rfmcdonald | [NON BLOG] What is straight-acting? (Reply)

You lead a normal everyday life and it's 'no questions asked' as people just assume you are straight. Every once and awhile a very aware person might notice something that causes them to think 'fem' but it's a fleeting thought because you turn around and surprise them with more masculine traits before they even have time to fully analyze the last one.

The last time that I took this quiz, sometime in early 2003, I also scored a 3. I shouldn't care about this quiz, I know. I'm skeptical that this quiz actually means anything, since the methodology seems flawed. For instance, I did get a pedicure in the past two years (from a Vietnamese clerk in a small shop on Avenue Mont-Royal on August 2003). That was because one of my toenails was ingrown and painful and an intermittant source of blood. Is it heterosexual to put up with the stabbing pain and bloodstained socks? Or, is it metrosexual? Or, is it just pre-postmodern urban male? Or am I missing something entirely?

My denial of the quiz's validity gives rise to an obvious question: Why did I take it at all? The ostensible answer--my confusion about the alignment of my behaviour to traditional gendered stereotypes--only creates more questions. Let me begin by stating that a few things recently have brought this issue to the forefront of my mind. At a dinner last Sunday attended by people with Kinsey scores much closer to 6 than to 0, I was chatting with one gentleman about sexual identity. He called me gay; I paused for a moment; he apologized for assuming that I wasn't straight before seeing my furrowed brow and giving up. That, admittedly, isn't nearly as bewildering as being approached by guys in a variety of circumstances who try to compliment me by calling me straight-acting. The irony in this particular context fells even me.

One reason that my apparent conformity to masculine gender standards matters to me, I have to admit, is that it gave me more control. I was more-or-less oblivious to my sexual orientation growing up. (Much can be, and has been, written about this obliviousness of mine.) I was oblivious in high school; apparently, I also managed to pass in high school, since my problems were more commonly self-inflicted than anything else. When I finally clued in, it allowed me to come out to people on my own terms, without being greeted by statements like "Oh, we suspected all along."

There are assumptions about gender which are closely linked with concerns about sexuality. The linkage isn't automatic by any means--there are plenty of stereotypically masculine non-heterosexual guys who'd be wrongly classified as straight by the casual observer, and there are plenty of stereotypically effeminate guys who'd be wrongly classified as gay or bisexual by the casual observer--but it seems safe to say that there is some correlation. The origins of this positive correlation between non-traditional gendered behaviours and non-heterosexual sexual orientation are easy enough to figure out. Traditional concepts of masculinity are intimately related to a proclivity towards heterosexual intercourse, preferably though not exclusively regulated; traditional concepts of femininity are, likely, connected towards a proclivity towards heterosexual intercourse, though the idea of female sexual autonomy has been controversial in most cultures. Proclivities towards non-heterosexual intercourse wreck this traditional gender binary. One relatively easy solution would involve resorting individual's gender affiliations by sexual orientation: stereotypically effeminate gay men interested could be included as second-class women, stereotypically masculine lesbian women as second-class men. This solution is vulnerable, most obviously to men and women interested in sexual and romantic relationships with both men and women (to varying degrees and in varying circumstances), but also to intersexed individuals who cannot be easily classified as either men or women, and to people who adopt most of the suite of gendered behaviours appropriate to their attributed biological sex save for sexual orientation. We come, in short to the performativity of gender described by Judith Butler.

Me, I'm still left scrambling.

Last Thursday, while I was on the Island, I chatted with two people who had known me for a fairly long time last Thursday on that subject. Surely, people who'd known me for several years would have a decent baseline on my behaviour. I was surprised to find out that

tudor_rose suspected. She couldn't quite define what it was exactly that tipped her off, but she suggested that it wasn't so much things that I did as things that I didn't, that I didn't (for instance) look at or flirt with girls. Later that day, Stephen followe up by noting that, although I'm an Island-born fifth-generation Islander and a native Charlottetowner, I don't have that much of an Island accent. Apparently, that kind of linguistic innovation--the adoption of dialects of superior social standing to one's vernacular environment--is particularly common among women and non-heterosexual men; certainly, a gay/bisexual male accent independent of communal affiliations does seem to exist, as this post on

linguaphiles and this BoingBoing posting suggest. Acts of omissions and acts of commission both play roles, then.

What does this mean for me? I still haven't the faintest idea. I'm not consciously trying to conform to a particular stereotype of the behaviour appropriate to my gender, I believe; I am fairly sure that I don't have issues with people who don't. My self-image, though, might well be at odds with my actual appearance, or something. (This is the point in the post where I call for public feedback.)