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Comment by purple-dragon | Hacker News Reader

> … a very obvious gay male flight attendant

I’m not a fan of these kind of characterizations. I can think of two things that make someone obviously gay: (1) they tell you, or (2) you see that person engaging in homosexual conduct.

Nearly anything else is probably a prejudicial stereotype.

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This is indeed a complex theme, in part because how it is linked to negative stereotypes and in part because people might not realize they are sometimes reinforcing the negativity in them.

It is not controversial to say that an obvious metalhead is indeed a metalhead.

Also I would like to point out that "(2) you see that person engaging in homosexual conduct" is not that much of a silver bullet here, as bisexual and trans people exist too :)

Also sometime it is not hard to know more someone that they know themselves, I had a couple friends that were known to be gay before they knew themselves. And also "a very obvious gay male" does not mean homosexual to many people, in the last years society and the internet became much more mature in distinguishing masculine/effeminate stereotypes from actual sexual orientations. I have no idea of what went through GP minds, but I believe that being able to separate the "very obvious gay" from a description of a sexual orientation into a personality trait can be very beneficial for society in the long term.

If I can say it another, simpler way: I decide when and what I do with my body and what that makes me. No stranger’s perception nor insistence can change that. However, repeatedly being subjected to such judgements over subconscious or natural expressions of behavior, whether voice, gait, etc., is a vehicle for psychological harm, much like gas lighting.

You can absolutely decide what you do with your body, but what it makes you is not solely your decision. Like it or not, what we are labeled as is partially determined by what society thinks we are.

Here is an extreme example to prove this. I can say that I am a chair, and I can argue this until I'm blue in the face, but that won't change the fact that others will think that I am a human, not a chair. More relevant to the conversation, let's say I am a man that only has relationships with other men. I can call myself straight all I want, but if I tell other people about my behavior, they will categorize that behavior by the behavior(homosexual), thus it will not always align with the categorization that I apply to myself(straight). Okay or not, it is human nature to behave this way.

That’s my point. You can call me gay all day, every day because of my hypothetical lisp. That doesn’t make it so.

Sure, but I was more responding to your post above saying "I decide when and what I do with my body and what that makes me. No stranger’s perception nor insistence can change that." The perception of others does affect a persons categorization. Humans also categorize based on stereotypical behavior of things within a category, eg. lisp and swaying gate in gay men, long hair and lowered muscle mass in women, etc. These are all stereotypes that are found in a higher density within those categories, and often people within those categories change their behavior to align more with those categories(women intentionally growing hair out and wearing makeup) to accent category projection and improve accurate category interpretation in others(that is a woman). In this way, stereotypes aren't always prejudicial, it's more of the rigidity of the category interpretation that makes something bad, such as saying all men with lisps are gay, which is wrong.

I know this is quite a bit, but the main point I'm trying to make is that there is nuance in this conversation. Categorizations aren't always evil(though they can be), and are important social signals in our society.

I mostly agree, but it is lazy, sloppy, and unnecessary to combine “gay” and “flight attendant” at the hip as multiple people have done in this post.

As for deciding “what that makes me”, I was trying to obliquely save room for the case another poster brought up, namely being gay or bisexual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_male_speech

Whether you are a fan of those characterizations or not. It's real.

I know what’s real and I know people both gay and not gay (both adult and children) that have to deal with prejudicial treatment simply because of how they “sound”. But please, continue to defend yourself judging people or putting them in a box over something so superficial if you like—just don’t expect anyone to find it endearing.

I'm making no such defense. But since you are no longer being rational at this point I'll just say that speech is used to communicate your identity, and to ignore that idea is more harmful than to understand it.

You can pull the ripcord if you like, but I said nothing irrational. Some may purposely choose to express aspects of their identity through vocalization—I don’t disagree—but counter examples abound.

> since you are no longer being rational at this point

I am not who you are answering to. I don't think purple-dragon is being irrational here, you initial comments were easy to misunderstand and negative stereotypes of homosexuality are still a problem today. Assuming goodwill I actually think that your comment had nothing wrong in it (assuming you do not actually think that that flight attendant "must" be gay or that all gay behave like that), still purple-dragon is not wrong either in reading it as a negative depiction. Internet conversations are just hard...

Apologies, I must have missed the username

I upvoted you because I truly believe this is today still a serious problem, but I also want to defend the complete opposite views because I believe they can lead to a better solution.

There is a publicly recognized stereotype of gay man (essentially Jack from Will & Grace) which is not a faithful depiction of many homosexual men, I find wrong to assume that it is indeed faithful (all gay man are like that and vice versa). What I think will be a solution to this prejudice is not negating the stereotype but divorcing it from the actual sexual orientation of the individual.

I believe that many heterosexual males would be more comfortable with a more effeminate personality and that an homosexual can be at any point of the "virility" spectrum, still the spectrum exist.

Sexuality is not just about intercourse. It is also a form of culture, identity, and expression.

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