So many straight guys are so horrified by the remotest possibility of someone they’re not attracted to being attracted to them.
Like given the smallest suspicion of a one-way crush they’ll be truly awful to women they consider unattractive or men who like men, even if the person in question doesn’t even come close to flirting with them.
But then they turn around and fucking harass women who don’t return their attraction – with zero self-awareness. It’s truly mind-boggling to see the same guy say some cruel shit to repel the ‘advances’ of a gay man or a fat girl who barely glanced in his direction and like thirty seconds later be pushing his luck with some girl who’s already said three times she’s not interested.
That’s fucked up.
It’s honestly just blatant policing of who is allowed to have initial attraction, and that I think really comes from this fucked up idea that attraction (hell, you could argue interaction in general) exists purely for their own benefit and pleasure.
Straight men get angry to the point of violence both at receiving non-intrusive interest that’s unwanted and at not receiving the interest that is wanted because they feel entitled to have their own wants and needs be the defining factor in all interactions.
They literally – frequently – expect other people to feel exactly what is convenient to them, and this phenomenon is a really obvious example. A major component of male entitlement is the bedrock assumption that anyone having emotions that don’t cater to a man’s interests is somehow attacking him.
A few weeks ago one of my coworkers was recounting the story of how a gay man who used to work with us told him – and I quote – “you have a nice smile” and about how he wanted to “punch the guy in the face” for hitting on him because it was sexual harassment and the guy NEVER should’ve gotten away with it.
So, I asked him if he’d ever told a girl he didn’t know that she had a pretty smile or that she was pretty and he said “of course I have” so I asked “was that sexual harassment?” and he said “well, no, I was just trying to be nice” and so I said “well, then why is a guy telling you that YOU have a nice smile sexual harassment?” And he was quiet for a really long time before he said “because he’s gay and I’m not /like/ that” (which I expected) so I said “what if you’ve been telling lesbians that they have pretty smiles or that they’re beautiful and /they/ weren’t ‘like that’?”
He got so angry when he couldn’t come up with a ~good answer to that and stomped out of the room. But I hope that it sunk into some part of his head that /his/ attraction isn’t the only one that’s valid or acceptable. Because I’m so sick of straight dudes acting like it’s the end of the world for ANYONE they don’t find attractive to be attracted to them.
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