Are Gay Men Misogynistic Because They Don't Like Vulvas?

These gender studies scholars believe so.

This article was originally published in Le Point on 24.08.2025

I’ve never been into vulvas (vulvae?). Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against them, and some are in fact attached to the best people I know. (Apparently, anyway, it’s not as though I’ve asked to see their private parts. More on that shortly.) Others have literally borne witness to those great intellects and artists that have made my life—and those of so many others—bearable. I mean, Sartre and Camus and Darwin came into this world through that mysterious vaginal vortex, so it must be divine.

It’s just that, as a gay man, female genitalia are about as appealing to me as, I don’t know, the paperclips on my desk or the days-old cheese scone behind the display counter at the café across the road. I must be careful with my vulvic analogies here, because according to gender studies scholar Flora Oswald and her colleagues in a recent study in The Journal of Sex Research, homosexual males’ attitudes toward labia are an underacknowledged—and especially pernicious—source of women’s poor body image and low self-esteem.

That probably sounds as nonsensical to you as it did to me, so before I explain how these scholars went about exposing gay men (and others) to close-up images of disembodied vulvas to gauge their reactions, allow me to attempt to articulate their claim that our feelings toward vulva are inherently misogynistic. First off, the authors reason, despite the stereotype of gay men as friendly, nice, and feminine—“allies [with women] in the fight against the heteropatriarchy” or bffs to the sort of “fag hags” depicted in, say, Sex and the City—the more sobering reality is that gay men, as a group, are just as invested in maintaining systems of male privilege as heterosexual males. Now, there are certainly plenty of sexist, indeed misogynistic, gay men out there, but that’s a rather broad brush, and on the surface, this seems orthogonal to our feelings toward female genitalia. The authors unpack their reasoning: “Popular culture is rife with anecdotal evidence for gay men’s disgust with women’s bodies, and women’s genitalia in particular.” Oswald and her colleagues point to a popular YouTube video called “Gay Men Touch a Vagina for the First Time,” showing a few campy—and gloved—gay men screaming and recoiling at a woman’s nether regions.

I’ve watched that video, and although the authors describe the men’s reactions as “ranging from curiosity, to disgust, to characterizations of the vagina as dangerous. . . echo[ing] broader cultural representations of women’s genitals which are, both historically and contemporarily, steeped with misogyny” not all were so negative. Sure, one joked he was afraid he’d fall into it and another worried about losing a finger, but, you know, humor! Another called it “a beautiful moment” in connecting with women. (There’s perhaps also a bit of a double-standard here. That same educational series also featured squirming lesbians touching a penis for the first time, with one saying it reminded her of the time she worked in a butcher’s shop and handled stuffed turkey necks. Ha! Is that “misandryist?”).

In these researchers’ eyes, though, this aversion to vulvas hides an ugly truth about gay men.

Gay men’s misogyny . . . may be expressed particularly harshly toward women (e.g., in the form of explicit disgust at women’s bodies) because gay men do not depend on relationships with women in the same way that heterosexual men do. That is, heterosexual men may temper hostile sexist attitudes with ideologies proffering the necessity of romantic and sexual partnerships with women (e.g., benevolent sexism), but gay men do not share this reliance on women and may thus be free to express more hostile misogyny, like explicit disgust with women.

The logic here, presumably, is because gay men aren’t trying to get inside women’s pants and aren’t reliant on them to help us to raise our offspring, or whatever other heteronormative dynamics between the sexes entail, we don’t have to pretend to like them as fellow human beings. We have no skin in the game, so to speak, and therefore our contempt for females seeps out more openly. I find this transactional logic rather offensive and cynical. Yet the authors seem intent to demonstrate gay men’s “hostility” toward women, especially as reflected by our judgy reactions to female genitalia.

