curled in a ball listening to mia doi todd wishing the stomach pains would go somewhere else already~~

Prose; pop!: Gay men and the way we talk about and to women, revisited.

gaysagainstgaga:

judyxberman:

ohrohin:

So I wrote this the other week and it seemed prescient. I was at a cocktail party recently with one of my friends and we were, you know, yukking it up with party guests, washing down pizza with champagne, and just having a grand old time. Then suddenly, a gay man passed by my friend and decided to pet her butt in the process. She was mortified; this is someone neither she nor I had any backstory with. There is no context for this to occur, really.

I don’t like seeing people I know in a state of distress at parties I bring them along to. Or really, in general. Parties are not for distress. So when she excused herself to use the bathroom, I asked him if he would be able to apologize to her. He was happy to comply.

I mean, I thought so.

But then fifteen minutes later, he turned it into an episode. What he did was permissible because (a) he was a gay man; (b) he was in theatre; (c) it was a “love tap.” I calmly explained that while his motives weren’t evil, it was still a breach of physical space—gay or not. But he wasn’t hearing it. Worse, yet, when I excused myself to go to the bathroom, he took the opportunity to have a discussion with my friend to convince her that I bullied him into the apology. My friend has let it go since; I have let it go; and perhaps this is going to be the watershed moment for this guy to reconsider the way in which he approaches a population that he has romantic interest in.

It was kind of an eye-opening experience for me, to stand there as a man who likes men listening to another man who likes men rationalize away why he would choose to sexually harrass a woman he doesn’t know. I mean a subset of men once championed as being urbane and nuanced are developing neanderthalic habits of their own.

I think for me, the more mortifying thing is that there are women who see that kind of gesture as cute or permissible; who are telling him, “Honey, that’s funny!” But maybe it’s all about boundaries and it takes trial and error to really become aware of those boundaries.

I don’t know that the women are MORE mortifying, but the fact that gay men have been given the message that their expressions of sexuality are cute and funny — to the extent that some gay men don’t even understand why a woman wouldn’t want to be groped by a “non-threatening” stranger — has repercussions for everyone. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t touch someone if you don’t know them well enough to understand their boundaries. 

YES.