Outward

The Six Types of Heterosexuals

Do you know how to identify a heterosexual? 

Credit: Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock.com

A Memo:

While the types of activity vary widely among heterosexuals, the community can be separated into six separate groups: the blatant, the secret lifer, the desperate, the adjusted, the bisexual, and the situational.

The blatant heterosexual is the obvious “firm-handshake” type who typifies the American obsession with a leaden, totally affected notion of masculinity. Among female members of the group, “blatancy” manifests in exaggerated mannerisms meant to communicate subservience and reinforce the group’s fetish for gender-based power play. These people spend their lives struggling through elaborate performances of a sexuality that they nevertheless believe to be “natural” or “average.”

Secret lifers comprise a large number and lead double lives, pretending not to care all that much about non-heterosexuals—so much so that they may pass as allies—but secretly wishing that those with different lifestyles than theirs wouldn’t be so annoyingly loud about it. Of course, they ironically do not mind flagrantly displaying their heterosexuality to the world at every opportunity.

A desperate heterosexual frequents myriad dating sites, geo-location-based dating apps, singles’ cruises and dimly lit backroom “meet-ups” in his or her quest for a connection with the opposite sex, mirroring mating strategies that, interestingly, are widely maligned when attributed to the homosexuals who largely pioneered them. Heterosexuals are generally understood to suffer from stunted emotional development—perhaps due to over-approving parents—making it difficult for them to understand the opposite sex enough to form healthy, meaningful bonds.

The bisexual indulges in sexual relationships with both men and women—but many do not reveal their identities for fear of losing heterosexual credibility.

Adjusted heterosexuals are those who attend straight bars, work drinks, friendly dinners, and pool parties to pick up a lover with the understanding that by the age of 30, they should be bound in “conventional” straight marriage of which the end-goal is reproduction. The male heterosexual often attempts to recruit (especially younger) females into this lifestyle using a strange argot and charmingly crude methodology referred to colloquially as “game.” Meanwhile, the more aggressive female members of the group work to lure men into relationships through intricately choreographed exercises in emotional manipulation. However, many (if not most) relationships between heterosexuals are relatively short-lived or unhappy. This is sometimes due to acts of infidelity but more often to a lack of basic self-understanding that can arise when a group believes itself to be “normal” and therefore not needful of reflection or critical thought.

The final type of heterosexual is the situational one who participates in heterosexual acts more so because of his or her situation, i.e. a complete lack of imagination and societally endorsed foreclosing of curiosity, rather than for any deep heterosexual conviction.

Unfair? If this taxonomy sounds like a gross generalization to you, try the real version about homosexuals, issued by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 1985 and uncovered this week by Right Wing Watch. Sadly, this kind of thinking is far from being an archived relic in 2013.