tigresslilly

Yesterday my car was getting an oil change, so after work I was sitting with another coworker while we waited for our rides.   So we were talking, as people do when I mentioned my ex-boyfriend in passing and he said "oh well that answers some questions".  

Now, there are a couple obvious questions that this statement "answers" on the surface.   Maybe he was wondering if I was dating someone or maybe he was wondering if I was gay or straight or maybe he was wondering why someone with a college degree was working at the Cosi and my sudden move cleared that up.  Whatever it was I was just going to smile and let it go, but he continued. 

"With that hair cut I couldn't help but wonder if you were one of those hairy armed dykes." 

And I was just so startled.  It seems stupid, but the first thing I thought was that I have blond hair on my arms and we wear short sleeves so wouldn't he have noticed if I was hairy?  And then my next thought was maybe this was one of those assholes where any hair on your arms makes you hairy.  

By the time I got to the implication that short hair makes you gay and he was using a slur and perhaps all lesbians in his mind are hairy and butch because they won't date him, my ride had shown up and I'd left. 

I was both lucky and unlucky that my ride showed so quickly after the comment because part of me wishes I'd been more with it and confronted him about his language and use of stereo type and the the other part of me is just grateful.  I was just so thrown by that one statement, you know.  There was so much loaded implication about how I look and am viewed even when in a uniform and in a work zone where sexuality isn't expressed and then so much implication about lesbians and what it means to be one and what kind of person he is in general. 

I mean this guy is 5'1" hairy and overweight what the fuck is he doing judging others on their looks?  Seriously, do men some men feel so above general look requirements that they can decide based on looks whether a woman is one of those lesbians and state them casually to coworkers?

I don't know, every since I can remember people have felt entitled to comment positively or negatively on my looks, men more so than women and it's always bugged me.  Until recently though, while some women have asked me out as men sometimes ask me out, no one in my peer group has ever assumed or wondered about my sexual identity based on my looks.  Maybe that's just because I've always showed signs, like boyfriends, that I identified as "straight".  Maybe no one has ever had the guts to say stupid shit like that to my face.  I don't know, it bothered me on so many levels that he would say it more than anything else. 

I know I'm being a little overly sensitive.  People make asshole assumptions based off of looks all the time, I do that a lot too.  I wonder when men and women come in as same sex couples with children whether they're sisters, friends, life partners, and so on.  Sometimes I try to guess what based on body language and interactions and probably looks to some degree.

I don't know.  I didn't like that he said it, I didn't like that I didn't confront him about it and confronting him about it later would be weird and I didn't like when I relayed the story how my mother and sister roled their eyes and called me a hyper sensitive feminist.  This most definetely qualifies as a bitch post.