I'm indecisive about what to put in the first post, what a stereotype...

Oh dear, I have to introduce myself.

Usually when I have to talk to someone I’ve never met before, my first instinct is to curl up in my nearest corner, put a lampshade over my head and cry, so you’ll understand my nervousness about talking to possibly thousands and millions of people I don’t know (even if it is only tens at the moment).

Well, here goes:

The name’s James (woo, rhyming), I’m 18, male, and I’m currently floating somewhere near 3.25 on the Kinsey Scale. Me and Cretzal are boyfriend and boyfriend, and that’s the reason he’s been man-handled into joining us in this endeavour (he’s been complaining about not being a good writer, the only effect of which is that I’ve been making several bad jokes about me rubbing off on him).

Anyway, as the figurehead writer on this blog, I guess I should introduce the blog a bit. As you can see, there are 7 of us, one for each day of the week. We can’t promise it’ll be set in stone which day we post on, because at any point we could be called away for doctor’s appointments, sado-masochistic orgies or to escape biblical floods, but rest assured that there’ll be something new every day, even if it’s dead boring.

Further to the week subject, we’ll be having a theme or topic that we talk about every week, and this week’s topic is... “Stereotypes”.

Ah, stereotypes. If the etymology of stereotypes were true, we’d have no issues. “Stereotype” comes from the Greek words “stereos”, meaning “firm”, and “typos”, meaning “impression”. So stereotypes are supposed to be “firm impressions”, as in correct ones.

Here’s a hint: they’re not.

Now, don’t get me wrong, stereotypes aren’t bad things. They can be useful for temporarily categorising people whom we are unfamiliar with, for instance assuming women like shoes or that male rugby players are butch (note the word “temporarily”). However, problems arise when we become completely unable to deal with the occasional woman who has one pair of Skechers in her entire house or the rugby player that behaves like Kenneth Williams in a “Carry On...” film. Bisexuals are stereotypically assumed to be promiscuous and indecisive about whether they are gay or straight, which is the result of society wrongfully assuming that the hetero/homo system is binary, that one can either be one, or the other.

People are not binary creatures.

A woman can have 1, 7, or 2,341 pairs of shoes. A rugby player can be 100% butch, occasionally bromantic when drunk, or so effeminate that players scream rape whenever he tackles them. I’m not gay, I’m not straight, and I can’t even say I’m 50/50 bisexual. The Kinsey Scale has the correct idea: yes there’s black, yes there’s white, but grey outnumbers those two by about 1,000 to 1.

And I suppose that’s what I’m driving at here. Stereotypes themselves aren’t negative things, but the way they’re used is all too often horrendous. They need to be flexible, changeable, and all too often the people who use them aren’t.

However, this is only my opinion, which is the benefit of having 7 opinions per week; we’ll likely all disagree in hilarious ways.

Feel free to contact us if you like, we’re open to comments, critiques, requests for naked photos at homojournal@gmail.com (we’re open to requests, doesn’t mean we’ll oblige).

See you same time next week,

James.

Ooh, a hidden message, how intriguing...