I’ve had many discussions, with no resolution, among my friends about whether a lesbian can be a fag hag. A friend, sure; but some people think they can’t be a true fag hag.
I meant to preview, not submit.
The point of contention about whether or not a lesbian can be a fag hag is commiseration about men. So I guess we must decide what elevates a friend to the lofty status of fag hag and whether that commiseration is an essential element.
Oh honey, you want to tell Ros she’s not a fag hag, you go right ahead, and I’ll sell tickets.
I agree with matt. You don’t tell a lesbian she ain’t what she says she is. If she says she’s a fag hag then she is.
Especially those femme ones. They can do some nasty things with a stiletto heel. And they aren’t put off by offers of free beer either… shudder
Yes. I can’t speak for everyone but AFAIK the fantasy always involves being the sex one would prefer to be. It’s really difficult for me to imagine taking on any other role.
I have a question for bisexual folks. Is attraction to men similar to attraction to women or are they different? Do they always involve the same (cute person) -> (arousal) pathway or can it be a matter of finding a very dissimilar set of visual/auditory/tactile stimuli exciting?
I guess I qualify here, though its hardly an even split for me. I’m generally attracted to more men than women, but hardly 100% gay. I have to say that for me it does feel different somehow. In general it does boil down to “cute person” = arousal of interest, but that’s like saying “I took the highway system”. Accurate yet also a major gloss-over of the facts. Unfortunately right now the ability to describe the emotional difference just isn’t within my range. I will say that they merely feel different, neither stronger nor weaker than the other.
The main thing that changes is my manner of speaking and acting around a man I find attractive versus a woman. With a guy I tend to either get shy or get giggly and say the first thing that pops into my head. With a woman I tend not to show quite as much, which is often why people just asssume I’m flat out gay, because its all an internal dialogue while externally I’m just trying to be friendly and nice. Maybe when I actually get some sleep, as I’m currently on 48 hours sporadic rest, I’ll be able to expand this answer a little more.
Feel free to poke at any items that you’d like me to explain further.
Thanks, Priam. 
I guess what I meant to ask is whether it is common for the attraction response to be completely different between the genders.
I can definately say right now that being rejected feels exactly the same regardless of gender 
I find the attraction response can get even more complicated, varying not just by gender but by person. I can’t say whether this is more common than myself, but at least that’s one datum. I know we have some more bifolk around the board so maybe they’ll post something.
Actually I made it quite clear in all the ATGG threads that anyone could - and was encouraged to! - answer any and all questions put in the thread.
Esprix
I guess my question has to do with why do so many people confuse gay with TG, or is there a space where gay and TG overlap.
When I was in graduate school back in the late 1980s, this fundamentalist Christian anti-gay campaigner came to the campus and his followers distributed leaflets to promote his appearance. He claimed to have once been a gay but was “cured” of it by conversion to Jesus, hallelujah!
(I remain very skeptical of right-wing Christian claims to have taken the gayness out of people via religion. Exodus and them. What about the ones who converted and renounced their gayness, then realized they were living a lie, ditched the fundamentalism, and went back to being honestly gay? As I always say, the leopard can’t change its spots. You can’t pray the spots off a leopard, for cryin’ out loud.)
So this fundamentalist had “before” and “after” pictures of himself on the leaflet. I didn’t go to see him, I just glanced at the leaflet. The “before” picture, meant to horrify Christians with the depravity of his former sinful life, showed him dressed as a WOMAN, with long permed hair, lipstick, and everything. You know what? She looked pretty hot. I’d do her! She looked much nicer to be around than the uptight, self-righteous fundamentalist who replaced her. (Assuming this story is, in fact, true.) This person made a better looking woman than man and I have to wonder if he/she wasn’t actually TG. Or what.
What puzzles me is the conflation of “gay” with “transgendered.” Yes, gay guys usually make the best drag queens, but this was no drag queen. She was just a really nice-looking woman dressed in conventional female clothes. I honestly didn’t see what her feminized look had to do with being gay. It disturbs me to think that 1) the fundamentalists had confused gay with TG, and 2) they had used religion to coerce a TG back to the other side of the gender binary. The whole setup stunk as far as I was concerned.
I think there are at least four components (and probably more) to human sexuality. Physical sex, gender identity, sex roles (masculine / feminine), and orientation.
These usually are correlated in a predictable way–physical females have a female gender identity, are feminine, and are sexually attracted to men. Vice versa for men.
Many people look at sexuality as binary–“female” means being phsycially female, mentally female, feminine, and attraced to males. All of this is lumped together as if it were all one thing, rather than a group of related traits.
When people deviate from the norm, those who see sexuality as one thing tend to use the same label for all of these deviations.
So when these people see a man in a femme persona, they assume the she deviates from not just the norms of masculinity / femininity, but also from the norms of sexual orientation.
That would 12 years ago today for me – January 29. 1993. It was sometime in the afternoon. I date to the moment I looked at myself in a mirror and said, “I’m gay.” Of course there was soul-searching before, and five years of trying to develop feelings for women.
It is true. I agree with the “boys are hot” sentiment, but that alone wouldn’t make it good – or at least no better than anything else.
I think it formed me as a person in ways that I like. It forced me to consider things I would never have considered otherwise, and made me realize just how much of things taken for granted in this society are silly and arbitrary, and – worst of all – lacking in compassion.
It forged me into someone, and I like that someone better than the person I think I would’ve been otherwise.
Or marching in a city’s first Pride Parade. Or in finding “your people” after a long search.
There is something in having to fight for what you have that makes you appreciate it in a way you can’t otherwise.
