It never interested her enough to try to think out the reason for it, for she knew nothing of the inner workings of any human being's mind, not even her own. It was like a mathematical formula and no more difficult, for mathematics was the one subject that had come easy to Scarlett in her schooldays. Our goal is nothing less than willful obtuseness, a condition that was displayed in all its glory by a woman on Hardball who illustrated the pitfalls of gay stereotyping by drawing what passes these days for an analogy. Suppose, she said, you entered a room and saw there a man in a kilt. Men who don't generalize about women will be even more dumbfounded than those who do, while women who generalize about men will be somewhat less furious than those who don't.
Every little bit helps.
Gays especially are made uncomfortable by unanalytical people and often confess to them for reasons unrelated to braggadocio. They may simply be tired of waiting for the truth to sink in, or they may find it necessary to clear things up when a determined tabula rasa mistakes them for extras from Deliverance. Gays prefer heterosexuals who are worldly, raffish, nonconformist, and eccentric, not out of snobbery or decadence but because these types never meet a thought they cannot entertain royally. The worst damage inflicted by our fear of stereotyping is in the arts. When this river flows unimpeded the result is a Shakespeare, but when it's dammed up we get the eighth wonder of the American global village, the nonjudgmental novelist.