Reply #54: It all depends on the situation. [View All]

The easy answer is "Whatever they want to do." but the question wasn't how do you respond, it's how do you react. I react negatively in certain situations and not others. How middle of the road could I be? But it's true. If I am at a bar, a party, or in my home and someone is camping it up, then I react differently than I do when someone is making a fool of himself in public. And yet, I vividly remember deliberately making a fool of myself in public many times. We did it on purpose, for shock value, but that was back in the 1970's and now it seems kind of tired to me.

Acting effeminate can be hilarious. It can also become a habit, especially the switching pronouns and talking like drag queens. If a friend calls me up and says, "Oh girl, I seen you at Walmart." he's being funny. I know a couple of straight guys who do something similar, except that instead of imitating drag queens or Wanda Sykes, they are imitating a gay stereotype.

I remember riding on a bus many years ago when two teenaged boys were just flaming all over the place. When they got off, a young black woman in the back turned to her friend and said something like, "That's offensive. Women doesn't act that way." So it would appear that she thought that the gay boys were imitating a female stereotype, a silly one. She was right, women DON'T act that way. So perhaps effeminate isn't even the right word for this. Other words we have used ourselves would be swishing, trashing, camping, etc... but it's really not acting effeminate in a dictionary sense of the word.

My mom has a favorite expression applied to all sorts of behaviors, "You don't have to act like what they call you." I've never been completely sure what that means, but it seems to make sense.