This is Gay Culture!
Everything is gay culture if you believe
Hello gays, theys, and all the straights who are here by accident,
I’m homosexual Matt Bellassai and this is… This is Gay Culture!, a weekly newsletter about all the things that I’ve decided are super gay. I hope you’ll subscribe! 🏳️🌈
so what is this?
It’s a newsletter! Like, for reading. Each week’s issue will have two parts, and yes, they’ll be short because I’m aware gay people have no attention spans.
First, I’ll honor an icon you didn’t know was gay culture, according to me, a homo with absolutely no qualifications other than having a keyboard and depression. This icon might be a person, like D.W. from Arthur, a raging bitch who took no shit and lived for drama. It might be a place, like the underwear aisle at Target, which has long turned generations of gay adolescents onto the seduction of ✨ The Bulge. ✨ Or it might be a thing, like Gushers — remember Gushers? The fruit snack that was like, “Here, let me literally BUST A LOAD on your tongue!!!”
Second, I’ll include a roundup of all the super gay stuff that happened that week so you can stay up to date on just how gay the world is. Because gay shit is happening all around us, every single day! Mostly this will be random stuff that made me laugh and/or set my homo senses a-tingling. Like this Martha Stewart tweet. Insisting that you have 21 peacocks, and NOT 16? Babe… that’s gay culture.
why should I subscribe?
Subscribe so you won’t have to remember to look for it every week! It’ll just show up in your inbox, right next to all the emails from brands pretending to like gay people for Pride. That way, you can save your energy for more important gay things, like cyberbullying Kacey Musgraves into releasing her next album.
Also, if you don’t subscribe, you might miss an issue. And then everybody will think you hate gay people.
is it free?
You bet your gay ass it is! Even for straight people! Just hit that subscribe button and it’ll *poof* right into your inbox so you’ll never miss out. Just be sure to share and spread the word. It’s a nice thing to do, and you’ll be supporting me, a homosexual desperate for attention.
ok, so what exactly is gay culture…
Gay culture is, to get the obvious out of the way, rainbows and drag queens and bleached hair and the incognito browser window. It is high camp and fashion and reality TV and Christine Baranski. But it is also the Princess Diana Beanie Baby, Trix yogurt, the Loch Ness monster, the nipple suit in 1997’s Batman & Robin, Spongebob Squarepants, toaster ovens, that specific shade of pink dye in the strawberry frosting at Dunkin Donuts, Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea, and that one deep-sea fish with the dangly earring that glows in front of its face. Gay culture is staking your entire reputation on a C-list pop diva’s failing career. It is falling deeply in love with a stranger on the subway simply because his ass looks incredible in those jeans. It is taking thirst traps in public bathrooms, speed-walking around straight people on the sidewalk, wearing shorts with 3-inch inseams, and drinking iced coffee in subarctic weather. Gay culture is all around us. Even inside of you.
why is it always “gay! gay! gay!” with you gays?
Because gay stuff is fun and better. You should try it.
But also, gay culture is history, babe. We’ve been here and queer since the beginning. People with bad haircuts love to say God created Adam and Eve and not Adam from the Village People, but is anybody asking whether Adam and Eve even wanted to fuck in the first place??? Maybe Adam would’ve been happier with a nice oiled Steve to prance around the garden with?? Maybe Eve would’ve ignored that apple if there’d been a full-figured Ella to give her some delicious fruit instead of a nauseating man??? I mean, hello! Their first instinct upon eating the apple and receiving the knowledge of life was to bust out the sewing machine (!) and fashion together some fig leaf jockstraps (!!) to cover each other’s genitals!!! Literally the gayest thing you could possibly do!
But really, practically all of human history is gay. You just know there were gay cavemen walking around in couture loincloths, painting big beautiful horses on their little cave walls, wearing their luxurious furs at night. Ancient Greece? Obviously one big gay steam room. Medieval knights? Sword fighting in more ways than one. And the Rennaissance? Honey, the original queer artists’ collective.
who are you anyway?
I’m Matt, a gay writer and comedian who is not qualified for this task, or any task. If you’d like, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. And you can listen to my podcast.
I spent my closeted teenage years agonizing over becoming a gay stereotype. My greatest fear was coming out and being placed in the gay box. Being gay was one thing. Being seen and known as gay was another. But, like all gays who have since seen the light, I’ve learned just how beautiful and bright the gay box can be. It’s pink and furry and full of other gay people who love being gay. I want to be seen as gay, and known as gay, and for everything to be as gay as possible always and forever. This newsletter is my way of making the world a little bit gayer one thing at a time. I hope you’ll subscribe and join the fun!
one important note.
This is a very dumb newsletter and definitely not a history book. But it’s important to note that true queer culture — the things that bring the LGBTQ+ community joy, the stuff that contributes to our sense of communal identity, the very way we move about the world — grew out of tremendous pain and struggle. The mainstream long denied our existence, so we created our own culture so that we could see ourselves. And overwhelmingly, “gay culture” as we know it today was created by the most marginalized among us, those who were held down by straight white society, yet chose to celebrate themselves proudly and radically in spite of it. The queer/trans black community, in particular, is responsible for what many gays (and straights!) take for granted today: ball culture (the precursor to drag as we know it), kiki-ing, voguing, “throwing shade,” “reading,” basically everything on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Black trans women led the charge at Stonewall and paved the way for the gay rights movement of today, a movement that still largely leaves trans people of color behind. As always, no celebration of queer culture, not even a very dumb newsletter like this, could exist without their contributions. We must continue to fight for trans folks so that every single member of the LGBTQ+ community can enjoy a full, joyful, gay-as-fuck life.
Love from Japan!
This is awesome and you are fantastic!!! So happy you’re doing this!