'2 Qt 2 B Str8' , is this offensive?

Culturally, people consider men are not too much into their look or style.... If a man cares too much for his looks and styles, and is looking all cute from head to toe, they immediately consider him gay... That might be what it means and I'm not so sure whether I should feel offensive about it or not cos' I don't really care about that matter....

 

Back in the days before I really knew about my true orientation, I used to be puzzled at the notion that 'gay men tend to be better looking, on average, than straight men'. There was this Robbie Williams song, the first verse:

"All the handsome men are gay?" It had never occurred to me that how good-looking (conventionally speaking) someone was, could be any indication of their sexual preference at all. Oddly enough, I later overheard a few women bemoaning the fact that "so many of the best looking guys are gay, what a waste" or words to that effect. :lol:

 

This is actually a really good point. Kudos to Kaiser. :lol:

 

"You're right, see what you're looking for?"

:roflmao:

But honestly, I don't find it offensive at all.

 

I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here, so going to take my best guess and if I'm not answering the right question, apologies in advance. Let me know and we can talk out what the actual question is and then I'll try to answer it to the best of my ability. Anyway...

First some background:

Cuteness isn't really a finite quantity but either a subjective judgement of someone else or a state of mind about oneself (which is also subjective, I suppose).

Consider if you were walking down the street and saw someone you thought was good looking. You might (at least for sake of this example) call them cute. You continue down the street and pass another person. They are even better looking than the first one. Finally, you continue on a bit more and see someone who is just jaw dropping gorgeous by your standards (you are having a good day).

Which leads to a question: When you saw the second person, did the first person have all the cuteness sucked out of them and become somehow less cute? When you saw the third person, did the other two people suddenly transform into ugly people? Certainly not. But at the same time, it is generally accepted that different people have different levels of physical beauty, at least insofar as our society tries to create 'universal' standards for such things (whether those standards are good/bad or should exist in the first place is a whole other discussion in itself). But it's not a black/white thing of either 'gorgeous' or 'shatter mirrors'. There are all kinds and levels and such.

Which takes us to the 'too cute' bit. I've only ever heard of stuff like this in relation to gay men, so will talk in terms of that - not sure if women (straight or otherwise) would use this phrasing or have something equivalent.

The idea here may be either that:

a) Gay men are generally just better looking than straight men - basically as a result of (stereotypically) spending more time on their appearance (gym, grooming, skin care, etc.) - note that this idea probably has its origins in the 80s or a bit earlier when the conventional wisdom was that straight men didn't put a lot of effort into their appearance. The whole manscaping, men's body spray, metrosexual, gym toning etc. thing, with its notion that men should spend time on their appearance is fairly recent and is sometimes credited to gay men as having started the trend.

OR

b) When a straight woman encounters a really good looking man, Murphy's Law says that he'll turn out to be gay (at least that's the 'mock conventional wisdom' about these things these days).

I actually ran into a variant of the latter when I was in college: A housemate brought one of the girls from his class home to work on a project or something. I was passing through the house at the time and said hi. He later told me that she asked about me in a way that indicated she was interested in me. He said that I was gay. Her response: The cute ones always are.

I've also heard that phrase used by gay men in regards to good looking straight men btw.

Anyway, combine the background 'conventional wisdom' about gay men being better looking, or the best looking guys turning out to be gay with a bit of snark and you could have some guy wearing at T-shirt or something with this saying on it.

Or I guess someone saying it about another person (they're too cute to be straight).

It's not saying all straight men (or people in general) are ugly, but that the very best looking people are gay and this person is one of them.

Hope this helps,

Todd

 

I suppose I understand the offense people are taking, but, come on, there are real things happening in this world--horrible things, really offensive things. If I spent any time being offended by things like this and then actually spent the corresponding relative time being offended by--well by actually offensive things--I wouldn't have the energy to get out of bed in the morning.

 

To AKTodd:

Ahh, gotcha. Yeah, I think I know what you mean now. Ah, these things are confusing. :/

To OGS:

Offensive things are different to different people. I agree that there are more horrible, more offensive things, but if someone said this to another person who has really low esteem and is extremely self-conscious about their looks, it may be taken the wrong way.

Although, I'd hate to cause an argument, so I guess I'll just leave it at "anything can be offensive to anyone"... if you need proof, go on Tumblr.

 

I'm too cute to be of this planet.

If someone told me I was too cute to be gay (which they have), I would be somewhat offended. I'm flattered because they think I'm cute, but if I'm also gay would that mean I'm considered one of the ugly girls now? Are "my kind of people" ugly?

And when they say, "But you could easily get a man." OMGGG. I can't. Obviously I can get a guy. They're on my jock all the goddamn time. I'm not an idiot. They obviously don't know how sexuality works.

 

no its true

 

The only time I have ever heard "2-Q-T-2-B-S-T-R-8”, was in the story about Allen R. Schindler US Navy. He was disciplined for having transmitted that string of characters over the Navy's Pacific network from the USS Belleau Wood.
On his first night of liberty after his punishment, he was beaten to death by two shipmates in a public restroom in Sasebo, Japan for being gay.
This case resulted in the United States Congress creating a compromise allowing gay people to serve as long as they did not tell anyone they were gay, they also were not supposed to be asked if they were gay. This law was just repealed a few years ago, and was known as Don't Ask Don't Tell.

 

Ha Yup - It took me over an hour and several rewrites to even get that explanation down:eek:

One of the things that's talked about in my line of work is 'write out detailed instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - assume that the reader knows NOTHING about how to do this'. Now I know what that feels like.

It's amazing how what seems like it should be a simple concept can turn out to be so hard to describe when you try to do it in writing.

Todd

---------- Post added 5th Sep 2014 at 07:09 PM ----------

Heh. Shortly after college, I had a friend's dad say the female version of that about me once when he found out I was gay 'But he could have any woman he wanted!'

My response: But I don't want any.:lol:

Todd