jef> Offended? No. Nauseated? Slightly. 
I grew up in some serious redneck country myself but I never encountered anything like that.
See, we have this problem in America. We have this totally bizarre standard of manhood that is really nearly unprecedented in history. If questioned, people will assume that it goes back to the rugged frontier cowboy days where life was harsh and men were men and so forth. But it didn't. This image of men harkens less to cowboy days than it does to cowboy movies. Really, it goes back to the first part of the 20th century, when we had a couple of really nasty wars, saw Communists everywhere, weathered the Great Depression, and in the process developed this sensibility that men should be largely unrefined. Conscientious men almost universally had more important things to do than attend to such fluffy things as aesthetics and how they felt about things, and men who didn't eschew these supposedly frivolous notions were viewed with suspicion.
I think the stereotype of the foppish, flamboyant homosexual male (and for that matter, the butch lesbian) come not from some any direct link between those two desires, but from a convergence. Gay people are already violating some far more serious taboos, so there's really no reason for them to bother with molding themselves to nonsensically restrictive gender roles otherwise.
Even though the conditions which led to these attitudes are long gone, the attitudes themselves have propagated on into the present day because fear of social rejection keeps people in line. When social rejection is a given (as it is among gay people as well as certain other groups), one is liberated to do pretty much as one pleases.
Regardless, this is why something that is designed to be attractive instead of, or in addition to, being starkly functional just automatically sends up the "gay" flag in many Americans' brains, or how, say, sensible shoes on a woman automatically mean "lesbian" to some people.
Personally I think the whole thing is stupid and I wish it would just stop, but then I wish the Israelis and Palestinians would stop their bickering too, and you see how much good my wishes are.
I grew up in some serious redneck country myself but I never encountered anything like that.See, we have this problem in America. We have this totally bizarre standard of manhood that is really nearly unprecedented in history. If questioned, people will assume that it goes back to the rugged frontier cowboy days where life was harsh and men were men and so forth. But it didn't. This image of men harkens less to cowboy days than it does to cowboy movies. Really, it goes back to the first part of the 20th century, when we had a couple of really nasty wars, saw Communists everywhere, weathered the Great Depression, and in the process developed this sensibility that men should be largely unrefined. Conscientious men almost universally had more important things to do than attend to such fluffy things as aesthetics and how they felt about things, and men who didn't eschew these supposedly frivolous notions were viewed with suspicion.
I think the stereotype of the foppish, flamboyant homosexual male (and for that matter, the butch lesbian) come not from some any direct link between those two desires, but from a convergence. Gay people are already violating some far more serious taboos, so there's really no reason for them to bother with molding themselves to nonsensically restrictive gender roles otherwise.
Even though the conditions which led to these attitudes are long gone, the attitudes themselves have propagated on into the present day because fear of social rejection keeps people in line. When social rejection is a given (as it is among gay people as well as certain other groups), one is liberated to do pretty much as one pleases.
Regardless, this is why something that is designed to be attractive instead of, or in addition to, being starkly functional just automatically sends up the "gay" flag in many Americans' brains, or how, say, sensible shoes on a woman automatically mean "lesbian" to some people.
Personally I think the whole thing is stupid and I wish it would just stop, but then I wish the Israelis and Palestinians would stop their bickering too, and you see how much good my wishes are.
