Precisely. The thing about life is that it happens around you and your children, be you ready for it or not. The “some girls like girls and some boys like boys” conversation is a fricken’ cake walk compared to these (just as examples):
“Daddy, there’s a boy in my class that comes in with black eyes all the time, and he says he falls down a lot, why does he fall down so much?”
“Daddy, Uncle Albert always smells funny and he stumbles when he walks, how come?”
“Daddy, Billy Johnson next door joined the Army and today Mrs Johnson was crying and said he wasn’t coming back…why isn’t Billy coming back?”
Sorry, I’ve just heard a few too many people frame lesbians as only existing for straight men. Lots of, “porno lesbians are hot but in real life they all look like lumberjacks”, which has a lot of disturbing implications to it. I’ve lost track of the amount of time I’ve heard a man say that they don’t mind lesbians as long as they are hot.
I’m afraid I’ve got my dander up a bit, since I’ve seen commentary on this story on the internet range from ‘D’AWWWW’ to ‘they are just waiting for the right man/this is immoral sinfulness’. Apologies to Rigamarole if that wasn’t his intent.
No offense intended on my part, certainly none taken. This is the first I’ve encountered andygirl, I think.
For me, I took his comment to mean “Wow, they are just 2 random people and they both happen to be very good looking! How cool is that for those of us who get to look at their picture?”
I’m old enough to remember the 1950s, and it was a great time to be alive . . . as long as you were male and white and Christian and straight and able-bodied and financially comfortable. For the rest of us the “values” caused a great deal of pain and frustration. Those values are now over 50 years old. Good riddance.
Well, there are tens - maybe hundreds - of millions of lesbians. Law of large numbers says most will be average-looking, just like straight people. Not especially unattractive, but certainly not hot.
There are far more “hot” men and women out there than people think, it’s just that they’re hidden under a layer of fat. If everyone in America magically had a healthy body-fat percentage, all of a sudden we’d see a whole lot of very attractive people whose faces and bodies were previously covered with fat. Attractive facial features are actually pretty common, and it’s the truly ugly people who are the outliers.
With this said, I don’t know why people are so surprised that the public perception of lesbians’ appearance is that they’re not aesthetically attractive. To put it very simply, and very generally, men are attracted to appearances, so straight women and gay men have to pretty themselves up for men. Women are attracted to abstract characteristics like personality traits, and so the appearance doesn’t matter quite as much, and straight men and gay women can get away with more aesthetic apathy. Also, lesbians seem to me to be much more likely to be monogamous, and long-term monogamy usually makes people stop giving a shit about their appearance.
By that I mean a few stereotypes that it’s “safe” to kick.
Re: “right down to the lowest, bigoted, backwards corncob-cmokin’ cousin-pokin’ hillbilly”
I’m just glad to know that there are still plenty of folks who will conjure the worst possible thoughts the moment they hear my accent. Makes me more understanding toward the intolerant I find myself amongst.
I normally would think the following a thread hijack, but since it was brought up, just what is wrong with cousin love, or is it ok as long as it’s same sex?
I’m sure some will think I’m trying to provoke, but really I just want to know what, if any, boundary’s you would provide to children.
What if your teen charge informed you they were in love with your other teen charge who has lived in the same household for some length of time? Does time, blood, or sex of each play into it? What if it’s three of your charges, all professing their commitment to each other?
Hey, I’m not trying to say what is right or wrong. But don’t be surprised if the person you call a “hillbilly” ( or “redneck”) sends a “damn Yankee” back your way. Although you might be surprised to know that closed minded is part of the definition for at least some of us.
Not that I’ve called you either hillbilly or redneck, but do feel free to fling “Damn Yankee” at me all you like. You do realize that we (Yankees), don’t actually consider that an insult, right?
Very true in my experience. My daughter makes no distinction based on skin color, which I find rather interesting (and good). We live in a mostly white neighborhood (though we do have a few African American families on our block), and most of the people my daughter has interacted with have been white. That said, when she encounters different races, she doesn’t blink an eye. It made me smile quite a lot when she was describing kids in her preschool and when she talked about one of the African American kids she described him as “having curly hair.”
Now, it wouldn’t surprise me to note skin color differences…it is something that differentiates how someone looks, but it’s not the first thing that pops into a young kid’s mind, and certainly not as something ‘bad’ unless the parents have given some indication that those with certain characteristics should be looked on as ‘bad’.
I also think in today’s world in the US it helps a lot that we have a black president (and in my case, that I and my wife tend to agree with him on most things), as my daughter has seen President Obama, heard us explain who he is, and mostly hears us refer to him positively.
Straight men thinking gay women exist only for them? How stupid. Common sense should tell them that STRAIGHT women exist only for them…not the gay ones.
