Abstract
Instinct is a nationally distributed gay male magazine that relies on the strategies of humor and irony, encouraging their readers to not take life too seriously. Mirroring the sarcasm of popular straight men's magazines from the 1990s, such as Maxim, Instinct casts its audience in the role of the hyper-masculine queer, reifying masculine control of female sexuality, while constructing the fantasy of sexual domination over straight men and “older” gay men. This article provides an ideological analysis of Instinct, focusing on the themes of gay aging, representations of “young” and “old,” the sexualizing of older gay men, and the absent discussion of future to further understand how the concepts of age, aging, and the future are constructed in gay popular discourse. While defending itself through the justification of “harmless fun” and mocking its critics as “sad losers” who are not in an the joke, Instinct reinscribes ideologies of youthism, myths of gay male aging, and leaves the future as a question to be avoided.
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