Darkside Rainbow

Some time ago, I said that I didn’t quite understand the outrage in Tuscany over an anti-discrimination ad featuring a photo of a newborn baby. I thought the ad was clever, to the point, and extremely effective. I didn’t once stop to think that using the knee-jerk human reaction to anything involving children in such a way constituted some rather underhanded and manipulative tactics, right from our side of the gay vs. anti-gay war. I thought it was all right, because it got the point that I wanted to make across. I didn’t realize that I was setting a double standard.

I realized when I read an article about New Jersey anti-gay campaigners who’ve launched a series of radio ads using the voices of children to denounce gay marriage.

The ads begin with an announcer saying “If we change the definition of marriage..” but is interrupted by a child.

“Grandma, my teacher said if grandpa was a girl that’s ok, you can still be married,’” the voice says.

The announcer then returns to say: “Our kids will be taught a new way of thinking: ‘God creating Adam and Eve is so old-fashioned.’”

“Thinking the unthinkable: ‘If my dad married a man, who would be my mom?’”

I started frothing. “This is wrong,” I snarled to myself. “It’s dirty, it’s underhanded, it would take a bunch of sleazy rats to use children to prey on people’s reactions just to spread their propaganda–”

And that’s when it hit me.

I was being a damned hypocrite.

I was being just like every other narrow-minded, hot-headed political mudslinger who flings words like “liberal” and “conservative” around as insults, points fingers, and accuses the other side of every atrocity known to man. I was condemning them for tactics that people on my side of the argument used, and following the very same mindset: it’s reprehensibly wrong if they do it, but it’s permissible if we do it because we’re right, damn it. It doesn’t matter which side you define as “us” or “them”. In the end they aren’t so different.

In the end, I became what I loathe most. I lost my rationality, my objectivity, my sense of fairness. I succumbed to bias.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been that disgusted with myself.

No, it isn’t all right to use manipulative tactics like that to spread your propaganda - and no matter what side you stand on, to someone your beliefs will be considered propaganda. It’s not right for us, it’s not right for them, it’s not right for you, and it’s not right for me. If I’m going to condemn conservatives for using such methods, then I have to condemn anyone else who does as well, even if I agree with their message.

You can’t call it “fighting the good fight” when you fight dirty. Some may say that you do what you must to win; I can’t say that I agree. Just because one side fights dirty doesn’t mean that you must sink to those levels to win. Don’t set a bad example, and don’t follow one, either; rise above, and set the standard for your opposition to adhere to. Both sides would benefit if we fought fair, fought cleanly, and met each other face to hard, ugly face. That includes facing our own hypocrisies, and recognizing our own double standards. It means understanding that we often loathe things in others that reflect what we hate most about ourselves. It means respecting the opposition…and making ourselves worthy of their respect, in return.

Only then will these battles of human rights come to the table of negotiation, and be settled fairly with no further blood shed.

new jersey, gay marriage, radio ads, national organization for marriage

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…nnngghhh. [insert entirely graceless faceplant into a pillow here] It’s morning already? Sweet honkin’ Jeebus, why is it morning already? Here; read this while I go make some mother-snortin’ coffee.

US Set to Deport Gay Iranian - ZNet/ZMag

President George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but tragically they may find common ground about the disposability of Hassan Parhizkar’s life.

Since November 7, a mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.

A deportation order to send him back to Iran has been issued, and any day he could be put on a plane back to Tehran, where he was born.

“I am very afraid, and so very frustrated,” Hassan Parhizkar told me in a truncated, collect telephone call from jail.

“My asylum request has never been before an immigration judge. I just don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do…” he added in a voice choked with tears.

“I work hard, I pay my taxes, and I live a quiet life without bothering anybody,” Parhizkar told this reporter.

Done reading? Good; I’m done brewing (and even marginally awake now).

The article goes on to tell such a deliberate tearjerker of a story that I had to stop and Google the validity of the source (and I still have my doubts; why isn’t this being covered anywhere else?). Hassan has been preyed upon by a man falsely representing himself as an attorney, arrested by the morality police in his own country for having a relationship with another man (but homosexuals don’t exist in Iran, do they, Mr. President?) and now, after struggling to make a life for himself as a business owner, faces deportation to a country that will likely make sure that he doesn’t bring that gay census count from 0 to 1. No doubt adding one more to the body count is seen as less heinous than allowing a known homosexual to make a liar of Iran’s president.

I can only hope that he won’t be deported once he’s had a fair hearing. The U.S. has standards set in place for situations such as this, in which if the illegal immigrant faces undue punishment, torture, the death penalty, etc. then the U.S. will grant them asylum. It’s a public relations nightmare, after all, for a country’s immigration services to say “You’ve been living here illegally? Nope, back home to the noose you go, we’ll send flowers for your grave.” No, I’m not going to go off on a Bush-bashing tirade assuming that of course he’d want to send the man back to Iran to die because he’s evil, homophobic, uneducated, thick-headed, the usual rhetoric. Bush probably doesn’t even know what the man’s name is yet, but if it gets to the point where the issue’s brought to his direct attention then he’ll pretty much have no choice about granting asylum lest he stir up one hot mess. Even if you trust Bush to be stupid, trust his advisors not to be that idiotic. So honestly, especially if this picks up more media coverage, I’m not too worried about Hassan Parhizkar. I do feel sorry for him, though.

If you want to do something about his situation, there’s a petition going around to grant him asylum. This may be my sleep-deprived, I-am-a-b*tch-in-the-mornings state talking, but it’s fairly useless beyond making people feel better about themselves. Stick your name on the petition, pat yourselves on the back. The power of petition just isn’t as strong as it used to be, especially at the federal level. But hey, go sign it anyway. Better to do one tiny, useless thing than to do absolutely nothing at all.

My cranky butt is out of here.

Hassan Parhizkar, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran, homophobia, anti-gay sentiment, illegal immigration, asylum, deportation

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Since Doug over at Current Events Watch snitched the topic I’d intended to froth at the mouth over today (we apparently rank below animals, so I suppose there’s nothing wrong with acting like a rabid dog, now is there?), I thought perhaps we here at DR might wind down with a little humor.

Ladies and Gents, I’m going to clue you in to the most beautiful thing about men: the second that you begin to agonize and worry over whether you should or should not be flirting/dallying/doing whatever with us, we will choose that opportune moment to say just the right thing to ensure that you’ll never want to again. Gay, straight, young, old, we are a self-resolving problem. It’s convenient, it’s efficient, and as prevalent as it is, it’s a miracle that any of us manage to maintain viable social interaction. Give us enough verbal rope, and we will eventually hang ourselves.

The simultaneously best and worst example of this?

