(no subject)

[rivka]

So I was in the locker room after my water aerobics class, getting dressed next to the instructor.

"Have any fun plans this weekend?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said. "Tomorrow we're having people over for a cookout, and then Sunday we're going to gay pride in D.C."

She followed up with: "Are you married?"

Huh.

I, personally, would not choose to respond to "We're going to gay pride" by asking "Are you married." It just wouldn't occur to me. What was she thinking? I can think of three possibilities:

(1) She had such extremely accurate gaydar that she correctly perceived me as bisexual. (I wasn't, for example, wearing my wedding ring.)

(2) She wasn't thinking - she was clueless. Maybe she wasn't listening, or maybe she didn't recognize the phrase "gay pride," or maybe she didn't stop to think about the normal audience at gay pride.

(3) She was in a state of homophobic panic brought on by being nekkid next to a queer person.

What do you think?

[Poll #306787]

Water aerobics, incidentally, is insanely fun. I had no idea that I would enjoy it that much. I came home in a lovely peaceful floaty endorphin haze, which unfortunately has now worn off to be replaced by sore muscles. But still: water aerobics is way fun.

I realized that I automatically expect to be the worst at any physical activity. There was another woman I spoke to in the locker room before class - this was her second time doing water aerobics. She was tall and slender and conventionally pretty, and I automatically assumed that, given that we were both beginners, she would be much better at it than I was. She wasn't. In fact, she had a lot of trouble figuring out how she was supposed to move, and I pretty much did okay.

The same thing happened when I learned to shoot, and when I started doing English Country Dance. I'm good at both of them, and I was fairly good at both - and a quick learner - from the beginning. But in my mental image of myself, I still expect to be hopeless at anything physical. I begin to suspect that I may not be uncoordinated and awkward after all - that my problems with physical activity may just be due to disability-related weakness, and not to any inherent klutziness.

It's a weird feeling.

Comments

[snippy]

(e) she knows that gay people can get married now, and some have; she wanted to know if you were one. After all, being gay and being married are neither mutually exclusive nor causative at this point.

[geminigirl]

I'll be at the Parade tomorrow evening, and at our table from 12 or 12:30 until 2. Come by and say hi if you're there then, or give me a call (do you have my cell number) and lets try to meet up and say hi?

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

She might have thought you were from Massachusetts. :)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I suspect that learning to dance, whatever form; and no matter how hard it was to come by, will always make such things which require co-ordination easier to acquire.

As for shooting, in some 20 years of teaching people to shoot, females fare better. They come with very few pre-conceptions about what they are supposed to do, and they have no cultural baggage telling them they are supposed to know how, so they listen to instruction.

And most of shooting (exp. with a rifle) is about patience, more than anything else, which is easy to have, when one isn't trying to prove anything.

TK

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Since you were having a personal conversation, she might simply have noticed that you said "we" and asked if you were married because of that.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Yeh. That was my thought -- she might have heard "cookout" and "we" and just gone with the nearest handy label for "we"-ness, not registering Gay Pride much before talking.

A sort of "none of the above", leaning toward "clueless". Sounds like a couple of standard icebreaker questions. Not that I often use "are you married?" as an icebreaker, but a lot of people seem to. Makes me squirm.

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

I vote for noticing the use of "we" and asking about being married. She may have figured that asking that would lead to you either saying yes, or saying no and explaining the "we" without her having to ask lots of questions.

Also - she may have no conversational skills, so that was one of the "find more out about the new person" questions she had lined up.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

She'd somehow found out through some other means that you were married, and was confused by your mention of gay pride, given that so far at least, gay people can't get married in your state. So she was confirming whether what she'd heard was, in fact, correct.

-J

Re: None of the Above

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

I answer this with a very short story that may or may not have happened (I've told it so many times I can't remember anymore)
About 2 years ago now I was working in Blockbuster and a woman and I were discussing movies she could watch (happens more than you'd think) I suggested some movie which caused her to ask if a particular actress was gay. I had no idea and this segued the woman to gay marriage. I said I was all for it, everyone deserves to loose half their stuff in a bad divorce. She said she was all for it because then her son wouldn't have an excuse any more and would have to settle down.
NOW! With the legalization's that are soon going to sweep the land like a scythe of justice or at least equality, gays are going to have to be subjected to the same mother complaints and social pressure to pair off that the rest of us get.

SO to get to the point. I think she was trying to pressure you into getting married.

Re: None of the Above

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

The Onion did a very funny article based on the idea that now gays were getting pressure to marry, just like heterosexuals.

Re: None of the Above

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Well there you have it, this must be the answer when a fine reporting instiute like The Onion is involved

[pbrim.livejournal.com]

None of the above. I would have assumed a mental dialog of, Um, I thought she was married and straight, but she's going to gay pride, so maybe I was wrong, but she said "we" so maybe I was right, but being gay and married are not necessarily incompatible anymore so maybe I was both wrong and right. I can't just ask the naked lady next to me "Are you gay?" that might give the wrong idea or be rude or something.
Spoken: "Are you married?"

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

This is pretty much the way I analyzed it.

[winterbadger]

Me too, with the addition that at least some people are probably aware that participation in gay pride events is not restricted to gay people, and that even straight people sometimes like to celbrate with their friends. :-) But maybe I'm giving her credit for too much depth, I dunno.

[ckd]

(e) She took "we" and wondered if you'd been to SF, Massachusetts, etc...

