Val

My experience is that it is getting harder to tell who is gay and who is straight anymore. I've seen the hippest model type good looks of a girl smooching on their girlfriends and I've seen straight men who look and act absolutely gay. I don't think it's accurate anymore to suggest that all gays are effeminate prisses and all lesbians are butch. Take you for example. There are plenty more like you out there, both men and womyn. Just like the straight community the LGBTQ community is made up of people from all different walks of life. Class, race, gender, age, religion, disability and sex varies in our community just as in the straight world. I call it the human community. We are all the same and yet different in so many ways. I've seen the butchest looking women, like you describe, whom I was sure were gay end up being married with kids. It has made me rethink my notions of the typical LGBTQ stereotype. I also know some very kind, smart and personable gays and lesbians who would fit the stereotype. I would gently suggest to try not to judge people based on their looks alone but rather on their character. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Sean

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Justin

Do not fret. We are not here to judge you harshly. All readers are cordially invited to submit whatever question is on their minds. We are not in the business of serving as internet “word police” or “thought police”. Our readers are unburdened by the onus of having to restrict their questions to ones that comport with so-called political correctness.

Your question makes it clear that you have worried about making some sort of politically incorrect gaffe that will illicit the condemnation of our site's readers by expressing an opinion that could be deemed an unwarranted stereotype of the gay people in your town, but nothing you have written rises to the level of an unwarranted stereotype. I do not know the name or location of your town, but you have stated that your town is small enough for you to be familiar with all of its gay residents and their individual personality traits. Such a scenario seems unlikely to me, but I do think it is possible. I just read online that 32 percent of the people living in the region in the United States known as “the South” are morbidly obese. If 32 percent of the people living in the vast South can be morbidly obese, then it is, indeed, quite possible that all the gay men in your small town are effeminate and all the lesbians in your town are...not exactly effeminate, shall we say? I am willing to keep an open mind and consider what you have told me about the gay people of your town as a well-documented, sociological phenomenon just as the report that I read online about the rate of morbid obesity amongst inhabitants of the South was well-documented evidence of a growing, modern-day, sociological phenomenon. Factual reporting of a well-documented, sociological phenomenon does not deserve the opprobrium attached to an unwarranted stereotype just because it informs us of matters that some might view as unflattering.

A gay bible does not exist. Nowhere is it written that you must like every one of your fellow gay people. Straight people do not like every other straight person in the world, and it is unreasonable to expect that gay people should like every other gay person in the world. You have no reason to feel guilty about not being drawn to people who display a particular personality trait you find unappealing. Hating, ridiculing, or discriminating against someone for who they are makes no sense, of course; but you certainly are free to discern for yourself the qualities in people that draw you to them or leave you less than desirous of their company. I know straight, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who are not drawn to people who simply exhibit such lightly offensive personality traits as a casual sense of time, a lack of a sense of humor, a foul mouth, a or cigarette addiction. They would never mistreat someone who displays these particular personality traits; they just opt not to seek out their companionship. “Hate” is a very strong word; it rarely applies in life. I strive not to hate people, and I don't believe that you hate the effeminate gay men or the butch lesbians in your town. You only hate the time spent with them.

One day when you are ready, you will move from your current town; and you will find that the world beyond your small town is chalk full of all kinds of gay people. A full spectrum, or rainbow, of gay personalities really does exist. Some of the gay men you'll meet beyond your town's city limits will be effeminate; some of them will be traditionally masculine. Some of the lesbians you will meet will be butch; some of them will be traditionally feminine. I know that you'll be kind to all of them. I hope you'll give all of them a chance to be your friend. You, however, are not a bad homosexual for feeling more drawn to certain people than others, be they gay or straight, based on the personality traits you find appealing in others. You are like every one of your gay brothers and sisters on that front.

I will leave you with pearls of wisdom sung so beautifully by the inimitable Mama Cass, who beat the odds and achieved sex symbol status as a 300 pound woman and made an indelible mark on the glorious pop culture of the 1960's: “You gotta go where you wanna go / Do what you wanna do / With W-H-O-E-V-E-R you wanna do it with…”. With whoever! Got that?

Fair winds and following seas.