Pete Buttigieg: Gay Media Too Worried About Me Being ‘Wrong Kind of Gay’

Mayor Pete Buttigieg spoke frankly about his frustration with gay media and being branded as the “wrong kind of gay” in a recent interview.

Buttigieg commented on the perceptions of gay men and the media in an interview with Sirius/XM Radio host Clay Cane on the Urban View channel.

Cane asked Buttigieg if he felt he was perceived differently because he was not as “effeminate” as other gays.

“I just am what I am,” Buttigieg replied. “There’s going to be a lot of that, that’s why I can’t even read the LGTB media anymore.”

He appeared annoyed about gay media speculating on whether gay individuals like himself were, “too gay, not gay enough, the wrong kind of gay.”

“Jeeze, all right,” he said, dismissing the controversy. “All I know is that life became a lot easier when I just started allowing myself to be myself.”

Buttigieg has not always been treated kindly by the gay media.

The Outline’s Jacob Bacharach wrote a column about why Buttigieg was “bad for gays” because he was the “most palatable gay man” and mocked the gay hookup app Grindr. The New Republic published and then unpublished an essay criticizing Buttigieg for his gay personality.

Buttigieg frequently refers to his sexuality in interviews with black media, pointing out he understands what it’s like to be ostracized.

“We have an opportunity to bring people together, not by watering down our differences, or papering over our values, but by making clear that anybody who has been on the wrong side of exclusion in this country does in fact belong,” he said in a recent interview with American Urban Radio’s April Ryan. “I’ve experienced one kind of exclusion, it’s different from what others have experienced, but what all of us have in common is that we cry out for belonging.”