It all started because Tom Hartley couldn't find a date. Hartley, an attractive 33-year-old living in Southern California, was desperately seeking a guy who describes himself as "straight acting," a phrase routinely—and according to Harley—erroneously used by the majority of men lurking in chatrooms or manufacturing personals ads.
Taking matters into his own hands, Hartley designed a test for potential dates which rates them on a scale ranging from ultra-feminine (think: Nathan Lane in The Birdcage) to hyper-masculine (think: Bruce Willis in anything). He posted the test on the Web this April, and much to his surprise, the site has exploded onto the gay landscape with more than 50,000 men taking the test each month and even a recent mention in The Advocate as one of the hot, new sites on the Internet.
"It's hard to find someone that is straight-acting," laments Hartley. "I remember one day, I was so frustrated that I typed "straight acting" into a search engine and nothing came up. That's when I got the idea to construct the site and purchase the domain name, straightacting.com ." The straight-acting quiz is comprised of 25 multiple-choice questions which tabulate information such as: "Do you enjoy being tickled?" "Do you own a spice rack?"
"How many Snoop Dog CD's do you own?"
"How many candles are in your apartment or house?" The quiz has become the new barometer by which gay men measure themselves against each other, especially in AOL profiles, where members boast of their high level of masculinity as verified by their results in the straightacting.com test. "How often do you consider these ratings as a reason to generate a conversation with someone," I recently asked in one AOL's ChicagoM4M rooms. The responses ranged from "never" to comments like "It helps. It's not the only reason I would chat with someone, but if I like the rest of the profile and if they have a picture of them that's attractive, and they didn't rank as a total woman on the test, sure I'd probably talk to them." Hartley says he has no idea how many AOL users mention their test results, but based on e-mail responses, he's confident that it is a "substantial percentage" that will "continue to grow."
However, not all gay men are as interested in proving their testosterone levels as you might think. If you enter the words "straight" and "acting" into a search engine now, after the launch of Hartley's site, numerous other Web sites pop up, which emphatically denounce the term "straight acting." One site issues the following comment, "This expression is one of my absolute BIGGEST pet peeves. What in the hell does it mean and why are we as a gay community using it to describe ourselves? Using adjectives like this not only makes it OK not to be gay, but it also reinforces a lot of the self-hatred that many young men go through during their process of 'coming out.' I realize that often when people use this expression they are referring to a 'look' ... the Abercrombie boy, as it were. The ironic thing is that this has become the gayest look out there." A gay man chatting in the ChicagoM4M room echoes these comments by stating, "The phrase 'straight-acting' even sounds weird ... it sounds like you're trying to 'act' straight ... it brings attention to the idea that it is an act and not truly being 'straight'—whatever that means." Hartley concedes that there has been some controversy surrounding his site, specifically its name. "People always ask me why I didn't pick something like "masculine.com" but that name was already taken. Look, if you score low on the test, it certainly doesn't mean that you are any less of a man," explains Hartley, who designed the test —based on many of his own experiences—in just a few hours. "I'm surprised at how much people tell me the test is accurate. 70 percent of the respondents have said the test is accurate or somewhat accurate."
I point out that gay men, no matter how effeminate they may be, are not brain-dead and that the test can be easily skewed to result in a dishonest rating. "Sure, people can skew the test, but most people are looking for the truth. Most people take it honestly because they have a genuine curiosity about what level they are," says Hartley, who readily admits the test is in "no way scientific."
Straightacting.com also includes: a "Straight Talk" chat room—where like-minded men may socialize, where there are tutorials on learning to appreciate your feminine side, and there's a personals page which contains more than 400 ads (complete with quiz ratings), updated every three months. "The personals are not permitted to have nude pictures," explains Hartley, mainly because he plans to transform his site into a portal along the lines of Gay.com or PlanetOut. Currently, the site has partnerships with several e-commerce companies including Amazon.com, where for every sale an Amazon banner generates on the site, Hartley receives a commission. But no matter what new direction straightacting.com may take, Hartley maintains that the quiz will forever remain unchanged and intact, though he does plan to draft a women's version of the test in the next few months.
So what how did Hartley score on his own quiz? "I scored a 2: Very Straight Acting," he says proudly. Nevertheless, despite the enormous attention the site has generated, and despite the much lauded accuracy of his test, Hartley remains single and in search of that ever illusive creature: the straight-acting queen.