The dreaded pickup line.

To paraphrase Alex Hitchins, it takes a great deal of courage for a man to spot an attractive member of his preferred gender and take on the burden of approaching them, knowing that the first words that come out of his mouth with most likely determine whether or not this person will smile at him or throw their drink in his face. With that in mind, you’d think we’d take better care with the things we say. You’d think we’d try our best to be straightforward and engaging, rather than making sad attempts to be clever and witty even though we know we’ll fumble and fail at every turn.

We hardly ever learn, though. I’ve been victim to a number of cringe-worthy pickup lines myself, from the Harry Potter guy and his magic wand to the admittedly attractive woman (yes, women do it sometimes, too, just not as often - don’t think you’re off the hook, ladies) who approached me in the line at the movie theatre and, without so much as a hello, told me to meet her by the side of the building by the blue Camaro and she’d take me back to her place and we could…well. You get the picture. She walked off before I could say a word, leaving me gaping. I can’t help but wonder if she actually waited there, and if so, for how long.

You can’t even escape it online. I still have my membership on OutinHouston.com, created during the experiment that led to The Steve Incident, and now and then I check my e-mail on the site. Just yesterday I ran across this lovely gem, dated 11.16.07:

“ha baby wanted to know would you like to hook up an mess around alittle an if so when because I would like to taste that juice **** 4 its milk but i dont swallow but like to taste it all so let me know baby mike..”

Censoring asterisks mine, typos his. Not…that censoring really does much to lower the ESRB rating of that little gem, nor would proper grammar and punctuation make it any more appealing.

But Mike, you see, is a persistent one. Since I never answered his first e-mail, yesterday he sent me another, this time with a picture attached:

“ha guy lov the photo of you an wanted to know would you like to hook up an mess around at my place if thats ok with you are i can cum to you as well baby me lives on the southwest 59/hillcroft an love to suck on a sweet **** today if thats ok with you baby mmm ..mike”

Oh, Mike. You and your homonyms! So witty. I truly admire your dogged determination. It takes quite a bit of courage to view a total stranger’s profile online, read their commentary, and gather the balls it takes to honestly think that anyone would be impressed by that approach, let alone by getting it twice. Mike, you and I need to have a little talk about subtlety. Really. And while we’re at it, here, let me lend you my little pocket edition of Webster’s handbook of grammar and style…

Can’t fault the man for knowing what he wants, though.

I have to say that my most memorable experience with a bad pick-up, though, happened in a gay bar where another ex, Arturo, used to bartend. We were dating at the time, naturally, and I dropped by the bar just to see Arturo and say hi to the owner, as he was an old friend as well. It was a busy night, so I found a spot on the bar and stayed out of the way, amusing myself by watching the typical drunken non-complexity of the night life. I wasn’t particularly projecting an air of availability, but I suppose this fellow was just drunk enough to give it a shot. He was actually rather handsome; dark hair, eyes in a particular color that I have a weakness for, and just a trace of a sexy English accent. I might have entertained the idea of flirting with him to pass the time if he hadn’t stumbled over, grinned at me with a touch of inebriated charm, and said,

“Is that a cucumber in yer pocket, luv, or are ye jes’ ‘appy to see me?”

Cue the expected raised eyebrow and flat look. “Neither.”

He just grinned wider, though, and at this point I could tell he was building up to something. “Got a nice big cucumber in me pocket for ya.” He patted his hip, and against my better judgment I glanced down. Sure enough there was a long, large, clearly-outlined bulge in his rather tight pants. At that point my brain broke; I didn’t even know how to process that, but he wasn’t done yet. He snickered and said, “No, really, it’s a cucumber.”

He wasn’t lying. He stuffed a hand into his pocket, rooted around a little, and dragged out a genuine lean and green cucumber, already starting to wilt from being shoved in there for so long. He waved it under my nose, nearly giggling.

I cracked up laughing.

It turned out his name was Rick, he actually wasn’t so bad, and yet I still made him promise to never use that line on anyone again. He gets points for ingeniousness, but dear gods…how drunk do you have to be to think that stuffing a cucumber down your pants is a good idea?

I could probably deluge you with stories both hilarious and horrifying all day, but I think you get the idea. I’m sure you’ve all got plenty of stories of your own. Bad pick-up lines, funny come-ons that ended up as epic failures…we’ve all experienced them. I suppose it’s universal, and honestly with such a legacy I’m surprised that gay men and straight men don’t get along better. We all suffer from the same foot-in-mouth syndrome, after all.

We’re just lucky that there are a few people out there who find that struggling awkwardness cute.

relationships, romance, dating, bad pick-up lines, flirting, horror stories

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I’ve officially been single for over a month now. It’s been slow, adjusting to thinking of The Ex as just a friend, adjusting to not having him in my life anymore, figuring out what to do with the time that used to be ours. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not, but my life has settled comfortably and I’ve continued walking on; yet in that time, I’ve noticed something that I’ve rarely had occasion to before.

Since I was eighteen I’ve been in and out of relationships, never single for more than a few weeks. I’ve always had a boyfriend, most often someone who worked out for anywhere from six to sixteen months before we went our separate ways - sometimes as friends, sometimes as bitter enemies, sometimes as if we’d never met. There was always a queue of anywhere from one to seven men waiting to fill the spot. I was never without a date, no matter where I went.

Only now, I am. Some of the “shelf boys” are still there, hoping I’ll pick one of them next and yet knowing I won’t because I hate the odds of losing a friend should he become an ex-boyfriend. Some have moved on to other happy relationships. And here I am, drifting in limbo, smiling and shaking my head when I’m asked out on a date, turning down offers for one-night stands because I’m just not into that, enjoying a little flirtation here and there before curtailing it before it goes beyond a certain point. I have no problem going out to a film or dinner alone, or with a few friends. Why?

Because I’m happy being single.

And in the past month, I’ve noticed that no one really believes that.

There’s a certain stigma associated with maintaining a doggedly single state, especially in the gay community - and showing up somewhere without a date is only the first mark of your stigmata. When all your friends have dates, you’re the odd man out. They restrain public affection in front of you because they don’t want to make you feel left out, uncomfortable, or lonely. When talking about couples’ activities they’ll often break off in the middle, give you apologetic looks, and change the subject. They ask if you’re all right, and don’t believe when you smile and say it’s not necessary, you’re fine. If they find out that you and the ex had a chat, just keeping up with each other and remaining friends, they worry that you’ve left the encounter traumatized and achingly aware of your single state.

