when the shoe is on the other foot...

(note: started this as a draft a while back. Am going back through trying to clean out some old junk which got started and never finished so I can harass Mason and make him finish a couple of things which he has started and never finished. Written 1/31/06; published 9/25/07.)

Just came across this on craigslist missed connections:
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Stop Looking At Me!!! I'm NOT Gay!!! - m4m - 30
Reply to: pers-128881633@craigslist.org

Date: 2006-01-27, 2:19AM EST

Listen, I have nothing against gay guys, but you have a way of making a guy feel uncomfortable. I know I'm hot, but I like pussy. If you have a cock, you have no shot. Stop the cruising. Stop the ogling...unless you're looking for a beat down... What are you people trying to take over the fucking world??? Not every amazing looking guy is gay. Now you made me angry. Geez!
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I'll skip over the most glaringly obvious problem with this post (that being that it is a rant not a missed connection and everone hates idiots who post things in the wrong catogories), and jump straight to the sexist assumptions and a few hints for straight men who are uncomfortable with the attention.

1) just because someone is looking at you on the train doesn't mean that they want to jump your bones.

2) just because a guy is gay and looking at you doesn't mean he wants to have sex with you. Dude, you are in New York City, and I don't care how pretty you are, you aren't the only pretty person and you can't go ten minutes without running into another gay man. This isn't a city of slim pickings. If you aren't giving off some serious signals, no gay man on the subway thinks you are going to have sex with him or gives one good goddamn either way.

3) having established that your sacred man-cherry is not in danger from the leering homo masses, maybe you should chill out about people looking at you. Maybe it is because you are attactive; take it as a completment. Men fucking stare at women like they are slabs of meat all the time and act like a woman is hysterical if they say anything about it, but look at a straight man's ass and he will freak out like you were trying to eat his soul. Yeah, staring can be taken too far either way, but stop being a whiney idiot and suck it up over the casual glances. Grow a thicker skin nancy boy.

4) threats to kick the ass of a gay man that stares at you may be fun to type but try it in real life. No, don't. Insecure bullies pick out the weakest folks to pick on and target them when there aren't other folks around to defend them so I will make no "bring it on" commentary based on the fact that more than a few of us would punch you back and that much as I can get sick of gym-bunny gay boys, they certainly shift the likelihood of the queer being smeared in a fag-bash scenario.

Actually my favorite gay bash story is of my friend R walking down King Street in Charleston, SC when some punk makes a comment along the lines of "Hey queer boy, are you gay? I'm going to kick your ass!" At which point a very large, muscle-bound man turns around and to says to the asshole, "I'm gay, and I'm going to kick YOUR ass." At which point the jerk turns and runs and R thanks the fellow and continues on his way.

The original point of this wasn't to comment on who could kick who's ass but rather on the way that straight mean often objectify women and are blind to how it feels to be on the recieving end of such things. I'm not the type to treat women as delicate flowers who men have to be fawning and protective of, but I am also keenly aware of how differently men in general treat women versus how they treat other men.