HOW MANLY ARE GAY MEN?

Abstract

This article analyzes the social construction of masculinity and its plural expressions based on the guiding question, “how masculine are gay men?”. The research, qualitative in approach and bibliographical in nature, is grounded in authors such as Judith Butler (2019), Raewyn Connell (2015), Michel Foucault (1988), and Pierre Bourdieu (1999), who understand gender as a cultural production and power as a symbolic practice. The analysis reveals that hegemonic masculinity is not a natural fact but the result of a historical process sustained by norms of virility and patriarchal domination. By questioning this model, gay bodies emerge as subjects of rupture, capable of performing new sensibilities and re-signifying the masculine from the perspective of difference. The reflection highlights that performativity, as an ethical gesture, transforms existence into a political space and subverts the mechanisms that produce exclusion. In this context, masculinity ceases to be synonymous with strength or control and becomes a signifier of freedom, affection, and the courage to exist beyond normative boundaries. It is concluded that recognizing diverse masculinities means recognizing the very right to be human in its totality.