If you say you’re happy being single, you must be in denial. Are you bitter now? Are you too hurt to deal with another relationship? Or is there something wrong with you, and you’re afraid it’ll ruin the deal if you try with another man? Maybe you’re damaged goods. Maybe there’s some dirty secret. Maybe you don’t even realize there’s something wrong with you that kills relationships, and you’re to be pitied and avoided. Maybe it’s not that you choose to be single, but that you just can’t snag another man. It all contributes to this palpable air of pity when you’re around your predominantly non-single friends; they treat you as if you’re made of fine china and may snap at any moment.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it. It’s just the first time I’ve experienced it first-hand. I’ve seen friends receive the same pitying treatment, that same careful sidestepping and, in some cases, eventual ostracizing. The couples would stop asking them to go places because they were the awkward extra and, even though the discomfort was all in their heads, made people uncomfortable. The singles were so desperate to avoid being left out of the loop that they’d hook up as quickly as they could and dive right back into the social circles, leaving the other unlucky singles behind. If you remain single for too long, the unspoken message is clear: We think there’s something wrong with you, and we pity you. Sometimes it’s not even unspoken. Sometimes the sardonic remarks are all-too-loudly heard, condescending and snide.

For some reason, we’ve developed this idea that having a boyfriend, a mate, is a sign of social status and one of the primary goals of one’s existence. It’s not something limited to the gay subculture; we’re just a bit cattier about it, but it’s prevalent through most of society. Without a mate you aren’t complete; without a mate you haven’t proven that you’re somehow worthwhile because someone else thinks you’re worth dating, loving, marrying, or just having wild, hot, indiscriminate sex with. You need a boyfriend or girlfriend to be a real man or woman. You need someone else at your side to be considered a viable member of society, and you can’t possibly be happy without.

And if you think otherwise, there’s obviously something wrong with you. You’re marked. You’re stigmatized. You are somehow unclean, and black-marked in your social circles.

The beauty of this is that once you reach the stage where you’re comfortable being single, you no longer care.

I admit, for the longest time I bought into the social stereotype. I needed to have a boyfriend, or people would think I was pathetic and undateable. I needed someone to give me love and attention before I could feel good about myself. I needed someone to want me before I felt attractive. I worried about what my friends thought if the man of the hour wasn’t demonstrative, affectionate, whatever. I was afraid that I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I was alone.

Then I made the hardest decision I’ve made in many years. I voluntarily stepped away from the man I’ve loved for the past four years, from the man with whom two attempts at a relationship just didn’t work. I walked away for my own good, and for his.

And I realized that alone, I’ll be just fine. Alone, I’m still the same talented writer that I was when I was dating someone. I’m still that cynical a**hole that makes people laugh even while they roll their eyes. I’m still that guy who can turn a head now and then, and who enjoys the occasion to make someone blush. I’m still that dork who can turn from brazen and confident to geeky and shy in a matter of seconds. I was all of those things before I was dating someone, and I will continue to be those things now that I’m single again and walking tall.

Accepting that has started to show in my demeanor. I’m no longer embarrassed by others’ attitudes towards “the single guy”; I no longer allow myself to be stigmatized. I respond with amusement, with confidence, and now when I turn down a date or a proposition people don’t look at me as if wondering what’s wrong me. They look at me with curiosity, and wonder just what it is I know that they don’t, that makes me able to smile and say “no, thank you” to men that others would kill to say “yes, god yes” to.

What I know is this, and it’s been a long time in coming: I don’t need a relationship to validate myself.

And no matter what the prevalent mindset of society says…neither do you.

being single, romance, gay relationships, single stigma, dating, gay social circles

Before I forget:

1,000-Comments Contest Winner, New Contest

If you haven’t read the comments to today’s comic, Kujo Hikaru won the 1,000-comments contest. Technically I was number 1,000; since I don’t count, Hikaru won with comment #1,001. He’ll be getting a 1GB USB flash drive and a cameo spot in one of the upcoming No Style comics. (He also needs to e-mail me to tell me where to send the flash drive and at least give me a vague idea of how he wants to be drawn.)

The next goal will be 1500 comments. I don’t know what the prize will be yet; we’ll see what kind of nifty little thing I can afford to buy. Maybe an MP3 player or something like that.

Tentative Date for the First DR Radio Live/Interactive Broadcast

Looking at the calendar, right now I’m tentatively scheduling the first live talk radio broadcast for Sunday, December 16th, from 5:00-6:00p CST. I’d wanted to do it on a weeknight, but on weeknights I’m generally not available until after 8:00p and I think that may be more inconvenient for most than an earlier Sunday.

That gives me a little over two weeks to get over my stage fright.

Fun.

I still have no idea what I’ll ramble about. I was half-tempted to do a comparison between gay romance novels/erotica written by men vs. those written by women, as honestly 9/10 women are just better at it, but I don’t know how 451 Press would feel about me reading that aloud on their site.

That, and I couldn’t do it and keep a straight face.

We’ll see what I come up with. Like I said, I’d welcome any ideas from you guys. If you’re going to suffer through listening to it, you might as well have a hand in shaping the instrument used to torture you.

darkside rainbow streaming radio, darkside rainbow live webcast, no style, gay comic, webcomic, comments contest

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The fact that this happens more often than you might think is one of the primary reasons why, at the ripe age of 27, I’m already a card-carrying member of the Cantankerous Old Men Club^TM.

No, I’m not really that mean - though you can bet this and far worse things often run through my head when I find myself in a situation like this for the millionth time. I have given a few people very politely-worded anatomy lessons regarding the fact that women, on average, have breasts - while I tend to be distinctly lacking in that area. They generally decline lesson two on more in-depth anatomical differences. I do so wonder why.

It’s mostly my face that gets me in trouble; I’m not particularly feminine otherwise. The part that amuses me, though, is that people often treat me as if I chose to be born with the face of a particularly angry and murderous three-year-old Korean girl. [eyeroll] Yes, people, while I was just a wee zygote I decided, “Hey, I think I’ll develop into a poofy-lipped big-eyed boy-thing of outwardly indeterminate gender. That’ll be fun!” Of course, I might not get mistaken for female so often if I’d let Carlos have his wicked way with me and cut my hair, but I found out the hard way a few years ago that short hair doesn’t do anything for me. Short hair makes me look like an extremely butch lesbian.

No, I’m not kidding. Sihaya and Indikaze may remember that episode. Four feet of hair gone in a matter of minutes, leaving me staring in horror and wondering what the hell I’d just done.

So I will deal with being naturally androgynous, and with the amusement and annoyance it causes, and think my snarky thoughts to myself, and move on. And speaking of moving on, now that I’ve bored you with this oh-so-fascinating ramble…I’m out until tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, the art on this one stinks.

