another gender item
Apr. 18th, 2006 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiriasNo idea how old it is, but here's a Salon article I found on straight fairies. (I wonder if those guys are what last year's crowd liked to call "metrosexuals")
I was recently in a conversation with someone who was convinced her cousin had married a gay man. Wouldn't hear "maybe he's just a little effeminate" or other such arguments; her faith in his fruitiness was unshakeable. Me, I'm a little uncomfortable with the gender stereotyping that goes along with such surmising. I've been to a few queer events with my favorite lesbians and I do know that there's definitely a different vibe, somehow. But nevertheless I feel there's something a bit... inappropriate... about making assumptions about other people's sexuality. Part of that is because I think that people are complicated and sexuality and social roles are complicated and the labels people choose may tell you more about them than the labels you infer. Part of it is I guess that I think making public inferences about behavior that most people consider private is almost always rude. Particularly when you come at it with the attitude that you know them better than they know themselves. Even when that's true, it's never polite to say so.
Not that I've never done it myself (at least privately; I've never been in the business of gaydar self-promotion). But there have definitely been people who have surprised me, and I try to remember that.
I was recently in a conversation with someone who was convinced her cousin had married a gay man. Wouldn't hear "maybe he's just a little effeminate" or other such arguments; her faith in his fruitiness was unshakeable. Me, I'm a little uncomfortable with the gender stereotyping that goes along with such surmising. I've been to a few queer events with my favorite lesbians and I do know that there's definitely a different vibe, somehow. But nevertheless I feel there's something a bit... inappropriate... about making assumptions about other people's sexuality. Part of that is because I think that people are complicated and sexuality and social roles are complicated and the labels people choose may tell you more about them than the labels you infer. Part of it is I guess that I think making public inferences about behavior that most people consider private is almost always rude. Particularly when you come at it with the attitude that you know them better than they know themselves. Even when that's true, it's never polite to say so.
Not that I've never done it myself (at least privately; I've never been in the business of gaydar self-promotion). But there have definitely been people who have surprised me, and I try to remember that.