My mistake. You always hear the term “gener inequality” instead of “sexual inequality” (probably due to the morons who hear “sex” and just go “heh heh heh . . . sex.”)
Hey NotNow, if there are any questions you’d like to ask but don’t feel comfortable asking on the board, check my profile for my email address. I’m not an expert, but I have done demystification training about sexual orientation and gender identity for young people. (…since when did I start talking about “young people?” I’m 23, goddammit…)
So yeah. If you want to, feel free. (Also, what Punha said, regarding your most recent post.)
Im not a member, so I cant check your profile. Us poor students cant afford things like memberships 
I eat ramen daily, and cereal if im really rich 
matt_mclNOSPAMPLIS(at)hotmail.com
(delete the NOSPAMPLIS and replace (at) with @).
Me too, but the thing is that high schoolers, the younger ones, were born in the early 90s (2004-1990=14), and this year’s crop of college freshmen (those fresh from high school, that is) were born in 1985-1986, some probably in 1987. It isn’t that we’re old but that they’re young.
(I did list my email address here already, right? Eh, hell. sadpunk31 gmail com but without the 31 and with the typical punctuation)
Two chicks, at once 
I would imagine they would have to be bi to hook that up.
You also mention you dont look like what most gay/bi guys are supposed to look like. Which begs a question I always wanted to know, whats the deal with the ‘gay lisp’ thing? Is that part of hormonal therapy? Are there straight guys that have the same flamboyant attitude? Give me the straight dope
Hmmm, we all know what strong wrists is a sign of :rolleyes:
And yes, I will never read a mans health magazine ever again that doesn’t have naken women in it… :smack:
I am also fearing Im setting off some gaydars here. I should make it very clear that my interest is strongly and only in the opposite sex, I just dont want to mislead anyone or be misunderstood. Im not comfortable with my sexuality yet damnit!!!
Ah yes. Austin Powers 3 immediately comes to mind. Fook Yoo and Fook Mi… (A’course, being bi does give me the advantage of being about to mix and match to assure a good variety of bodyparts:D)
You might find, by the way, that if you were with two bi girls they might just want to play alone (with each other but not you) some. Sexual activity isn’t a show for everyone, don’chano:)
'fraid I can’t give you a factual/scientific-research-based answer, as I don’t have one. I haven’t THE foggiest idea why some gay men have lisps. Haven’t the foggiest idea why some straight men do as well. There is, my experience has observed, a certain vocal lilt (not a lisp) exhibited by some gay men, but that isn’t something you’ll find me exuding, nor something that’ll come out the mouths of many of my gay friends. (By the way, it doesn’t beg a question, it raises a question.)
I don’t know much of anything about hormonal therapy, but my impression is that any individual undergoing hormonal therapy these days (ignoring the forced therapy Alan Turing underwent before he committed suicide) is probably not gay but transexual/gender. I would expect - and this is based on my limited knowledge of the human voice/respiratory system - that any change from hormones would be not in lispiness or whatnot but in depth or timbre or something of that nature.
Regarding straight guys who are exuberant, I would expect there are just as there are gay men who are about as flaming as gravel. I hope gobear won’t mind me mentioning him as one particular gay guy who, from what I have seen of him, is about as masculine in mannerism as your stereotypical straight guy. Then you have my friend John who sets brush on fire if he isn’t careful.
The larger question, though, of why gay men are often observed as being more effeminate than straight men - or, to be more precise and less helpful, why those we know to be gay are generally seen as being more effeminate than those we assume are straight, seems to me to be as much a false positive as anything. You see me walking around and, unless you know me already or you’re one of the two girls I met once who immediately thought I was gay, you likely will assume I’m straight. Were I walking around with my friend Bryan, you might assume based on that pairing that we were gay men and in a couple.
What you won’t know unless you ask (and we decide to impart this to you) is that I am bisexual and not sexually interested in Bryan and that he is a FtM transgender guy still transitioning and appears male.
So I think it’s a question of assuming folks are straight, some of whom are gay and don’t “look” it, to co-opt an offensive term.
Yup. Unfortunately I wasn’t very good at hitting a baseball.
Oh, hell, there are bound (heh!) to be pictures of women in those magazines. I have yet to see an ad for Soloflex/Boflex/etc. that doesn’t have women modeling it.
