I have been entertained lately by a woman who keeps showing up in my Reels feed ranting about dating, men, and whatever else has pissed her off that day. I don’t always agree with her most of the time, but that has sort of been the entertainment of it. Then she posted something that made me go, oh, never mind. You’re wildly off-base.
She shared a voice message a man sent her on a dating app. He was soft spoken. That was it. He did not say anything weird, nothing in the message suggested anything about his sexuality, he just had a softer voice. She responded by asking him if he was gay. He said no and asked why she would ask him that.
She then proceeded to go into this whole tirade about fathers needing to accept their sons if they come “prancing” up to them saying they like Barbies more than GI Joes, because otherwise they grow up closeted and turn into “raging DL” men who marry women, have children, and then sneak around with men on the side. She said she can spot a DL man from a mile away and that she hoped this guy “figures out who he is” before he ends up with a wife and kids.
Her caption was, “DL men harm women.”
Now, I see the point she thinks she is making. If someone is gay and grows up in an environment where they are ashamed of it or afraid to come out, there can be consequences later. People do enter marriages hiding parts of themselves and people do get hurt by that. Deception and betrayal are some of the top contenders to navigate in a romantic relationship because of how deep the harm.
But what did any of that have to do with this guy?
She heard his voice and decided he was gay. When he said he was not, that apparently just meant he is closeted. Then because he was now closeted in her mind, he became a future man who might marry a woman have a family and cause immense harm to them. She basically wrote out this man’s entire future based on the sound of his voice.
The Barbie example is the same thing. Yes, it would be great if all parents accept their gay children. They should also accept the son who likes Barbies and grows up straight, because liking Barbies does not actually tell you who a child is going to be attracted to later. A boy can be feminine and straight walking around their high school in a crop top and boa. A boy can be masculine and gay. A man can have a soft voice and be straight. A gay man can sound like he spends his weekends chopping wood and rebuilding engines.
That is kind of the problem.
You cannot say children should be free to be themselves and then immediately start assigning sexuality to people based on whether they fit your idea of masculinity. If the father in her example looked at his son playing with Barbies and said, “Well, clearly you’re gay,” that is not exactly giving the kid room to figure himself out either. It is just a different kind of assumption.
And the “I can spot a DL man from a mile away” thing is where I really lost her. Based on what? If you do not know the man, his relationships, his sexual history, or literally anything about his private life, then what exactly are you spotting? His voice? His mannerisms? His softness? Things already culturally stereotyped as gay?
That is not insight, that’s confidence in your stereotypes. Albeit most likely conditioned via the patriarchy, but nonetheless, nothing a little critical thinking and education can’t fix.
And once she decided he was closeted, there was really nothing he could say. If he said yes, he is gay, then she was right. If he says no, he is straight, then he is hiding it and she is still right. Very convenient system.
The caption makes it uglier to me because now she is not only deciding a stranger is secretly gay, she is linking that imagined identity to harm. “DL men harm women.” Okay, but what’s the evidence that this man will do so in that way? He had not deceived anyone that she knew of. He had a voice she apparently did not think sounded straight enough.
That is a hell of a leap.
The harm in those situations is the deception and betrayal. It is not being gay. It is not being feminine. It is not liking Barbies. It is not sounding soft-spoken.
I think what irritated me most is that she probably thought she was saying something progressive about accepting gay kids and protecting women. But if your version of acceptance is deciding who is gay, then I think you missed a rather large part of the assignment.
No comments yet