Ms. Behavior February 2011

Should girlfriend introduce her ‘she’ as her ‘he’?

Dear Ms. Behavior:

My girlfriend and I have reconnected with a 40-year-old cousin of mine whom I haven’t seen in ages. Jason has moved to my neighborhood and is a decent guy. The problem we have is that he makes vaguely homophobic statements, about one per evening that we spend together. He also makes sure everyone knows (since he’s always single) that he’s not gay.

He invited to his new place last week, and the walls are covered in vintage homoerotic art. Though it isn’t porn, it is unmistakably gay in its undertones—e.g. shirtless muscle-bound men all pushing a car or fixing an airplane together.

I spent a long time looking at the prints. Jason noticed and said, “Those were the days, when men were men and a great value was placed on male buddies.”

Male buddies? I think we should clue Jason in; he’s probably a gay man and doesn’t know it! Do you think it’s okay for us to connect this fact to his homophobic comments, which make both me and my partner uncomfortable? I really do want to keep the relationship, since most of my family is dead. What’s your advice?

—Joan

Dear Joan:

Your cousin may actually believe that his interest in male friendship is totally non-sexual. Whether it’s roping horses together in a meadow or lifting weights at the gym, strenuous grunting and appreciation of each other’s glistening muscles are indeed part of the ritual of man-on-man attachment.

For certain people, such bonding activities may be a prelude to sex; for others, the desire for physical touch remains hidden under the veil of “Male Friendship.” Touching is often only sanctioned during pastimes such as fixing things together, contact sports and other forms of costumed frottage.

You can and should address Jason’s overt homophobia and tell him that his comments make you and your partner ill at ease. Otherwise it may seem that his remarks are okay with you. Relentlessly tsking at his derogatory comments may help him catch on.

(If such subtlety doesn’t work, you may need to try administering a small shock with a cattle prod).

Suggesting that Jason needs to recognize his own buried gay impulses, based on his art work, will be fruitless. It would only alienate him, at least at this early point in your reconnection, particularly if he’s as repressed as he seems.

Right now, all you can do is share your own lives with him, take him to a gay fete once in a while, and hope that when he awakens to his desire for tea-bagging you’ll be the first to know.

Dear Ms. Behavior:

My family has always been critical of me. They’ve never been happy that I’m a lesbian, and they’ve never been fans of my girlfriends. My relationship with my current partner, Lee, is serious, but we’ve been together for less than a year; I haven’t introduced Lee to my family.

When we first met, Lee was an extremely butch woman. However, shortly after we got involved, Lee decided to follow his lifelong desire to become a man. Once he started taking hormones, the physical transformation happened quickly. It’s nearly impossible to tell that he’s trans; my friends have said that they’d never know.

I haven’t known what to tell my family. My sisters and my Mom are calling and asking where I’ve been. They want to know why I’ve been so scarce.

Frankly, I just haven’t known how to handle it. I’m tempted to just introduce Lee as my boyfriend and let them think he’s a biological man. In some ways it feels like it would be easier to avoid their questions and their judgment, and I know it would make them happy.

In other ways, I feel that not telling the truth would be a betrayal of myself and of all my gay friends.

What do you think I should do?

—Eva

Dear Eva:

It’s easy to see why you’re tempted to just refer to Lee as your boyfriend without further explanation. You have the opportunity to cash in on heterosexual privilege while still privately maintaining your somewhat queer identity. It’s also true that if you mention that Lee was born a biological female, your family is likely to think of him as a woman no matter what else you say.

But it’s sad to think that you can only gain family acceptance by bringing home a man.

Lee may have strong feelings about whether or not to disclose his trans status, so your decision about whether or not to tell your family should obviously be made in consultation with him. He may want to be totally out about it, or he may want to be private. You’ll need to work this out together.

If your family is as ignorant as you say, their acceptance of you—contingent upon you pretending to be heterosexual—will be a mixed bag.

Ultimately, you have to decide if you want the gratification of your family’s support even if it means that you have to hide who you (and Lee) really are. Under these conditions, the thrill of your family’s newfound respect for you may wear off rather quickly, and their small-mindedness will probably reveal itself in other ways.

Dear Ms. Behavior:

I love my girlfriend, but I don’t love the way she smells. Her breath and sweat and body smell are okay (not great), but I seriously dislike the smell of her…um…lady parts.

