Queer Sibs
On Fag Hags, Fag Stags and Dyke Tykes
By Mikee dela Cruz
PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 2009

Singleton, too, acknowledges that “of course, these stereotypes have a basis in reality.”

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After all, according to Emma Pomfret, writing in Queer Guy for the Straight Gal for Sainsbury.co.uk, “who can a woman turn to when she's at the end of her tether after disastrous coffee dates with every loser within a 100-mile radius?  Or when the guy she's dating is just not that into her, so she needs a strong hand to pull her away from the torment and into a fabulous, sexy frock?”

The answer is the gay friend.

"A smart woman turns to the one person in the world she can trust completely - her gay best friend," explains Dave Singleton, Match.com columnist and author of Behind Every Great Woman There's A Fabulous Gay Man, as quoted by Pomfret.  "Just ask Liz Hurley, Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts, Madonna, and thousands of women across the UK. They're on the phone with Rupert Everett, Elton John – or me."

This isn’t to say that it’s a one-way street – gay men, too, benefit from the friendship, predominantly in the gaining of acceptability as a non-threatening (i.e. asexual) presence in the straight world.

The strength of the gay-straight relationship is in the absence of “some sort of agenda attached (with usual relationships, since) gay boyfriends are neither brother nor husband, boyfriend, dad, or girlfriend.  These days, we're consultant, confidante, non-judgmental, not competitive with women, empowering, and funny," Singleton says.  "The relationship between gay men and straight women is an agenda-less friendship that's bigger than friendship, steadier than romance, and responsible like family."

For Melissa de la Cruz, co-editor with Tom Dolby the anthology Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Love, Lust, and Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men (Dutton, 2007), “straight women and gay men seek each other out because they are natural allies ... they have both been marginalized. They understand each other, without the sexual tension. Now that I'm older I appreciate my female friendships, too ... but when I was younger, those relationships were really competitive."

And for Dolby: "You know how men are from Mars and women are from Venus? Maybe gay men are from Venus some of the time, too."

BEYOND COMMON NOTIONS

Richmond notes, nonetheless, that “what's been missing from popular culture thus far is a deeper look into the complexity and varieties of straight woman/gay man relationships in the real world.”

There are, as De la Cruz notes, “the messier side of things.”

The biggest concern, for Salon.com’s Thomas Rogers, writing in Ladies: I'm Not Your Gay Boyfriend, is the conversion of the gay guy into an item – albeit a must-have item.

“For most of gay history, the fag hag held a coveted spot.  They're the unsung heroes of the gay world,” Rogers quotes Shawn Hollenbach, the creator of New York's Miss Fag Hag Pageant, as saying.  “It was a mutually fulfilling relationship: Men got the appearance of heterosexual legitimacy and intimacy free of sexual tension; women got a touch of glamour and performance and exoticism.”

But “nowadays, when a grown woman describes herself as a fag hag, it feels like she's throwing around a designer label or telling me she knows a celebrity – a kind of social conspicuous consumption. Worse, it's a designer label that's faded from fashion, like a Juicy-brand velour sweat suit,” Rogers says.  “In the past decade, gay men have become less defined and ghettoized by our sexuality than ever before, making terms like fag hag feel as retrograde as, well, Will & Grace."

Thus, “more and more, the fag hag is becoming a relic of another era.”
For Rogers, therefore, while fag hags may have played important roles in gay lives, “they might not be as key to some young gay men's coming of age as they once were,” he says. So while, for others, “they'll be as crucial as ever, hopefully they'll be calling themselves something more accurate. Like friend.”

For Vicky R., “the terminologies can only go so far – that’s why they frequently change,” she says. “That partnerships between straights and gays thrive is what matters.”