Business Card!!!

*phew* I feel better.

Probably not homophobic as much as I'm-straight-but-don't-expect-me-to-welome-advances-of-gay-men phobic. I believe there's a subtle difference, and conversely the opposite is true.

POOR MAN'S SHORTY'S bless!

also @2 what the hell did he expect in a gay bar? also hi welcome to every woman's experience, maybe he woke up a little bit there

@4, who knows, maybe he felt it would be a more social event rather than prospective dating. Regardless, the friend was BS by implicating that not enjoying being hit on by gay men makes you homophobic. As for the guy saying "yeah, kinda," let me know how often you are able to produce a Shakespearean response on short notice when stressed out, let alone go into greater detail like "I don't dislike gay people, I just have no attraction to them and getting hit on by all those guys was uncomfortable."

Raindrop, are you saying the average gay guy is as offended by a straight guy flirting with him as the average straight guy is by queer attentions? Really?

Unknown @4, You did notice that the friend didn't speak to the police and understand that his recollection of events might be slightly different than what was reported to the SPD by the not-at-all gay and only vaguely homophobic guy who went to the gay bar and got annoyed when gay men expressed sexual interest in him, right? Because it seems pretty likely that events did not transpire exactly as reported.

Serious, not trying to be an MRA dick here: Why is a guy disliking being hit on in a gay bar homophobic, while a woman disliking being hit on in a "straight" bar totally OK? Personally, I think the guy here did nothing particularly wrong; he found the scene he was in not to his liking, so he left. Or tried to leave, until he was assaulted by his hopefully-former friend. Maybe answering in the affirmative to the "are you homophobic?" question a bit uncool, but not assault-level uncool.

The only leeway I can see is the notion that a gay bar is pretty specifically a place where guys go to hit on/get hit on, where as other establishments are more casually social.

Personally, I think every straight guy should spend a tiny bit of time in a gay bar, just to experience the woman's point of view of what it's like to be relentlessly hit on by guys you have no interest in.

@5: No, more like a lesbian or gay man getting hit on by a straight man or woman - in regard to 'conversely'. What @5.1 (unknown_entitly) said.

Looks like the comment numbering code is based on a time posted value rather than an incrementing collection.

There's a difference between becoming bored at being hit on all the time by people you have no interest in, and becoming upset at the idea of these people hitting on you. We weren't there but the description is more of the "upset".

If he's in a meat market and just gets tired of being meat, he did right to leave. No call to get grumpy at other folks about it though, if that's what he did. When he keeps getting hit on on the bus, that's grumpy time.

"Authorities suspect alcohol was involved."

That dude went to a gay bar in the first place signals to me that he was doing his best to be cool with it, but as a straight man that has gone to many a gay bar with his friends it does take practice to deflect and learn to roll with it. And some gay bars you just need to stay out of as a straight dude. Its not a space for you.

And as @4 said; welcome to every woman's experience. How's it feel having a dude not leave you alone? It was probably good for him.

Wow - double nickels in a comment thread. I sense a shimmer in the matrix....

Hummm - I know this isn't base 5 but maybe there is a cribbage logic now that we have double 10s after double 5s....

One doesn't need to be homophobic to not want to be hit on at a bar - I imagine it's a feeling most straight women are very familiar with. And simply leaving seems like an appropriate response to this discomfort.

@4 you're dangerously close to "what did she expect, [going to that place / dressing like that / drinking all that alcohol]" territory!

Hey Straight Dudes! If your friend asks you to accompany him to a gay bar, and you elect to go with him, you can probably expect to be hit on in said gay bar, because IT"S A GAY BAR. BUT, don't worry, as there's a very simple way to respond to such advances! All you have to do is say, "sorry, not looking", or "I'm just here with my friend", or really pretty much any polite brush-off will suffice - you can even say, "I'm straight!" - it's all good. And most (as in 95% of the) gay dudes will leave you alone if you do this, because there are plenty of other gay dudes in the gay bar who DO want to be hit on and they will just move along to the next person.

I'm going to guess that the straight dude did not know his gay friend was gay or that they were going to a gay bar. Some guys are stupid like that.

@15....uhmmm, no.

Sexist.

@2: Yes. We know you feel uncomfortable around gay people but ostensibly you don't belong at a gay bar either.

@17 - Please elaborate my dear!

Going from the information provided, the gay friend comes off sounding like a self-righteous asshole with a possible drinking (and obvious anger-management) problem.

As others have already said, welcome to a woman's everyday experience. In fact, this smacks of the classic straight-man beef against women: if she doesn't like getting hit on, she's a raging bitch and/or dyke; if she does like it, she's a slut.

All I know is that there's TWO NUMBER FIVES AND IT'S FREAKING ME OUT. Also, that last panel is awesome.

Also also, did the guy call the cops on his friend? I can't tell them if that's the right or wrong thing to do here, it's just... unusual.

When it rains...

...it pours!

I bet none of you people even cares that I've never been given an SPD business card. Typical.

If he's in a gay bar and reasonably attractive he should expect something like this to happen. In the closet? At least he didn't get violent.

