Physical Exercise

Regular exercise (sport, walking, cycling, etc.) is one of the basic recommendations to improve and keep up your physical and psychological health , by sleeping better, and reducing stress for example. Given the obvious homophobia in many group sports, gay men do not often practice them.  The development of gay-friendly group sports activities are necessary to allow for participants to meet each other and develop ad-hoc social networks.

These two graphs may give the impression that gay men are doing really well in comparison to men in France when it comes to frequency of physical exercise.  We should realize however that our sample includes mostly young adults and that physical exercise is very much correlated to age.  Therefore, these findings are not necessarily as good as they may seem.  In fact, the only health area where gay and bisexual men outperform men in the general population is eating and weight.

Contemporary gay culture, and on a wider scale consumer society, places disproportionate emphasis on a particular body type and appearance. While this strong social and community pressure can encourage a certain type of physical exercise, it is also a source of stress and undermines self-esteem and the ability to form relationships not based on appearance and also undermines psychological health in general.