This is a comment by Thomas Pluck on “Our Society’s Brutal Economic Message To Men Who Express Gender Differently: You’d Better Not…“
A kid in my apartment’s pool reminded me of my younger self today. He was boisterously loud, playing with a Barbie and another doll, just making up crazy stuff and splashing around. He didn’t care. I thought that was great. I try to pinpoint when I started giving a crap about that kind of thing as a kid.
As a married adult I don’t care who thinks I’m gay. I wear pink if I want, pastel blue, yellow. I carry my wife’s bag if she needs me to. I drive a Mini Cooper and have considered a Miata. I meet gay friends in gay bars. Then again, I am a musclebound ape who trains in MMA, so I’ve never had anyone “say anything,” and sometimes I wish an idiot would.
There are still penalties for both sexes for stepping over the wrong gender line. It’s rather ridiculous, what argument is there, nature? We’ve stepped so far away from nature in human civilization that applying it to gender roles is rather quaint.
Photo—K. Kendall/Flickr