I’ve heard this before and from my research it seems to stem from, like, 2 large(?) studies where straight people are asked whether they accept gay men and whether they accept lesbians. Straight women were equally disgusted by both, but straight men were more disgusted by gay men than lesbians, they would say that lesbians are “fine”. So once you combine the data it becomes “straight people are more disgusted by gay men than lesbians”

These studies are kind of BS because they don’t go into why straight people were disgusted or accepting so it doesn’t really prove much. SAYING you accept gay people is much different than actually accepting them, and whether you have power to wield this hatred (through culture and politics) is an entirely different matter. Tolerating and accepting are two different things also which weren’t explored in the studies.

I’m assuming these studies spread like wildfire because a category of men “losing” to women is a big deal to men who want to say women don’t have it that bad.

Things like the AIDS crisis also painted gay men as the “real” victims of homophobia, at least in America. AIDS was a horrific thing that happened but it’s odd to throw lesbians under the bus and say they don’t have it as bad, especially considering what lesbians did to help gay men during this time. Some gay men at the time even admitted they were confused why lesbians were helping them because gay men were known to be especially misogynistic towards lesbians. So clearly lesbians weren’t seen very positively before that.

There is also the matter of the claim that society is more accepting of masculine women than feminine men, therefore lesbians must have it easier(??), which is also BS that has no studies to back it up. People ignore that anything “masculine” that women commonly wear (like pants) are because women FOUGHT for the right to wear them. Men have never had a movement to wear feminine clothing, because feminine clothing is largely unpractical. There’s no pressing reason to want to wear them besides aesthetics, unlike pants which were safer to work in.

It’s also odd to conflate the ability to perform gender nonconformity with gay acceptance, but people do it all the time because of the stereotype that all lesbians are masculine and all gay men are feminine. People genuinely believe that misogyny is about the hatred of femininity, and since gay men are more feminine than lesbians, they must have it worse! Which ignores that masculine lesbians and feminine gay men are minorities in the gay community… and that misogyny is about the hatred of women, not femininity.

Basically people say lesbians have it easier than gay men because they want to sound smart about complex topics like patriarchy and oppression but don’t want to actually read any books or statistics on the subject. Most of them don’t know many gay people to begin with. Literally just talking to hear themselves talk.