Oh, honey. (First of all, gaydar is about as pluralizable as radar.) I don’t think matt or I were thinking to ourselves “You know, this guy who is uncomfortable around our type is the sort I’d like to ask out.” I similarly doubt anyone thought that your desire to be informed meant this was other than an FYI-type thing. (Shit, am I talking down to you? You didn’t set off any gaydar, I assure you.)
Let me set you at ease. I understand you are straight and I’m not interested in attempting to hook up with you. (I prefer guys who are gay to begin with; it makes life much easier. 
)
Gay men display the same range of gendered behaviour that straight guys do. I just spent the evening having dinner with a straight guy who is very femme (much to my dismay, as I like femme boys a lot). And there are plenty of gay guys who are very, very butch, and plenty of gay guys who aren’t either particularly butch nor particularly femme.
There is an impression that gay guys might tend to be more femme than straight guys. In general that’s a stereotype. To the extent that it might contain a kernel of truth, that could be explained by the following:
-
if a guy isn’t femme, you don’t realize he’s gay; in other words, you only notice Jack, you don’t see Will.
-
Since gay people have to break through a number of social barriers regarding gender roles as part of coming out, if a gay man is naturally femme, he might have more of a tendency to accept this about himself and to be accepted by others in his community than a straight guy who is naturally femme but who never went through this process and who therefore represses that aspect of his personality. (Not that the gay community always accepts femme guys and butch women, however.)
I’m not sure what you mean by hormone therapy. Non-trans gay men don’t have any particular reason to take hormones (except of course if they happen to have some kind of medical condition that requires that type of treatment).
Oh my god, if that produced strong wrists, I’d have wrists like cast-iron pipe.
yeah, the hormone thing was wrong. And just to further clarify, I didnt think any of you would be silly enough to be interested in me, its just that I dont need a new toaster or a cell phone 
I just realized, but I totally hijacked this thread, and Im sorry… (i think I’ve also apologized enough for one thread)
So, back on topic,
CONGRATS SIX!!! I’m glad you came to terms with yourself and are accepted for what you really are, if I understand it or not!!!
My leg and abdominal strength are a little less than they were before, though because of my weight loss, I’m proportionately a bit stronger.
I’m much more aware of my senses. Part of it is physical. My skin is much more sensitive than it was, and I’m more aware of the differences in how the weights and textures of fabrics feel against my skin.
Let me make an aside for a moment. I was watching the Twilight Zone Marathon New Year’s Day. One episode featured an extraordinarily beautiful young woman. She was sitting in a booth in a side shot, wearing a knee-length dark wool skirt, spike-heeled pumps with what appeared to be 3 or 4 inch heels, a white blouse closed at the neck with a black tie. Her black hair was carefully swept back from her face, covering the tops of her ears. She wore pearl earrings.
A man spills something on his shirt, and she gets up and slowly walks across the cafe to clean it for him, walking with one foot directly in front of the other, presenting as she goes. She cleans the spot on his shirt, but her head is tilted back as she does it, giving us a full shot of her face, as she glances down at the spot, then back up at the mans face, moving her eyes but not her head; she’s clearly more interested in the man than the spot. Everything about how she moved and reacted to this man just screamed that she wanted to rip his clothes off and do the nasty with him right there on the bar.
It was more erotic than any dozen simulated sex scenes I saw at the movies last year. I was a little turned on.
Which brings me to the next difference. Testicles. Before I began hormone therapy and had my testicles removed, my description of that scene would have been something like this:
That girl was hot. I mean, she was totally hot.
I’d have felt a tingling in my testicles and my penis would have twitched.
Picture a man’s subconscious as a baseball game. In that moment, the penis is like a relief pitcher saying, “I’m ready for action, coach, give me a moment to warm up in the bullpen, then put me in”, and the testicles are like a couple of fans egging him on, telling him Coach is going to do it this time.
This is what happens when a straight man, particularly one in his late teens and early 20’s, interacts with an attractive woman. Your body is constantly telling you mate with her, mate with her, mate with her. This happens with women that you see on the street, in the mall, who walk by wearing a musky perfume, who can be heard clicking down the hall in heels, on tv, in paintings, on billboards, and for geeky comic book nerds, in comic books. The male body doesn’t differentiate or evaluate potential mates, or even on the basis of whether they’re actually real, it wants to mate with them all, so it gets prepared 20, 30, 50 times a day.
