Check Your Privilege, Straight Girl! A Response to Chloe Curran’s Jezebel Article “Get Out of my Gay Bar, Straight Girl”

Chloe Curran’s article appeared on Jan. 12, 2013 on Jezebel.

Playing with dolls: Discriminatory Dawns

Chloe Curran’s attitude bothers me. She has just said that people like me aren’t wanted in her gay bar spaces unless we act in a certain “socially acceptable” way, i.e., we bow our heads and show that we’re grateful for being allowed into a gay “safe space.” Well, Chloe, I used to frequent gay bars all the time, but never as a neat stereotype. The straight girls who hogged the mirror and gabbled on about “ooh! Prepare to be hit on by women!” were most likely behaving in a way that is common to people in groups. They tend to adopt a particular behavior dynamic that they wouldn’t otherwise exhibit if they were alone. 

I always went to gay bars with my husband. Yeah, we’re both straight, although I’ve always had an open beauty aesthetic that meant I enjoyed ogling men and women (and all the degrees of transgender)  alike. Plus, I love pageantry, so drag shows were these unique jewels of intimate entertainment I could get nowhere else. I never felt unwelcome in a gay bar and, although I was hit on by many women, I rarely turned down a dance with them on account of my not being a lesbian. I felt free to bump and grind on the dance floor, knowing that it wasn’t a pickup. 

But when Ms. Curran let it be known that I was welcome in a gay bar only begrudgingly IF I behave in a certain “nonthreatening” way, my first inclination was to be insulted. I came to gay bars to escape the social expectations and strictures of the regular straight bars, and now Chloe wants to incorporate those strictures right back into the gay bar scene. I’d have to sit in the back of the bar and shut my mouth, accepting that I’m a second-class citizen in this gay safe space because I’m not gay.

Watch Ana Kasparian respond to Chloe Curran’s article 

It reminded me of when I was 13 and in that “awkward phase.” My stepsister, who was slightly older and more "hip" than me, took me to visit a group of her friends, but she told me to shut up and not embarrass her because I was “fat” and therefore not to think of myself as an accepted part of the group. When I got there, the girls were all about 15-20 lbs. lighter than me and obsessing on their next diet. It was an obsession group. I had never felt “fat” at 105 lbs. before, and these girls made me feel absolutely enormous. I don’t blame my sister for her attitude; it was a group dynamic that was self-reinforcing, and she was part of it. She had the genetic blessing of being naturally thin, while I was entering the awkward puberty phase and slowly developing what would become a slight weight problem, although I know now that I was never truly “fat” in the absolute sense. 

But I had been “othered” by the in-group, skinny, diet-obsessed young teens, and that stung. Luckily, it didn’t turn me into a bulimic or anorexic, although I did become a workout junkie, possibly the best possible outcome from such a stressor. The point of the story is that I felt intensely uncomfortable around these girls, and I didn’t go back. They could have their little diet club, and I would focus on my own interests, which ran to science fiction, sports and tomboyish things. I accept that those girls were young and going through a tough socialization ritual in which the group dynamic ruled the individual.  I was just too different from them, and I felt uncomfortable because of it.

This feeling of otherness is one thing that made me feel more comfortable when joining in with the gay community in the bar scene. Please, Chloe, allow us misfit straight girls the freedom to be different, eh? The world isn’t just divided into “gay” and “straight.” I identified with the gay community on so many other levels. I was a Goth and a cosplayer before the words were invented, so I was delighted with drag shows and creative clothing. I was isolated as a teenager in that I was an “ugly duckling;” in fact, I looked almost EXACTLY like J.K. Rowling’s description of the teenaged Severus Snape, only female.  And I got much the same treatment as young Snape did. My social life was nil.  I didn’t have a date that wasn’t set up by my church or my parents all through high school. Of course, who wants to go on a date to see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the 36^th time? Me, that’s who! 

So I hope that the next time I decide on a whim to go to a gay bar, I am not targeted as “the other” and made to feel unwelcome unless I grovel for the crime of being straight. I’d hate to see the gay community enclaving itself like this on the brink of its full acceptance in the larger society. Live and let live, Chloe, and anything that gets too obnoxious, well, call the bouncer, eh? That’s what she’s there for.