Tik Tok is home to a variety of trends from new dances to popular audios. There are many sides of Tik Tok, and you may be in multiple, depending on how diverse your ‘For You’ page is. However, I will be talking about a specific side of Tik Tok today, and this side of Tik Tok is referred to as Gay Tok (the side of Tik Tok created by and for the gay male community). There are innocent Tik Toks about gay couples on a date, but there are also videos that showcase the problematic side of the gay community. These short videos shine light on hook-up culture while other videos touch on the discrimination gay men of color face in the dating scene.

The first Tik Tok, created by @itslucasmorales, includes him sitting still in a room with the caption, “me remembering the time in high school where I thought I would find the love of my life on Grindr and ended up losing my virginity at 2am to some random guy in a tank top.” The audio in the background exclaims, “Don’t you feel silly, don’t you feel stupid, don’t you feel a little ashamed,” with an ominous sound playing in the background.

This short, twelve-second video shows the difficult dating scene gay teenagers face. The gay community’s dating pool is extremely small. Some people are closeted and not ready for a relationship, others are not queer, and some are already in relationships. The lack of a dating pool created a different pool within the gay community: hook-up culture. Younger gay people are thrown into hook-up culture through Grindr: a dating app intended for gay men. However, Grindr is used primarily to seek potential hook-ups instead of potential relationships. The way Grindr is used exposes teenagers to predators and potential grooming, which leads to gay teenagers engaging in sexual activities with older men. Early exposure to hook-up culture shifts gay teenager’s perception of relationships and their functioning. Instead of a relationship being seen as an emotional connection, it is perceived as a physical connection; gay teenagers will focus more on their bodies than their mental health.

The unhealthy, toxic atmosphere of hook-up culture perpetuates the idea that appearance, especially body shape, is a deciding factor in whether one deserves love or not. The fixation on bodies is deeper than expected. Each body type has their own category, such as twink (hairless, thin bodies) to otter (hairy, thin to athletic-build bodies) to bear (hairy athletic-build to larger bodies); there’s a category where any body type fits. This body categorization has been normalized to the point that there are quizzes, such as this one, to help identify your body type! Hook-up culture creates this body categorization and physical damage, but it also causes emotional damage. There are no emotional relationships. In hook-up culture, there are friends with benefits and sex with no strings attached. This goes back to the physical harm hook-up culture can cause with body fixation, but these issues also cause a mental toll on the person involved. The emotional aspect of relationships is not taken into consideration, making it difficult for gay teenagers to define a healthy relationship, especially if they are deeply involved in hook-up culture.

Hook-up culture is the root of most of the problems in the gay community. Hook-up culture leads to the creation of body categorization, physical over emotional relationships, and the use of preferences to justify discrimination in the gay community, which leads to my next Tik Tok.

The second Tik Tok involves a queer, black man talking about dating as a black person. This person discusses discrimination they have faced in the gay community from other black men. He starts his Tik Tok with the quote, “I’m getting to realize that I’m lowkey not in the mood to date black men anymore, and here’s why.” @Miamiboykhai explains the standards black men face in the gay community and the standards forced upon him. He mentions how black men have commented on his femininity, his skin tone, and his height in comparison to his position during sex, “What I’ve often heard towards myself was I was too feminine […] too dark while being feminine, and then I had people tell me I’m too tall for my position.”

@Miamiboykhai discusses how the “outside world” already treats him differently, and now, he is ostracized from his own community. Many gay people feel out of place even within the gay community. They are treated differently due to their gender expression, body shape (as described in the first Tik Tok), and skin color. Grindr also plays a part into these standards. Many profiles have bios that exclude many people (no fats, no fems, no Asians), and the discrimination within the gay community creates an unsafe environment for people of color because of the intersectionality we face. Our cultures and religions are homophobic while the gay community is racist and discriminatory.

Another important argument this Tik Toker brings is, “[…] and I watch you guys pick and choose who you allow to be feminine, who you allow to date, you guys have many rules in the dating world as black people.” Femininity in the gay community is used to categorize gay people; it is associated with thinner body types, bottoms, and submissiveness. However, we need to move away from these stereotypes and realize femininity is a gender expression, and it does not dictate one’s position during sex, their likes and dislikes, or their behavior. Another thing that I should mention is that anyone can be feminine; it is not an exclusive trait reserved for people who are “allowed” to be feminine.          

So, what can we take from this? Tik Tok is a social media platform filled with a variety of genres and videos. The ones spoken about here display problems within the gay community in distinct ways. The first Tik Tok only used an audio and a caption, but it still made a strong point about the dating scene in the community, and it leads to discussing how the gay dating scene became what it is now. The second one was more of a rant, but it also showcased discrimination from someone’s personal experience. Tik Tok allows several people to discuss matters like this one, and it gives the younger generation some insight and information about several other issues in our world. In this case, we see how hook-up culture has perpetuated the idea that appearance, specifically body shape, dictates how desirable and valuable a person is and the assumptions that are made about a person through their gender expression.

Writing for Wear Your Voice | www.wearyourvoicemag.com