Back to the baseball analogy–the relief pitcher is sitting in the bullpen. Everytime there’s a new batter, the fans are telling him Coach is going use him this time, so he gets up and starts to prepare to go in and deliver the ball. When the coach doesn’t put him in, he sits back down, but the moment a new batter comes up, the fans are telling him this time Coach is really going to do it, and he believes them again, so he’s up again, ready to go in. This happens for every batter, every game, until the coach needs him, and he’s convinced, every time for a second that coach is going to be putting him in to face this batter.
This getting ready to mate reaction happens so often that it goes almost unnoticed. Almost unnoticed. But for the half second, or second or two that the body is preparing to mate, the brain diverts a bit of its resources from the senses–sight, sound, etc. to deal with the pleaurable possibility of being able to deposit some sperm in this potential mate. Men get so used to this that it happens on a subconscous level–most of the time it’s over before there’s even a realization that it’s happened.
But sometimes it’s a bit more intense. Sometimes the guy lingers over the sensation, does a double take, or watches the girl for a few more seconds.
The coach gets up and walks to the mound to talk to the pitcher. The fans are telling the reliever, let’s call him Johnson, Coach is ready for you now, and Johnson has his hopes up. The coach is talking to the starter, so this time Johnson doesn’t just think about getting warmed up, he actually steps onto the practice mound and tosses a few. Now at this point, the coach isn’t prepared to put Johnson in, but he’s thinking about the possibility that he might just need him in the near future, but the fans don’t care, they want to see Johnson in the game, so they keep egging him on. And Johnson always believes what the fans tell him.
For a man, this is just how the body works. Enjoy the sensation, then go back to whatever you were doing before. For me, it was a constant source of psychological discomfort. Not much, just like the physical sensation wasn’t much, but it was there, and it happened 20 or 30 times a day. It was like getting pricked with a needle over, and over, and over again. It never hurts very much, but the combination of that little bit of discomfort combined with the knowledge it was going to happen again, and soon, and there was nothing I could do to stop it was upsetting, sometimes to the point of depression.
Now that I’ve had those unruly fans escorted from the stadium permanently, things are much different. Johnson is still hanging out in the bullpen, and he’s ready to go in when he’s needed, but instead of getting up every time there’s a new batter, he’s sitting around reading People and waiting for Coach to call him on the bullpen phone. And he’s even content to let the other relievers, Chester, Skinny, Baxter, Tungsten, Fingers, Toby, and all the other pitchers have their shot first, and it’s ok with him if they take care of things entirely and he never has to put down his magazine.
Now when I catch a guy looking at me, or lingering a few seconds longer than may be necessary, I know what’s happening in a way that a natal woman never can, which makes me a bit more sensitive than I would otherwise be. This is usually either a neutral experience–I’ve learned to disregard it the way a guy does on his end–and when I do notice, it’s usually a bit flattering. But there are still times when it makes me uneasy, and I still learning to deal with that.
Store clerks, of all kinds, in all kinds of stores treat me differently. Female clerks are much more likely to engage me in small talk, complement some piece of clothing I’m wearing and ask where I got it. No straight man would ever do that with another man.
Male clerks often either ignore me entirely or reapproach me every couple of minutes to ask if I need help. Before, they’d usually approach me once, I’d say I’m ok, then I’d be left alone.
I get excluded from or minimilized in conversations about guy things, even when I’m the one who knows the most about the subject.
For example, I don’t know as much about comic books as Fenris or Askia or Candid Gamera, but I can guarantee that in my local comic shop I know more about comics than the huge majority of the guys in there.
On a recent visit, there was a middle-aged in there looking around. He asked the general group that consisted of several guys in their teens and early 20’s and me what the silver age was, because he’d heard his son talking about that and he was looking to get his son a nice, rare, silver age comic book for Christmas, and did we have any suggestions.
Invisible Girl (Me): The Silver Age started in 1956 . . .
Teenboy: Nah, it was 1961, with Fantastic Four #1.
Invisible Girl: Uh, no, the first Silver Age comic book is generally considered to be Showcase #4, which . . .
Middle-Aged Guy ignores me and continues to listen to Teenboy’s half-informed, but loudly stated, opinions.
Going on a roller coaster coaster is a profoundly different experience with female breasts.
That’s what I can think of now, and this is turning into another book, so I’ll stop there.
