I’ve Warranted My Own Reddit Thread!

A couple of years ago, after going on a string of several dates with men who ended up wanting to make America Great again, I put “No Republicans” in my Grindr and Tinder profiles. I don’t know if it’s my borderline Aryan coloring or past penchant for salmon shorts (I’ve since acclimated to the more Ashevillian aesthetic of bearded, L.L. Bean bro), but for whatever reason, I was attracting the wrong crowd and wanted to put an end to it. 

I don’t know if it backfired per se because I haven’t made it out on a date with any men who “voted with their wallets” in years, but it has, interestingly enough, made even more gay (or…curious) Republicans (or apoliticals; so many of these men spout Republican talking points, but claim they just really “aren’t that into politics”) gents message me not to flirt, but to fight. I’d tell friends stories about these tiffs, and they’d always just ask why I didn’t take it down. 

Part of it is because I find gay men voting against their rights and other assorted topics associated with toxic masculinity or internalized homophobia fascinating. And part of it—and I don’t necessarily like to admit this, and it didn’t start this way, but if I’m being honest, this was a large part of keeping it once it started becoming a nuisance—was that it’s content, and content, well…content gets you paid. 

How putting “No Republicans” in my dating profile opened my eyes (Slate’s title, not mine), went live in June of 2024, and, to my surprise, generated almost no adverse reactions. Over the past couple of years, I’ve leaned much harder into writing pieces about my experience being a gay man in a climate that—at least politically—is becoming more hostile to anyone who identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and up until the Grindr piece went live, anytime I even innocuously mentioned being gay, I received some semblance of hate mail. 

I think a large part of this has to do with the audiences these pieces reached. Before the Slate piece, most of the gay-oriented pieces I’d done were for the Asheville Citizen Times, the leading paper where I live in Asheville, NC. Though Asheville is infamously progressive, I’m still in the bible-belted south, and the paper, like most regional newspapers, is, demographically, a cross-section. Slate’s audience, by comparison, is liberal…and significantly paywalled. 

I’ve had men—and almost every piece of homophobic hate mail I’ve received that is signed by name is from a man…—message me bible verses on LinkedIn, Facebook message me to tell me to “keep my sodomy to myself” (sidenote: Being that I’m writing for a newspaper, I’ve never mentioned anal sex), and email me to tell me I should stop pushing my lifestyle in others’ faces (while attempting to push their Christian beliefs on me). I had one person—this was nameless, so I can’t ascertain their gender, but if I were a betting man (which I’m not), I’d say, man—comment scriptures on every single blog at my former place of work (which truly took some sleuthing to find me on LinkedIn, find my workplace website, figure out that I was the one writing most of the blogs, then comment on over 25 of them…but, unfortunately, sleuthing done in vain because as the overseer of the blog, I was tasked with approving or disapproving all commentary). I also had one person—again, I’m guessing a man—tape a note decrying me a word that rhymes with maggot on my apartment door (this rattled my dad enough to overnight me a ring cam the next day, but I didn’t think it a stalker per se; there’s a lot of blank Grindr profiles that distance says are in my apartment complex). 

Suffice it to say, anytime someone messages me to bring up my “No Republicans” article (which, not to brag, has happened a couple of times), I brace myself for a negative reaction. This is what I did in December when I received a message (on Grindr, naturally) from a man who said, “I thought I recognized you from the No Republicans on Grindr piece,” but then he continued, “That was really good work. Reddit loved it.”

“Reddit?” I wrote back. I don’t spend a ton of time on Reddit and, until last year, rarely delved in (to be honest, I’m finding it’s a great place to research pieces). 

“Yes, Reddit,” he wrote. I found it because it has its own thread on one of the subreddits I follow.  

That channel? Fuckthealtright, ‘A subreddit dedicated to shitting on the racist, misogynist, antisemitic, adolescent clusterfuck known as the "Alt-Right," which, of course, would warrant more praise than not. 

Anyone who has work dissected online is typically advised to avoid the comment section at all costs. Internet discourse is brutal, and typically, comments are made based on a title or random thought someone just needs to put out into the world versus the content that’s actually there. Still, even considering that can take a toll on your self-esteem. I remember one Citizen Times article where commenters discussed whether my “bloating” was alcohol-related or just a side effect of my being fat…

So, I was further delighted to find that these comments were primarily complimentary and thoughtful! 

“I know a lot of articles here get glanced at then discussed, but peeps really should read this one.  If youre confused how conservative men can compartmentalize the parts of their life they need to to vote for trump, this is an solid read” one user wrote. 

“When I don't want to fuck you, that's just preference. When you don't want to fuck me, that's discrimination,” wrote another, highlighting the blatant hypocrisy of right-leaning gay men. 

“I'm in a pretty rural area, and the amount of guys sneaking around on their wives and girlfriends is unreal, and how pissed they get when I refuse to be a home wrecker is depressing,” wrote another, on a tangent—married men getting their rocks off with men whose rights they’ve voted against—I’d wanted to address in the Slate piece, but didn’t have the wordcount to achieve. 

I’m not here to brag about getting a good response for a piece I wrote half a year ago, but I thought it was a funny tidbit to share.

This also plays into something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:  can we effect change if we’re constantly writing in an echo chamber? Part of the reason I liked writing for the Citizen Times was the knowledge that much of the audience didn’t agree with my viewpoints or that many of them hadn’t ever considered things from a gay person’s perspective. Conversely, writing for Slate and its liberal audience, who doesn’t mind paying good money for good content, feels like it falls under echo chamber territory. Still, one could argue that while Slate has a progressive slant, it’s not necessarily a gay one, and while gay people weren’t surprised how many right-leaning men are on Grindr, straight people 100% were. And the comment section and SubReddit started actual discourses instead of commenters spewing hate or ridiculing my admittedly bad old headshot.

 I don’t have a correct answer or even an informed hypothesis to offer here; I just think the different reactions of different audiences are interesting, important to clock, and something I’m going to continue trying to grapple with and be mindful of when placing future pieces.