Gay Men & White Supremacy in the Gay Community

If we want to help dismantle white supremacy, we have to identify how gay culture perpetuates it.

8 min readNov 21, 2021

White supremacy exists in every corner of society and within each of us, regardless of race or ethnicity. It is an ideology that is continuously forced upon humanity to ensure that power and privilege are held by whiteness. An obvious manifestation of this is the racial make up of U.S. presidents and politicians. A seemingly less harmful symptom of white supremacy is the mainstream media focus on white people and stories. Within the gay male community, it shows up as seeking fit, white or light-skinned men as sexual or romantic partners. However, that’s not the only manifestation.

There are numerous articles, videos, and social media posts that highlight the racism on display in apps like Grindr. If the United States of America were on Grindr, I would imagine its profile would read something like this:

Whites only — no blacks, no Asians, no Hispanics, no immigrants
Love to travel
Attracted to masculine, straight-acting men, NO FEMMES
Into fit, able-bodied only
Not into older
Be normal, healthy, disease-free
Looking to invade, dominate, and destabilize you
Just my preference!

If your Grindr profile looks anything like this, or if you seek men who have these “preferences”, you are helping to uphold white supremacy within the gay community and society at large.

The purpose of naming this is not to blame or demonize gay men, but rather, to highlight the need for change in our community, and more specifically, within ourselves. Just as white supremacy functions as an onslaught of discrimination, oppression, and segregation in the U.S. and the world, it does so within our community, except we are its promoters and the impacted.

Let’s unpack white supremacy further and see how it thrives in the gay male community.

Don’t be a white suprema-sis

An ideal gay white supremacist reality would have mostly white men and a sprinkle of light-skinned men of color. Every man would be cis, masculine-presenting, and have a “fit” and able body. There would be an emphasis on aesthetics that are Euro-centric and appearances that reflect a certain level of social or financial status. It would include watered-down aspects of other cultures while excluding people from those communities.

This reality sounds atrocious and bland but it exists in gathering spaces, events, social circles, and LGBTQ professional, political, and advocacy groups. It’s what’s promoted in gay movies, shows, news, and social media accounts.

To identify white supremacy in our community, it helps to understand what it looks like in society and throughout history. White supremacy functions by separating humanity and assigning biased value to human aspects, such as gender, skin color, facial features, body and hair types, intellectual and body functioning, language, culture, etc. It creates systems and hierarchies that place whiteness at the top where power, advantages, and resources are accumulated. It develops delusions in favor of whiteness and against people of color that are spread as truths or facts through laws, rules, education, and propaganda to increase the value of whiteness and devalue non-whiteness. It stays intact by getting passed down from generation to generation.

Real life examples that result in the unjust benefit to whiteness at the expense of marginalized people include:

The genocide of Native peoples across the globe and theft of their lands
The enslavement of Black people by white Europeans
Assigning monetary value to Black and Brown bodies for capital and labor gain
The exploitation of people for labor, land, wealth, sex, resources, children, knowledge, and culture
The creation of the police and legal systems intended to protect property and wealth for white people and keep others oppressed and in fear
The zoning laws that created desirable neighborhoods and communities for white people and corralled communities of color and immigrants to run down, neglected, and toxic environments
The lending practices that gave white people the means to move up through the class system and develop generational wealth while denying the same access and opportunities to people of color and queer people
The destruction of the environment and native lands for capital gain
The system of education that offers learning opportunities to white children and enacts inequity and a prison pipeline to communities of color
The history that is taught to promote delusions dressed as truths to favor whiteness and presents white people/men as heroes and saviors while excluding the history, talent, ingenuity, and greatness of marginalized people, including queer and trans people
The standards of beauty promoted in media, fashion, etc. that emphasize whiteness as the ideal and label Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, disabled, fat, and neurodiverse people as undesirable and disposable

And the list goes on. White supremacy uses tools like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, ageism, capitalism, environmental destruction, and any form of oppression, segregation, exclusion, and dehumanization in order to maintain power. White people are not exempt from being targets of white supremacist tools, either by being bystanders as those tools are utilized against their targets, or to prevent white people from dismantling white supremacy.

It all exists in gay male culture under different names and disguises. White supremacy manifests itself and is reinforced in the gay community by:

Promoting the “ideal” body type and an unhealthy pursuit of it
Preferences for white or light-skinned men as sexual/romantic partners and friends
Voicing and posting those preferences for others to hear and see in order to avoid interacting with people deemed undesirable
Excluding others based on race, ethnicity, body size, aesthetics, social and financial standing, etc.
Fetishizing men because their race, ethnicity, size, disability, etc., either exclusively for sex or for romantic relationships
Bottom-shaming, body-shaming, and any form of shaming directed at others and yourself
Seeing others and ourselves as sexual objects
Using sexual desirability as a means to assign value to others and ourselves
Assuming you have the right to access anything that belongs to someone else, especially their body
Imposing your beliefs or opinions on others and how they should live their life
Fighting for gay rights but not trans rights
Fighting for gay rights from a white male lens that lacks intersectionality
Having a bias against bisexual men or erasing bisexuality altogether
Being derogatory toward women, trans and non-binary people, intersex people, and femme guys
Preferring and performing masculinity and shaming femininity in men
Appropriating practices and culture from people/groups who don’t receive your positive regard, respect, money, friendship, love, or humanity

This list also goes on and on. White supremacy exists in gay culture in many forms. We cannot fight for racial, social, political, and environmental causes while simultaneously reinforcing white supremacy in our community. We must fully acknowledge and fight against white supremacy if we truly want liberation for our communities.

Being gay does not make it okay or give you permission to engage in white supremacist behavior nor does it absolve you from the harmful impacts it has on others in our community.

A barrier to dismantling white supremacy in our community is that there are gay men who are comfortable with the benefits granted to them under this regime and see the harm it inflicts on them and others as an acceptable tradeoff. There are others who want to experience those benefits and will morph to assimilate themselves into something that will hopefully gain them access to the privileges of white supremacy.

It is crucial to understand that gay/queer people will never fully exist in peace or safely in a white supremacist society. We must work to avoid becoming barriers to the dismantling of white supremacy.

The beauty is that as we tear down systems and hierarchies based on white supremacy and work to establish more inclusive ways of living as people in society and on this planet, folks of all ages who are gay, bi, queer, trans, non-binary, gender queer, intersex, Black, Brown, Native, Asian, multiracial, disabled, fat, and neurodiverse will hold the key to making it happen.

Resources: Expanding your knowledge

The following resources highlight some of the ways white supremacy exists in society, was established, is perpetuated, and how it harms everyone, especially marginalized people, in all aspects of life, in and outside of the LGBTQ+ community, including housing, education, healthcare, economics, employment, politics, and more, in the United States of America and globally.

Articles

“In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation”
The connection between the -isms and white supremacy in 2 minutes.
“4 Ways That White Supremacy Harms White People” [with audio]
“An Invitation to Save the Planet by Ending White Supremacy: A racist system that values some lives over others helps to fuel the climate crisis”
“TWO STATES. EIGHT TEXTBOOKS. TWO AMERICAN STORIES.: American history textbooks can differ across the country, in ways that are shaded by partisan politics.”
“White gay privilege exists all year, but it is particularly hurtful during Pride”
“Racism In America Should Not Take Center Stage in the Global Fight Against White Supremacy”

Videos

Books

“The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein [Book]; (Listen: Interview with author)
“Me and White Supremacy” by Layla F. Saad (Listen: Interview with author)

Films

“Gather” documentary on Netflix

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