10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives [Video]
What can gay men do to improve their lives?
The gay scene has changed rapidly in the last 10 years. Dr Joe Kort should know because he wrote the very successful book 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives back in 2003.
He recently released a new and updated version of his book to take into account many of the changes that have impacted gay men and the gay scene.
So I spoke with Joe about some of the important changes he’s noticed with gay men over the last decade that have transformed how we think about gay sexuality and relationships.
Most importantly, this book is about how gay men can improve their lives despite all the challenges of growing up and living in a predominantly heterosexual world.
In this interview Joe discusses:
- how life was different for gay men when he first wrote his book in 2003
- why coming out is only the beginning of the journey for gay men
- what is internalised homophobia and why so many gay men experience it
- his new views on sexual addiction and having a sex-positive approach to sexual health
- how dating apps and hookup apps have changed the gay scene forever
- how do to deal with compulsive checking of dating and hookup apps
Watch the video, listen to the audio or read the transcript below.
Watch the video below
Listen to the audio below
Buy Joe’s book by clicking the image below
Transcript of the video
Clinton Power: | Hello, this is Clinton Power here. It’s my great pleasure to be speaking today with Dr. Joe Kort. He’s the author of “10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives”. |
Hello Joe, how are you? | |
Dr Joe Kort: | Good, I’m good. How are you doing, Clinton? |
Clinton Power: | I’m very well. I’m very excited to be talking to you about this book. I know you originally released this book in 2003. It’s been 13 years. You recently re-released it. Is that correct? |
Dr Joe Kort: | Yes. I recently revised it and changed a few things, pretty much a whole chapter actually. It’s a different book now in many ways. |
Clinton Power: | Fantastic. I’d love to talk to you about how things have changed over the last 13 years because I think there have been so many changes in the gay scene and gay relationships, and coming out, and many different areas. I think this is going to be a great topic for us to dive into. Why don’t we begin by talking about how were things back in 2003 and how they’re different today, 13 years on? |
Dr Joe Kort: | I didn’t know how much different it would be when I was going through the book because when I think back on it, I think it was pretty relevant. And it was at the time. I had someone help me. I reread it. First of all, nothing in the social media. It was just starting to happen. There were no gay apps. I was still talking about people meeting in rest areas and parks where they cruise. While that may still happen from time to time, the norm is people are on their apps. I didn’t have any examples like that. |
Clinton Power: | This has been such a massive transformation, kind of a revolution, hasn’t it – social media and hook up apps, the dating apps. Even across the straight scene as well. What are some of the big changes, the big impacts you’ve seen of gay men getting involved with the hook up and dating apps? |
Dr Joe Kort: | Some of the things I talked about in here, it seems less shameful. Even though it still seems like there’s a stigma, if I met him on Grindr, I met him on Scruff, or whatever. There still seems to be a little bit of a stigma, but it’s less of a stigma than having met somebody in a bathhouse or met somebody in a cruising area kind of thing. |
Another thing I’ve noticed is people feel like they get obsessed with it. They call it addicted to it. There’s that kind of thing that we never used to see before. | |
Clinton Power: | That’s definitely something I’ve seen in my practice as well, Joe. A lot of gay men I work with coming in a saying they’re quite distressed about how compulsive they’re getting with the hook up apps. Almost like every 15 minutes of every hour every day, they’ve got to check to see have they got a message, who’s nearby. Are you seeing that in your practice as well? |
Dr Joe Kort: | I really am. They are very disturbed by it. A lot of … You probably have this in your practice where they delete it, then they bring it back, and “I’m not going to do it for 5 weeks” and then they come back in a few weeks. It’s a 24/7 thing. It’s endless. It’s like being in Las Vegas or being somewhere where you’re constantly around gambling machines with a lot of money. |
Clinton Power: | It’s like a candy store, that’s how I describe it. It’s always within your fingertip’s reach. Very tempting. What do you say to gay men who are really struggling with the compulsion or finding that those kinds of behaviours are getting out of control? |
Dr Joe Kort: | I try to help them look at what’s driving it. Let’s take a breath here for a minute. The old me would have said, “Get rid of the app. Let’s stop all this behaviour. Take a time out.” That never works. Some might have done that for a week or 2 but they would be struggling and then they relapse, we call it a relapse. I don’t do any of that anymore. Now I’m like, let’s try to understand this from a place of sexual health. There’s something about you that’s trying to get expressed here, some time of connection you’re not getting otherwise. This is like a shiny new object in your hand all the time. Is there a way for us to redirect your attention but understand it as well? It’s often coming from loneliness, depression, feeling like they’re trying to get some need met through that that can be met other ways. |
Clinton Power: | I think that’s very true. That brings me to something else interesting in your book that you mentioned. Back in 2003, you were working more from a sexual addiction model but you’ve really changed your whole philosophy and how you’re viewing sexuality. Can you tell us a bit about that change that’s come about for you? |