I think I’m going to resolve to get more involved in queer politics again. Even with my lack of time, and even with the apathy in this complacent city, it’s something that felt good to do, and something that needs doing.
As for “sissy” trans guys, I have a close friend who’s in that category. He’s gone through the difficulty of coming out to his family, getting hormones, and starting the long process towards his operations. But he still wears dresses and very androgynous Goth outfits, and he describes himself as a femme gay man, and so he got into trouble with his worker.
Now he goes to these appointments dressed in what he refers to as “lumberjack drag” – denim and flannel – to prove he really is a guy.
Very sorry to hear that.
All this time I’d thought there were only three, and was knocking myself out trying to sort and resolve them for myself. I cannot tell you how glad I am to read that.
It seems to me that to define a person as “gay” or “straight” is dependent on defining what they themselves are, and that is not always so easy. I like to think of people as androphilic or gynephilic instead. Of course, then there’s the conundrum that by a traditional conservative definition, one whose body is physically male and who is gynephilic would be considered straight, but in actuality if their gender identity is female then they’re not straight at all.
That bothers me a lot too, FWIW, and IME it’s not just the fundamentalists who are doing that.
And we did, I seem to recall.
Whoo, do I ever have a can o’ worms to open up. The larger context is the alliance, or whatever it is, in sexual and gender politics alluded to by including the “T” in LGBT. Remember when it was just GLB? Then the T got in. Or did it really?
The more specific issue is about transwomen and lesbians. I was thinking this issue should have its own thread started so as not to sidetrack this one. It’s one area where the “queer soup” has really boiled. Check out Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism by Patrick Califia.
If you’re looking for a friend (boy or girl, depending), how do you know that that person is gay? I’ve heard “gaydar” mentioned, but it sounds utterly stupid to me.
And by stupid, I mean the word “gaydar”.
Pheromones.
Good thing about being Gay?
That is like asking the good thing about being alive. It is being yourself and living every moment as it should be lived. I consider myself very lucky. I was out to my parents before they died, I have been out at every job I have ever had, and I have rarely, if ever, had any problem whatsoever. I find most people accept me for who I am…even the Mormons I work with, and the Catholics, and the Jews…despite their religion’s hatred of Gays, on a one-to-one basis, nobody seems to have a problem with me being Gay or accepting of my SO.
People laugh when I tell them I knew I was Gay when I was about 5 years old, but it is true. I had an uncle who was in the Navy and I remember at that age thinking he was the best looking person on earth. Years later I told that to my aunt and she was horrified (they had divorced decades ago) and she asked, “he didn’t do anything to you, did he!?” “No.(I wish)” “Good. I found out later he liked guys.”
What do you know…my “gaydar” was already functioning at age 5.
Anal Sex
Myth that every Gay guy is into it. Trust me, in my younger days I was Super Slut…(still have the cape and mask) and aside from quite a few Germans, most of the guys I met were not all that into it. In my thousands of sexual encounters (yes, really…told you I was Super Slut) I think anal sex was a deal breaker with only a few dozen at most.
Straight Guys Who Asked Me Questions
I never came across as “Gay”…I “fit in” at the local bar, always have. Sounds somewhat condescending, but true. Even have people tell me now I “don’t look Gay” whatever that means. Whatever.
One thing I have found over the years is that a lot of “straight” guys are envious of Gay sex…they understand the concept of horny guys getting off whenever they want to. They get the idea that if they were Gay, they could easily understand two guys going at it several times a night. Without turning this into a porn story, there have been quite a few “straight” guys in straight bars who have invited me back to their place, “to talk”. And yes I know the diffence…you only had to look at their apartment and porn collection.
Now is the time to bring up the big taboo.
I think the biggest disaster to the Gay community was AIDS. It was never a “Gay” thing, despite what the press tried to report. It was a very heterosexual disease in other countries even before it had a name here. Mute point where and how. Unfortunately, the disease hit Gay men first in the US, and hardest, and furiously. Lost lots of great friends, talented people, fun people, nice guys. I kept their names in my rolodex for years. I will never forget a friend who told me he knew the exact night he contracted AIDS…a guy he went home with told him he had some odd skin cancer. That friend figured cancer wasn’t contagious so who cares. That friend died shortly afterwards. But back then, politics denied access to the information. Ronald Reagan. It was only a few articles in The Advocate and other Gay press that started to wake people up. By then it was too late. Now it has come to light that some men are immune. Some of us have a special gene. I guess I have it, because if anybody should thank their lucky stars, it is me.
But despite AIDS, and despite the constant fight for basic rights, and despite a President who claims to want an Amendment to the Constitution to ban Gay marriage…
if there is such a thing as reincarnation, count me as one who wants to be re-born as a Gay man.
I am happy, I love my life, I love my partner of 24 years February 28th of this year, and I have absolutely, 100%. no regrets.
If “gaydar” exists, about which I have absolutely no opinion, except to take the word of gay people who claim to have it in the absence of any personal evidence one way or the other, it’s in the nature of noticing subliminal cues: stuff like hesitancy, noticing an attractive person of the same sex a bit more than a straight person would (i.e., letting one’s attention dwell on them), failure to respond to “straight” cues, etc.
It’s not “stupid” but stuff the rest of us would not pay attention to. Imagine if historically being left-handed was grounds for ostracism, so, as a left-handed person seeking out other southpaws, you learn to notice someone starting to reach for something with their left hand before switching to the “proper” hand, lack of fine-detail coordination and sloppy handwriting with the right hand, etc.