Role Models
Dear Dyke Whisperer, To each her own, but I swear I don’t understand the hostility that exists between today’s young lipstick lesbians toward anyone remotely construed as “butch.” Why the obsessive drive to act and appear straight? To conform? Enlighten me, please!
Confused in Carolina
Dear Confused,
Here’s what I despise: individuals who put on an act, regardless of what that act is. The extreme expression of gender behavior at both extremes IS an act. For everyone, gay or straight, male or female.
Gay men shouldn’t act like catty, vain teenage girls because even catty, vain teenage girls aren’t really like that — they just act that way because they assume that’s what society wants them to be.
Likewise, the beer-swilling, aggressive macho shit is an act regardless of whether it’s a gay man, straight man, or lesbian.
What has fucked us all over is the demand that we separate natural traits or behaviors into “male” or “female” categories, and then punish people who don’t behave according to their sex.
This extreme division of the sexes has also led to countless divorces and break-ups. When we create entirely separate worlds and personalities for men and women, is it any wonder that they can’t relate to each other any more? If a woman’s entire world is soap operas and child-rearing and her husband’s entire world is sports and cars, it’s no wonder they can’t share enough to stay married.
The truth is that any of us can naturally have a blend of traits that are socially labelled masculine or feminine. What tingly bits we’re born with or what tingly bits we’re attracted to does not determine what interests or personality quirks we have.
Just because someone’s interests or traits tend to cluster more in one artificial category than the other doesn’t mean they’re transgendered or defective. For that matter, even transgendered people don’t have to have a huge cluster of stereotypical traits of their true sex. I’ve known a few quite “effeminate” FTMs. They transitioned because their bodies were wrong, not because they needed to artificially code themselves as macho.
We need to lose the sexism because that’s really what’s behind this “straight-acting” bullshit.
Stop the acting. Stop succumbing to centuries of brainwashing about what men and women are “supposed” to be, and just be yourself and find a partner who shares your interests. It’s really that simple.
