From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: sexuality as a private matter
Summary: bwmt, bwwt
Date: 30 Aug 92 14:30:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: cis.1992Aug30.143002.24300
Followup-To: soc.motss
Organization: earnestly practicing faggots

jack hamilton remarks on his tendency to peg a black man and a white
man together, or a black woman and a white woman together, as gay.
maybe where jack lives this is a reasonable inference - although
most of the time surely he can't know whether his guess is right -
but in my experience it's not.

i know a fair number of straight same-sex "best friends", one black
and one white, as well as a fair number of "best friends" or couples of
the same sort.  (i also know a few mixed-race mixed-sex couples.)
of course, my acquaintances don't constitute a random sampling of
the relevant populations.  if they did, i'd conclude, from the
fact that i know roughly the same number of same-sex as mixed-sex
mixed-race (what a mouth-bending phrase *that* is!) pairings,
that such same-sex pairings *are* more likely to be gay.  but that
statistical reasoning won't wash, because i know such a large number
of same-sex pairings.

and of course i see a fair number of mixed-race same-sex pairs
doing business together; it's not an uncommon sight at places 
where people do business lunches and business dinners.

the notion of "best friends" - quite widespread in the working class
and lower middle class, in the u.s., anyway - is interesting in
itself.  in the u.s., a woman refers to another woman who bears
this relationship to her as her "girlfriend" (the woman who cuts
my hair goes back and forth between talking about visiting her
girlfriend in california and doing things with her boyfriend here
in columbus, meaning very different things by these parallel
terms), while a man will talk about his "buddy" or "best buddy".
this is a special relationship; a woman might have a number
of girlfriends, and a guy a number of buddies, but in each case
one of them stands out as *the* girlfriend or buddy.

last december when i was driving across te country from ohio to
california, i stopped overnight in barstow, ca. (in the high desert, a
dusty, rather depressed town mostly dependent on surrounding military
installations), and took my usual hour's walk around town to loosen
up.  there were young male couples everywhere - guys in civilian
clothes but military haircuts, mostly just sort of hanging out
together, strolling around town, checking out the western-wear stores
together for probably the twentieth time, maybe thinking it was time
to go have a beer at one of the battered bars with "military welcome"
signs tacked up outside (a sure sign that the military is not welcome
a lot of places).  a fair number were black-and-white-men-together.

it might be that in the military, black and white men (and black and
white women, i should add) are much more likely to be thrown together
in situations where they end up depending on one another for
companionship and friendship than they are in other settings.  well,
sports is another place where mixed-race friendships develop; people
who regularly work out at the same gym, or play basketball together,
etc., sometimes pick up best-buddy or girlfriend relationships;
several of the mixed-race same-sex pairings, straight and gay, that i
know about got started this way.  and the office is another place.
(while i was walking the main street of barstow, the only people who
took notice of we were businessmen in suits and ties - i have no idea
how they picked me out, in my jeans and sneakers and old sweater, as
someone they should recognize with a little hello, but they did, all
of them - including one pair of men in their forties, one black and
one white.)

arnold (just stopping here, having nothing
          particularly conclusory to say)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,ne.motss