This is an original illustration of mine and commentary written by me that I am reblogging here from my Tumblr blog at machoface.tumblr.com
Madeira Desouza’s Sliding Scale
This will piss off some people, but here goes anyway. These are my views as a gay man.
On one side of my sliding scale is femininity and behaving womanly or womanish. On the opposite side is masculinity and behaving manly or mannish.
You may want or need some examples to help clarify the extremes of my sliding scale, so let me offer some examples that are available from the world of cinema (and you can rent these on DVD). The 1978 film La Cage aux Folles (in French) and the Americanized version in English, 1996’s The Birdcage, are two films that will explain everything to you quite vividly and with much humor.
On the feminine side of the scale (in the two films and in real life) one can find gay males who choose to behave in an overt, demonstrative yet passive manner using soft, higher pitched voices with the occasional lisp or sibilance (hissing sounds when using the English letter “S”) or other exaggeration of consonants and vowels. That side of the scale features behaviors that rely upon sweeping arm gestures, limp wrists and touching one’s own face to draw attention to emotions and emotional intensity.
On the masculine side of the scale (in the two films and in real life) one can find gay males who choose to behave in comparatively more aggressive ways than the other side of the sliding scale, particularly in ways that emphasize strength, muscles and dominance. That side of the scale features the choice of using gruff voices in a lower pitch with no lisping and no sibilance. Instead of touching one’s own face, the touching usually is to one’s own crotch or chest or forearms to draw attention to physique and physical strength.
Using this sliding scale, I think that it is very easy to place every gay male that you happen to meet at one point or another between the extreme feminine side and the extreme masculine side. While some of you may consider this cultural stereotyping (a “good” or “bad” thing, depending on whether you are being stereotyped), at least this sliding scale offers you a way to pinpoint gay male behaviors and outward appearances.
After many years of observation, I have come to believe that a gay or straight man can choose how he behaves in terms of his outward appearances—the high or low pitch of his voice, the submissive or dominant physicality, the clothing that emphasizes his body, the self-touching that emphasizes emotional intensity or physical intensity, and, whether he elongates vowels and favors the hissing sound of the English letter “S”.
The question as to why some gay men choose the feminine rather than the masculine side is open for a lot of discussion.
I invite you to comment below right here on my blog about these issues.
You can choose to use the sliding scale to begin to understand gay mens’ outward appearances and discuss these traits with others. There are, of course, many points along the axis of this scale from one side of the other: I have seen drag performers (men who dress and behave in a show as if they are women) who are not necessarily homosexual; but, they use makeup, wigs and womens’ clothing as part of their act to entertain audiences. I have also seen gay males who are not drag performers, but who where facial makeup (eye lashes and eye liner and lip color) along with fingernail and toenail coloring like women do. I have also seen gay males who look muscular and athletic and based upon all outward appearances, they could be drafted this week into the National Football League.
As a gay man, whatever type of man you find emotionally and/or sexually attractive is an individual trait that I believe is not subject to our willful choice. I believe that being gay brings with it many turn-ons and turn-offs that we must eventually admit if we are honest with ourselves.
The way psychology and sexuality work together in us humans, I really don’t see how any of us can make willful changes to what turns us on or what turns us off. We can try new or different things on a short-term basis, of course, We also may learn to tolerate things that we don’t like too much—like finishing our broccoli because we know that green vegetables help bolster our nutritional health.
But, if we truly are turned off by the taste of broccoli, well, there’s probably little that we can do except smother the dreaded green vegetables with a lot of cheese and just keep eating them.
Read more on my website.
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My latest project is a long-form writing endeavor. I have written a story in around 40,000 words (novel size) that explores what happens when a gay man’s psychic powers are abused. 
His first name, Dijon, comes from a city in France known for certain food items such as mustard. He appears on the FOX hit TV series, Glee (
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