How Gay Are You?

Out shopping for a Valentine's card and I got distracted by the array of jokes, feel good slogans and pretty pictures in the birthday section and more specifically, a card detailing a 'birthday gayness test' involving a pink cat. I didn't quite know whether to take offence or find it amusing - in the end settling for an uncomfortable laugh as I proceeded to do the quiz.  Concerns about Valentine's Day and that all important card were forgotten, as results declared that according to my choice I was 'super-gay'! Well, I didn't need a card to tell me that, but I did ponder whether, as a lesbian, the result was because I liked cats or simply because it was pink - or were they covering all bases within the word 'gayness', by using a pink cat?!

It made me remember a similar but lengthier test I became aware of whilst supervising a group of teenagers, who were finding out how gay everyone was, using a quiz by Channel 4 called the  'Gay-O-Meter'. Again I was left undecided whether it was just a bit of harmless fun or whether it reinforced stereotypes about gay people, with it still being deemed ok for the gay community to be the butt of the joke? 

Where as I do quite well on the Birthday Gayness Test, the 'Gay-O-Meter, declares me only 36% gay. It mocks my result by asking 'How does a straight acting girl ever manage to get a date? Any more girlie and you'd have to be straight!' (Straight acting - now there's a whole other blog just in that line!) It didn't ask me about cats or the colour pink and so I can only put my 'gayness' failure down to my lack of DIY skills, never having shaved my head and being really bad at pool.

I asked my mate about it and my dilema of whether to laugh or rant. She responded, 'good to see you lightening up on these things!' (in reference to my past ranting about Katy Perry and why I would not dance to her songs with her subtle forms of homophobia in her lyrics within 'I Kissed A Girl' and 'UR So Gay'). 

Is this another form of subtle homophobia that I'm right to question?

Maybe my friend is right, I should lighten up; a joke card with a gayness test is harmless, the 'gay-o-meter' is just a bit of fun. If 'gayness' is all around us - in comedy, in songs, on TV and on birthday cards is it all helping everyone to feel a little more accepting? 

I'm not so sure.