Why Are Male Soap Viewers Disproportionally Gay?

[ER Tosh]

Well for me as a straight fan there is not much difference between soaps and Marvel/DC comics. Both have decades of continually that they follow (or try to follow), outlandish stories of people coming back from the dead, and have crazy fan bases who hate certain characters for what they did years ago (See some X-Men fans still hate Scott Summers for leaving Madelyne Pryor and his son when Jean Grey came back from the dead in 1986). I know that society says that Marvel/DC Comics are for nerdy straight men and soaps are for women and gay men but for the things that I like about them they are similar to me.

[FrenchFan]

I totally agree. I love both comics and soaps because of one word: continuing story. That's what I love: characters I can follow days after days, years after years.

[quartermainefan]

X-Men was a soap opera but along with the lovelives you also had people trying to take over the world, destroy the universe and whatnot. I would say the closest soaps came to this was 80s GH with its spies, supervillains, and people like David Gray trying to get the magical sword of Alexander the Great. You can have all the things I called dross, but to appeal to everyone you need more than just that.

[Shawn]

SImple...gay men have better taste.

[edgeofnight]

I, literally, grew up with soaps. I was born three weeks after the CBS premieres of ATWT and The Edge of Night. Unfortunately, I didn't have siblings, but became as attached to the soaps as my mother and grandmother. Looking back on my life, I can't help but think of how many of my situations could have been a soap storyline. In high school, I was the victim of bullying. I had skipped two grades, and, apparently, it did not sit well with my 'new' classmates. I applaud OLTL for their bullying storyline, and I am glad that the subject of bullying is finally being addressed and not being swept under the rug, or considered to be a 'normal' part of growing up. In my 20s, I was involved with a gal, a year older than me, with similar interests - namely POLITICS. She was a member of a party's national committee, while I was in the opposite party's county committee in my area. We had a long distance relationship for 6 years, but while I was trying 'to get to first base with her,' (during my frequent visits to see her), she was actively fantasizing about another guy -- who just happened to be the governor. She was his official photographer. She, literally, thought the sun rose and set on this guy. She lovingly used to refer to him as KOTW (King of the World). So, I was, involved in a triangle. One, in which, the third party did not know he was even an active participant. She fantasized about his being named as her party's candidate on the national ticket, and his announcing to the world that he was ditching his wife of 30 + years to marry her. After six years of this craziness, I broke up with her. Afterwards, I found out she had, apparently, crossed over the line and lost it, and was, eventually barred from being anywhere near the state capitol of the governor's mansion. She was, you might say, a late 1970s/early 80s version of Monica Lewinsky.

After all that drama, I met my wife. And, despite the fact that she is 25 years older than me (she was a cougar long before it became fashionable to be one), we've been together for 28 years and married 24 years.

All my medical crises over the past 11 years could have easily been part of a soap. 11 surgeries in 10 years; 8 within the past 4 years. A medical malpractice lawsuit and a federal Class action lawsuit is now pending.

Watching soaps has been, if nothing else, therapeutic for me.

[EricMontreal22]

(I'm gonna resist commenting on the fact you seem to imply that gay men would find all this appealing even though straight women shouldn't)

And you know that's exactly what Charles Dickens' novels, Henry James' works, even Shakespeare (excepting some wars) deal in too--those EXACT same issues and problems. Do we question whether straight men would have any interest in those works?

The big qualifier of course is quality, but if you just deal with the basic themes as you did, what you say is idiotic (sorry--I really don't mean that to be rude as you're a poster I usually agree with, but I want to make it clear how strongly I disagree). The masculine stereotype is straight men never gossip, they don't know how to articulate emotions, etc. I think it's been clear that a large part of that is due to social conceits, and not to how people really are. There's some truth--women do talk things out more and even if it became more acceptable for men to, I still think women would do it more, etc, but not to that extent. Even look at a show like Sopranos or Entourage for that matter and the basic themes aren't all that different, they just have a "cool" sheen over them.

[EricMontreal22]

I love the comic book/soap comparison because I often bring it up when people ask why I watch soaps. (I mentioned earlier that my straight brother followed DAYS for a few years, and actually as a teen I remember he tried to create a bible for his own soap--he's a lifelong X-Men fan). I don't really follow comics, I'm more into shoujo manga (stuff like Nana of course is as soapy as anything in the world), but I've read enough of my brother's to see the huge similarities. As you say, the huge backstories, the retconning by new writers, the cliffhangers, the fact both genres are about the only two where "back from the dead" stories are routinely accepted, etc.

