Bromosexuals

Ugh. Another gay trend piece, this one from the New York Observer. Apparently, some people don't know when somebody is gay! And some gay guys deliberately dress butch! Fascinating!

In his own job as a bartender at Lavish Lounge, a gay bar in Queens, Tom Karl, 25, routinely gets mistaken as straight even though he could not be more entrenched in gay life. Known on the gay circuit as "Tommy Hottpants," he lives in Hell's Kitchen and throws a debauched weekly party at Beauty Bar on East 14th Street. His ex-boyfriend, the singer Rufus Wainwright, wrote the song "Between My Legs" for Mr. Karl during the latter's bout as a stripping go-go boy. "People talk about respecting who you are because who wouldn't," he said. "But how much do people really believe that? People have a hard time swallowing that life is less polarized than they think." He added: "That queeny stuff is old. People have been queens forever. So now I think you're seeing the drag go from feminine to masculine." Of course, even that can be its own kind of costume. There are not really that many slutty lifeguards or toned members of the Abercrombie & Fitch swim team roaming Chelsea, just as there aren't really that many sex-crazed schoolgirls or MILFs prowling the meatpacking district. The clinical name for the bromosexual shift is enantiodromia, a Jungian kind of law of physics: Too much of anything makes its opposite grow in popularity. Hippies become yuppies, private-school alpha brats become slacker trustafarians, housewives become cougars.

Masculine drag is something new? OK. The term "bromosexual," I guess, is some kind of frat boy neologism. Bro, you homo? Ew.