It’s not just gay men, of course. Previous studies have shown that both men and women have an aesthetic preference for vulva with small, non-protruding labia. And labiaplasty—a cosmetic procedure in which portions of the labia minor are removed or elongated folds tucked away—has become an extremely common cosmetic procedure. The natural diversity of female genitalia has become pathologized, the authors point out. Although the objectifying “male gaze,” along with increased consumption of porn on the internet, has contributed to these oppressive sociocultural norms of vaginal beauty, gay men shrieking at the sight of vulvas—especially those straying from the empty slickness of a Barbie-like crotch—probably isn’t helping either. (Hence the insufferable title of their article “Gayzing Women’s Bodies”).

It’s indeed horrifying to think that healthy body parts are literally being cut off in service to such labial ideals, or that any woman would feel stigmatized by the appearance of their genitalia. These are valid feminist concerns. And it’s a longstanding problem. For centuries, the formal anatomical term for vulva was pudendum, which comes from the Latin pudenda, or “parts to be ashamed of.” Gay men’s role in all of this, however, is another question.

Anecdotes and YouTube clips are one thing, but what is the actual evidence that gay men are, well, less forgiving of natural displays of vulvic variety than are other groups of people? To test this, the researchers conducted two controlled studies in which participants were exposed to (I was going to write “subjected to,” but is that just my hostile misogyny flaring up?) close-up images of shaved vulvas. The stimuli were, in fact, before-and-after photos from a labiaplasty clinic’s website, but the participants weren’t made aware that they were actually looking at the same lady parts at different times. So, the first study included 16 photos, but only the private bits of 8 different (White) women; the second study had 12 photos, but really only 6 women (3 White and 3 Black) before and after their cosmetic surgeries.

“All vulvas were hair-free . . . to control for grooming preferences, as well as to better highlight the distinct appearance of labia,” Oswald and her coauthors explain. “We were careful to select images without extraneous visuals that might otherwise detract attention from the labia (e.g., genitalia with razor burn, ingrown hairs, or skin abrasions).” You can view the test stimuli here. Just make sure you’re in an appropriate setting before clicking on the “supplemental materials” file. I made the mistake of opening it in public while on a layover at Heathrow Airport. It lasted only a few milliseconds—and judging by her swift relocation, I’m pretty sure the woman sitting beside me got the wrong impression of me—but it’s safe to say this was the most time I have ever spent with naked vulvas. Or ever will.

Thousands of participants ranging in age from 16 to 80 and with a sample composed of straight males, straight women, gay males, and lesbians, were shown each vulva on their computer screen—one at a time—in a random order. For each image, the participant answered a set of questions (the so-called Vulva Rating Scale). Namely, they were asked on a scale of 1-5, “How normal does this vulva look?” (1 being very abnormal and 5 very normal) and; “How well does this vulva represent the societal ‘ideal’ in terms of appearance?” (1 being very poorly and 5 being excellent). The authors reasoned that the higher the score across these two variables, the more accepting—or less critical—the participant was in judging “normalcy” and “societal ideal” when it came to what was between a woman’s legs.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the university ethics committee meeting where this study was discussed. “Wait, they’re going to show them what now?” I imagine the members asking. “Should we provide these gay men counseling?”

Compared to the heterosexual men’s judgements, the gay men evaluated the preoperative vulva as significantly less normal, and as conforming less to the societal ideal. For those labia that had been cosmetically tailored, however, there was no difference between straight and gay male judgements. Lesbians, meanwhile, saw all of the vulvas—preoperative and postoperative alike—as being significantly more normal and societally ideal than did straight women. “Taken together,” the authors write, “these findings suggest that gay men may be particularly attuned to labial ideals or unwilling to accept deviation from these ideals.”

I don’t know about being particularly attuned. Sorry, we’re vaguely aware that they exist, but most of us have never given vulvas a moment’s thought. The researchers do consider that these results might simply boil down to a lack of exposure. Lesbians and straight males, after all, have probably come across considerably more labia than have gay men, whether their own sex partners or by viewing porn. Ultimately, however, the investigators argue that this mere exposure effect fails to explain the data. “This explanation relies upon the notion that these individuals have a number of sexual partners with diverse labial appearances,” they write, “such that they can extract this information on labial diversity. . . pornographic depictions of labia are [also] heavily restricted in diversity.”