Dr Joe Kort: | I really realise how much I’ve changed in 13 years. I used to be a sex addiction therapist. I was trained, I was certified. I have to say that today, I regret to say I spent all that time and money and training and I think it’s harmful, I think it’s abusive, I think it doesn’t work. It only puts somebody at odds with their sexuality. It doesn’t honour the fact that some people don’t want to be and aren’t a monogamist. Some people have fetishes, kinks. Some people like sex that doesn’t look like the way it’s supposed to look like in our culture and what people think. Back then, I was kind of sex negative and I didn’t really understand all that. I didn’t have sex education. Since I’ve written this book, I’ve become a sex therapist and I’ve learned that a lot … That’s the thing in the sex addiction work, no sex education and sexual health models are introduced. |
Clinton Power: | I think that’s very true. One of the things that you mentioned in the book, which I thought was very interesting, is that back in 2003, a lot of people that may have come in with sexual, even people who maybe were involved in BDSM, you’re saying the straight community is now becoming more normalised. You mention the book “50 Shades of Grey”. It’s almost like some of these things that were perceived as really kinky or not healthy are now being embraced by the straight community. Can you talk a bit about that? |
Dr Joe Kort: | It’s sort of understood that this is just another form of sexuality. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing pathological about it. Don’t get me wrong, when I was a sex addiction therapist, I would pathologise straight and gay. It wasn’t just gay men. I think we know more now. There’s more research, there’s more understand. I think the internet has helped us. I think 13 years of the internet has shown us that people get into this and it’s a healthy expression of their sexuality. |
Clinton Power: | The internet has revolutionised life, absolutely. One of the things you also talk about is internalised homophobia. I know this is a very big thing for most gay men. Many LGBTQI people. You say that coming out is only the beginning of the journey. Tell us a bit about what you mean by that. |
Dr Joe Kort: | That part did not change in my book. When I went through that I’m like you know what? When people come out of the closet, people always say I should feel better. And they do in the beginning, and it’s only the beginning. Then, I say in the book, there are dust bunnies in that closet that need to be dealt with. If you didn’t deal with your mother, your father, some historic issue, internalised homophobia, that still remains whether you’re in 2003 or 2016 now. I’m still helping men now with their internalised homophobia. |
Clinton Power: | Let’s maybe define, what is your definition of internalised homophobia? It seems to be a lot of confusion about what it actually means. |
Dr Joe Kort: | It means, it’s sort of like gay shame. That there’s something wrong with gay men who may act feminine or who may be stereotypical or who may have multiple hookups. I used to call promiscuous, I don’t call it that anymore. There’s a lens they’re looking through that’s negative. The lens maybe have been learned from childhood, often it is learned in childhood. You’ve heard the parents say it, the religion say it. It’s homophobia but directed at one’s self and each other, other gay men. It’s awful. |
Clinton Power: | One of the things I’ve said in my practice is that sometimes I’ll speak with gay men and they’ll say, “I’ve come out. I’ve got great friends, family’s accepting. I’m really confident. I’m comfortable with myself. But I really can’t stand feminine men. I’m really disgusted by queers, by gay guys”. This seems to be this big disconnect about actually recognising that it’s a form of internalised homophobia. Is that something you see as well? |
Dr Joe Kort: | I do. It’s different when someone says, “I don’t care for feminine men, I’m not attracted to them”. When they say it neutrally like that, I understand that. But if they say, you just said “disgusted, I can’t stand it”, you’re having a reaction. That’s about unfinished business around your own issues around homosexuality. |
Clinton Power: | Absolutely. Where do you see … I’m going to ask you a question now really about jumping to the future. We’re having this conversation in another 13 years, where do you predict we’re going to be in terms of gay men, gay rights? Another thing you talked about in the book is gay marriage, has been a massive shift since then. Where do you see things going from here? |
Dr Joe Kort: | God that’s such a good question. I mean in the last 5 years, I wouldn’t have believed we could actually legally marry, that straight people would be so accepting of us. I don’t know other than, I feel like we’re going to get more and more mainstream. It’s just not going to be an issue the way it is … I think it will be … It’s still an issue maybe in religious communities, conservative communities, but I just think that it’s going to be very different. I think it’s because the younger gay people and lesbians don’t want to be in all gay areas. They want to be intertwined. I didn’t like that at first, because I still liked being on a gay cruise or in a gay bar. I don’t necessarily always want to be mixing with straight people. They’re insisting on it. I think that continues to make us more welcome and more understood. |
Clinton Power: | I’ve definitely seen that as well. I don’t know if this is happening in your part of the world, Joe, but certainly even in Sydney over the last 5-10 years, a lot of the gay venues are really struggling. They’ve been shutting down Oxford Street, our main, traditionally very gay street. Where our Mardi Gras parade goes every year. Has been struggling for close to 10 years, if not more. I think part of that is related to what you talk about in this book, that there is this movement of gay people to wanting to socialise in a mainstream way. They’re not necessarily always wanting to be in a gay venue. When I came out, every Saturday night of course there was no other choice but to go to a gay venue. |
