Twenty-five gay films produced from 1987 to 2011 in Europe, the US, Argentina and Israel form the basis for this study on masculinity in gay romantic drama. The shared plot motif is a self-assumed straight man realizing that he is homosexual or fluid in his sexuality. The narrative trope of awakening from the folk tale “Sleeping Beauty” (1657) by Charles Perrault, and its revision in late 19th century feminist literature, is the common dramatic component of these gay films. There are similarities with early feminist literature in the representation of the repressive nature of social structures and the fracturing of hetero-normative gender expectations. The article argues that even as some of the hetero-normative conventions of the romance as a genre are upheld, because two straight-looking men perform both roles, masculinity is problematized and a queering takes place at the level of temperament,