Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Stereotypes


“Wow, you really keep the place neat,” commented my friend while visiting my condo. “And you have a way of arranging everything so it fits and looks nice.”

“Well, you know us gay guys,” I joked. “We’re hell on wheels when it comes to interior decorating.”

My friend lives on the edge of homophobia, and consistently jokes about queer guys. He exploits stereotypes about gay people, typical fodder for homophobes, and it throws him for a loop when a friend comes out and explodes the stereotype. I came out to him because we’re good enough friends I figured he could take the truth.

He asked why I hadn’t told him before, and I explained I thought he was too homophobic to understand. “Aw, I just kid about that,” he responded. I tried to explain how jokes about gay guys can be injurious to those stuck in the closet and afraid to come out. Making jokes using stereotypes is discrimination.

No question: some gay men exhibit stereotypical gay behavior; there is ample exposition. Wikipedia explains that the “heterocentric” mainstream stereotypes gay men as effeminate, speaking “with a lisp and/or a female-like tone and lilt.”

Alan Taylor provides more scholarly data in Homosexuality and Social Sex Roles (Haworth Press, Inc., 1983). He reports 72% of sample respondents stereotype homosexuals as sexually abnormal, 52% consider us perverted, 42% find us mentally ill and 29% consider us effeminate. Smaller percentages feel that we are lonely, insecure, immoral, repulsive, frustrated, weak-minded, lacking self-control, over-sexed, dangerous and sinful. And that pretty well wraps up male homosexual stereotypes.

A stereotype is an oversimplified, standardized and generalized perception or image of a person or group. Stereotypes ignore individual differences and are often simply not true. They tend to lump people into pigeonholes and categories that are not appropriate. Stereotypes reinforce prejudice.

Many gay men don’t fit stereotypes and sometimes wish the more flamboyant among us didn’t reinforce gay stereotypes in the heterocentric mainstream. Gay performer Adam Lambert, for example, earned the ire of one friend of mine who “absolutely hates” Lambert because he is so gay-in-your-face. Conversely, others feel Lambert serves the gay community by habituating the public to visible gay men in their midst.

For my part, I don’t feel like I fit gay stereotypes. That is probably the result of having been in the bisexual closet for so many years. When I came out of the closet I didn’t suddenly start lisping, acting swishy or hitting on my straight friends.

I must admit though, that after hanging out with a bunch of gay men for a couple of days, I noticed a change in my behavior. In the company of gay men, I became more openly gay, allowing myself to respond more candidly to other men. I flirted and enjoyed touching and caressing. I let myself feel more homosexual and loved it.

The wake-up call came when I transited back into mainstream society. I spontaneously hugged a friend I met on the street—he was gobsmacked—and flirted with a couple of boys in the grocery store checkout line. Katie, bar the door!