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Re: Frank Talk on Gay Stereotypes
Hmmm...interesting topic, at least interesting enough to coax me out of
lurking quietly on this mailing list.
I'm not really going to deal with my own personal experience, not because
it's private (although that would be a consideration), but because, to be
frank, I haven't had much experience anyway. :-) Ya'll going to have to
deal with my own personal views and opinions.
Why are gay men perceived as promiscuous? One might also want to ask why
gay men are also perceived as shallow and (for the most part) only
interested in the more superficial surface aesthetics of others. And to
this, I would have to say that I don't know if the perception of gay men
has much to do with the fact that they're homosexual so much as it has to
do with the fact that they are, first and foremost, *men*.
Seems to me that everyone would agree to a certain extent that men, in
general, are more focused on the more shallow aspects of life, i.e. sexual
gratification, beauty, money, whatever...hence the phrase, "men are pigs."
This perception is not as pronounced in the heterosexual community, I
don't think, because of the presence of women, who act as a buffer between
men's "piggyness," and society's perception of that "piggyness." But with
homosexuals, the female element, and that buffer it represents, are
removed. You just have men. Therefore, it's no wonder that such shallow
elements seems more pronounced, when in actuality, it really isn't.
And, because homosexuality is perceived as "deviant," it also lends
credence to the supposedly causal relationship between being gay and being
shallow/promiscuous/what have you.
Anyway, those are my initial responses...
-khoa
"Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse."
-Cervantes
Khoa Nguyen
<email>
http://www.seattleu.edu/~kwa
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