Jessa Crispin considers how fluid gender really is:
This has happened repeatedly: I will be at a party, introducing my new beau to friends for the first time. Someone will pull me aside: "Honey, I hate to break it to you, but that guy
is gay." All my life I’ve been attracted to men who creep a little further down to my side of the gender spectrum than most. Or, let’s face it, men who meet me somewhere in the middle, as I’m not off in the far reaches of femininity myself. Men who are a little more fluid. And so this scene has played out a few times in my life. "No, he’s not," I say. Now, anything I offer as proof will only solidify their assessment. Such as, "But I am having the best sex of my life." "Well, yes, he’s probably good technically," a friend will say. "He probably had to learn to be to disguise the fact that he wasn’t into it."
There’s no winning this argument. Because the only acceptable deviation from traditional masculinity is queerness; anyone deviating must be queer.
Even if they don’t know it. Suddenly what was good in my life is pathologized. Suddenly there is something wrong with him (secretly gay), and there’s something wrong with me (only attracted to men who are secretly gay). This isn’t about style, about guyliner or wearing a boldly pink tie. It’s about something essential in who they grew up to be, something in their nature that my friends — smart, bright, ambitious, dare I say masculinized women all of them — are reading as less than.
(Image: Scott Sheidly’s Portraits: a series of “fabulous” depictions of tyrants, dictators and popes, on view at the Spoke Art Gallery, via Emily Temple)
The Dish 