~Adri

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, androgyny

A while ago I asked if you believed the claim of Anthony Fortunato, one of the men accused of killing Michael Sandy, when he said that he, too, is gay. I didn’t believe him.

Apparently neither judge nor jury did, either.

Anthony Fortunato, Ilya Shurov, and John Fox have all been convicted of second-degree manslaughter in the murder of Sandy, with the specific definition of manslaughter as a hate crime, with sentences ranging from 17 to 21 years. The fourth, Gary Timmons, only received 4 years in exchage for his guilty plea and testimony.

The clever attempt by Fortunato and his lawyer could have turned the entire trial on end; as it is, the case forced people to reconsider what defines a hate crime, and whether or not one has to hate someone for it to be considered a hate crime. In the end it was decided that whether or not the defendants hated gay men was irrelevant; it was sufficient that they had targeted Sandy because of his sexuality, thus qualifying the attempted robbery and subsequent murder as a hate crime.

Personally, I think that was probably the best course to follow. You can’t conclusively prove an emotion; you can prove intent with more success, although even that’s tricky. In truth I’ve always been uneasy with the phrase “hate crime”; the language is strong, inflammatory, and inaccurate. Most crimes labeled as hate crimes are less crimes of hatred than of prejudice, which - while related - are still two different animals. If you’re defining a crime by whether or not there was hatred motivating the criminal act, then that can cover just about any crime of passion. That label can be slapped on just about anything, further muddying the waters when the alleged criminals are brought to trial.

What would I call it? I don’t know. “Hate crime” rolls off the tongue easily and it’s simple, at least. “Prejudice-motivated crime”, not so much. It doesn’t matter, really. A stone is still a stone, no matter what word you apply to it. Changing the name of the crimes won’t change that they happen every day, and will continue to happen unless people are made to understand that prejudice-based crimes will not be accepted in our society.

While the sentencing of his killers won’t bring Michael Sandy back to life, it will send the right message out to those who would enact violence on others out of prejudice.

The law will stand for the downtrodden, as it was meant to. And those crimes will not go unpunished.

michael j. sandy, hate crimes, hate crime legislation, murder, john fox, ilya shurov, anthony fortunato, gary timmons, justice jill konviser-levine, seth lieberman, gerald di chiara, homophobia

Kids, this is going to have to count for your update for today. I am, at the moment, sulking and not ashamed to admit it - and since today’s a day off of work, I’m going to take advantage of it despite my sentiment towards the holiday. Not in the way I’d hoped - which is why I’m sulking - but if I can’t at least get a little tipsy and relax (thanks to cheap, flimsy plastic bags, a broken bottle of merlot, 12a alcohol sale cutoff times, and an absolutely disgusted mood that guarantees I won’t be venturing back out at 7a to buy another), I’ll compensate by being a lazy bum about writing anything of substance. You may want to read through this anyway, as I’ll need your feedback on something.

Changes to the DR Streaming Radio

It may or may not be live by the time you read this (that sidebar box only updates changes once every four hours), but I’ve replaced the streaming radio that was coming from my hard drive via a Microsoft Media Server stream and playing by a buggy WMP plugin. Instead I’ve loaded the files as separate MP3s into a Flash player called JW Player, which everyone should be able to use. If that slow-as-molasses sidebar still hasn’t updated yet, you can try it out below:

 
It doesn’t autostart (my preference) and streams everything from my personal domain, putting less strain on my laptop’s CPU. (It also avoids giving my ISP a heart attack over a streaming upload of 403MB of uncompressed media cycling 24/7, but I’m sure my web host will compensate by popping a blood vessel or two over bandwidth usage.)

It’s much nicer to use and look at, lets you switch between tracks, shuffles on default but lists alphabetically to make it easy to scroll to your favorite tracks, and organizes the track info in a painstakingly compiled playlist (that I probably made a typo on somewhere, knowing me). Since it’s Flash, it should work in pretty much any browser on any OS.

I had a reason for screwing with the live media broadcast, though, and that little WMP plugin isn’t gone for good.

Darkside Rainbow Live Interactive Webcast

You read that right, a live interactive webcast. That’s why I was experimenting with MMS streams coming live from my computer, and with Windows Media Encoder. One evening in December - I haven’t decided which yet, depends on the feedback I get from you guys - I’ll be hosting a live, one-hour radio talk show. You’ll be able to tune in via your web browser and the WMP plugin (by the way, I figured out why it wasn’t working in IE, so that will be less of a problem) or your default streaming media player; there’ll also be a live chat room that you can join to talk to others listening to the webcast and talk to me while I’m on-air. If you miss the webcast or it doesn’t work in your browser or OS, I’ll be posting an MP3 recording of it after the fact along with a transcript from the chat room.

Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that every once in a while I’d post pre-recorded rants to the old site. This…this is going to be very different, and possibly very awkward and embarrassing, but I’m game to give it a shot at least once to see how it works out. On the recordings I could work out what I wanted to say ahead of time, read it off, practice, and re-record if I flubbed. Live and responding on the fly to the chat room…oh, man. That has the potential for hilarious disaster. It might be worth it to tune in just to listen to me fall flat on my face. Some days I sound like a Oxford scholar, and some days I’m so amazingly inarticulate that I can’t even pronounce my own name.

…and some days I can say “low-density polyethylene compound” or “deoxyribonucleic acid” at top speed without missing a beat, but will get tongue-tied on “hello”.

Let me know if you’d be interested in listening in, and if you have any ideas for anything you want to hear me rant about, as right now I have no idea what I’ll talk about for an hour…though in the interests of staying on-topic, it really ought to be GBLTQ-related, hm? I can also do Q/A sessions on the webcast, or answer Ask Adri questions, so e-mail those in or send ‘em using the contact form if you want to get yours answered on air. Try to keep them brief, though, so I’m not spending twenty minutes just reading your letter out loud. Hell, if you want me to do shoutouts to your friends or something like that, I won’t mind.

If you want to tell me around what times would be best for you (and your local time zone), that’ll help me determine a date and hour to do this, as well. If I can nerve myself to. I get the feeling this is a catastrophe waiting to happen - but at least if I go down, I’ll go down flaming proudly (no pun intended).

And hey, if it turns out all right and moves smoothly, we might make a weekly or monthly thing out of it. Why the hell not.

I’m out of here, now. Happy…that day. Yeah, that day.

Seriously, though, I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves. Ciao, until tomorrow. I and my lack of wine are going to go sulk with a new DVD.