I read a book recently that dealt with this subject. A virgin male, 38 yrs. old that had not established his sexuality. He admired women from afar and yet he had a habit of seeking male friends. This story took place during the depression in the 30's and evolved into the war years and eventually this man took a widowed woman to be his companion for life. The man was a farmer in Montana and his whole life was devoted to his "place". This wasn't a Broke Back Mt. thing at all, it was a good love story that turned out well. Good read, "Plain Song."

Its a love-hate story for the ages! "I ain't gonna quit you (until you stop breathing)" because “As you know, madness is like gravity...all it takes is a little push.”

Raindrop,

If you do not wish to be hit on by gay guys, do not go to gay bars, If I go to a straight bar and a woman propositions me, I politely reply with a "No thank you, I'm gay". If it happens too often for my liking, I leave.

This may not make sense to you, because the entire world is a safe space for straight men. Nobody threatens your safety for being heterosexual. There is no such thing as "straight bashing". Courts do not let gay guys off the hook for murdering straight people either on a "heterosexual panic defense" or a twinkie defense.

However, gay men do not enjoy universal safe spaces. Even with the sea change in popular opinion, where many churches now welcome us and we can kiss at sporting events and in straight bars without being milled by an angry mob, this is still true. This is a case in point. Here, in one of our bars, a bar which is explicitly a gay bar, where gay men are encouraged to come and know that we can express our desire for one another without fear, we see a straight invader who acts like we should, I dunno, make some announcement over the PA system that a heterosexual man has just entered the room, so everybody has to just quit being gay all of a sudden for fear that he might feel uncomfortable.

This is our bar. If you don't like what we do in our bars, then do not come to our bars. Its not like there is a shortage of straight bars. Its not like it is completely impossible to find an alcoholic beverage anywhere without risking the sexual advances of gay men.

I can assure you, we won't miss your business.

Hey, while you're at it, take all the tech boys out of Capital Hill with you so we can have our gayborhood back.

@27: "If it happens too often for my liking, I leave."

So far as I can tell, that's precisely what the straight guy in the police report was doing. He decided, "This isn't my scene, I'm not having a good time, and I want to leave."

His friend calling him a homophobe was a bunch of manipulative crap designed to get him too back off of the perfectly reasonable decision that he wanted to go. His response wasn't so much an admission of homophobia as much as it was a spur-of-the-moment, heated, "Fuck you for trying to tell me I'm a bigot for having boundaries."

Put yourself in that scenario. Say a straight male "friend" insisted you accompany him to a particular bar, and you got hit on incessantly by straight men. Heck, the come-ons are so frequent and aggressive you decide you want out. And when you go to get some air, your straight male "friend" says, "What, do you hate men?"

I would conclude your "friend" was shit-testing you, trying to see how much you would put up with, see how easy you were to manipulate and shame, see if he could get you drink enough to "flex" on being a lesbian to prove how much you don't hate men.

Thinking ill of the gay "friend" in this scenario has nothing to do with hating gay people or gayness, and everything to do with hating three type of manipulative people who try to use guilt and shame to violate the boundaries of people who were supposed to be their friends.

I just responded to two posts as though they were one. The top of the response was to Wandering Stars, the bottom was to a post I cannot find now, for the life of me.

@27: You're absolutely right. I have no business going to a bar infested with pole sucking effiminate degenerates obsessed with Rogers and Hammerstein musicals and crystal punch bowels. Don't worry, I'll stay far away!

(LOL!)

P.S. To my dear Wandering Starts and that dreadful Undead Ayn Rand.

I am gay. Raindrop is gay. Really. Most sloggers know this.

The sheer fact that you two surmised that I'm not illustrates your myopic provincial dispositions that all gays must be bleeding heart liberals or they are not worthy of listening to "Over the Rainbow", which I am doing right now.

31,

I'm not a liberal, either, RD. I guess this just goes to show how little either of us can tell about the other based on a few blog posts

@32 - indeed - no worries

For those who might be confused, the word liberal means something very specific, and is not a catch-all term for everyone to the Left of a conservative. In fact, most Europeans would consider both the major US parties to be liberal. Liberalism implies an embrace of free market capitalism, and therefore almost everyone in the federal legislature is in fact a liberal.

I reject the free market. This means I cannot be considered a liberal. There are those both on the Left and Right who, according o this standard are illiberal.

A socialist is not an extremist liberal. Socialism is a school of thought completely separate and distinct from that of Liberalism.

I only bring this point of clarification up, as the US news media tends to misuse these terms. I simply seek to correct a running malapropism, lest anyone find the above exchange confusing.

There's sure some discussion going on here and all, but all I want to say is that the tiny "no boobs" thrown in there amongst all of the profanities made my day. Thanks once again, Callan.

Whoa, there are two @22 posts. How did you TWO that?

@36: I posted those comments logged on from two different computers simultaneously, hence giving credence to my suspicion that it's a bug involving a poorly coded race condition to get the next comment number.

Does this dude know what women go through at a straight bar? Constant groping and aggressive come-ons. Secondly, I've been going to gay bars for 10 years, Despite the fact that me and my friends are fairly good looking, we never experience touching like that. Every straight dude I know who goes to gay clubs exaggerates how he was touched and groped at a gay bar when it usually doesn't happen.