Dr Joe Kort: | Yeah. I mean in some ways, we are kind of losing our culture. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Maybe, it doesn’t seem great to me. As a Jew and being raised Jewish, we still have a culture. I can go in and out of it whenever I want. It’s not going away, it’s not diminished. I just hope we don’t lose what it is to be gay men, our sexual freedom, our ability to have relationships the way we want to have them, they don’t have to look like heterosexual marriages. |
That’s another change I actually went through. I wanted my marriage to Mike to look like a straight marriage. I wanted to be just like everyone else. The book reflects that, but I don’t believe that anymore. I feel like, you know what? We get to make this look like whatever we want. We have choices that straight people don’t have right now. | |
Clinton Power: | I love this message in the book that you convey. It’s very much about defining your own sexuality, defining your life, and not having to fit into those heteronormative templates that we all grow up with. Something else I want to touch on in this book is that you talk about … It’s interesting, this probably harps back to the addiction piece, but originally, you changed “Avoid and overcome sexual addiction” to “Explore erotic turn-ons and sexual interests”. You spoke recently about how that came about because of your change in your model of giving up the sexual addiction. Can you say a little bit more about the importance of that? The importance of exploring erotic turn-ons and interests. |
Dr Joe Kort: | Actually, I do think this is another thing that gay men don’t do. I want to write more about this. We come out as sexual preference, or not sexual preference but sexual orientation. Then, we don’t come out sexually. We don’t really embrace who we are. Sexual identity as attracted to me, women, or both, or all people – pan-sexual. Such erotic orientation … Erotic orientation is what I get into. What are my fantasies? What are my peak erotic moments? They can be 2 separate things. I learned this mostly from working with straight men who have sex with men. Their sexual identity is straight, but their erotic interest is in gay sex. Their erotic interest doesn’t make them gay, their sexual orientation doesn’t make them gay. I feel like gay men … Everyone, gay, straight, male, female, should really understand that what you like erotically can be its own orientation. |
Clinton Power: | There seems to be a huge shift I’ve particularly noticed in the last 5 years, Joe. There seems to be a lot more acceptance around the gray areas, you think back to the Kinsey Scale. It was either mostly straight, mostly gay, or you’re in the middle, you’re bisexual. Now there seems to be a whole range. We hear about hetero-flexible, even Hollywood actors coming out saying, “I’m mostly straight”, there’s a kind of openness there. Can you speak about that? Is that something you’ve been seeing as well? |
Dr Joe Kort: | I’ve been seeing that a lot as well. I don’t talk a lot about that in this book, but in my current book, “Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?”, I talk a lot about it there. Since I’ve written that last book, I get a lot of these guys who are just fluid. They’re not gay, they’re not straight, they’re not even bi. They don’t have a place. That’s a whole other topic. I have noticed that and I have noticed gay men being a little more understanding of it. Before, they would say, “He’s gay, I don’t want to hear another word”. |
Clinton Power: | I guess the good news is, overall, the shame is decreasing for men around us if men are feeling more comfortable coming out. And as you say, “Look, I like having sex with men, but I want a romantic relationship with a woman” and they’re okay with it. |
Dr Joe Kort: | It’s very cool. Very nice. |
Clinton Power: | I think you’re book “10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives” is an absolutely a sensual reading for gay men. Where is the best place for men to pick up this book? |
Dr Joe Kort: | Right now, I self-published this time. I got my rights back and I decided, I’ve been through publishers and I didn’t want to do that anymore so I published in on Amazon.com. They can get it on Kindle. If they want an autographed copy from me, they can go to joekort.com, email me, and I’ll send them an autographed copy. |
Clinton Power: | Fantastic. Those are the options there. We’ll put links under the video as well so people can immediately grab your book. I highly recommend you grab a copy if you want to improve your life. Thanks so much for all you do for the gay community and LGBTQI community. It’s so valuable and I know you’ve been working with this community for such a long time. It’s wonderful that you’ve updated this book and you’ve brought it very much into the present day phenomena and topics that have made it very relevant. Thanks for talking with me and I hope you can talk again sometime. |
Dr Joe Kort: | Thank you Clinton, very much. |
Clinton Power: | Bye for now. |
Dr Joe Kort: | Bye. |
About Dr Joe Kort
Dr Joe Kort is a Psychotherapist, coach and author based in Detroit, Michigan who has been in practice since 1985. He specialises in Gay Affirmative Psychotherapy, as well as IMAGO Relationship Therapy. Dr Kort is also a Board Certified Sexologist specialising in sex therapy and sexual identity. He is also a AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor and offers workshops for couples and singles. He runs a gay men’s group therapy and a men’s sexuality group therapy for straight, bi and gay men who are struggling with specific sexual issues. Dr Kort’s practice is mixed with straight, gay, lesbian and bi-attractional individuals and couples. His websites include www.joekort.com and www.straightguise.com