Gay Men and Sensitivity: How to Transform Queer Hypervigilance into Emotional Strength

How Queer Hypervigilance Shapes—and Empowers—Gay Men

My nervous system came out before I did.

Long before I could articulate why certain spaces felt unsafe, my body knew. It would tighten at the sound of laughter in school hallways, jolt at the sudden movement of male classmates, and flood with cortisol whenever my voice rose slightly above its carefully controlled pitch. My father called it being "too sensitive." My teachers labeled it as "overthinking." But what they were witnessing wasn't fragility—it was my body's fluency in a language of survival I'd been forced to learn.

I remember sitting at fourteen in my school's cafeteria, tracking eight different conversations simultaneously. Not because I cared about the gossip, but because I needed to know if I was becoming the subject of it. My homework was always done, my clothes never too bright, my opinions rarely voiced unless I'd rehearsed them silently first.

The Invisible Labor of Vigilance

This vigilance was mistaken for maturity. "He's such a thoughtful boy," they'd say. They never realized I wasn't choosing thoughtfulness—I was mapping escape routes.