Hello, All Purple!

[queerbychoice]

I'm wearing all purple today - a dark purple satin pleated skirt, a dark purple shirt with a big scoop neck bordered with purple lace, a dark purple hair tie, and lavender socks. Since I own at least three purple skirts and about six purple shirts, along with about six pairs of purple socks and several purple hair ties, I usually wear all purple one or two days out of every week, so the fact that this is one of those days would not normally merit any comment here. But it merits comment today because just now I went out to my car at the same time that the guy whose reserved space in the apartment parking lot is right next to mine happened to be getting out of his truck, and as he got out of his truck he looked me up and down, leered approvingly, and exclaimed, "Hello, All Purple!"

It occurs to me that if spoken by the right person, that might not actually be that bad of an opening line. However, this particular guy represents for me some of the very vilest aspects of human nature that I've ever yet encountered. My apartment complex, see, has a weird kind of arrangement where the residents are each assigned a personal reserved parking spot but the visitor's parking lot with the unreserved parking spaces is hidden way in the back and around a corner behind another building so no actual visitor can ever possibly find it - which means that all visitors continually park in the residents' reserved parking spaces instead. It's irritating when someone steals my parking spot, because then I have to park in the visitor's parking lot myself and walk quite a distance to get back to my front door, but that's what I do. The guy whose parking space is next to mine, however, does not do that. Whenever he comes home and finds that some ignorant visitor who couldn't find the visitor's parking lot has stolen his precious parking space, he double-parks his truck perpendicularly blocking the visitor from being able to get out, and also blocking the people whose parking spaces are on either side of his (such as me) from being able to get our cars in or out of our parking spaces, and then he goes into the rental office and demands that they have the car that stole his precious parking space towed away.

Please note that this is a poor neighborhood, where many of the cars he's had towed away have probably not been worth much more money total than the price of the towing that he inflicts upon their owners.

I abhor this guy.

I'm not sure what the appropriate response to being greeted "Hello, All Purple!" by such a jerk might be. Should I answer "Hello, All Jerk!" maybe? I just blatantly ignored him and acted exactly like I hadn't heard him even though he was right in front of my face.

The moral of this story is: if you're going to try to get all chummy and flirtatious with neighbors, try not making a complete jerk of yourself with others in front of them first.

Of course, the caveat to this moral is that really I always completely ignore all people's pickup lines in exactly the same way anyway, unless either (1) I have very good reason to suppose they're queer (I don't do het guys), or (2) they've gone out of their way to do something so incredibly nice for me that I have to at least politely acknowledge their existence even though I have no interest in being flirted with by them (this last situation is purely hypothetical, since no one trying to pick me up ever tries doing anything nice for me). So really I guess the fact that he's a jerk didn't make much actual difference in my reception of him. But lets pretend it did, because I like the story to have a moral.

Comments

fuck mr. purple dude

[grubstreeter.livejournal.com]

mr. purple dude sounds like a butt munch, and not in a good way. you should dump chicken liver on the hood of his car, not that i've ever done that, nor that you will not go to hell for doing so.

love,

drunk boy who loves canadians

[djm4]

...I have very good reason to suppose they're queer (I don't do het guys)

Note that this is in no way, shape or form a pick-up line, but this particular (thus far) het boy wonders idly why not? And yes, the answer 'because I'm male; do the math' has occurred to me, but that hasn't stopped other bi/gay men I know.

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

no one trying to pick me up ever tries doing anything nice for me

*feeds you good ice cream then tries to pick you up, then decides to put you down again since he doesn't know what to do with you up"

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

* " yes whatever moo laa now it is 5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555 minutes past my bed time

[experimentego.livejournal.com]

I'm trying SO hard to come up with an intelligent comment about cars and parking and other things and pretty much calm you with my sympathy but all i can think of right now with this entry is "Purple, purple... grape, grape... fruity pebbles taste soooo great."

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

::throws a fruity pebble at you for your silliness::

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

It actually occurred to me as I typed that line that I might get a response from you about it. Actually I don't think I do exclusively lesbian women either, although they don't generally try to pick me up like het men do so I haven't had occasion to contemplate it much.

I really prefer to be romanced by people who either have no consistent gender preference, or have historically tended to prefer males. If someone makes it clear that they've always preferred females, I sort of feel like the fact of my being female is just confirming their existing prejudices, whereas if they've preferred males before then I feel like I'm helping open their minds to something new.

Along the same lines, whenever I feel myself developing a preference for either gender, I always wish someone of the other gender would come along and remind me that that gender can be just as good, and restore my faith in that gender. Which is maybe why I like the idea of doing the same for other people's gender preferences. I'm not that comfortable with the notion of preferring one entire gender over the other, even though ironically, the very fact that I tend to prefer people who don't prefer women seems to leave me interested mainly in men, simply because the majority of people involved in the queer community seem to prefer the same sex.

It's all a little confusing. For the record, the last person I actually went out with was a het male, in spite of the fact that I'd previously said I'd never go out with a het male - but he was a dwarf, and a masochist, with distinctly nontraditional experiences of sex and gender, so I made an exception - but it only took about two days before it became clear that it couldn't ever be a serious exception . . . he was fine as a body to practice having sex with, but we didn't agree with each other's worldviews at all so on the mental level we could barely hold a conversation for three minutes without giving up in disgust. I know it's theoretically possible for a person to completely understand queer theory and the queer experience without actually being queer, but the odds against my ever meeting a person who actually turns out to have succeeded at that seem to be pretty huge, and just because a person seems to have a reasonable understanding on the surface, that doesn't necessarily mean it won't crumble to pieces when I actually probe it any deeper.

[djm4]

Thanks for the answer; it's very interesting. I think you overtly politicise your relationships and sex life more than I do, which is fair enough.

(As an aside, every woman I've slept with has been bisexual, but that's probably more a function of the company I keep than an actual preference. I'm also very strongly attracted to a certain short-haired androgynous look favoured by many lesbians of my acquaintance, but for obvious reasons this tends not to go any further than flirting.)

[djm4]

Oh, and it strikes me as worth mentioning that the truck guy sounds like a grade A prat to me, too.

[booklectica]

I know it's theoretically possible for a person to completely understand queer theory and the queer experience without actually being queer, but the odds against my ever meeting a person who actually turns out to have succeeded at that seem to be pretty huge,

It's very rare, I agree. djm4 is very unusual in being a het male who, I feel, has succeeded at that. I think being kinky in other ways (i.e. SM and poly) helps.

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

mmm...fruity

[annaclaire.livejournal.com]

when i lived in an apartment complex, my reserved spot used to be next to the reserved spot of the female news anchor of the local ABC station.

she once hit my car while pulling out of her spot and tried to drive off. i was having none of it.

she did not try to flirt with me.

[experimentego.livejournal.com]

Gulp! Fruity-licious!

::Fred Flinstone shows up::

"Barney! My pebbles!!!"

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

If someone makes it clear that they've always preferred females, I sort of feel like the fact of my being female is just confirming their existing prejudices,

That seems to equate a preference for one sex with prejudice. That makes about as much sense to me as equating eye colour with prejudice - not everyone chooses their orientation.

I know it's theoretically possible for a person to completely understand queer theory and the queer experience without actually being queer,

Someone might completely understand queer theory, but I don't think anyone can ever completely understand "the queer experience". I don't pretend to completely understand my own, let alone anyone else's. And in my experience, a person's orientation is a very poor indicator of the level of Clue they've acquired.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

"Prejudice" in the traditional sense means "judging without all the relevant facts." It's something that all human beings do, and have to do, and that it's actually useful to do, because quite often we do have to make an "educated guess" about the best action to take, just based on averages and odds because we don't have access to all the facts.

Since there are very real trends for the different genders in our society to behave differently, it is very valid and sensible for people to tend to prefer one gender over the other. There is nothing wrong with that at all. If you're looking for an equal relationship without any gender polarization and you don't want restaurant waiters to just automatically put the check in front of the "male"-looking partner all the time, it's absolutely true that if you notice someone belongs to a different gender than you, then you can reasonably conclude that the kind of relationship you're looking for would be a lot more difficult to achieve with that person than with a person of the same sex. To come to that conclusion involved prejudging someone who you haven't even met, but it does happen to be a pretty reliable prejudgment. It is a rational prejudice which serves many useful time-saving purposes.

However, there are also exceptions to the general trends, and the fact that there are very valid reasons to have a preference for one particular gender doesn't change the fact that there are also very valid reasons to distrust one's preferences and constantly question whether you could do with a little less prejudging than you currently rely on. The word "prejudice" is an emotionally loaded term, but if you perceive it in its full variety of definitions then it does get at what I think sexual preference really consists of. It's similar to the racial profiling debate - if you have a situation where there truly is not sufficient time or resources to check every person equally, and you do have very good grounds for believing that the people you're looking for are mostly members of one particular race, then racial profiling can save time and resources. But at the same time, it also overlooks way too many exceptions, because nothing is really clearly divisible along racial lines.

"That makes about as much sense to me as equating eye colour with prejudice - not everyone chooses their orientation."

I don't perceive sexual preferences as being at all comparable to eye color or at all biologically determined. However, I don't argue that everyone chooses them either. They evolvce through social influences and learned information - as do all our belief systems and all our prejudices. They are not bad, but I believe we should constantly question them and challenge ourselves as to whether they can be improved - just as I believe we should constantly question all our beliefs and behaviors and challenge ourselves as to whether they can be improved.

[djm4]

Thanks. You wouldn't always have said that, I know.

To be fair, I know next to nothing about queer theory, and my understanding of the queer experience is limited to those parts that have affected me (which all depends on one's definition of 'queer', obviously). My mother never asked me 'where did I go wrong?' but, to do her I doubt she'd have asked me that if I'd told her I was gay. I've been queerbashed (for some reason, I come off as gay to a lot of people) and I'm principled enough not to get out of it by saying 'but I'm not gay', because that strikes me as accepting the bashers' terms.

But 'completely understanding queer theory and the queer experience' seems to me like a pretty tall order even for someone who does define as queer. Although now I come to think about it, why don't I schedule a workshop at it for BiCon 2003?