At a Glance

One thing I've noticed in being attracted to gender-bending and androgyny is a near-ubiquitous comment that always seems to accompany people who blur the gender lines. That comment is, 'This makes me question my sexuality.'

Almost always it's a comment made by a man who identifies as heterosexual in reference to an incredibly feminine male. (Like my boyfriend Andrej. He is my boyfriend. And we are going to get married. He just doesn't know it yet. That's not creepy or anything, right?) Because people tend to have a really surprised and reflexively defensive adverse reaction to discovering that something they like is in fact something they never thought they would like.

I never really thought about it until recently, but as soon as I did start thinking about it I realized it didn't make any fucking sense.

Maybe this is extremely difficult for me to grasp just because my sexuality is so indiscriminate. The reason extreme androgyny and gender-bending like Andrej Pejic don't make me question my sexuality is because I don't really actually have any easily-defined sexuality. As far as I'm concerned my sexual preference is more or less summed up as, 'Hey, you're cute. Get naked.' I wasn't always like this and it did take me some time to come to terms with the fact that I was attracted to a lot more than I was raised to believe was 'okay', but I don't ever remember being seriously disturbed or upset at discovering the non-vanilla things that attracted me.

I get that being a Straight Guy (TM) is completely incompatible with finding other men attractive. Unfortunately we still live in a world where men (and it's really only men--women aren't bound by this arbitrary, outdated social-sexual restriction, at least not in the western world) have to continually 'prove' their sexuality by shunning all things 'feminine' in favour of what is generally considered appropriately manly. I still remember a few years ago (actually it was probably more like a dozen or more years ago now I think of it...) when the colour pink became in vogue for men and this was actually a big fucking deal. Like, people were seriously concerned about men wearing pink. Men with long hair is still taboo. Skinny jeans on men (which I admit look kind of ridiculous on some guys just because they're not dressing for their body types) are mockingly referred to as 'girl jeans' and sneered at as being 'gay'. So it is completely impermissible for heterosexual men to see other men as being attractive because, in a world where pink shirts and aesthetic care are unacceptably unmanly, acknowledging the attractiveness of someone you aren't even yourself attracted to is a big fucking no-no.

Except here's the thing.

I do not fucking understand it.

My dad is pretty much on the right-wing. Anti-environmental, anti-choice, religious. (He does wholeheartedly support evolution, though, but has a hard time squaring science with faith. Hello cognitive dissonance!) He certainly has no tolerance for homosexuality.

But even my dad is perfectly comfortable admitting when other men are attractive.

I don't think my dad has any latent homosexual feelings. I can smell a closeted homosexual for miles and my dad isn't one of them. He's just a straight guy who can understand and appreciate what makes other guys attractive. And I seem to have inherited (or at least learned) this way of thinking from him. Because there are a lot of ostensibly 'attractive' people to whom I am not myself attracted but that I completely understand why other people like them. I don't fancy Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Megan Fox, or Christina Hendricks but I completely get why people find them attractive. I'm just not into them myself. It is not that fucking hard to think this. It's just a case of, 'Yeah, I can see why you like it but it's not really my thing.'

Okay?

So I really do not fucking understand why people look at pictures of girly male models--the kind you can't tell at a glance might be men or women--and have to question their sexuality.

Why does this make you have to question it?

At a glance, you really legitimately cannot tell Andrej Pejic is a man unless he is wearing men's clothing. (Which he often isn't.) The aesthetic he puts forth is one of femininity. He isn't trying to be a girl, but he looks like one. And he looks like a prettier girl than most girls. The fact that he has a penis doesn't change the fact that he looks like a woman. Finding him attractive when you are not typically attracted to men doesn't make you gay. It doesn't draw your sexuality into question. You are not finding yourself attracted to something you are not normally attracted to--you are attracted to something you are attracted to. The fact that it's an illusion is neither here nor there.

Let's put it another way.

Imagine you like redheads. You fucking love redheads. You adore redheads. You think they are fucking sexy. You prefer redheads over any other hair colour. You see a picture of a really cute redhead, a good-looking girl. Or guy, if you swing that way, the sex isn't important here. You just fancy them like mad because, hey, redhead! And then you later find out that the model isn't a redhead at all and dyes their brown hair red. What you saw was an illusion, a trick of the eye, an aesthetic the model puts forward that doesn't accurately display their true physical attributes.

Does that mean you don't actually legitimately like redheads and are instead attracted to brunettes, the model's natural hair colour?

Let's say you're attracted to large breasts. (On women. Well, I mean, you could be attracted to large breasts on men but for simplicity's sake let's just assume you are attracted to large-breasted women.) You see a good-looking woman walk by. She's fucking stacked. You chat her up. Maybe you go out a few times. Maybe you just jump right into bed. (Whatever makes you happy!) In the course of events, you discover that she has had breast augmentation and her natural breast size was a very demure A-cup. You were attracted, again, to something that does not offer an accurate representation of their natural physical reality.

So does this mean you're naturally attracted to small breasts since that's what she had naturally?

No.

Simply being attracted, on sight, to something you find attractive only to find out that it isn't accurate or is an illusion doesn't change what you are attracted to. Particularly in a situation where the deception is deliberate. In the case of Andrej Pejic, with makeup and long blonde hair, he is almost always in women's clothing, often dresses and lingerie and other articles of clothing we typically think of as being unmistakeably and unquestionably female. The illusion is deliberate. He looks like a woman. Therefore, he will stir attraction in people who are attracted to those feminine traits.

We are human. We are attracted to what we perceive with our senses. It just so happens that our senses can easily be tricked and are not 100% reliable 100% of the time. But this doesn't, and never will, change what makes you tick. If you like women, being attracted to a gender-bending effeminate male model doesn't make you gay. If you are attracted to men, being attracted to Buck Angel doesn't change that.

But honestly? Confining yourself to a rigid definition of anything--gender, sexuality, or anything else--does you no favours. We thrive on flexibility, and if evolution has taught us nothing else it's that immutability ends pretty badly for everybody involved.