I told my two closest friends about this when we first got together, but they encouraged me to go for it, since everything else about her is nearly perfect.

We have a fun sex life—and she’s always perfectly happy to go down on me—but I am running out of excuses about not going down on her. I’ve only done it two or three times, and I hated it. I can’t do it again.

I don’t know how I would tell her that don’t like her smell, especially since she can’t fix it. She bathes regularly and doesn’t eat anything strange; it’s just her personal odor. I’ve never had this problem with anyone else.

So, should I tell her the truth so that she stops asking me to do it? Or should I just keep coming up with excuses forever and ever?

—Olfactorily Challenged

Dear Challenged:

Most excuses that could possibly be used for an exemption from muff diving would seem both hypochondriacal and temporary:

1) Whip lash

2) Sprained tongue

3) Headache

So what else can you do? It would be awkward and hurtful to say that you like the taste of pussy in general but not hers specifically. You might be better off with a little white lie: explain that you don’t like giving oral sex and you don’t think it’s ever going to change.

This gives her several options: 1) She can decide not to go down on you, too, if it feels bad to her that oral sex isn’t reciprocal; 2) She can work on accepting the fact that she’s in a relationship with someone who’s never going to go down on her; 3) She can leave the relationship with the hope of finding someone who loves to give lip service.

Address your questions and comments to: msbehavior@aol.com. Meryl Cohn is the author of Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior’s Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette (Houghton Mifflin); signed copies are available directly from the author.

Will pierced partner perplex parents?

Dear Ms. Behavior:

Okay, so say you’ve had this longstanding thing for a woman involved in a long- term relationship. And say it’s been this frustrating mutual attraction that causes both of you to spend lots of time together and then completely avoid each other for months at a time. Then, say the married woman moves to another city so you’re depressed but relieved.

But the relief doesn’t last very long because now her relationship is falling apart, and she’s hanging around again, and it’s all extremely tempting, but you know it will ultimately be exceedingly bad. What would you do?

—Stella Drama

Dear Drama:

Never mind what Ms. Behavior would do. You are clearly a loaded gun just waiting to go off and you should find another outlet for your swollen dramatic desires before you blow your own life to smithereens. (See? Ms. Behavior can be just as dramatic as the next person, and just as capable of mixing her metaphors.)

According to Ms. Behavior’s calculations, getting re-involved with the married woman will cause pain for at least 11 people.

Why 11, you say? Ms. Behavior is excited by the opportunity to use her math skills: There’s you, the married woman, her partner, the three therapists who will have to hear about it for the next year and a half, the married woman’s two best friends, her partner’s friend (hopefully, you’ll feel too much shame to “share” it yourself), plus a couple of random people who were only trying to shop for groceries.

Love triangles are what classical theatre and daytime melodramas are made of. Great to watch from the safety of the amphitheater (or your sofa), but torture to experience.

Repeat after Ms. Behavior: Secret love triangles always hurt.

Can’t you just read your middle school diary to remember why this particular type of drama is ugly? Sometimes renting bad movies can fulfill one’s desire for turmoil, however, it sounds like you’ve already stepped off the cliff. Since you’re saying that you know this situation will be “exceedingly bad,” and since you’ve gone to the trouble of writing to an advice columnist, perhaps you will still make the choice to keep your tongue in your own mouth. But it seems unlikely, doesn't it?

Dear Ms. Behavior:

My boyfriend Ray and I are planning to visit my conservative parents in Nebraska. This will be the first time they’ll meet him—or any of my boyfriends—and I’m pretty nervous about it. The problem is that Ray recently got his chin and his tongue pierced, and he insists on keeping the studs in at all times.

I know my parents have come a long way in accepting me, but the facial piercings will make them faint.

All of my old boyfriends were bankers, but Ray is a guitarist in a rock band. He says that if he takes his piercings out for even the five days we’ll be in Nebraska, the holes will close up. He’s not willing to get them re-pierced because it was too painful the first time.

I think Ray’s being selfish and he should just forget about the piercings. He doesn’t realize what a big deal this is for me. He thinks I’m being ridiculous. What do you think?

—Ed

Dear Ed:

Hello? Is it 1992 again? The world is full of nice clean-cut bankers who wear suits and would never consider punching holes through their faces. But if you wanted a banker, you’d be with another one, wouldn’t you?

