Two weeks ago, after a half-marathon trail race where I wore my “Trans Pride” shorts that have hearts with the trans flag on the butt cheeks, a guy (cis-man) came up to me and said, “I like your shorts, especially the hearts with the trans flag on the butt. I was running behind you for a while and I noticed”.
I was taken very much by surprise. Other people have commented on these running shorts of mine at races but it’s always been women (or female-presenting people) just saying, “I like your shorts”. I don’t do well with appreciative comments on my looks, especially from strangers; and since my looks have become more masculine, I have gotten used receiving fewer compliments, if any at all, and only from women (or female-presenting people). Sometimes there’ll be a very matter of fact comment on our bodies between me & my climbing/running buddies, with a brotherly camaraderie; or a compliment from one of the gay men in the chorus. But otherwise the norm is, “straight/non-queer men don’t make appreciative remarks on each other’s looks” — an unspoken but very clear homophobic social rule. So this comment by the guy at the race really surprised me. And my friends who either overheard the comment or heard about it later when I told them about it, all said that he must be queer and/or hitting on me. And I ended up believing the same — and feeling flattered also because I found him attractive.
It eventually turned out that he wasn’t hitting on me at all.
All my friends and I had misinterpreted.
This discovery disappointed me in a disproportionately intense, almost devastating, way. I felt not only terribly disappointed but also disproportionately hurt and frustrated, even angry. The intensity of my emotional reaction required an explanation. So here’s the analysis of the four reasons I found for my extreme disappointment, frustration, pain, and anger: two of them are external reasons, i.e. frustration, pain and anger due to society’s biases and their influence on how I allowed myself to perceive this situation; two are internal reasons, i.e. due to my own emotional state & biases.
External reasons:
1) Queer people tend to “see queer everywhere”, so most of my queer friends to whom I recounted the episode automatically thought that guy must also be queer. I think many queer people tend to “see queer everywhere” because, for better or for worse, they spend most of their time in queer environments so they end up having a biased view of the world or a tendency to “wishful thinking”. I have spent (& still spend) most of my life, for better or for worse, in environments where queer people are either non-existent or invisible, so I have a more realistic sense of how it is: society, unfortunately, is overwhelmingly straight and sadly normative (and, to be honest, many queer people are sadly normative, too, with their romanticism and monogamic or hierarchical partnering and attachment to marriage). So I should have trusted, or followed, my own usual, logical assumption here, too: chances were that this guy wasn’t queer simply because there are fewer of us queer folk.
2) Society is overwhelmingly neurotypical and allosexual, and people apply the neurotypical and/or allosexual filters to everything. People just cannot take a comment or phrase at face value, they have to, or want to, see (sexual or romantic) implications in everything. I usually don’t. I’m usually literal and asexual to a fault, often missing (sexual or romantic) cues the few times they are directed towards me. So I should have done just the same with that guy’s comment at the race and taken it at face value, as a simple statement of facts: he liked my shorts (like many other people do), appreciated the trans flag (i.e. he’s probably a good ally), and explained the practical way in which he came to notice it. No more, no less. This one time, instead, I allowed the neurotypical, allosexual filter applied by people around me to bias my own interpretation. Why did I allow that?
I allowed it for the following two, internal or personal, reasons:
1) I wanted to interpret that guy’s comment in a neurotypical, allosexual way for once because I desperately want (a) “boyfriend(s)”. I’m in such terrible need for that type of connection — for sexual attention and sexual connection with (a) man/men — that I’m trying to “wish it into existence”, I’m seeing it even when it’s really not there. This is a very dangerous and unhealthy emotional state for me to be in.
2) Somehow, for the past decade, when it comes to some form of non-platonic attraction, I have always been drawn irresistibly — subconsciously — to unavailable people/men. I don’t know how but some part of me — my “reptilian brain”? — seems to pick up on cues that indicate the person’s unavailability (to anything non-platonic) and then I’m drawn to them non-platonically. It’s gotten to the point where, for me, the words “unavailable (to anything non-platonic)” & “(non-platonically) attractive” are (dangerous) synonyms.
This is all very frustrating, painful, and concerning to me.
So, as I try to work through and dispel this burning disappointment, what can I learn from this experience, and what can I treasure?
I can learn to trust myself both more and less: I can, I must trust my autistic, literal, asexual brain more, allowing myself and maybe also trying to show others to take comments at face value, to not read additional (sexual or romantic or flirtatious) meanings into everything; I can trust my life experiences that keep showing that there are few queer people and even fewer non-normative ones, proving that most people really function in the boxes they were given; but I must also trust myself less when it comes to feeling non-platonic attraction towards people, because there I am in a vulnerable, needy, and therefore very biased and dangerous position. So I’ve got to apply to myself, and follow strictly, a simple rule: if I feel any form of non-platonic attraction towards someone, I must steer clear of them.
On the other hand, I can treasure one thing from this whole experience, from that one comment that guy made to me after the race two weeks ago: for a brief instant someone connected to me in a refreshing, non-standard and simply direct way, breaking those unspoken but mighty homophobic rules that prevent most men from praising each other’s looks; for a brief instant, a man who was a stranger took the courage to say something nice to me, to an openly queer person with masculine looks. No more, no less.
The Little Prince and the Fox 