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This article examines the production of hegemonic masculinity within a minority context, through the ethnographic study of the fantasies of manliness that organize white middle-class gay male sociabilities in and around Paris, France. I start with a description of the digital context within which these fantasies operate, focusing on three types of uses of sexual images: autosexuality, networking and self-representation. I then examine the social relations of gender, sexuality, class and race at work in three types of fantasies: ‘rough manliness’, ‘straight manliness’ and ‘hood manliness’. Among participants in the study, gay male vernacular know-hows about the erotic staging of manliness most often articulate with conservative views on gender norms and hierarchies. Also, the erotic investment of ‘hood’ men’s racial difference articulates with a moral condemnation of their supposed violence. Within this specific cultural context, fetishisization of manliness tends to participate in the production of a hegemonic masculinity thought and felt as ‘natural’, ‘authentic’ and ‘modern’.