I realize that in general use, gender and sex tend to be used synonymously, but what I think you mean here is sex inequality. I’ve always had a female gender, but I do agree that my having been both sexes does give me a somewhat unorthodox view of certain issues related to sex roles.
Mrs. Six and I visited a gay bar once, thinking that, hey, we’re lesbian lovers, this is a place where we’ll be accepted and wont have to put up with unwanted advances from men.
When we revealed that I was transsexual, we were made to feel very unwelcome. I wasn’t a “real” lesbian, I was a sick, physically disfigured man, and she was just as sick as I was because she was with me.
Mrs. Six’s take was that they were just jealous because our being with each other meant that the two best looking women in the place were taken.
That’s not really an answer to your question, though, its it?
One of the other couples in our neighborhood actively avoids us–they’ll cross the street rather than walk past us on the sidewalk–and their teenage boys have on occasion yelled profanities at us when their parents aren’t around. We tried to talk to the parents, but they refused to acknowledge us.
Some of the neighbors know (it wouldn’t be hard to figure out), but others assume that we’re sisters, even though we don’t really look much alike.
Mrs. Six has been, on occasion, treated differently, at work since she “turned lesbian”. No actual harrassment, but a small number of the other women there are suddenly uncomfortable around her and tend to avoid her.
OK now, I just want you to know that I have been reading and posting in this thread with deep respect and that I have been learning a TON of stuff that would never have occured to me, and I thank you for so forthrightly sharing all that, Number Six.
But the baseball analogy (right up until the part where you said this caused you pain) had tears rolling down my face. “…the reliever, let’s call him Johnson”?? I’m not mocking you, but damn, that was funny.
Hey, as you’ve seen before, no harm in asking/clarifying. The number of people - and this includes educated-on-sexuality-matters - who think “Oh, he’s attracted to men, so he’ll be sure to ask me out” is really quite staggering. It’s really no different at all from guys who say “Oh, she’s straight, I bet she wants me.” It’s ego-inflating.
The problem becomes when one thinks “Oh, I am not a woman, so I bet gay men would do anything up to and including rape just so they could get at me.” I have encountered this viewpoint (and less savory incarnations) before, as I am sure others have as well. There are a few hypotheses - I don’t know enough about them to justifiably call them theories - on why this happens. Some of them are less sympathetic than others. If you like I’m sure those of us who have heard about this/discussed it before would be happy to do so again.
Oh, hell, threads get hijacked far worse than this one. There’s a thread in the pit right now that went:
creationism museum/theme park → fundies/creationists → Biblical justification for stuff → Genesis 1 and 2 and possible contradictions … and then took some severe tangents involving a detailed discussion of evolution, some about intelligent design and one person who provided us with the fact that T.Rex’s arms were quite strong, albeit short. Hijacks are QUITE common here, and I don’t see anyone complaining in this thread:)
That is impossibly vile. To me, it really smarts to hear it coming from fellow queers, who you’d at least hope would have something resembling a clue.
Me too, so to speak. Dealing with discrimination etc. is one thing with people who aren’t in the community, but facing discrimination from within is strikingly depressing, among other things (if your own folks won’t support you, who will?). And often (I’m hesitant to say always, but really…) the guilty party plainly ought to know better.
A near mint Detective Comics #27.
NotNow: Hijack away. I’m not so self-centered that I need every post here to be about me. Your questions and comments are welcome as long as they stay polite, and I need something to do with Mrs. Six working a double shift and the second snow day school closing in a row.
Everyone: I realize nobody in this thread has done this, and I’m not saying anyone would, but a bit a friendly advice. If you see two Asian women together, and you’re tempted to make an Austin Powers joke, don’t. They’ve heard it a dozen times before, and it wasn’t funny the first time. It’s a joke that doesn’t work outside of the context of the movie.
As to htat gey bar: That’s just horrible! How can people who bitch and complain all the time about being disciminated against then turn around and treat other people horribly?
So, okay. Who do you think gets discriminated against more: men or women?
Bleh! “that gay bar”
…even if their names happen to be, upon talking to them, Fook Yoo and Fook Mi?
Just, er, asking. Cuz, um … nothing, really. All hypothetical, of course. I’ve never propositioned coincidentally-named twins whom I’d just met.
[sub]Would it make me a bad person? I’ll go sit in the corner now…[/sub]