The gay best friend is one of the most sought-after token friends. Once you capture him and his sassy quips, you can finally claim true inclusivity. You can now worship the ground he walks on and show him off like your latest designer purse. That is, as long as he doesn’t attract any of the other freaks to your friend group. 

I have observed that friend groups, especially those dominated by straight women, will seek out the friendship of a “palatable” gay man, but will shudder at the idea of being friends with a transgender person or a lesbian.

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A “palatable” gay man means a gay man who fits neatly into what non-gay men think a gay man has to be. He is usually more feminine, sassy and presumed to be a bottom (even if he isn’t a bottom). This reduces gay men down to a stereotype that makes them easier to consume and fetishize for straight women’s pleasure. 

While you may feel like an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community since you and your GBF gossip about boys and the most recent Kardashian drama, you are not an ally if your support stops there. To be an ally, you have to support more than just the gay men you have decided to tokenize: You aren’t in support of the queer community if you don’t support all of it.

Since gay men (not gay transgender men, as they are subjected to a different form of commodification and fetishization) have been so commodified, it is seen as acceptable among these groups to take part in the community. These women not only see their participation in drag shows and gay bars as acceptable, but almost as if they have an undisputed right to be there. 

But those spaces are made for queer people to find community, not for others to consume like a trend. While I’m not sure all of these women want to be true allies to the LGBTQIA+ community, for those who do want to reform their tokenizing ways, here is a guide to stop tokenizing the gay community. 

The first step is to realize the community of gay men is not a monolith. Not all gay men are RuPaul catty queens. Gay men, just like any other group of people, have a great amount of diversity among them. From hyper-masculine bottoms to high femme tops, gay men cannot be confined to the boxes straight people have assigned to them. 

By humanizing gay men, you will begin to realize they aren’t something you can collect as a status symbol and false proof of diversity. They are complex individuals like you and me.

The next step to becoming a better ally is to recognize your biases against other parts of the LGBTQIA+ community. If the mere thought of lesbians makes you uncomfortable, sit with that and unpack it. 

Are you disgusted at the idea of two women being in a loving and consensual relationship? If so, why? They aren’t harming you, and you don’t have to partake in that form of relationship if you don’t want to. But you still have to respect their relationship if you want to be an ally.

You must also confront your biases about transgender people and respect them and their identities. All you have to do is make an effort to respect their names, pronouns and boundaries. That’s it. It is so simple. If you do these things, you have met the bare minimum for considering yourself an ally to the queer community.

If you really want to prove that you are an ally and that you truly care about your gay friends, you would learn about queer history, respect queer community spaces and advocate and fight for queer rights.

You don’t get to commodify gay men and partake in queer culture if you aren’t going to fight for our existence. Now more than ever, we need people fighting with us to secure our rights. As more and more anti-LGBTQIA+ bills get passed, it is imperative to put your money where your mouth is and protect the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Politicians may not come for your friends’ rights first, but when one part of the community’s rights are taken away, the rest are sure to follow. 

Peyton Dacy is a sophomore writing about the struggles queer people face on college campuses and beyond. His column, “Lavender Letters,” runs every other Tuesday.