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Keeping Score
Mar. 21st, 2013 04:53 pmI Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter. I Am A Person.
I had a fortunate childhood; I was lucky enough to grow up around a stastically unusual number of out gays and lesbians. My aunt ran a hair salon; my mother and grandmother were involved with musical theater. I lived in neighborhoods that were havens for gay and interracial couples. I went to performing arts schools.
There are elements of straight culture that just don't translate to a homosexual environment. For instance, you can't be posessive of your exes; you're in a small enough dating pool that it's not really possible to avoid dating people your friends have dated. You also can't declare that it's impossible to be friends with someone who has the type of genitals you fancy (the central argument in "men and women can't be friends") while maintaining you can only relax around people of your gender and orientation (the assumption that leads to "girls' nights" and "boys only.")
When a breakup doesn't work out, you can't generalize and blame it on "all men" or "all women," because you are also a man or woman. There is not an immediate assumption made about the role you occupy in a relationship: that you rather than the other person will cook, that you rather than the other person will fix the car. Nor is it assumed that you will maintain the same role in your next relationship.
There are plenty of straight people who share these attitudes. But I have found they are rarer in exclusively heterosexual friend groups. I don't know whether the gender-policing causes or derives from the lack of homosexuals in the group, although I would guess the latter. This holds true even in groups of artists or groups of theater people; if there are no gays in the social group (they don't have to be present at the event), I can pretty much bet somebody is going to do something stupid like hand me a wine cooler (because women don't like beer), refer to "us girls," or, if male, bend over backwards to avoid being alone in a room with me for even a moment (because otherwise we might accidentally have an affair).
Thanks to good luck and lifestyle choices, I encounter this behavior rarely enough that it's surreal when it does happen. I tend to react pretty loudly, along the lines you might expect, but there's a delay of a few beats while I feel an emotion that is somewhere between rubbernecking and being posessed by a Victorian anthropologist. In that moment, what I am doing is marvelling at the notion that for a lot of people - maybe even most people - this is normal and would not be remarked on. Probably including most of the people who make laws and run major organizations.
It feels Absurd with a capital A, which is another way of saying it is alienating. It's hard for me to imagine going through life believing I am surrounded by people and women (or conversely by people and men) - that half the people I encounter, although they look and sound very similar to me, are fundamentally impossible to understand, and are all different versions of one person (and therefore like what women like or want what men want) even if they say and act in ways that would seem to contradict this. It's hard for me to imagine saying "I can't write men, so I don't." It's even harder for me to imagine then getting published, selling well, and having this unremarked upon. It's hard for me to imagine then being praised as a masterful writer, one of the best.
It's strange to listen to a speech that I think includes me, which starts with the phrase "all of us," and then hit a line like "we want to protect our wives" or "like all of you, I started doing this to impress chicks" and suddenly have to redefine what "us" meant the whole time. It's hard for me to understand why, if I was trying to get someone to feel what I was feeling, I would say "put your sister in my shoes" instead of "put yourself in my shoes."
Just yesterday, I was playing a card game with some people, and one of them called me "my friend's wife." He's known me as long as he's known Ciro. We talk more often. We've spent more time hanging out without Ciro than they've spent hanging out without me. But when he felt he needed to be extra respectful and emphasize that he wasn't looking at my breasts in a sexual way when attention was drawn nonsexually to my breasts (which are, despite advertizing to the contrary, a body part, like hands or a chin), I wasn't his friend. I was his friend's wife. And maybe that means they're not my breasts.
I had a fortunate childhood; I was lucky enough to grow up around a stastically unusual number of out gays and lesbians. My aunt ran a hair salon; my mother and grandmother were involved with musical theater. I lived in neighborhoods that were havens for gay and interracial couples. I went to performing arts schools.
There are elements of straight culture that just don't translate to a homosexual environment. For instance, you can't be posessive of your exes; you're in a small enough dating pool that it's not really possible to avoid dating people your friends have dated. You also can't declare that it's impossible to be friends with someone who has the type of genitals you fancy (the central argument in "men and women can't be friends") while maintaining you can only relax around people of your gender and orientation (the assumption that leads to "girls' nights" and "boys only.")
When a breakup doesn't work out, you can't generalize and blame it on "all men" or "all women," because you are also a man or woman. There is not an immediate assumption made about the role you occupy in a relationship: that you rather than the other person will cook, that you rather than the other person will fix the car. Nor is it assumed that you will maintain the same role in your next relationship.
There are plenty of straight people who share these attitudes. But I have found they are rarer in exclusively heterosexual friend groups. I don't know whether the gender-policing causes or derives from the lack of homosexuals in the group, although I would guess the latter. This holds true even in groups of artists or groups of theater people; if there are no gays in the social group (they don't have to be present at the event), I can pretty much bet somebody is going to do something stupid like hand me a wine cooler (because women don't like beer), refer to "us girls," or, if male, bend over backwards to avoid being alone in a room with me for even a moment (because otherwise we might accidentally have an affair).
Thanks to good luck and lifestyle choices, I encounter this behavior rarely enough that it's surreal when it does happen. I tend to react pretty loudly, along the lines you might expect, but there's a delay of a few beats while I feel an emotion that is somewhere between rubbernecking and being posessed by a Victorian anthropologist. In that moment, what I am doing is marvelling at the notion that for a lot of people - maybe even most people - this is normal and would not be remarked on. Probably including most of the people who make laws and run major organizations.
It feels Absurd with a capital A, which is another way of saying it is alienating. It's hard for me to imagine going through life believing I am surrounded by people and women (or conversely by people and men) - that half the people I encounter, although they look and sound very similar to me, are fundamentally impossible to understand, and are all different versions of one person (and therefore like what women like or want what men want) even if they say and act in ways that would seem to contradict this. It's hard for me to imagine saying "I can't write men, so I don't." It's even harder for me to imagine then getting published, selling well, and having this unremarked upon. It's hard for me to imagine then being praised as a masterful writer, one of the best.
It's strange to listen to a speech that I think includes me, which starts with the phrase "all of us," and then hit a line like "we want to protect our wives" or "like all of you, I started doing this to impress chicks" and suddenly have to redefine what "us" meant the whole time. It's hard for me to understand why, if I was trying to get someone to feel what I was feeling, I would say "put your sister in my shoes" instead of "put yourself in my shoes."
Just yesterday, I was playing a card game with some people, and one of them called me "my friend's wife." He's known me as long as he's known Ciro. We talk more often. We've spent more time hanging out without Ciro than they've spent hanging out without me. But when he felt he needed to be extra respectful and emphasize that he wasn't looking at my breasts in a sexual way when attention was drawn nonsexually to my breasts (which are, despite advertizing to the contrary, a body part, like hands or a chin), I wasn't his friend. I was his friend's wife. And maybe that means they're not my breasts.