~Adri

darkside rainbow streaming radio, darkside rainbow live webcast, thanksgiving, f***ing cheap plastic bags, ask adri, gay advice column

As many of you know, yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, honoring the memories of transpeople killed because of their gender identity and violence against transpeople in general. I suppose it might seem a little trite when transfolk were conveniently left behind during the vote on ENDA, but it’s still important to show respect for transpeople nonetheless; a little extra recognition on one day can’t erase the prejudice they put up with year-round, but it can help to ease the sting just a little. I have several trans friends, and they held their own little TDR party to share their war stories of transition, their triumphs, and the overall experience with their friends, both gay and straight. (I ended up carrying one of them home drunk last night, poor guy).

I find it interesting, then, that this story cropped up in the news yesterday, right on the day of remembrance:

Losers: Transgender Candidate A Fraud - 365gay.com

(Riverdale, Georgia) Two people who lost to a transgender candidate for a seat on the Riverdale council claim Michelle Bruce committed election fraud by claiming “to be female.”

Bruce, who has never hidden that she is transgender was the incumbent in the Nov. 6 election for the Riverdale, Georgia City Council. She was the top vote-getter and advances to a runoff election next month.

But failed candidates Georgia Fuller and Stanley Harris have asked a judge to disqualify Bruce from the runoff.

[...]In their petition to the court Fuller and Harris refer to Bruce as “Michael Bruce” and ask the court to nullify the Nov. 6 results. [...] The paper reported that Bruce’s voter registration, her notice of candidacy and her driver’s license all identify her as Michelle Bruce, a white female.

She declined to say if she had had sex reassignment surgery.

“That’s private,” she told the paper. “The people don’t care about it.”

Now…correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s only fraud if there’s deliberate deception involved, and deliberate intent to defraud someone by gaining from their loss. The loss vs. gain argument doesn’t even work here because in an election, there’ll always be one winner and one or more losers, so of course the winner will gain from their loss. Michelle Bruce didn’t deceive anyone; not only is she legally recognized as female, but she was even open with voters about the fact that she’s transgendered.

I don’t see fraud here. I see two bitter losers latching on to something they think they can use to turn the tide in their favor. I also see a great deal of disrespect for Michelle and her transition, by referring to her as “Michael”. It rather reminds me of someone at my friend Karl’s job, who insists on referring to him as “Kelly” and who will be as nasty as possible about it. Fuller and Harris lost to the better - or at least the most popular - candidate, and lost fairly. They should just accept that gracefully, rather than launching an attack because they think Michelle Bruce somehow deceived voters.

Granted, the issue of deception can be a tricky one where transgenders are concerned, because much of the general public doesn’t understand the concept of gender identity and its differences from sexual identity. They view crossdressing as a sexual fetish that often has to do with being gay, when that’s hardly the case. I recall that not too long ago a transwoman who’d been living happily with her husband for many years was arrested because her neighbors found out she was trans, and called the police to have her arrested for attempting to deceive and defraud the community. To members of the GBLTQ community who accept transpeople and understand exactly why they need to act on their gender identity to live in a way that’s most comfortable for them, the entire notion of deception and fraud seems utterly ridiculous.

To the general public, who will go on complete mental lockdown if you ask them to try to reconcile a gender identity the total opposite of one’s anatomy, it’s not so ridiculous at all.

They don’t even mean to be malicious. Another friend of mine, Charles, deals with this on a regular basis at work. He’s pre-op, FtM, taking hormones. He looks very masculine, grows a beard, everything. Underneath his clothing, though, he wears a binder to flatten his breasts. He still has female anatomy, but to anyone who knows him, he’s very much a man. When he was first hired, the HR manager was made aware of the situation and she did her best to understand, and even if she didn’t she was at least very nice about making sure that no one else knew anything about it and he was hired on as Charles, not as Cheryl. One day he was outed in the employee bathroom, though…and once everyone knew he had female anatomy, they immediately began referring to him as “she” and “her”.

And they weren’t even trying to be mean. That’s just the way they’re conditioned; female anatomy means female, male anatomy means male, and anything else is just all in your head and should be dismissed. It’s almost a battle of generations, as current and upcoming generations tend to understand gender identity far more than their elders. We understand why it’s a matter of respect to accept transgendered people as their chosen identity rather than by their anatomy, because they couldn’t help the anatomy they were born with and in many cases either can’t afford to change it or, in the case of many FtMs, have less than desirable surgical options available and thus choose to make do with what they have. A lot of people don’t see that. They just say that you can’t possibly call yourself a woman or a man when you have the anatomy of the opposite sex.

Still, sometimes people can be educated into understanding. Many transpeople have had success educating their parents, so all hope isn’t lost. Even people like Fuller and Harris can be educated, if they’ll just listen and try to understand. It just takes time, patience, and a little understanding of your own.

And cases like these remind me of just why it’s so important that those of us who do understand show respect to our trans friends, so they know that there are those who do support them and appreciate them, and will help to hold them up while they deal with those who can’t.

riverdale georgia, michelle bruce, michael bruce, georgia fuller, stanley harris, transgender, transvestite, transsexual, crossdresser, crossdressing, mtf, ftm, m2f, f2m, male-to-female, female-to-male, gender identity, gender dysphoria, transition, transitioning, sex change

Guys, I’ll be posting a real update later after the coffee’s done brewing, but right now I need you to answer a question for me:

Does the little streaming radio plugin in the sidebar automatically start playing for you when you load the page, or does it not start until you hit Play or load the mms:// stream directly into your media player from the link? I’ve got autoplay completely turned off in the embedding code as I find it wholly obnoxious to load a page in which music is forced on me and I have to hunt for a way to turn it off. So far everyone I’ve asked except one person has said that it didn’t start until they told it to. I’m trying to figure out if it’s really auto-starting for her or if she’s just trying to be a special little snowflake.

Let me know what browser and OS you’re using, as well. I’m planning to use the streaming plugin for monthly events later (I’ll explain more soon, promise) so it’ll help to know just how it behaves in readers’ browsers.

Thanks, and I’ll be back in a bit with something actually topical.

~Adri

P.S. Stop laughing at me for having a playlist full of Asian pop and rock. I have a very broad spectrum of musical tastes, but kept to mostly international music or remixes or things from game and film scores to keep the RIAA off my butt and out of 451 Press’s hair regarding music broadcasts from any artists they “own”. This is streaming directly from my hard drive, so who knows what else I might deem safe to throw on there as I poke through my vast musical collection.

She’s confident. She’s drop-dead beautiful. She’s intelligent, capable, engaging, and frankly she doesn’t really need you or any other man - but you’ve caught her eye nonetheless. She glances at you in passing - then pauses, curious, and looks again. At this point you’ve noticed her looking, and realize that - gasp! - she seems to be interested in you. So when she walks over with a smile and stretches out a hand to introduce herself…

…you sneer at her and tell her to move along, because the kitty litter box is down the hall.

