Straight Talk

[davidlpope]

With the train of thought that wearing a kilt makes you a possible gay man, then the great majority of Scottish males who have worn the kilt at some time in their life would be gay. I'm sure that the kilt is an equally attractive mode of dress for either a gay or straight man.
Come to think of it any time I have been in a gay bar or club in Glasgow, I have yet to see a man in a kilt, me being the only kiltie!
I would not like to tell my fellow members of the Tartan Army that they could be interpreted as gay, in fact I don't think anyone would have the courage to suggest this to them.

The more ticklish "cultural approaches towards sexuality" aside, I think many of these issues stem from lack of context. Without appropriate context, folks are left to their own ignorance and misinformed notions. I think that we, as XMarkers, generally tend to overestimate the public's knowledge concerning Highland attire.

Here's an example of what I'm getting at:

Example #1: Man walks into a "Scottish-themed pub" in Stone Mt., Georgia the Saturday night after the Stone Mt. Highland Games. He's wearing a complete kilted "ensemble" (i.e. kilt, proper kilt hose, sgian dubh, shirt, tie, tweed jacket, leather sporran) and carrying his bagpipes. His kilt is instantly identified as the "native costume" of Highland Scotland [or perhaps (erroneously) misidentified as being Irish in origin].

Example #2: Man walks into a sports bar in Akron, Ohio in the middle of the week wearing a utilikilt, scrunched-down white socks, combat boots, a logo t-shirt, and a jeans jacket. His "kilt" is misidentified as a "skirt" and the (erroneous) assumption is made that the kilted fellow is cross-dressing. The further (erroneous) assumption is made that cross-dresser = gay man.

I don't know why people see fit to infer one's choice of bed partner from one's clothing in the first place, but things being as they are, if you want folks to recognize your kilt as a kilt, you have to help them out a bit by putting it in context. I suspect that the folks in Glasgow and the rest of Scotland have enough "internal context" to understand what a kilt is, hence the lack of confusion. In the US, though, there's not this "internal context" that one can rely on.

In terms of OC Richard's particular experience (which might seem to dispute this line of reasoning), perhaps he merely cuts an sharp figure when kilted and is noticed by both heterosexual women and gay men as being attractive?[i.e. perhaps there wasn't an inference made that his kilt connoted homosexuality.]

David