I know a few comic book writers have confessed to being soap fans, or at the least being "educated" by watching General Hospital, or whatever, as a child with their moms.

Add to that, I know comic books reached their peak when they did get more soapy--most famously with XMen in the late 70s/early 80s under Chris Claremont when the stories became as much about emotion, and very soap opera-esque romance and love triangles, as they were about battles. This did increase female readership, but not all that much, but it DID increase male readership by leaps and bounds. There are a LOT of gay male comic book geeks--more than I think the companies realize (the number of times I've been with a guy who I had always thought would never like anything remotely "geeky" only to see his room and see a comic book or Star Trek poster is insane), but still, the main readership is straight men.

(And I admit one ex boyfriend got me seriously into Xmen, when I made him read some of my fave books, he made me read about 4 years of that Claremont era of XMen--some of it I thought was awful, but a lot of it really hooked me, the same as probably watching one of the better soaps from those same years would).

[EricMontreal22]

And Dark Shadows in its way I guess (it is true that the masses seem to accept soap opera more when it's covered in genre--Ent Weekly recently mentioned that both Game of Thrones and especially True Blood are essentially soap operas with the gloss of genre).

That said, I don't fully agree. Serialized fiction like that of James or Dickens, as I said, didn't have those added elements at all. They did both deal in issues of class, something soap operas used to routinely deal with but lately has been (unfortunately I think) lost. But otherwise... (I actually wonder sometimes why more soap writers don't just rip off those 19th century novels, they'd probably end up with better stories. In the past of course they did--Nixon always seemed to channel Bronte when she attempted gothic storylines, most notably with the wife in the attic story on AMC with the Maricks, which had equal parts Rebecca of course).

[EricMontreal22]

Undoubtedly. Let's not even bring up the hazing rituals or towel snapping in the showers. It's funny, I spent several months in Italy where it's not unusual (in the South anyway) to see grown men who are good friends hold hands while walking. And of course most Italian men worship their mothers, and live with them until they are married. Yet, it's also a society that doesn't believe in homosexuality (although it believes in homosexual acts), and idolizes the hyper masculine. It seems sometimes the more exteme the one side is the more extreme the other is.

[Soapsuds]

I always thought you were gay...lol....dont take offense by it....

[EricMontreal22]

I admit I assume every guy on here is gay unless I hear otherwise.

[All My Shadows]

I think it's less that straight guys aren't interested in babies, weddings, affairs, etc, as much as they aren't interested in the way soaps present them. Lots of talking, lots of facial expressions, slow-moving action, etc. Westerns are some of the most masculine shows in TV history, and the old school 60s westerns relied heavily on soapy plots to fill episodes. Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, The High Chaparral, Bonanza, etc. All of them had weddings and affairs and babies and other stories we normally associate with soaps. But they also had guns and fighting and horses and poker games, etc.

It's like when parents hide vegetables in their kids' food.

[EricMontreal22]

I do think there's some truth in that. Then again theatre (which I admit even I just said is more a gay cliche) when is the same--talky, facial expressions (well more, gestures), slow moving, and when people study it they aren't automatically thought of as gay. Though it's not super masculin either, I admit (and much less so if the theatre involves people singing...)

[Mr. Vixen]

I'm straight, and I love the soaps. I have many gay friends, and some of them like the soaps, too. But I have other male friends who are straight, that love the soaps. When I was a junior/senior in highschool, I had a friend that LOVED the soaps. I used to go to his house all the time to have DAYs and All My Children marathons (on VHS...oy!).

[quartermainefan]

Shakespeare takes human drama and situates it in huge stories of passion and war. Soaps take human drama, remove all the drama, and situate it passionless in living rooms in stories where nobody is ever allowed to make up their mind and commit to anything because the story and character must continue year after year. If Shakespeare were writing DOOL, EJ would have been killed off back in 2007, not having this endless and beyond dull marriage-go-round with Sami and Nicole.

Game Of Thrones is definitely a soap opera, but once again the story is about power and wars and scheming and within this huge story you find families and multigenerational stuff and love. If it didn't have the framework of the evil Lannisters vs the noble Starks I don't think anyone would care one bit whether or not Sensa loves Joffrey. Whereas on a soap, Sensa emoting and narrating her every thought would be an end to itself.