- What is nice about Matthew and I, my partner,

is we both are men and we both carry that image.

Somebody that is not afraid to get their hands dirty,

not afraid to go out there and shovel but also

is not afraid to go in the house and cook dinner

if they need to, also.

- Knowing that a guy has my back,

I always felt like that was kind of what

the man did for the woman but I feel like I can protect

my partner as well as he can protect me.

No one gets anything over on us.

I feel like I'm pretty safe that way.

I feel very secure.

(men shouting)

(crowd cheering)

- The bull I got on today, he was kind of nasty in the chute

and he made a quick right turn,

banged me up into the gate and hit my elbow and

I lost all focus.

My instinct took over and that was to just

reach for something because I was in a bad spot.

I was in trouble.

- [Narrator] Steven Daigle became

America's favorite gay cowboy when he appeared on

the CBS reality show, Big Brother.

- Just doing rodeo itself is an adrenaline rush.

It's competition.

You're competing against yourself.

You're competing against animals.

You're competing against other people.

I don't know, it makes you feel like you're living.

You actually get a lot of notoriety out of it.

People love to watch it.

It's definitely good for getting a hug-up

every now and then.

(laughing)

To get on the back of that bull and sit down,

you have to be mentally ready, physically ready and

all of it's just exciting.

Gay cowboys are very in the media right now.

(horse whinnying)

You want your 15 minutes, too?

Some of the things you never got to see on the show,

people were more shocked to find out I was a bull rider

than they were to find out I was gay.

Like, when we had conversations, people were like,

"Oh, you're gay, oh okay."

Then, they're like

"You ride bulls?

"Now way!"

They're like,

"Shut up!

"I can't believe you get on the back of a bull!

"That's so crazy!"

People think that, like, a gay guy couldn't ride a bull

or ride a bucking horse and what they don't realize is that

I'm just as much of a man as a straight man is but

there's a difference, I think,

between masculinity and being tough.

I think you can be very masculine and not be tough

and I think a lot of these,

what you might call effeminate guys,

that are rodeo-ing, they may be very effeminate

but they're tough.

(upbeat dance music)

♫ Oh oh

♫ Come on

- [Narrator] James and Steve are also regular fixtures

at gay rodeos but more often you'll see them

in jean skirts instead of Wranglers.

A few years ago, the couple decided to dress up in drag

to raise money for charity.

I wanted to prove to people that you could still be a man

and wear a dress and raise money but when it all comes off,

you're still a man no matter what.

I am just as rough and tumble in drag as I am out of drag.

I've ridden bulls.

I've done steer riding.

I do chute-dogging.

- It takes a man to walk around in a pair of heels.

Trust me.

It kills your feet.

Not only that, to have big enough balls, shall I say,

to walk through a crowd of say, a leather community,

in drag, and they're looking at you thinking,

"Why do you belong here?"

Then, by the time the night's over,

they're eating out of your hand thinking

you're the best thing since peanut butter.

That's an accomplishment.

- As you can see, this is not an easy process.

We're putting body parts in places they don't need to be

and we shove ourselves into clothing

that should not really fit.

I tell people all the time that it takes balls to be a woman

It really does.

It ain't easy being pretty.

I actually enjoy the fact that

I get to be somebody different.

I've made up this character, for good or bad or indifferent,

and you know what, I get to raise money for charity

across the US.

I'm fundraising, so if anybody would

like to buy some raffle tickets?

Do you have the time?

I get to make a difference.

I get to give back to the communities that I'm involved in.

We need to give back because

we get so much from our communities.

- I think it's fun.

I like the shock value.

The people who knew me before, as Steve,

and then I kind of come out as Aspen.

My best friends do not recognize me.

I kind of like that aspect of not saying that I'm hiding,

but it's a different persona and a different side of me

that I can get across to people.

The drag community is a very loving group.

It's sort of like they feel that they have to

protect one another and help one another because

they're discriminated by people within their own community.

Not by everyone, but there are those people who

discriminate against the drag.

For a group that already has the tinge of discrimination

against ourselves from the communities at large,

it's discouraging to see that

we're discriminating against each other.

This is one persona.

When this comes off, I forget about that,

because that's not who I am.

I'm James and when I put this on, then I'm Janet.

I'm two separate people.

Once she comes off, she's in a box and

I'm back to being a regular Joe Shmoe.

