You know you're overthinking it when you ask Gretchen Felker-Martin Food is cultural, which is why every culture has a "delicacy" that is disgusting. You eat their delicacy, you are welcomed in their culture. I dated a girl with a Swedish family, I ate lutefisk every Christmas. Food becomes threatening when it imposes a cultural shift. Real Men Don't Eat Quiche came out in 1982 because in 1980, supermarkets everywhere started carrying quiche in a carton. You buys your pint of pasteurized eggs with ham and spinach in it, you pours it in a pre-baked pie crust, et voila, quiche. This of course prompted late night comics to rail about quiche which has an even funnier name than tiramisu. Here's how Marlboro advertised their cigarettes while a TV cowboy was running the country: All that it took for ice cream to become gay was for Joe Biden to profess enjoying it. All that it took for Bud Light to become gay was for a transgender influencer to drink it. All that it took for dijon mustard to become gay was for Obama to ask for it on a burger. This is why Andrew Tate and his ilk freak out about bananas - they are gay signaling so hard that every little thing is gay. Women don't give a shit about 8% body fat, men do. Women don't give a shit about shaved chests, men do. Women don't give a shit about sports cars, men do. They are so afraid of being called gay that they lack the confidence to deep-throat a banana. THAT is what makes food gay: anything queer people are comfortable with, because anyone threatened by someone else's sexuality has deep and unrelenting questions about their own. Same as it ever was.
Ryan believes we’re going through another cultural shift in our ideas of queerness, similar to the one brought on by urbanization. This time, the internet is the driving force, connecting queer people across physical space and allowing us to speak about ourselves without gatekeeping by straight people. It might seem like a greater understanding of the changeability of sexuality and gender, even within one person across a lifetime, would signal the end of these behavioral associations. But new ones are being built, because “we’ve got to find ways to express our identity,” says Ryan.