PS, an update for those who might have been wondering since May 17:

Cambridge City Hall: still standing.
My marriage: unaffected.
Sky: not fallen.
Biblical plagues (locusts, boils, frogs): nothing. Not even cicadas.
Weather fit to smite sinners: None. Note that the tornadoes hit somewhere else. It was really hot this week though.
Level of continuing concern locally; not even a page 27 story in the paper.

(Ronald Reagan: Still dead.)

[lcohen]

whew!

thanks for the update. so many bullets dodged!

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

If it was me, I would have been tempted to say something "yes, but in an open marriage" and let her come up with her own conclusions.

Hard to tell what she was thinking when she asked the question...

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

What she said.

I think if she'd asked "Aren't you married?" rather than "Are you married?" I'd have gone for [b] or [c] as she would've had some clue of your matrimonial state. Thus it's either [a] or [d], and I don't have enough data to even guess.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I was thinking she wondered whether you'd gone off to get married in San Francisco.

[boxofdelights]

When I ask someone "What are you going to do this weekend/after graduation/if Bush gets elected?" and they respond with "We will...", I'm always more interested in who comprises the "we" than I am in whatever they are going to do.

I'm glad you had fun with aquarobics! I did them when I was pregnant. Oh, how good it felt to float! It was enough to make me believe in the aquatic ape theory.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I have no comment on the gaydar/cluelessness/other thing, but oh boy do I hear ya re my internal perception of physical ability.

I've always been short and chubby through to fat. The star sports for "physical education" at high school were basketball and volleyball. I played soccer and tennis for fun but always thought I sucked at them. It wasn't until I had a go at archery early last year that I realised that I actually had eye-hand co-ordination. It's a nice feeling when you start up something _expecting_ to suck at it, and you turn out not to.

Whee! Enjoy it.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, have always been tall and slender-to-midsized, and I really AM clutzy! (Maybe it's because I have further to fall. ;-)

-J

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Like half of the other people who've responded, I think she thought you were from Massachusetts.

Seriously, if I heard that someone was going to gay pride with someone, I might ask if they were married, even if I wasn't in MA. People get married even in places where their marriages aren't recognized by the local civil authorities, yet those people are still married.

I wonder if the question would have been clearer if English still differentiated between second person singular and plural:
"WE are [X]ing this weekend."
"Oh, are YOU (plural) married?"
vs.
"Oh, ist thou (singular) married?"

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Sign me up for the answer, "she noticed the we, and was wondering if you recently got hitched in one or another of the great marriage extravaganzas."

If they had such a thing as water country dance, you'd be awesome at it, I bet.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised no one has suggested the possibility that she might have been trying to figure out if it was OK to hit on you.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Why add embarrassment to perplexity?

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

My take on this is that she was running a standard "small talk" script without paying sufficient attention to the responses. I've known a fair number of people who do that -- I think it's a learned behavior that they pick up from their parents. There are Things You Say To Be Polite, and those questions, in that order, sound a lot like two of them.

Re: She responded to your saying "We..."

[hazelchaz]

"Tomorrow we're having people over for a cookout, and then Sunday we're going to gay pride in D.C." You didn't say "I'm...", you said "We..." implying that either you have an SO or other close people, or you have a mouse in your pocket. She was following up your statement of your plans with a polite inquiry to find out who "We" are.

[fernblatt.livejournal.com]

I would have checked both B and C as well as D with a possible comment having something to do with sheep. But, that's just me...

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

I begin to suspect that I may not be uncoordinated and awkward after all - that my problems with physical activity may just be due to disability-related weakness, and not to any inherent klutziness.

a) i know about the happiness about not being worst at something-- when i was taking tai chi, i was actually pretty average for the class. it was nice.

b) :P

c) er, i mean, even before the arthritis there was a reason my parents didn't name me grace. ;) go, you!

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to weigh in on the "we" thing. When I'm in the closet about being in a triad, sometimes I play married (but don't mention it's to two guys) and sometimes I play I'm single. The latter has made me exceptionally aware of when I say "we" and when I say "I." In my experience, people haven't commented on it, but they notice.

I think you should have an "any of the above" and "all of the above" as well as "none of the above."

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

perhaps she was vaguely aware of the SO, has a particularly binary mind and can't quite wrap her mind around the not gay/marching for gay rights thing

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I read it as "Oh, you must be gay, and I know that you might be able to get married now, and I hope you're happy."

In other words, a wrong guess followed by an expression of sympathy and support.

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

I responded none of the above; the scenario that I found most likely was that she heard the phrase "we're having people over" and that triggered an "ask if she's married" response. The "going to gay pride" datum may well have played no part in her thought process - but that doesn't imply cluelessness. If she's a member of a liberal religious congregation (such as a typical UU church), "going to gay pride" may just be one of those things that people do. (I'm a terminally heterosexual male, but that hasn't stopped me from going to the Boston youth pride march as a youth group advisor for the last couple of years. Here's (http://users.rcn.com/fpcstow/ypr/) a picture from this year's march - that's me in the white shirt and blue hat over on the right-hand side of the picture.)

But in my mental image of myself, I still expect to be hopeless at anything physical. I begin to suspect that I may not be uncoordinated and awkward after all - that my problems with physical activity may just be due to disability-related weakness, and not to any inherent klutziness.
It's a weird feeling.
Yep. Having your internal self-image challenged is always a tricky thing - particularly when the truth is that you're better than you thought. I used to always get a sort of squirmy, "no-you-can't-be-serious" feeling when this happened to me.
Maybe I'm finally growing up, but I'm getting better at accepting that sort of feedback.

[ororo.livejournal.com]

My guess is that she probably had no idea what to say next, but found you interesting enough to want to find out more information about you.