Well, that didn’t make much sense. It should have said:
I remember a stand-up comedian who once said that those that act that way do so simply because it’s fun!
Saltire has a great point, from that URL:
"“Yup, there are a lot of gay men that you can tell by mannerism,” one soc.motsser confirms. “Why this is I am just as puzzled
[about] as you are. I am a gay man who no one would suspect is gay. When I came out, I didn’t change my speech pattern or
the way I walked, etc. . . . What you may be overlooking is that although many `swishy’ men are gay, many many non-swishy
men are too. The theory that you can tell a gay man by sight is incorrect; you can tell that a swishy man is probably gay but the
converse (every gay man is swishy) is not true.” "
I had a straight guy friend who had rather “femme” mannerisms, like limp wrists and a prissy voice.
Actually, his dad had died when he was only two, and he grew up with his mother and three sisters. There weren’t any real “male” role models in his life. So he kind of picked up on how his sisters and mother acted.
I think this is a good question about behavior that irritates me. A lifelong friend of mine is homosexual, and he has never exhibited the stereotypical attributes and mannerisms of a gay man. So, why do some homosexuals feel the need to “act” the way others “expect” them to? My friend doesn’t speak with a lisp, he doesn’t mince around limp wristed, he doesn’t dress any differently than anyone else, he doesn’t have any proclivity toward anything “feminine”. I’ve asked him whether or not he feels that he must “act” like a heterosexual so as to “mask” his “true sexual identity” and he couldn’t stop laughing at me. So the original question remains, why do some people feel the need to behave stereotypically?
My guess is that perhaps these people are not all that comfortable with who they really are so they may have a need to fit in somehow someway, and the easiest subconscious means of fulfilling that need is to act like a certain “type” of person. Depending on outward appearances for defining oneself seems awfully weak to me, but it seems to me that a huge number of people do.
Seems ot me that everybody does it. What is up with that post, 10? So you have a gay friend who isn’t lispy or femme-y, which means that effeminate gay males are mentally or socially weaker than the rest?
What the fuck, dude? So femme-y gays are “forcing” themselves to “act” in a way that “others” would “expect” them too.
Why isn’t that a bad thing when your friend is doing it? “My friend doesn’t speak with a lisp, he doesn’t mince around limp wristed, he doesn’t dress any differently than anyone else, he doesn’t have any proclivity toward anything “feminine”.” He’s acting like the majority of people out there.
Seems to me as if he has a need to fit in somehow someway, and the easiest subconscious means of fulfilling that need is to act like a certain “type” of person, a “straight”. Why doesn’t that annoy and irritate you?
The truth is, 40, that all humans take in cues from the people around them and change their behavior accordingly. People start to talk alike. Accents and mannerisms converge, slang bubbles to the top, dressing styles compare and contrast. People are somehow designed to unconsciously change their behavior based on norms or peers, and we all do it all the time.
Seems to me that you just don’t like lispy femme-y behavior in guys, and you’re trying to rationalize your way around that fact by branding those who behave accordingly as inferior. Cuz it’s somehow okay to be irritated by those beneath us.
jb
Speaking for myself, it was like this:
- I behaved according to what came natural.
- Other boys said I was acting like a girl.
- I didn’t mind; I liked girls.
- Other boys who were told they acted like girls often went to a lot of trouble to change their mannerisms and behaviors. That made my behavior contrast more.
- When you are a little kid, girls seem more mature, more grown up. A lot of what I was doing was emulating adults, which was perceived as “being like a girl”.
Does that help?
Ahunter3
but to what degree do you display these mannerism? Is it a Steven Seagal walk or a full blown SNL guy? And why? That is my original question. I don’t think you consciously thought “I would rather walk like a girl than a boy” unless all the people around you were girls and then maybe you would think “that is the way to walk”.
I don’t think it has anything to do with sexuality.
Why does Seagal & Hugh Grant move like that and Van Damme and Stalone dont?
