The Stereotypical Difference between Gay Men and Lesbians
By Andy Heath
"Look at that little queen floating through the air over there. He looks like the epitome of fashion in his A and F clothes. Yeah, he's wearing his designer jeans and his $60 pair of flip flops. He's thin; he's probably on the crystal meth diet. I bet he goes to the club every weekend and has a new man every night."
Ever hear that said about gay men? What about the next paragraph?
"Oh man, my car's not working right now. I bet she could fix it. I'm gonna go ask her for directions to Home Depot, the place where she and her girlfriend have all their dates! I hope there's a lesbian in line when I buy my new set of weights, as I'll need her to carry them to my car. I'm not strong enough. But I'm afraid to ask her to do that for me because she might hit me with her brass knuckles."
Have you ever heard that about lesbians?
Let me tell you something about gaydar; I have found that the older I get (as you read this, I'm 31), the worse my gaydar becomes. Let me put that differently - the older I get, the more I realize how bad my gaydar always was. Yes, yes, sometimes I can tell someone is gay, but I have been known to be wrong on occasion. And sometimes I'm quite surprised when I run across someone I thought was straight that turns out to be gay. The fact is that the only way you can know for sure about someone's sexuality is for that person to simply tell you - and even then you have to assume that he or she is telling the truth! Sometimes people lie, believe it or not!
I posted a few days ago about how so many people believe that gay men act so much like women. To be honest, I don't think these stereotypes help us much - if at all. All they do is paint a picture in people's minds of what monsters we are. They think we're such freaks of nature. And we're not. We're really not!
But what if we were? Let me pose to you the question of what if we all did fit the stereotype of being gay or lesbian? Would we then be freaks of nature? What about the people - and yes they do exist - that do fit the stereotype of the "typical" gay or lesbian? Are they freaks of nature? No indeed.
Straight people might always hold to their stereotypes of us gays and lesbians, just like whites will always hold to their stereotypes of Blacks and Christians will always hold to their stereotypes of Jews. That does not, however, mean that we have to do to the same. It goes with my post the other day on how mean gays are to each other. If we can conquer our own stereotypes, we will find our situation improve.
