DL
Short for down low: a man who has sex with men in secret while living as straight, often with a wife or girlfriend, and who doesn't call himself gay.
DL means down low, and "on the DL" means secret. In gay slang it describes a man who has sex with men while living, and presenting himself, as straight: often with a girlfriend or a wife, usually with no interest in being called gay or bi. On the apps "DL" in a profile is a promise of discretion and a warning: no face pics, no hanging out, nobody finds out.
It is not the same as being in the closet, though it overlaps. A closeted man knows he is gay and hides it; a DL man may simply not think of himself as gay at all, and the secrecy is part of the arrangement.
Where it comes from
"On the down low" began as African American slang for anything kept quiet, recorded in the early 1990s and spread by hip-hop and R&B. Nobody knows for sure where it started; one theory, unproven, points to prisons. The sexual sense, a man living straight and having sex with men on the side, appears in Black gay online spaces around 2000, in profiles that paired it with "str8-acting".
The wider world discovered it in 2003, when The New York Times Magazine ran Benoit Denizet-Lewis's long feature on Black men who had sex with men but did not call themselves gay. A year later J.L. King's memoir On the Down Low took the term to a mass audience. The coverage often blamed DL men for rising HIV rates among Black women, a claim critics soon questioned, and one that added another layer of stigma for Black gay and bi men.
How it is used today
DL has long since stopped being only a Black term. Today it is app shorthand for any man who wants sex with men to stay invisible, from the married guy in the suburbs to the college jock who "doesn't do this". It travels with discreet, str8, masc and NSA, and it is a staple fantasy of gay porn, where the straight-acting DL guy is a cousin of trade.
Opinions in the community are split. Some see DL men as victims of homophobia doing what they can; others are tired of being someone's secret. Both can be true at once.
A man who hides one part of his life may hide his test results too. Whoever he is, PrEP, condoms and your own regular tests are the protection you control.
Related terms
Sources 3
- Green, Jonathon. "down low, n." Green's Dictionary of Slang, online edition. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/4dittcq
- Denizet-Lewis, Benoit. "Double Lives on the Down Low." The New York Times Magazine, 3 August 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/magazine/double-lives-on-the-down-low.html
- King, J. L., with Karen Hunter. On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep with Men. New York: Broadway Books, 2004.