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Gay Unlike Me September 30, 2008

Yay! Another post where I get to reference Sex and the City! 

Remember the episode where Miranda’s boss sets her up with a lesbian, having assumed that she must be gay because he’s never seen her with a man? That happened to me! Except it was my neighbor who tried to set me up with her lesbian friend. She said, “But I never saw any men around your house, so I thought. . .” Her friend was very beautiful, so too bad for me I’m not gay.

My first reaction: is couple-centrism is so ingrained that when people see a woman alone, they are more likely to assume that she’s gay than single? If she’s gay, then at least she has a role in the couple matrix, and as we’ve mentioned in previous posts, people like putting couplehood on a pedestal because it’s a simple, comforting formula. Is a single woman who can slide into all sorts of social nooks and crannies more threatening to heteronormatives than a gay coupled woman? I don’t know!

Lisa points out that in the case of my neighbor’s friend, maybe as a gay woman it’s hard to determine who else is part of your community, and a single woman meets some of the criteria for an approachable love interest. And I think she may be right. My neighbor’s friend originally suggested to my neighbor that I might be interested in dating a woman. The idea did not come from my heterosexual neighbor.

–CC