And then you wonder why she thinks you’re a prick.

Sound outlandish? It’s not. That scene took place in a cafe down the street from the Art Institute of Houston in late 2001, and I watched in disgust while my former friend and classmate, Jeff, sent a woman packing just for saying hello…then proceeded to smugly congratulate himself as if he’d done something noble and worthwhile.

It’s a pretty common occurrence. While we aren’t all guilty, gay men can be some of the most misogynistic jerks around. We act as if women are substandard just because we aren’t attracted to them. If a woman flirts with us we think we’re entitled to be catty to her, as if she should have known better even if we’re not walking around with huge “GAY - NOT AVAILABLE TO WOMEN” stickers on our foreheads. We pick at their clothing and call them skanks if they dare to dress like anything other than prudish Victorian schoolmistresses, for daring to subject our eyes to their female flesh. Even if we have close female friends, when they’re not around we make derogatory comments about how disgusting female anatomy is and mock the worst stereotyped traits of female behavior even as we unconsciously mimic them.

My question is: why?

Are we afraid of women? Are we so insecure in our place in society and our own self-worth that we need to somehow make ourselves feel superior to someone? Do we fear that, in entering into relationships with other men, we will be compared to women and thus wish to distance ourselves from them as much as possible? What is the point in acting as if we’re members of some elitist society, a no-girls-allowed club in which our childhood treehouses have been replaced by sprawling art-deco flats?

Regardless of the reasons, it’s entirely unfair. We shouldn’t act like it’s the woman’s fault that we aren’t attracted to her gender, and we shouldn’t treat her as anything less because of it. Straight people don’t treat members of the same sex that way; in fact, I doubt they even think to, as members of the same sex are simply viewed as comrades, potential friends - an attitude we should take more often with women. Women fought too damned hard to be recognized as equal members of society for us to undermine them that way, and they’re still fighting. In fact, they’re fighting the same battle that we are; they’ve just made more progress.

Maybe it’s that we’re jealous of that.

Regardless of that, it’s time to stop. We gripe and moan about the nasty way that people treat us, but sometimes we are the most hypocritical a**holes on the face of the planet. We act like it’s our right, granted by God or self or what the hell ever, to be as nasty to anyone as we want; in fact, we think it makes us cute.

Well, I don’t think it’s so cute. And frankly, no matter what’s been done to us as a group or how many creepy fag hags we’ve put up with, we aren’t owed the right to that kind of behavior as many seem to think we are - not on a daily basis, and most certainly not unprovoked.

Maybe if we weren’t so snotty and discriminatory so often, society in general would make more of an effort to accept us. For every story you hear of that nice gay couple down the street who helped rake the neighbor lady’s yard, you hear three stories about the b*tchy gay guy in customer service who treated a lady like trash for no good reason, about the snotty gay stylist who couldn’t be content with just trimming a woman’s hair but instead launched an all-out personal attack on her skin and clothing, about the hot guy in the cafe who called a woman a skank for smiling at him and told her that the kitty litter box was down the hall.

Enough already.

We erode our own right to equality when we refuse to grant equality to others.

So grow up, guys.

This is real life, and girls don’t have cooties anymore.

misogyny, bad behavior, gay male misogyny

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…what? They can’t all be about being gay. My life doesn’t revolve around being gay, so my comic won’t always, either.

So…yeah. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but part of my highly-mixed ethnicity includes a significant portion of Native American blood. When I say I’m part Native, I don’t mean “I’m white as hell but think it makes me cool to say that I have a great-grandmother nine generations back who was a blue-eyed Cherokee princess”. I mean “You know, next summer I really should take a trip out to visit my uncle and cousins on the reservation.”

So on matters of principle, I don’t celebrate the current common American idea of Thanksgiving - but I also don’t take it as seriously as the comic makes it sound. Every war has a loser, and the victor is often those with the best weapons and superior numbers. I’m not happy that Native culture has been either murdered, assimilated, or erased and is in danger of melting away entirely, but being an a** about it to Americans who enjoy Thanksgiving won’t change the past. So I have my principles, but try to keep a sense of humor about them - hence mocking both myself and my friend a bit via comic. (My friend was wrong, though, when we had this conversation. I do celebrate Christmas, just not from a religious standpoint - more from the “spirit of giving” standpoint, which is why I call it Happy Shiny Buy Things for My Friends Day, as I love giving gifts. And the only reason I don’t celebrate Easter is because I often forget about it until the day after, which happens to be my favorite holiday of the year (especially since it occurs after almost every holiday): Cheap Candy Day.)

For something a little more GBLTQ-topical, Anji sent me a link yesterday regarding the ongoing and tiresome battle over an Okeechobee, FL high school’s gay-straight alliance - in which the school board called the alliance a “sex-based club”. That statement alone is a horrible demonstration of the ignorance in society that helps to perpetuate both prejudices and stereotypes. Understanding one’s sexuality and gathering with those who also seek to understand their sexuality and fight for their rights doesn’t mean that they’re also gathering to act on that sexuality. Being gay isn’t just about having sex, and gay issues aren’t just about sexual experimentation or gratification. At this point the actual sex involved is practically tangential; there are so many more issues of human rights involved that I can’t believe anyone would think a gay-straight alliance, intended to promote tolerance and acceptance, was nothing more than a “sex-based club”.

But that’s not all from the WTF Factory today, kids. Not by a long shot. Apparently, if you disagree with the GBLTQ rights that a particular employer offers its workers, the answer is to buy out as much stock as possible in that company in order to gain a majority interest and, via shareholder vote, force those dirty gay supporters to comply with your beliefs. No, I’m not joking. Reverend Ken Hutcherson is urging conservatives to do just that with Microsoft.

That goes beyond extremism and into insanity. One can assume that most of these people don’t even work for Microsoft, but they’re so bothered by the fact that M$ - who really can’t be redeemed in my eyes, but at least this is one point in their favor - dares to support GBLTQ workers’ right to equality that even though it doesn’t affect them, they want to strip that right away. Why? Because it constitutes “pushing the homosexual agenda”.

What. The. Hell. That’s not pushing a homosexual agenda; I’m about as sick of that phrase as I am of the phrase “sanctity of marriage”. There is no homosexual agenda. We don’t distribute manifestos regarding our secret plan to conquer the country and turn it into a giant disco version of Fire Island; we don’t try to convert or recruit; we don’t do anything other than ask that we, as minorities, are afforded the same rights as other minorities contesting against the majority. We ask to be treated like human beings, like citizens, with the same rights and protections as anyone else. We aren’t asking for superiority. We’re asking for equality.

