Gay Men Are Blocked. A West Hollywood Therapist Wrote the Book on It. Literally

Joseph Contorer is a practicing therapist in West Hollywood who knows when he’s hearing the same story twice. After all, his line of work calls for recognizing patterns in one’s behavior. But when that pattern belongs to not one, two or a few, but seemingly an entire community, he began to take notice.

The names change. The locations vary. The decades differ. But the stories remain the same: a gay man who learned early in his life that surviving meant hiding. That same man who carried that habit into adulthood is still trying to figure out why the hiding didn’t stop even when the danger did. Contorer has a name for what that kind of repression does over time. He calls it being “damaged by default.”

That’s the book. You’ve Been Blocked: The Search for Gay Male Perfection released in July 2025, is already a finalist for both the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards and the American Book Fest Best Book Awards. Contorer spent more than 30 years sitting across from gay men in his office before putting any of this on paper. He grew up gay in the 70s and 80s, came into the gay community in the 90s, and has navigated the same waters and community his clients describe. The book comes from both places at once.

The Community Is Part of the Problem

Contorer argues that gay men get blocked from their authentic selves across three dimensions: at home, in school and society, and then again, more surprisingly, inside the gay male community (GMC) itself. That third one is where he rips the Band Aid off. The hope, for most gay men, is that the community will be the place where the blocking finally stops. Often it isn’t. “Many learn that the collective response from parts of the GMC  may also be invalidating, nasty, judging and shaming, leaving some feeling rejected and blocked again,” he says. The community replicates the same conditional acceptance that did the damage in the first place.

He gives that dynamic a name, “the M-Ranking.” It’s the community’s internal hierarchy, built around five qualities: Masculinity; Manhood; Model Looks and Muscles; Money and Materialism; and Mainstream Appeal. The lower a man scores across those categories, the more he’s likely to feel what so many gay men felt as gay boys growing up. Contorer saves his sharpest take for masculinity at the top of that list. Some gay men, he says, overvalue straight-acting traits to the point where it starts to look like discomfort with being gay. Most gay men he’s raised this with either agree or get defensive. He’s noticed the defensive reaction tends to be the more interesting one. “Dealing with the implications of years of childhood blocking is what created the narcissistic-driven M-Ranking search for masculine perfection,” he says.

The Damage Has a Name

Contorer has names for all of it. Validation neutral is the family that doesn’t attack a gay child but doesn’t affirm him either. They’re not calling him a faggot or dragging him to conversion therapy, just a loaded silence. A don’t ask, don’t tell parenting style. More common than outright hostility, he says, and easier to miss because nothing overtly bad is happening. “Being raised in a family that is validation neutral is not uncommon and will not create a normal sense of validation,” he says. “Thus it is essentially invalidating.” The kid still gets the message though. His real self is something to be managed, not acknowledged, let alone celebrated.

He calls the shame piece shame magnification. Gay boys don’t just carry shame, they live in it for so long that by the time they’re grown up the baseline is so high that new shame doesn’t register on its own. It just compounds. “When gay boys are in a chronic ongoing, persistent sense of shame, they feel they are carrying a dirty secret,” he says. “Any additional shaming is then exacerbated or magnified.” Some boys start acting out in ways that make the story true — seeking out negative attention, blowing up relationships, confirming what they were taught to believe about themselves. That pattern doesn’t stop when childhood does.

Narcissism, Alcoholic Behavior and the Hierarchy

Contorer argues narcissistic traits turn up at higher rates in the gay male community than in the broader population, tracing it back to the blocking process. This will likely raise a few eyebrows for those not paying close attention. Especially the homophobes. He’s not calling gay men narcissists. He’s talking about a spectrum of behaviors most people would recognize without needing a clinical name for it. “Many gay men endure a predictable history of being blocked and profoundly invalidated,” he says. “These injuries create a higher risk and rate of narcissistic-related disorders than that of the general population.” His own words: clinical opinion, not a research study.

He approaches alcoholic behavior the same way — patterns like grandiosity and impulsivity that show up in people who may not drink at all. Gay men who spent years closeted are particularly prone. “After a childhood of blocking, some gay men learn to use substances and develop delusions to manage distress,” he says. “Those who choose to never fully come out struggle with inauthenticity, which can mimic alcoholic behavior, whether they’re actively drinking or using.” Performing a life that isn’t yours extracts a toll whether substances are involved or not.

Gay men of color, older guys, heavier guys, more feminine guys — they already know where they fall in the M-Ranking. Contorer just says it out loud. “Ask gay men of color, gay Asian men — how are you treated in the GMC?” he says. “How are older gay men treated?” He says whole books should be written about racism and bias inside the LGBTQ community. This one just refuses to look away.

The Way Out

The book closes with the U-Factor (short for unblocking), his name for the antidote. It’s built around internal satisfaction rather than external approval, and the first move is simply recognizing how deep the approval-seeking goes and where it came from. “Gay boys commonly become experts at accommodating others, starting off with parents and family,” he says. “An initial step is to invite gay men to acknowledge that this process of seeking external approval is a predictable dynamic, individually and collectively in the GMC, connecting this back to childhood history.” Gay men didn’t choose to need that approval. It was built into them early. The question is whether they keep running it.

Contorer doesn’t think a collective shift in the community is coming anytime soon. “Which is why we have to be able to become personally adaptable despite what the collective environment does or doesn’t do,” he says. That’s where he leaves it. The work is individual, and it’s available.

Every gay man will recognize something in this book. That’s either the most comforting thing about it or the most uncomfortable. Probably both. When asked who should read it, Contorer doesn’t hesitate: gay men, their families, and other therapists. After 30 years in a West Hollywood therapist’s chair, he’s got the receipts.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You’ve Been Blocked: The Search for Gay Male Perfection is available on Amazon and other online retailers. Paperback $15, hardcover $20, e-book $9.99. The audiobook is also available on Audible and Spotify. More at theblockedbook.com.

About the Author

Joseph Contorer, MA, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist based in West Hollywood, California. He specializes in working with gay men and the LGBTQ community. You’ve Been Blocked: The Search for Gay Male Perfection is his first book. More information at theblockedbook.com.