I'm not as masculine as a lot of guys out there but

I'm still a guy once she comes off.

- [Narrator] The art of drag dates back to

the earliest days of the gay community.

In the 1930s, this nightclub was all the rage

with both gays and straights.

- Within gay male culture, there was a celebration at

being able to defy gender roles.

Gender roles were seen and arguably still are seen,

as very oppressive, very limited.

They already knew they were excluded from the mainstream

because their sexuality didn't fit the role.

They have, then, freedom to also play with gender roles.

- Camp is making fun of a kind of a failed seriousness,

so for those who take their gender expression very,

very seriously, for example, poking fun at that

and showing that their gender expression is just as much

a performance as anyone else's.

- People who go in drag often,

although they are embracing the feminine part of themselves,

do so with a masculine bravado.

They're embracing both sides of their sexuality.

(upbeat pop rock music)

- It wasn't that there seemed like there was something

better on one side of the fence than the other.

I think it was more being able to find a place where

I was comfortable being perceived by others

as I was perceiving myself.

I think the question I hear a lot from people is

"Why did you decide to become a man?"

And my answer is always that I always felt like

I was one already.

I never would have thought that the differences between

testosterone and that set of hormones affect your body

and estrogen and those set of hormones affect your body.

I would have been like, oh I'm sure it's not a big deal,

but it is and it's a huge deal.

Your sexuality is incredibly elevated in a way that

I had never experienced my sexuality ever before.

My aggression was really elevated in a way that

I hadn't expected and that I hadn't ever experienced.

I can't believe guys walk around like this all the time.

How do they not feel like crazy people?

I feel like a crazy person.

I probably cried like, four times in the last eight years.

I lost my--

I wasn't able to do it anymore.

If I got hit in the face or something.

(chuckling)

After I started taking testosterone,

people would be like,

"What's wrong with you?"

And I'd be like,

"I don't know but I'm really pissed.

"I can't explain it to you and

"I don't think I should have to.

"I'm just pissed."

I felt really almost a little bit sad about losing

that ability to communicate.

All of a sudden, I couldn't do it anymore.

I felt like my vocabulary got cut in half.

I could feel it but I couldn't explain it

and I don't know why.

It just kind of went away.

I think that we value masculinity so much

more in our society than we do femininity.

There's male privilege, which just happens.

It's people who will look you in the eye

when they talk to you.

That doesn't happen for women.

When you talk, people will listen to you.

When you have an idea, people will believe that it works.

You're constantly rewarded for masculinity in this way.

Even in other kinds of communities, like dyke communities,

butches are rewarded for being more masculine.

The same thing happens in gay male communities

that butcher, bigger, stronger, more straight-acting men

are more sexually valuable than feminine men.

I feel like I had to grow and learn how to become a man,

just seeing how we teach men how to be men.

I think I had to learn the same way as everybody else did.

How I sat and how I walked and how I talked and

all these things that I felt like,

if you do these things, that's what makes a man.

If you pay for dinner or if you take up lots of space

with your body or if you act like you know

what you're doing all the time, then that's what men do,

so that's what I'm gonna do and it didn't feel right and

I didn't know why.

It wasn't until I started being able to be in

gay male spaces that I realized that there were

a hundred million other ways of experiencing maleness

and masculinity than what television or billboards

or sports or whatever said.

You could touch each other, not in a sexual way necessarily,

but just like you could be friendly and funny and silly

and affectionate and genuinely care for another man.

I was like, oh my God, you can do all of these things.

But I wasn't allowed to do any of this stuff and

all of a sudden it was like permission to be able to.

No, you can do whatever you want.

- [Narrator] Jack Malebranche lives in Portland, Oregon.

He works for an exercise equipment company.

Jack is also an author.

He's written a book that takes head-on

the issue of gay masculinity.

Androphilia, a Greek term for love of maleness,

angered some critics in the gay community.

- I don't believe that gay should be the defining quality

that you associate yourself with.

There are a million other things that I can be

at any given time.

Making gay the primary one is counter-productive.

It puts you forever in a small group that separates you

from other people and separates you from other men.

I share more interests with other men than, in many cases,

I do with gay men.

Why should I limit myself by clustering around this gay

community and making that the center of my whole identity?