That’s not an agenda. That’s long damned well overdue.

Hutcherson even thinks that the battle for civil rights for gays can’t be compared to the battle for civil rights for African-Americans…just because ex-gays exist, but ex-blacks don’t.

Just because a biological trait such as homosexuality isn’t physically apparent doesn’t mean that it’s any different from one that is, such as skin color. They share a common factor: they’re things we’re born into, not things we choose. Ex-gays haven’t really stopped being gay; they haven’t changed that biological trait. They’ve been conditioned to ignore it and act against it, and often are psychologically damaged as a result.

The comparison between the two struggles for civil rights is still quite apt. The prejudice against those who are different hasn’t changed; the tactics of discrimination have. Hutcherson wants to say they’re different because homosexuals were never forced to ride in the back of a bus; blacks were never sent to ex-black camps and mentally reconditioned to think they aren’t black, either. It doesn’t change the fact that both minority groups have been discriminated against, denied rights and privileges, abused, and ostracized in the past - and both still are now. Both are treated as less than human; there was a time when being black was viewed as a perversion, an abomination in the eyes of God, and black people were somehow less than human. Isn’t that how homosexuals are treated now? We’re told that we’re sick, we’re sinners, we’re filthy in the eyes of a God that loves and welcomes anyone but us, that views us as little more than rutting animals.

Hutcherson wants to use the race card to play up the struggle of African Americans for equality as somehow superior, morally above the struggle for GBLTQ equality. It’s not. They are the same, and equally deserving of consideration.

We’re all the same. If people could realize that, we wouldn’t even have these arguments.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, microsoft, gbltq rights, lgbt rights, gay and lesbian equality, workplace equality, reverend ken hutcherson, gay-straight alliance in okeechobee florida, thanksgiving, native americans

Hey, guys. This is just a quick post to let you know I won’t be updating with any serious discussion today; I’m rather busy, working a lot on my other two jobs, and just a bit burned out on writing. I keep trying to start a post on a number of topics and then drawing a blank. Writer’s block is apparently kicking me in the teeth today. (No, NaNo’s not contributing to that at all, why ever would you ask?) I suppose sometimes you just get a little bogged down in your subject matter, and it’s hard to write about the same topic every day - as much as I enjoy this, enjoy the debates it can spark, and the conflicting opinions people post to offer differing perspectives. I just need a day off.

I may do a weekend edition post tomorrow (or even much later tonight) to make up for it so I won’t feel like I’m slacking on the job since I hate missing daily updates - but if I don’t, just look for me again on Monday with a new No Style comic.

As an aside, it is damned creepy to be recognized in your local grocery store by someone who occasionally reads the comic. Seriously.

Quick update on the 1,000 Comments Contest before I go:

…just to give this post something of substance, after all.

We’re currently at 922 comments - just 78 more to go, down to the double digits. That’s the home stretch, kids. I definitely think we can make 1,000 by the end of the month (especially with all the weird link farming sites giving me pingbacks; what the heck is up with that?). Remember, the prize is a Kingston 1GB USB Flash drive and a cameo spot as a character in No Style. If you can think of another prize you’d rather have, let me know and I’ll see if it’s within my means.

I’m gone for now; have to get back to work. Have a good weekend.

~Adri

Every day we hear stories of the pain caused by discrimination and prejudice against the gay and lesbian community. The news is filled with them: stories of families broken, friendships abandoned, jobs lost, public and private humiliation, personal injury…sometimes even lives lost. We’ve all read the stories. We’ve all been those stories, at one point or another. Some of us live them every day; some of us have managed to insulate ourselves until it’s a far-distant thing that we look upon with pity and sorrow. And sometimes…sometimes, those stories come knocking on our doorsteps.

A close friend of mine - we’ll call her Mirela for the sake of privacy - is dealing with her own story right now, and dreading its outcome. Mirela is a lesbian, and her family has always had trouble coping with that. Her father is openly derisive, while her mother has struggled to accept her and reconcile the fact that her daughter is a lesbian with her own personal beliefs. Mirela’s mother is also a teacher at the Catholic school where Mirela endured a miserable nine years as an outcast - the unpopular girl; the girl who was snickered about because she didn’t have the right hair or jeans or shoes; the girl who always hid her nose in a book so she wouldn’t have to hear about the things the other girls were doing without her, and the activities she was excluded from. I know how she felt; I was that boy, Catholic school and all.

Now, though, Mirela is a college student ready to start her career; over the years I’ve watched her fight through so many insecurities and difficulties and always come out strong and fighting on the other side of every battle. She’s got a wonderful girlfriend now, and Mirela isn’t at all ashamed to be open about her sexuality. She even has a LGBT support banner on her formerly public MySpace page.

I say formerly, because now she’s had to set it on private to try to avoid embarrassing her mother - but the damage has already been done.

Sometimes all it takes is one little thing to utterly change the flavor of your life. In this case that one little thing was Mirela’s mother bringing up Mirela’s MySpace page in a class of 13-year-old girls, to demonstrate just how public personal information can be so the girls understand the dangers they pose to themselves by posting their pictures and information on the site. Mirela’s mother ended up becoming the lesson as the girls burst into giggles at the sight of the LGBT banner - and now the woman has become the laughingstock of the entire class. Even worse, Mirela has become the laughingstock of the school for the second time in her life, when she’d thought she’d be able to leave that place behind forever. All of this just because she’s the teacher’s daughter, and she’s a lesbian.

Mirela’s mother has to deal with that every day, now. The whispers; the snickers; the looks. The loss of respect from her class. Even worse, there may be more severe repercussions, as word spreads to the parents. Mirela has had first-hand experience with how intolerant the parents who send their children to this school can be, and worries that her mother will face reprimand or may even lose her job if they decide that she might be a corrupting influence on her child. The hardest part for her to deal with, though, is that her mother might be ashamed of her - or if not ashamed of her, at the very least publicly shamed because of her. As hard as her mother has struggled to accept her, Mirela never wanted to bring public humiliation upon her, never wanted to do anything that might in any way embarrass her, but now it’s too late.

And all because of a group of small-minded children.

I don’t wholly blame the children. Mostly I blame the parents for not teaching them that another person’s sexuality isn’t something to be mocked or derided - but really, this is more indicative of a problem within society in general. Children will always be cruel towards those who are different; that’s just the way children are. But it wouldn’t have been such a big deal - and they wouldn’t be openly disrespecting an adult - if society hadn’t made it quite clear that hey, it’s perfectly all right to make fun of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered…anyone who isn’t 100% hetero and fitting the norm. Derisive gay jokes are more common than derisive straight jokes and are among the first “taboo” things that children learn to snigger about behind their hands in the bathrooms and lunchrooms, as they try out words like “fag” and “fudgepacker” and, if they’re feeling really daring and dirty, “cocksucker” and “rugmuncher”. They’ll fling these words at each other as insults with no real idea of what they mean beyond the fact that they’re related to being gay, and being gay is both funny and worthy of ridicule.

