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rfmcdonaldJust after we'd descended the steps of Woody's last night with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roosterbear and quillion, three young guys--20 or so, perhaps, all three young enough for the bouncer to demand their IDs--ascended. The last one, a guy with the perfect clothes and well-sculpted hair and a nice firm jawline, flashed a form of ID I'd recognize anywhere: a PEI driver's license, learners' class. All of them were recognizable as, if not gay, at least not Kinsey 0 types.
Why? Last December I wondered what exactly it meant to be straight-acting. I concluded that it had less to do with what one did and more to do with one didn't, with how one didn't partake in gay cultural norms for whatever reason. "Gay" maps onto only a small part of what I'll call, for want of a better term, "non-heterosexual culture." It's not surprising, since the mass of non-heterosexuals is an almost perfect illustration of an aggregate, of a random group of people united only by a single characteristic or set of related characteristics. It usually takes at least some effort to not pick up these characteristics, or at least some obliviousness to what these traits are.
It takes reciprocal acts of obliviousness to be gay-acting, of (again) not doing some things. Last Christmas,tudor_rose noted that there were things that I didn't do--like, say, looking at girls--that triggered her gaydar. What was it about last night's gentleman that set mine off? They paid too much attention to their appearances, looking too good. This simple trick's making its way into the straight male world--that's what metrosexuality is about--but it's still a reasonably reliable indicator. I'm curious: After more than a year in Toronto, just how many of these traits have I picked up?
roosterbear and quillion, three young guys--20 or so, perhaps, all three young enough for the bouncer to demand their IDs--ascended. The last one, a guy with the perfect clothes and well-sculpted hair and a nice firm jawline, flashed a form of ID I'd recognize anywhere: a PEI driver's license, learners' class. All of them were recognizable as, if not gay, at least not Kinsey 0 types.Why? Last December I wondered what exactly it meant to be straight-acting. I concluded that it had less to do with what one did and more to do with one didn't, with how one didn't partake in gay cultural norms for whatever reason. "Gay" maps onto only a small part of what I'll call, for want of a better term, "non-heterosexual culture." It's not surprising, since the mass of non-heterosexuals is an almost perfect illustration of an aggregate, of a random group of people united only by a single characteristic or set of related characteristics. It usually takes at least some effort to not pick up these characteristics, or at least some obliviousness to what these traits are.
It takes reciprocal acts of obliviousness to be gay-acting, of (again) not doing some things. Last Christmas,
tudor_rose noted that there were things that I didn't do--like, say, looking at girls--that triggered her gaydar. What was it about last night's gentleman that set mine off? They paid too much attention to their appearances, looking too good. This simple trick's making its way into the straight male world--that's what metrosexuality is about--but it's still a reasonably reliable indicator. I'm curious: After more than a year in Toronto, just how many of these traits have I picked up?
