“I rarely flirt, because on top of being queer, I’m also a trans man, and I don’t want to be harassed, beaten or killed,” says Sam, 23, from Utah. The most obvious and impactful difference is that straight, cisgender men are able to flirt free of the influence of homophobia and transphobia. So, to dig a little deeper, I asked more than 30 gay, queer and bisexual men and non-binary people about how they flirt and how their approaches differ from that of straight, cisgender men. I don’t doubt Zane’s claim that gay men flirt differently than straight men, but his list leaves me barely enlightened about the differences. So far so good, except that the “13 types of flirts” Zane goes on to outline are both a jumbled list of types of gay men with whom one might flirt - like “the shady queen,” “the muscle hunk” and “the ‘straight’ locker room cruiser” - and flirting techniques that are by no means unique to gay men (e.g., touching, whispering and eye-fucking). “Gay men, though, don’t have the same cultural dating and flirting scripts that straight men have to deal with, which allows us to flirt however we so choose.” “Boy, are we a shamelessly flirty community,” he writes. In a listicle for Out magazine titled “ 13 Types of Flirts Every Gay Guy Knows,” writer Zachary Zane claims that gay men don’t flirt like straight men.
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