I'll Have To Ask My Husband

The newspapers have mentioned the rise in incidence of verbal and visual anti-gay attacks in the USA since the election.  It does not make me fearful since the sight of two very elderly males who might or might not be a couple is not likely to stimulate whatever chemicals in the brain that react in rage? disgust? repressed lust perhaps?  I don't buy into that argument that lower class white males are all on the prowl and ready to attack gays.  From my experience of many decades I know, have often sensed it myself, there are young clearly sexually active males who are unthinkingly and positively heterosexual but who are easily roused to anger which has a real element of fear in it when confronted by the sight of gay males.  The problem is, to my mind, they get aroused by the idea of gay sex, fear it, act out on that fear.  I remember this so well from my teen years.  And more often than not if they could be isolated from the protection of their group of buddies, you could flirt them down to polite behavior, sometimes go further and have sex with them, which is what they didn't understand they wanted all along.  The main thing to remember in the face of menace: these males want a kind of intimacy they can only vaguely imagine, but they want it. It a relief to turn to males who have fully resolved their sexual needs and identities.  When we lived in Hull Massachusetts and now again here in Sarasota we deal with working men every few days.  If it is I who come to the door, I always answer their inquiry about the task they have come to work on with "I'll have to ask my husband," and very few are the times where the guys do a double-take, give a quizzical look, suppress a reaction. It's what all my elderly lady friends report.  They don't react to me as a male with gay potential, but rather to a sexless wrinkled old lump of flesh.