“Gay men from the countryside have very specific stereotypes of urban gay men,” he says. “These form part of the language communities like LGBTQ+ people use to understand each other.”īenno Gammerl, a lecturer on Goldsmiths University’s MA in Queer History in London, thinks that “gay’s walk fast” is rooted in stereotypes of urban gay life. “Social media encourages us to create quick, easy stereotypes to describe ourselves and other people,” says McRae. But while I still (definitely am) might be, it turns out that categorizing people, while indulging in a little bit of narcissism, is actually fairly normal behavior, particularly online. I often worry that finding some of the newer gay tropes funny –mostly, if I’m honest, because many of them apply to me– makes me insufferably self-absorbed. When stereotypes are positive, people can be particularly keen to adopt them. MacRae says that stereotypes are part of the “natural” process that our minds use to “figure out the world”. Regardless of whether gay men really do walk fast, there are psychological reasons why many of us want to embrace the idea that we do. Strutting, or walking at a rapid pace, can be a way of displaying homosexuality in safe spaces.” “People are much better at telling male sexuality based on movement, like ‘ walking gay’ or ‘moving gay.’ So gay men upping the pace of their walking also amplifies their sexuality. “People generally perceive sexuality from women's bodies when they're standing still and men's when they’re in motion,” he says. MacRae tells me that walking fast might be a method for gay men to give a “visual cue” of their physical fitness and attractiveness, and that there’s a gendered element to how we perceive sexuality that may influence walking speed. So already younger men in cities are the fastest walkers–perhaps gays just have an edge on that?” “The fastest walkers are men, younger people and people who live in urban areas. Psychologist Ian MacRae agrees that walking speed and style can be affected by either positive or negative emotions, but also says that gay men are statistically predisposed to walking fast. “When the weather’s good and I’ve got my music, there’s nothing I love more than sashaying through the city like it’s my personal runway,” he says. “I lived in Sydney for 20 years and there were a lot of confident walkers in Oxford Street, one of Sydney's gay areas, as this was a ‘safe’ area for people.”ģ1 year-old Ben has never driven a car and strongly identifies with the fast-walking trope. If you feel safe somewhere, then you may feel like ‘strutting’, being more open and feeling more extroverted,” she explains. “It is all about the feeling of safety and security in the body. Though Phillips also says that feeling confident can increase walking speed. to create “gay walking lanes” because gay men supposedly walk so fast. On Twitter, one person writes: “Straight people, look behind you, chances are there's a gay person trying to get past because you're moving at an extremely glacial pace.” Others joke that gays can halve the journey time estimate on most travel apps, or suggest that gay men walk fast “to flee the straights” because “they learned to walk to the beat of ‘Womanizer’ by Britney Spears.” Bizarrely, there’s even a petition in the U.K. If “walking gay” really is a thing, it seems that many gay people perceive speed to be a part of that. In that sense, the new(ish) stereotype that “gay men walk fast” is no different. Both found the accuracy of these new tropes difficult to prove, but explored their complex and often contradictory origins. Earlier this year, Vice writer James Greig attempted to fact-check the “new gay stereotypes.” GQ writer Alim Kheraj also investigated the gay love of iced coffee. From “gays can’t drive” to “gays love iced coffee,” new ones seem to appear every day. Inevitably, gay people being active online (Twitter gays, I’m looking at you) has caused new stereotypes to emerge. Yet today’s gay men aren’t as reliant on representations crafted by others, with social media helping to democratize storytelling by providing a platform for people to share their experiences. Historically, gay stereotypes have been even less kind.
To find out what else was gay, I looked to popular-culture, where I saw gay men mostly adhering to a fairly one-dimensional set of stereotypes: fashionable, witty, effeminate. Growing up, people would often tell me that I “walked gay.” I used to wonder how putting one foot in front of the other could seem gay, but I heard it so frequently that I accepted it as truth.