I had a bit of an incident last year and, intending to learn from the experience, decided to do some science and gather some data. The previous statement was vague, so I will elaborate.
The background goes like this: I have overwhelmingly female friends (for several reasons that I don't actually understand, including but not limited to "random-ass probability has made this the case"). As a person, I tend to be fairly vicious to strangers, but once you get past the obviously-constructed wall of artificial cruelty I'm an unusually kind person. I hold doors for people, and tip waiters generously, and compliment or otherwise support people when they get dragged down by the vagaries of life.
All of which is to say I'm a ravening flesh-eating degenerate from the depths of hell, but that comes later.
The actual incident, in vague terms, involved me being excessively, effervescently nice to someone, and having it come off totally the wrong way, followed by someone's boyfriend telling me several things I don't intend to repeat, threatening me, and all the other usual nonsense or, as they more concisely say in the dialect, freaking the fuck out. I'm a curious person by nature, so I set out to see if this was one isolated, horrible interaction, a general pattern of conduct, a sign of some underlying thing deeply wrong with me, et cetera. I wanted to "figure it all out." There was also some rather ominous homophobia involved, so I elected to test another variable and habitually paint my nails to scout for people's reactions.
In a shocking turn of developments, all my trials went exactly the same way! Goodness gracious, I would never have expected that.
I'll just highlight a particular case for the sake of comprehension, rather than illuminate all the nonsense I subjected myself to. In this case, I had a friend who frequently worked late night shifts and would often skip dinner. I announced to the Universe that I Simply Wasn't Having Any of That, and brought her dinner at work a few times. The operative word there is "few," because after about three of these interactions her boyfriend informed me he was going to beat me fairly severely for trying to "steal [his] girl," as it were. Curious, I sought to soothe the savage beast by telling him I was gay (which is a gross oversimplification for his benefit, but is more useful for explaining the issue away). To this he responded that he wasn't surprised, since I was, after all, "such a faggot," and blocked me after one more threat.
I sat in surprised bemusement for a few minutes, decided the situation was funny, and laughed manically on with my life.
This general pattern, with small variations, was repeated several times, with varying intensity (corresponding with a varying intensity of deranged cackling on my part) and differing overall results. The nails experiment, as an addendum, is turning out to be a wild success: women completely ignore or compliment them depending on who it is, and men almost universally make some off-color comment about losing a bet or request another form of explanation, since I'm obviously obligated to give them one. The "almost" is for the exception of the guy at the counter of my favorite sandwich shop, who said my nails were "hella fly." Love that guy.
I distilled a number of important points relating to the issue: the men involved are all near or total strangers (a cashier at Trader Joe's gave me the "bet" comment, for example). In the case of the Kindness trials, I prompted these reactions from what I might call a "one-order" stranger (one degree separated; we have a common element of social context). In the Homophobia experiment I provoked the comments and so on simply by being proximal to people for some small number of minutes. Addendum: Yes, people can hear you, especially if those people are me. These giant glasses I wear aren't to help my hearing, folks.
Furthermore, all (statistically speaking) of the reactions were strictly negative, and were further organized into a category I would describe as "territorial," or an "invasion response," or something of that nature. The boyfriend problem is an obvious one; to the boyfriend's perspective I'm some kind of competition (more on that later). The homophobic interactions are less easy to explain, and I would welcome advice on them. The explanation I choose to believe (because it makes me cackle loudest) is that the presence of the author in blazing pink nail polish represents a threat to the observer's heterosexuality, which he then needs to validate with other members of the Definitely Not Gay Club (a tax-exempt fraternal society under IRS 501(c)).
In the case of the direct interactions, e.g. the boyfriend cases, a truly alarming statistic developed over time. In not one, not two, but in every single case, the confrontational sentence opened with the iconic battle-cry: "Hey bud."That's just astonishing, really. I have nothing to say; it's weirdly universal. I blame dads.
I'll answer the homophobia one first, partially because I don't fully understand it and refuse to speculate. In short: it's okay that guys are good-looking, guys. It's okay to acknowledge that fact as true, and it doesn't make you gay. Furthermore, even if you are gay, that's not a bad thing; it's just a preference. It's like if I made fun of you for preferring waffles over pancakes. I don't really know who told you being "gay" or "effeminate" or whatever was bad, although I'm just gonna hazard a guess and assume it was your dad. Don't take this too badly, but your dad is, one way or another, an exceptionally experienced idiot. He grew up in a culture that no longer exists and, depending on where he came from, was probably wrong by our standards to start with. You're an adult now, which means that Daddy can't actually be held accountable for you anymore.
