Masc

Short for masculine: a gay man whose look, voice and manners read as traditionally male, and on the apps a loaded filter, as in masc4masc.

Masc is short for masculine. In gay slang it describes a man whose look, voice and manners read as traditionally male: low voice, short hair or a beard, no camp in the gestures, sports and beer rather than show tunes and cocktails. On the apps it is one of the most loaded words there is, because it is used both to describe yourself and to say who you will not talk to.

Being masc is not a crime, and plenty of gay men simply are. The trouble starts with the word's favorite companions: "masc4masc", "masc only", "no femmes". Those are not descriptions, they are filters, and they say a lot about how gay men still rank each other.

Where it comes from

The short form is app talk, made for bios where every character counts. The idea behind it is much older. Gay men have long sorted each other into the masculine and the effeminate, from the butch and the nelly of the old bar scene to the "straight-acting" of personal ads, and the masculine side has usually been treated as the more desirable one. Masc is the latest name for an old hierarchy.

On the apps it became notorious through lines like "No fats, no femmes", once a familiar sight on Grindr profiles. In 2018 Grindr launched its Kindr campaign, with guidelines against discriminatory language in profiles, and that kind of line was exactly what it had in mind.

Masc4masc

Masc4masc means a masculine man looking for masculine men. For some it is just a preference, like liking beards. For many others it reads as a put-down of femme men, the ones who were often bullied first and hardest for being visibly gay, and who were on the front line of gay liberation. The irony is not lost on anyone: a community built by queens, drag artists and nellies, with so many of its members advertising that they want none of that.

Masc, butch, str8-acting

Butch is the older word, used for masculine gay men and, especially, for masculine lesbians. Straight-acting, or str8-acting, goes further: it suggests passing as heterosexual, and it often travels with discreet and DL. Masc sits in between: it is about how you come across, not about hiding. Its opposite on the apps is femme, and many men are happily somewhere in the middle, masc at work and fabulous by midnight.

Related terms