Mainstream gay culture is a celebration of fashion,

the kind of music that 14 year old girls listen to.

It's the kind of thing that housewives would like.

It's not something that you'd associate with men.

As they become progressively involved in gay culture,

they just move further and further away from

what it means to be a man.

They become unable to relate to other men and

I think that's unhealthy.

In the gay community, and this is why I think effeminacy

defines gayness, is that it's okay to be effeminate but

your masculinity is always going to be in question.

We give straight men a wide range of how they can behave.

They can be nerdy little IT guys who don't really do

anything traditionally masculine at all but

because they're straight, we give them their masculinity.

They automatically get their man card,

whereas I think homosexual men have to work for it.

The measure of a man should be in his accomplishments.

I'm not a man because of how pretty I am,

or because of my great new outfit,

I'm a man because of what I've done and who I am

and what I stand for and what I talk about and

I don't really see, in gay culture,

any trend towards making that the goal,

to center your life around your accomplishments

and your values and your sense of integrity

and your sense of honor.

(upbeat percussive music)

- Masculine cultures have had same-sex sexuality

involved in them ever since the beginning of time.

Prisoners, sailors, all sorts of cultures of men

have had sex with one another but it wasn't really until

the 1940s when you started to have a self-identified

gay male community that was also specifically and

self-consciously masculine identified.

- As the soldiers returned from World War II,

these port cities like San Diego, Los Angeles,

San Francisco, New York, soldiers would stay there.

Having discovered each other,

started living and forming communities.

You started to see increasingly the adoption of

these masculine working-class forms.

You saw gay motorcycle clubs.

You could see pictorials and the popularity of

those types of magazines.

Beat poetry, this kind of masculine self-positioning

that did not necessarily excluse homosexuality and

you also saw a political movement that was looking for

legitimacy largely through normalcy and masculinity

was seen as one of the ways

in which you could be well-adjusted.

After the Kinsey studies came out in 1948

and then in 1956,

there was a much more widespread understanding that

many more men were engaging in homosexual activity

than was previously thought.

They couldn't always tell who was a homosexual just based

on whether or not a man was, for example, effeminate.

By the 1960s, you were starting to see the growth

of leather bars and this almost market segmentation

within gay male bar culture and one element of that

is explicitly about a kind of masculine and

even hyper-masculine pose.

- [Narrator] In 1964, Life Magazine even featured a cover

story investigating the secret world of the homosexual.

The article states that patrons of a homosexual bar

in San Francisco wear leather jackets,

make a show of masculinity and

scorn effeminate members of their world.

It also warns that for every obvious homosexual,

there are probably nine near-impossible to detect.

Artist Tom of Finland helped to embellish

this new-found hyper-masculine look.

Tom's homoerotic art appeared in various publications

as far back as the 1950s.

- He wanted to give his brothers some type of

masculine identity as men because society, at that time,

they would not even qualify us as being men.

He drew just beautiful men.

Their bodies were just stylized enough.

They had a certain look.

The way they looked at each other,

the whole game and the dance of it.

We like intrigue, we like mystery,

and he would actually put all of that into his drawings.

Masculine men having sex with each other.

He presented an image and we took it and made it ours.

- Masculinity became one of the ways that gay men

could find one another by emulating

the object of their own desire.

Then, you have, of course, the sexual revolution and

out of Gay Liberation comes the Castro Clone.

The irony of the Castro Clone, of course,

is that you're supposed to be displaying this sort of

natural masculinity but it takes a great deal of effort

to get it precisely right.

- [Narrator] Bob Davis experienced the era of

the Castro Clone firsthand.

- My first day in San Francisco,

we went to the opening of the gay softball league.

Gay men playing softball, playing sports.

Who knew?

I thought where in the hell am I?

Holy Lord!

You know, it was like halleluia.

It was the first generation of gay men who were living

open and out and free and they were basically

embracing their masculinity.

- [Narrator] However, the joy of this new-found expression

was short-lived.

The onset of AIDS took a devastating toll.

A new ideal of gay masculinity emerged,

centered around circuit dance parties

springing up around the country.

- Circuit culture is, in some ways,

a reaction against both the vulnerability represented

by HIV and AIDS and the Castro Clone look.

It's a much more explicitly ripped, heavily muscled,

less hair, more explicitly youthful.

- It was a reaction within the gay community.