The more elaborate answer is to the boyfriend situation because there are a lot, and I do mean a lot of things that are totally and frighteningly wrong with it. Everything that follows is strictly my opinion, and is likely to make me swear a great deal, because I'm fed up with it. Behold my rainbow chariot of unjustified fury.
First up is the territorial response. Succinctly: no. Your girlfriend is only "yours" in the grammatical sense that you're also "hers," and is not a case of your expensive figurines that I'm trying to smuggle out of the country. I'm not a particularly fiery social justice warrior, but for God's sake, guys, women aren't objects of possession that we compete for. We've been over this. C'mon.
Second is related to First, and gets invited to all of First's parties: the competition issue. I'm not competing with you. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I'll just enumerate a few for you. The first one is strictly arrogance, but it works: if relationships worked the way you're implying, you would... lose. You'd fuckin' lose, at least half the time. Say I'm perfectly average in terms of "attractiveness," and you are equally average. This means, every time we meet, your girlfriend has a 50/50 shot at just suddenly, magnetically becoming my girlfriend. This is also true for every other person and their girlfriend.
So, according to the math fueled by your insane cocktail of testosterone and father-related insecurities, if I'm a "rather good-looking gentleman, I dare say," I should be walking around with eight or nine girlfriends I've unintentionally Coulomb's Law'd off other people. You know where that type of thing happens? It happens in a lot of pop songs, which are overwhelmingly written by men.
Third is Second's weird cousin, who only gets invited to the party out of politeness: how you think relationships work in general. If you think I'm gonna walk by with my Ray-Bans over my big green eyes and bait your girlfriend away with a nice piece of salmon, precisely what the hell are you doing dating that person to start with? In the crude, ugly, barbaric "choice" system, she seems to have "chosen" you at least once, for which she probably had some sort of reason. How about a little trust in the integrity of your (notably) better half there, guys?
Fourth is something that First through Third have heard about, but don't really know, yknow? It has to do with confidence and self-respect. It's also sensitive, so try not to write me any death threats. If I'm so intimidating to you, with my big scary "brain" and my obviously gay haircut, why don't you just... get better? Not to put too fine a point on it, guys, but your issue seems to stem not from me doing something wrong, but the fact that I'm doing something right that you're notably not doing. A lot of men I talk to have fairly ridiculous standards for how their girlfriends look (don't even get me started on that crock of shit), and themselves walk around in their plain white T-shirt they've worn three days in a row and shower "like, sometimes." Scared of competition? Yeah, I probably would be too, to be really honest. Scared of your girlfriend's interest being drawn elsewhere? That's extremely stupid, but I have a solution for you anyway: be interesting to her. Wash your fuckin' face and go out with her to a movie or something else she likes. It's not a terribly complicated equation, if you have a brain not entirely composed of raw steak.
My brain is only 85% raw steak, and look how I'm doing. It's easy, guys.
Nice Round Five is Fourth's more genial brother, and this one's on boyfriends and girlfriends both: Manners. Etiquette. Decorum. Politeness. Civility. There are incredibly too many ways to say it in English, but the core concept is preserved. Just be decent to people. There's no call threatening a stranger on any grounds, and certainly not over something as petty as what I'm guilty of. Here's how this interaction went with one of my single friends:
Author: Effervescent Bubbly Kindness™!
Friend: Nah, that makes me uncomfortable.
Author: Oh, shit! I shall desist.
Friend: Cool.
And then we continued our friendship unabated. Nobody got stabbed or bludgeoned. No one is upset. Do you know why? Because that person had enough basic-ass respect for me as a human being to inform me she found something I'd done objectionable. I then had enough basic-ass respect for her as a human being to knock it off, and both of us had enough basic-ass respect to still like each other afterward. We're adult humans equipped with the faculty of speech, so those of you who are still in the sandbox kicking other chimpanzees' shins for their blatant attempts to co-exist with you are welcome to jump right the fuck back into the primordial jelly where you belong.
TL;DR Nah, read it, and think about it, and then tell me if I'm wrong. Or if I'm right. I don't care, because I'm craaaaaazy! (manic cackle)
P.S. I realized this is rambling and incoherent, even by my standards. Accept my concise, contrite apology or, alternatively, see the above articulation of the famous thesis "I'm craaaaaazy!"
P.P.S. One more thing I forgot! Feel free to show this to anybody you want; I don't have some policy labeled "ONLY YOU MAY READ THIS GRRR!" I also have no way of knowing if you do or not, so there's peace of mind for everybody C:
