Acting straight

This is one of those articles that send you to the thesaurus looking for an interesting new synonym for "unhinged."  Greta LaFleur worries that Pete Buttigieg's Norman Rockwell treatment on the cover of Time Magazine represents the triumph of "heterosexuality without women."  In this context, being straight has less to do with literal sex than with the awful sort of acting-white contagion that might lead black kids to do well in school in order to improve their lives and the futures of their communities.

We have oreos and bananas and apples as slurs for blacks or Asians or Native Americans who act too white.  It will be trickier to devise a slur for gays who act too straight, but I imagine someone's working on it.

4 comments:

Christopher B said...

corkscrew, perhaps?

E Hines said...

It will be trickier to devise a slur for gays who act too straight....

Not really, except ones suitable for polite societies like the Hall.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

Well, there's always "inside straight". :+)

Anonymous said...

Or "eggplant"... lavender on the outside, plain white on the inside.