The Assumption of Heterosexuality

I would like you to imagine something. This exercise is pretty easy. Imagination is a faculty that comes packaged with the very basic package of human functions.

Imagine a comic creator making assumptions that his hairdresser, an effeminate man prone to singing along to Mariah Carey songs, used to have a girlfriend.

Note that I did not specify the sexual orientation and gender identity of the effeminate man. All we know about him is that he is effeminate and his musical preference. Who he sleeps with is a mystery to us, as much as to the comic creator. For all we know, the hairdresser is a studmuffin who penetrates as many pussies as a private school administrator does (again, note my very careful aversion from specifying the gender identity of said private school administrator).

In any case, an assumption was made: that the hairdresser is heterosexual. This assumption was verbalized through a joke: "Pare, kayong mga parlorista, siguro ang dami ninyong chicks. Puro pwede pumipila sa inyo araw-araw eh."

I don't want to be the judge on how funny or ridiculous this joke is.

What I know is this: If we do not find anything DISHONORABLE about the assumption of heterosexuality, then we should not find anything dishonorable in the assumption of lesbianism. Every time we presume someone is straight should be just as offensive as presuming he's gay. When we ask about the existence of a girlfriend or a boyfriend, our mere choice of gender marker is offensive considering the availability in our vocabularies of the gender neutral term "partner".

This is a clear cut case of double standards where we are imposing a "normal" against an "abnormal", where people are being "offended" by other' people's private choices.

"Sorry I dishonored you," wrote Pol Medina Jr. to his publisher in his resignation letter.

I'm sorry, sir. But you have nothing to be sorry about.