What’s more likely to explain gay men’s harsher attitudes, Oswald and her colleagues reason, is their disgust of vulva. That’s where the alleged misogyny comes into the picture. Are gay men simply indifferent toward female genitals, or do we have an actual aversion to them? In fact, this is a very intriguing question, and one that, as an evolutionary theorist, I’ve always wondered about. It can be posed for straight men’s visceral responses to other men’s penises, too.

In their second study, the authors repeated their earlier experiment using a new batch of before-and-after labioplasty images, and a fresh crop of participants again divided by gender and sexual orientation. This time, however, they added a new question to the Vulva Rating Scale. Beneath each hairless specimen was the loaded question, “How disgusting do you find this vulva?” For this item, options ranged from 0 (not at all disgusting) to 4 (very disgusting).

Most participants didn’t find the displayed labia disgusting at all. (Or at least, they didn’t self-report finding them so; physiological measures would have been interesting to include here, as participants might not have wanted to appear to be negative or critical about such a sensitive body issue.) Although everyone found the preoperative images to be more “disgusting” than the postoperative depictions, we’re still talking about an average score for the former of just 0.87. Given that those “before” images likely represented some of the more dramatic morphological expressions on the labial spectrum (after all, they were meant as advertisements showing how effective the labioplasty procedure can be), that low overall rating of disgust strikes me as a pretty warm reception to vulvic diversity more generally.

Still, just as the authors predicted, homosexual males did find the images—both preop and postop—more ‘disgusting’ than did any other group. Even for them, however, disgust ratings were at the lower end of the scale (just 1.50 and 0.98 out of 4, respectively). In other words, yes, gay males were statistically higher than those of the other groups (and lesbians had the lowest disgust scores), but not exactly post-traumatic stress disorder levels to vulva exposure.

These meagre differences nevertheless led the authors to the following conclusion:

Gay men rated our labial stimuli as more disgusting than any other group . . . [these] findings align with recent literature suggesting gay men’s endorsement of sexist and misogynistic attitudes. Given the underlooked nature of gay men’s hostility toward women, we suggest that the current work necessitates reexamination of claims that appearance norms for women are uniformly upheld by the heterosexual male gaze and call for greater attention to the dynamics between gay men and women, particularly regarding the outcomes of these dynamics for women’s well-being.

I don’t think so. I have a hard time believing that the average woman is even remotely concerned about gay men’s feelings about the appearance of their vulvas, let alone that these “pernicious” genital dynamics are seriously impacting women’s well-being. The idea that these data—which again, show barely detectable levels of mild disgust among gay males—somehow reflect the “underlooked nature of gay men’s hostility toward women” seems a real stretch. There are indeed plenty of psychology studies showing that disgust is the visceral engine of hate when it comes to sexual bigotry (we gay men are often on the receiving end of that hate), but this feels qualitatively different from our squeamishness around female genitals. I agree with the authors that there are interesting empirical questions concerning the relationship between disgust and sexism here, for example whether priming gay men with images of labia influences their subsequent behavior toward women. But since gay men aren’t likely to come across labia in the wild, the real-world applications are dubious.

I’d probably rate most feet as mildly disgusting as well but knowing that someone has misshapen toes—sorry, “differently shaped”—doesn’t mean I hate pedestrians. Actually, I’m more likely to see another person’s feet than I am a bare vulva. I’ve gone this far without doing so, after all (well, aside from that airport incident). So perhaps a better comparison is disgust toward intestines. In principle, I know you’ve got them; but I’ll never see them (hopefully), and that’s okay. There’s a lot more to being a human being than our body parts.

Like what you read? Toss a tip in the jar—any amount that makes sense for you—so I can keep overthinking things on your behalf.