As I swam this afternoon, I thought about a very recent exchange between me and a straight friend. I commented to him how pleasant this unexpected sunny weather was. His reply was, "Yeah, there's some horny sights to be seen in Cardiff", meaning the amount of female flesh on show. He continued, "Shame there's nothing for you!" I drew breath and then patiently pointed out to him that the warm weather had the same effect on men and that there was quite a bit of male flesh on show too. I assured him that I was being entertained. He thought for a moment, "...Oh yeah, didn't think about that."
I think some straight men sometimes have great difficulty in seeing life from any viewpoint other than the viewpoint of a straight man. It reminds me of when I witnessed a conversation between two work colleagues in my old job, where one guy complained to the other that he didn't like "the sneaky gays who don't tell you they're gay." I questioned what he meant. I was, he tried to reassure me, not one of the sneaky ones, "I actually like you but I can't deal with the ones that don't tell you: sneaky, see; can't stand them." I suggested that the reason they'd not told him might have something to do with the attitude he was now displaying and nothing to do with a sly subterfuge designed to trick him. "What d'you mean...?" was his response.
This same guy once protested to a group of us in the pub that political correctness had gone too far and that the balance had now tipped too much in the opposite direction. As he worked himself into a bit of a froth his argument climaxed with the line, "The world is prejudiced against me now... and all because I'm normal!"
We might have won a couple of battles but winning the war is still a long way off.
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