They didn't want to be associated with AIDS.

Enough was enough.

What's a better metaphor for being pure and untouched

and undiseased than shaving your body and being pristine.

- [Narrator] But, the hirsute man was not gone for long.

Nowhere in the gay community are traditional masculine

traits more revered and celebrated than among the Bears.

The Bear movement began in the late 1980s.

- I think it was just big guys who weren't mainstream

When it all started back in the day.

So much is caught up into magazines and what the look is

supposed to be in the gay community and

how you're supposed to be and you know,

the reality of it is we all come in

different shapes and sizes.

We've just got to be proud of what we have and

where we are in our lives.

We all can't spend 16 hours a day in the gym

to be that perfect guy.

- I was Mr. San Francisco Bear in 2005.

If it weren't for Bears, I probably never would have

come out because I didn't fit into

gay society anywhere else.

Bears have always been about just inclusion.

Everyone just kind of hangs out and accepts everyone else.

- I love that song where beauty magazines

only make you feel ugly.

Beauty is like, masculine or just being who you are.

- [Narrator] Dozens of Bear events are held

around the world every year.

One of the biggest is Lazy Bear.

- The most masculine guys you ever see are pretty much here.

- Yeah.

- A bunch of us were walking through the Hard Rock Casino

and some guys were,

"What are you guys, a union or something?"

We look like a bunch of fucking plumbers or electricians

and that's fine.

You don't get beat up on the street,

and you get free beer.

It confuses people.

- [Narrator] Thousands of gay men trek every summer

to the forest town of Guerneville in Northern California

for a long weekend of drinking beer, dancing,

and just being with men.

- Everyone has a good time with the Bears because

they can be themselves and not have to put on the airs

or put their guard up.

- This is one of those parties where you don't have to come

and suck your gut in for the entire five days.

- The nature of the environment,

the fact that it's the mountains, the beautiful scenery,

it's cool, just all of that just puts you at ease

and so if you are at ease, you're more readily available

to make friends with as many people

as you can possibly make friends with.

- You express your friendship and your love for

your fellow men openly, it doesn't matter.

- There's something masculine about the whole kind of

hairy man kind of genre.

- I like muscles and hair and it's just like big

and masculine and butch.

I don't know why that is but it just is.

- I don't think it necessarily have to

have body hair to be a Bear.

I think it's more the whole masculine trappings,

the way they dress, like to drink beer,

and go out and have big meals.

- You go into the bars at the different Bear events,

you feel a machismo, a macho kind of feel to these guys

and you know, they may not be macho all the time,

but there's something about their masculinity,

there's something about them being together as a group

that really just makes it so powerful,

unlike any other group, I think,

any other culture in the world.

(upbeat pop rock music)

- [Narrator] As each gay man defines his ideal

of what it means to be a man,

the issue of masculinity lies at

a crossroads for the gay movement.

- The big push in sort of the relationship between

gay people and the majority culture in the last decade or so

has been let us in.

It's basically giving up the sort of

separate aspects of gay culture.

People of my generation, at least,

are not sure it's such a great bargain and are also dubious

as to whether or not the people who want that will

really find out that it's giving them what they want.

- Through marriage, through domestic partnership,

through adoption, it's much easier to assimilate

into heteronormativity if you're straight-acting.

- The other big thing is the unanswered question of whether

or not we as a community will solve the ways in which

we are stereotyped or oppressed by simply rejecting

gender diversity and embracing more normal

forms of masculinity.

I think over and over again,

we see that kind of pressure to be as normal,

whatever that means, as possible.

- Part of the process of becoming a gay male is

to unlearn some of the stereotypes that were imposed

upon us and to sort of relearn it so that we can be

masculine in a wide range of ways,

to incorporate some of the ways that we learned but

also to learn new ways, to be constantly changing

and evolving those as they occur.

- There's nothing to me more appealing than a man

that's so comfortable in his own skin that he can embrace

all parts of who he is.

- Every time that we try to assert that one kind of

gender expression is the most normal or the most important

for gay people, we push others to the side and so the key

is really, I think, for all of us to explore

what it means to be gay men in the entire range of

gender expressions that we have available to us and

to not obsess over trying to find out what

our real gender is but to allow for the possibility that

gender can change over time and it's flexible

and it's fluid and it's fun.

(high energy upbeat music)