Some thoughts on an incredibly complex issue… much of the time, the question of “why femme?” is answered, easily if glibly, by saying “depends on the person.” For the majority of “sissy” types, sissiness (is that a word?) emerges pretty early in childhood - the stereotypical kid who plays with girls instead of boys, hates roughhousing and sports, etc. That boy may well learn to repress it (which I did, badly), until coming out. Then it roars out again, and even guys who aren’t very sissy may adopt a few mannerisms simply as an expression of membership in the community (trust me - I live in Chelsea, I know :D).
Now, for me, I’d describe my childhood as mildly sissified. I had friends who were boys (some even turned out straight!) but it was the nerdier, less athletic types. And regardless of degree, it’s diminished as I’ve gotten older and felt more confident about life in general - more comfortable in my own skin. For me and, I suspect, for many others, the sissiness boils down to a flair for self-dramatizing; it’s a performance that helps distract yourself from more fundamental insecurity.
Another factor that may have a little bit to do with it - at least for those who somewhat less “sissy” by nature - is size. Physical wispiness may increase the sissiness. My sample, rigorously examined, is, um, two, but I’d be curious to see more. Between 16 and 32 my height hasn’t changed (about 6’2") but my weight zoomed from 135 to 175. I now qualify in a lot of circumstances as moderately butch, and I feel like I have the body to match. Even more dramatic is the change in a friend from college. Then, he was pretty much a screaming queen, as wispy as I was. Ten years later his body has thickened (non-steriodally - he’s natural looking, no backne or mood swings) to linebacker proportions. He wears it well, and now he’s very much a guy-guy. Not hyperbutch in some reaction-formation way - just masculine.
Wow, jb_farley, you certainly impress me with your command of the word fuck. Please continue, pecker weed.
Actually, don’t. Binary guy whose username I’m not gonna type, we do not level personal insults in General Questions. Knock it off.
And both of you take that vitriol to the Pit.
Not being a TV watcher, I have no way of comparing myself to the SNL guy, but I’m not unaware of “these mannerisms” I guess…
I’ve been told I walk and/or run like a girl, and that I sit like a girl. (Other people deny any similarities). I’ve been told that I sound like a female on the phone (and more often than not strangers on the phone assume I’m female). More abstractly, I’ve had many people tell me I have things like priorities and value systems and ways of looking at things that they commonly find among other women but not men. (and again, other people have expressed ridicule for this notion).
I don’t do any of this deliberately.
If you have two guys on a slab, can the coroner determine what language each one spoke? Or, even allowing that he/she could determine their primary language, could she/he determine any secondary learned languages?
Come on!
If everyone acted, spoke, thought exactly the same, what would be the point of reproducing?
What makes a person act in any number of ways? What drives certain people to lash out at complete strangers without provocation?
What moves certain males of our species to strut around, and feel the need to define themselves by denigrating other males?
I have no clue to any of the above. But I do know that variety is what makes our existence interesting.
I remember a TV interview with one of the original “Right Stuff” astronauts, who said that they had to take public-relations training that involved them being taught not to put their hands on their hips with their thumbs forward (your tax dollars at work)!
Quick guys - look at your fingernails. Did you claw your fingers with the palm toward yoursef, or (horrors) splay them out palms away? If you were to light a match on a matchbook, would you strike it towards yourself (so as to cowboy-like cup the flame), or strike it away from yourself?
These are actual tests run by psychologist to determine latent homosexuality.
Like vocal “Big Gay Al” silibation, I’d have to opine that all these are all cultural, not concrete determinants. I gew up in as back-woodsy, homophobic a place as you could imagine, but it was common practice for young ladies to digitally penetrate young men during coitus. Rather than disliking it, the boys took it as proof that, as drunk as they were, the girls were “into” the sex and not being date-raped. Yet elsewhere I’ve met straight guys who would’ve found it a threat to their heterosexualtiy (including one fellow who lost his erection due to being rimmed by his girlfriend).