Screwed up gender

I just returned home from a gay dance club.  I like to go dancing – pounding music and blinky lights relax me, apparently, in a zen-like meditative kind of way.  I make no apologies.  Why the gay dance clubs in particular you might be asking yourself?  (Or the answer is obvious, but I never assume…)  Because I’ve found that the music is better, the quality of the dancing is better, and most importantly I’m not hit on there.  The meat market quality of the gay dance club just doesn’t include me.  I get written out of that aspect, but get to partake in the dancing.  It’s a fabulous arrangement.

There are a few gay dance clubs that I’ve frequented at one point or another since I started dancing two and a half years ago.  The important thing to know is this: There’s a new-ish club in Austin that I went to for the first time tonight without a (gay) man on my arm.  I went, instead, only with a female friend.  We went to dance, and I assumed it would be much like my other nights there – no cheesy guys hitting on us, just good dancing.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Apparently two women dancing together in a gay bar scream “HIT ON ME!” in a way I never knew.  This is most fascinating to me because in all of the times I’ve been at this particular club dancing with a man I was only hit on once.  Tonight I found myself asking over and over again – do you know this is a gay bar?  Some did, some didn’t.  None seemed to jump to the conclusion that my friend I might be gay.

So what’s the deal here?

Why if there is no man present do men persist in the belief that one is welcome?  Even in a place, of all places, where cross-gendered dancing might happen, but generally only on a friendly level, not on a dancing-as-a-prelude-to-sex level.

About Karen Rayne

Dr. Karen Rayne has been supporting parents and families since 2007 when she received her PhD in Educational Psychology. A specialist in child wellbeing, Dr. Rayne has spent much of her career supporting parents, teachers, and other adults who care for children and teenagers.

4 Comments

  1. In the early 1990s, hetboys flooded the unofficial “straight night” at Traxx in Washington DC, and several of the het women I knew who went there to dance without getting hit on, instead started going on other nights. In fact, I think het women invading gay men’s dance spaces, and het men following them there, is kind of known phenomenon.

  2. Simple. Men have absolutly no qualms with sharing a woman with another woman.

    There is no chance that they will end up suporting offspring not their own.

    Heck they may end up producing offspring with both women.

    None of this is concouse.

    Hetrosexual males love(absolutly adore) lesbian women, especialy if they are not really lesbians.

    Regards

  3. Heck they would willingly donate sperm, even if they were lesbians.

    They have lots to spare.

  4. Oh this is a hoot. And proves your point completly.

    The hetro male is utterly blind(unless the lesbian is more masculine than himself) to the concept that a women could have no interest in a man at all.

    I just realised that you are a lesbian.

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