You will find their thin white bodies dressed in Shein bodycon, framed with a posse of beautiful straight girls. They may travel in a pack. The Mean Gay—the sassy, ‘fashionable’, friend—is a familiar figure, a trope that spans decades in mainstream media. However, this archetype exists far beyond the four corners of the screen. As culture evolves to make room for this character to occupy centre stage, as opposed to existing solely as an accessory, the Mean Gay has transformed alongside it.
Today’s Mean Gay thrives—perhaps as he always has—off his white privilege, thinness, and misogyny.
The cruelty of the Mean Gay manifests, not just as bitchy put-downs, but more insidiously through his domination of mainstream queer spaces, where he often sidelines and silences those within the community who hold intersecting marginalised identities.
It’s a troubling paradox—half of Australia’s queer high school students report verbal abuse at school, not to mention less overt forms of social ostracism: exclusion from ‘the Boys’ while simultaneously not being fully accepted as one of ‘the Girls’, the denial of teen romance, and the often traumatising ordeal of coming out (Hill et al. 2021). Why, then, would those presumably familiar with the sting of isolation so readily cast others into that same abyss?
I theorise that, having existed near the bottom of the food chain within the clearly defined hierarchy of a school’s student body, the Mean Gay finds a new habitat amongst the queer community upon graduation. Here, their gayness is the standard. This community is not impenetrable to the cis-hetero-normative, white supremacist indoctrination that all Western queer people have been socialised into. Within this context, the Mean Gay’s thinness, whiteness, and cis maleness place him at the top of the food chain, earning him reverence amongst his Mean Gay peers.
To be at the top is an unfamiliar sensation. One that carries with it an incessant need to assert itself. Sapphic women, fat queers, people of colour; everyone else becomes a part of a group ‘below’ the Mean Gay. As the Mean Gay was previously always the victim, there never existed a group for them to victimise. Now, that group does exist: the (non-white, non-male, non-thin) rest of the queer community. A sense of power or control—even at the cost of another’s humanity—is irresistible to the popular human condition, especially to that of the Mean Gay.
And the Mean Gay maintains his position as the apex predator of queerness.
But, how? Socially—and forgive me for drawing upon anecdotal experience here—this will be achieved through the invalidation of any expression of queerness that differs from their own, because what other expression could there be? Their personal queerness has been heavily vetted by mainstream society and all its biases. With this backing, the Mean Gay will make jokes about himself with a self-deprecating tone. An assertion about his size will be made; he will be a ‘whale,’ ‘bloated’ from the colossal salad that he just ate. His tongue-in-cheek defiance of social performance will be laughed at as ‘ghetto,’ and his unnecessary defensiveness will be dismissed as his ‘bitchiness’. The punchlines of this comedic performance are, of course, fat people, people of colour, and women.
The majority of the queer community aren’t Mean Gays, though. They can, surely, overcome the cultural rot inflicted by the gay white man. Right? Well… whatever version of the queer community you, my beloved reader, can conceptualise, is not one that can be meaningfully separated from our capitalist society. (Goddamn, we truly live in a society.) I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but this whole colonial capitalist thing tends to favour the cis white man (Everyone et al., forever).
Oxford Street on the weekend, KPMG internship in the week: the annoying thing about these Mean Gays is that they tend to evolve from Demon Twink to club promoter.
When these men, who have spent the prime of their young adulthood isolating the very demographics who fought for their rights, mature into the ‘acceptable’ gay mould sculpted for them in the 90s, they invest their marital wealth into gay nightlife. Now, I’m aware—Sydney’s nightlife is well and truly dead. But the gays love to party. Spend a night on Oxford Street, Sydney’s mainstream queer nightlife capital, and you will find it run—financially, socially, and spiritually—by cis white gay men. Despite the presence of the Oxford Hotel, Stonewall, Ching-a-Lings, and other bar-like venues, only one self-titled ‘Superclub’ remains on the strip: Universal, which posits itself as the pinnacle of Sydney’s queer clubbing, with its large capacity across 2 levels and 3 distinct areas. As a fresh 18-year-old, I used to frequent this club, finding myself adrift in a sea of shirtless, sweaty, fit white bodies.
On this dancefloor, I often tore into Mean Gays who felt as though they could grope my women friends, weaponising their gayness as a deflection from accusations of misogynistic or predatory behaviour. I witnessed groups of Mean Gays bickering amongst themselves, offering me a glimpse into their future: all-white, all-fit, midlife pool parties. I, too, was fetishised—for my Blackness, my femininity, and my youth. It became clear that this was not a safe space for anyone outside of the mainstream white male queer norm. For those outside this sphere, alternatives were few—and fleeting.
Dykadellic, a party event for queer women, trans, and non-binary people, hosted 17 irregularly occurring events between July 2023 and February 2025. Currently, Sydney’s only reliable bar environment for non-Mean Gays is Birdcage, an event for lesbian and queer people held every Wednesday at the Bank Hotel in Newtown. No shade to Birdcage, but it is common opinion that it’s shit, especially for those outside of a teenage babygay demographic. With a capacity of just 250, the event’s confinement to such a small space suggests it receives less funding than queer parties held in dedicated venues on weekends. It is not hard to imagine that this is because of the segregation between the Mean Gays and the rest of the community.
The nightclub has long stood as the heart of queer community: a space where people are free to express themselves between darkness and neon strobes. So, this physical segregation represents something much more sinister. The Mean Gays are refusing solidarity, promoting an ‘LGB’ movement which separates the gender diverse from the ‘mainstream’ queer community. The Mean Gays are throwing their siblings under the bus, to secure a fragile, assimilative acceptance by straight society—an acceptance hard fought for by Black trans women. As the saying goes, ‘When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.’
Or, maybe, I’m the Mean Gay. Perhaps this line of thinking only promotes further infighting, diverting us from the shared struggle against the white cis-het oppressor. But, I doubt it. I don’t believe we share that common cause anymore. The white faggot got his right to marry and decided to abandon the rest of the community. Their fight is over.
Ours is just beginning.
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