Laying blame, though, doesn’t change what’s already happened - and doesn’t change that now Mirela’s relationship with her mother is once more strained as she carries what she feels is her burden for embarrassing her mother.

No one should ever have to be embarrassed by their sexuality, for any reason. No one should ever have to fear that their sexuality will create an uncomfortable situation for a relative or a friend, or that it might somehow reflect negatively on those in their personal circle. In an ideal world, this situation wouldn’t have even been an issue and those girls wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at the banner.

But this isn’t an ideal world. This is reality, and reality is an ugly thing that will only change if we work at it - if we educate one another, and practice the tolerance that we preach. One day we may reconcile social perceptions of homosexuality with the reality, and gain acceptance to the point where we’ll become nearly commonplace. That day is not today.

But with hope and hard work, it may be one day soon.

gay and lesbian families, anti-gay discrimination, prejudice

Dear Adri,

I have a friend (let’s call her Kate) who I am pretty sure is gay. Being ridiculously curious (and also harboring a slight crush on her) I would love to know if I’m correct or not. However, she’s remained very tight-lipped about topics of a sexual nature - she’s never mentioned any crushes she’s ever had and I’m know she’s never dated or even kissed anyone before (we’re college students, by the way, which makes that a little more unusual). Kate has recently been telling me about someone else we know (Molly) who is pursuing her pretty aggressively, and while Kate has made it clear she’s not interested in this other person, she hasn’t said “because I’m straight” or “because I’m asexual” or anything, just that Molly is “kind of freaking her out” because she keeps showing up in Kate’s suite uninvited.

Recently one of her suitemates, someone who I think is even closer to Kate than I am, mentioned to me that none of the suitemates know whether Kate is gay, either. (She said this to me in the context of telling me about how Molly showed up in their suite one day and asked Kate’s entire suite whether Kate was gay when Kate got up to go to the bathroom!) Is Kate’s clear avoidance of the subject a sign that I should let sleeping dogs lie? Is it possible that she just doesn’t know whether she’s gay or not? I’ve had people tell me to “just ask her!” but I get the feeling she might not respond well to a direct “You sure like the Indigo Girls a lot! So, are you gay?” type question since she’s so private, but it seems like the only way to get a straight (ooh, ignore that horrendous pun) answer out of her. I’ve tried to sneak it out of her with leading questions such as (I think this was my most recent attempt): “Wow, Kate! Your Halloween costume is so hot, who are you trying to seduce? It would totally work.” but she just laughs and says “No one!” or something else equally vague. I also haven’t told her that I’m bisexual - could that be a good lead-up to some sort of let’s-all-confess-our-attraction-to-girls talk of some kind? Whether or not I figure this out, I like her enough so that I don’t want to make things awkward.

Wondering in Worcester

Oh, honey, I know it’s probably driving you nuts to sit on your feelings and your curiosity this way, but asking Kate directly is definitely not the way to go. You’ll end up making her as uncomfortable as that creepy stalker-child Molly (who sounds like she needs a few lessons in common courtesy, tact, and social graces - preferably from my grandmother, who’d happily enforce them with a wooden spoon across the knuckles).

I can’t really hazard a guess as to which way Kate might lean just based on the described behavior, as actually she sounds a lot like one of my sisters - who’s 100% hetero, but for the longest time was extremely reserved and uncomfortable around men to the point of being defensive and wouldn’t talk about anything related to sex or sexuality in any capacity. She didn’t date in high school or in college because she didn’t know how to act with boys, and remained staunchly single until her late twenties, when a close male friend made the first move and approached her carefully enough not to make her skittish. (She’s a very intimidating munchkin. Very intimidating. And yet she’ll bolt at the first sign of aggressive male attention.) People wondered if she was a lesbian, too, and she deflected the question because it embarrassed her. So the fact that Kate hasn’t had a boyfriend by now, or those other behavioral signs, may not really mean much.

At the same time, as you said, she may not be sure of her own sexuality. She may have just started to question; college is an environment that lets you explore these ideas that may not even have occurred earlier on in life. If she’s at that stage she’s probably doing a lot of thinking, and wrestling with herself internally. She won’t be willing to openly admit anything until she’s really sure that she wants to take that step.

But yet again, she may know quite well that she bats for the girls’ team and just doesn’t want to expose herself. She may have many reasons for being discreet; they could involve family, her potential career, even fear of losing her friends. Sometimes people want to stay in the closet for a while, so even if your suspicions are correct, she’ll deny them until she’s good and ready to come out.

There are so many possible interpretations for her behavior, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up because you’re seeing what you want to see and hoping that maybe, just maybe, she might be open to your advances. Don’t press her; you may end up losing a friend and getting slotted into a category with a crazy woman. You’ve already given yourself the best advice anyone could give; let slip about your own sexuality in a relaxed, non-aggressive way so she knows you’re supportive if she wants to come out to you, but don’t beat her about the head with the issue. Let her take her time.

If you really have to, if it’s just eating you up inside…you can even tell her about your crush, but don’t tell her about any assumptions you’ve made about her. Don’t pry at her to return the sentiment, or even tell you definitively if she’s remotely interested in girls. I wouldn’t even ask her to tell you yes or no on whether she’d date you just as a hypothetical; just tell her you wanted her to know how you felt, that you’re not expecting her to do or say anything about it, and that you’re not expecting anything to change because of it. If you really feel brave enough to put yourself out there and risk potential rejection, then it’s all right to reveal information about yourself as long as you don’t make her feel cornered or try to drag information out of her. That way you aren’t pushing at her personal boundaries too much.

I know “just leave it alone” isn’t the advice you wanted to hear, but that’s honestly the best thing to do. Find subtle ways to let her know you’re open to the idea if she wants to talk about it, but beyond that just let it rest. If she wants you to know, she’ll work up to telling you. Otherwise, just respect her privacy. I’m sure it wouldn’t make her feel very good to know that her sexuality is a common subject of gossip.

Best of luck to you,
~Adri

P.S. Sorry this is late, everyone. I wrote this last night and set it to drip today, and apparently WordPress didn’t publish it. I, being a stupid sod, didn’t notice until this afternoon.

Have a question you’d like to see answered on Ask Adri? E-mail your question to adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net with the subject “Ask Adri Question” or use the Contact Form to send your question in.

ask adri, gay advice column, coming out