If Ray is the man you love, let him be a rock star with a pierced face. Allow him to speak with that sexy lisp that reveals the hunk of metal pinning the flesh of his tongue. When you introduce him to your parents, be proud of who he is, what he does, and even his syllabant “s.” Or, “eth,” ath the cathe may be. (sic)

If you chicken out, you could always warn your parents about his piercings in advance. If you go in that direction, it would be best to exaggerate about Ray’s appearance. Tell your parents he has a pierced face, a shaved head with a skull tattoo, and three gold teeth. Once they meet him and find out that all he really has are a couple of dainty holes in his face and tongue, they’ll probably be delighted.

Dear Ms. Behavior:

My partner and I have always kept to ourselves, but now we have this new neighbor who just moved in and constantly shows up on the doorstep. Yvonne is a nice older woman, but lonely; she's a lesbian whose girlfriend died eons ago, and she never found another one.

It seems that Yvonne never gets to spend time with gay people, and now she’s thrilled to have “gay boys” (that’s what she calls us) living near by. She constantly talks about gay this and gay that and is clearly stuck in the 70s and 80s; she still talks about dancing at N.Y. bars in the old days and manages to fit the word “fabulous” into every sentence.

Yvonne finds little excuses to come over and drop by to talk. She walks by our house several times a day, hoping to catch my partner or myself at home.

We have had her to dinner, but she also tends to drop by when she sees us entertaining in the yard. Our friends find her off-putting, though benign.

We plan to have a few parties around the holidays. We will, of course, invite her to the small one we’re having for a few neighbors. But how do we let her know that she's not welcome at our other parties? How do you tell someone they need to be invited to show up at your door?

—Jim and Albert

Dear Jim and Albert:

Talking to a lonely older person, especially a widow, is a mitzvah (a good deed)—plus you never know when you might need a cup of sugar or some local gossip—but it must be balanced with your own need for peace and privacy.

Neglecting to deal directly with your neighbor’s lack of boundaries means she may take over your property like a weed, and you’ll be held hostage by chatter about disco, mullets and Stonewall while trying to entertain visitors in your own yard.

Practice a few gentle phrases, like, “This isn’t a great time, but we’d love to see you later.” Or, “Some old friends just dropped by. We’ll catch up with you when we have more time.”

If Yvonne does not respond to or even notice social cues and continues to show up, you’ll have to be even more direct, perhaps using language she understands: “We’re happy to spend time discussing Harvey Milk with you, but we also need some alone time with our ‘gay boy’ friends, so we can impersonate Bette Midler and Judy Garland, and snort poppers and dance.”

Then do stop by briefly once in a while or invite Yvonne to come over, but only after calling or emailing and setting a precise time.

If you model the behavior of making appointments before showing up, hopefully Yvonne will get the message that that’s what’s expected of her, too.

Dear Ms. Behavior:

I stumbled on your site and your far-fetched advice. Why do you make excuses for lesbians, when in fact most of them are hostile, especially to men? Are you yourself a lesbian? Are you speaking from experience?

I am a gay man and have a lesbian sister. Unfortunately I’ve been around many lesbians, including my sister, who are hostile. You would think that's what they live for. They don't care about anything but other lesbians. They act like men, dress like men, use strap-ons and have serious penis envy! Yet oddly enough they hate men and are so vicious towards most men. The men they do get along with are the really fem ones.

—Mark

Dear Mark,

Please allow Ms. Behavior to come out to you as a lesbian and to apologize on behalf of all lesbians who have at any time envied your penis and threatened your masculinity. It would be best if you could see a shrink immediately to deal with your feelings of diminishment.

If this seems too far-fetched, Ms. Behavior would like to arrange a no-cost healing experience for you: If you’ll just provide your home address, she will happily send a gaggle of kind-hearted lesbians clad in camisoles and flowing skirts, who will behave with the utmost femininity and respect in understanding your pain and healing your psychic wounds. They will bake you bread and let you rest your head on their warm bosoms.

Hopefully these sweet, loving lesbians won’t wear any penile accessories beneath their lady clothes, and they will make up for all you’ve suffered at the hands of mean lesbians who wear men’s suits and strap-ons!