Date: Tue, 10 May 94 00:51:50 -0400 Eastern
From: deb.price@glib.org

 
Homophobia is never in style for this hairdresser
(copyright: The Detroit News, Feb. 25, 1994)
By Deb Price
 
    Hairdresser Drew Andriani never knows when a stranger will
take one look at him and make an anti-gay remark. He's used to
the taunts, though. He's heard them since he was a long-haired
16-year-old living in California.
    Now a 26-year-old with hair well below his shoulders,
Andriani refuses to allow anti-gay prejudice to pressure him into
adopting a less conspicuous appearance.
    "I used to jog," he says. "I'd be jogging around and people
would shout, 'Hey, get a haircut, faggot!' Just driving past me
in the car. And I'd be like, 'How can you know my sexual
orientation by me running down the street?'"
    Andriani and I became acquainted while he was giving my long
hair a trim in a mall in Bethesda, a progressive pocket of
Maryland. Even there, he says, he loses business when male
walk-in customers flinch at the notion of being touched by a gay
man.
    "They get this really weird look and then they're like 'I
think I'd really prefer a woman to do this,'" Andriani explains.
"That's a potential customer I've lost through nothing that I've
said or done."
    Andriani never tells strangers that he's gay. For that
matter, he never tells friends or relatives either. I can't
quarrel with his reasoning even though I believe every gay person
must begin to find ways to come out.
    Just one thing keeps Andriani from telling anyone he's gay:
He's not. He's a heterosexual who knows from first-hand
experience that homophobia doesn't just hurt gay people.
    To fully understand how our society's fear and hatred of
homosexuality contrains the lives of everyone, we must see how
very effectively it polices the appearance and behavior of
heterosexuals.
    For example, anyone venturing beyond the territory primarily
occupied by people of their own gender risks being attacked as
gay. Just ask a male nurse, a boy on a middle school cheerleading
squad or a female Marine.
    Since we gay people are the intended targets of homophobia,
we tend to be more aware of its effects. (It's homophobia, much
of it internal, that still makes me hesitate before I take
Joyce's hand as we stroll that Bethesda mall. And it's homophobia
that keeps same-sex heterosexual friends from walking
hand-in-hand.)
    Heterosexuals need to see that eradicating homophobia is in
everyone's self-interest, says Warren Blumenfeld, editor of
"Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price." He compares encouraging
such understanding to a Gloria Steinem speech he heard in the
mid-1960s.
   "I was thinking," he recalls, "if she starts to call all the
men in the audience sexist pigs, I'm not going to stay." Instead
she helped him become a feminist by talking about how sexism
affects everyone.
    Just as some men loosen sexism's grip on their lives, some
heterosexuals are self-assured enough to follow their
inclinations even at the risk of being called gay. Andriani, a
hard rock guitarist, became a hairdresser because he enjoys being
creative and needed a steady income. His long hair is a tribute
to his rock heroes.
    He finds the anti-gay barbs directed at his hair particularly
"stupid" since every gay man he's met had short hair.
    When straight men demand to know whether he's gay, Andriani
responds, "So what if I was? If you were secure enough in your
own heterosexuality, it wouldn't bother you."
    Homophobia costs many heterosexuals far more than the price
Andriani is conscious of paying. Some are assaulted, even killed,
after being mistaken for gay people. Others lose their jobs.
    Much more commonly, budding heterosexuals lose the emotional
freedom to form close, same-sex friendships, Blumenfeld notes.
And many succumb as teenagers to the pressure to "prove" they
aren't gay, even at the cost of unwanted pregnancy or venereal
disease.
    How different all our lives would be if we'd never fled from
the possibility of being called homosexual. And how much freer
our world will be when that label carries no sting for anyone.