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"All the gay websites couldn't figure out why I was such a jerk that I wouldn't talk about it."

Said the ice skater Johnny Weir (who people have long assumed is gay, even though he wouldn't say it):

"But pressure is the last thing that would make me want to 'join' a community... The massive backlash against me in the gay media and community only made me dig my 'closeted' heels in further."

So, what do we learn from this? Possible lessons:

1. Although in the past, it was fear of negativity from heterosexuals that kept gay people in the closet, these days, a gay person might choose the closet because of the negativity of other gay people.

2. If a celebrity wants to write a successful book about himself, he needs to withhold at least one juicy piece of information. For Weir, this was that news ? even though the only real news was that he's saying what he'd never said before.

3. Some people think of themselves as, above all, individuals, and when others think the most important thing is their membership in a particular group, they resist. They don't want to be defined by a single quality, especially when it's a quality that makes other people see them in terms of the group stereotype, and not personal uniqueness. There was a special playfulness to this notion in Weir's case, because he engaged in the very open "flamboyant" style that people think of as stereotypically gay.

4. Just because you're gay doesn't mean you like other gay people and want to join their team. Heterosexuals don't naturally love all the other heterosexuals. Gay men may need to look for their sexual partners in the pool of gay men,* but there's no reason why you have to like everyone in your category of potential sexual partners, and, indeed, it's a good idea to reject the vast majority of potential sexual partners. You only need one (at most). You're entitled to think that most of them are jerks.

5. Ice skating is not a team sport.

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*By the way, this is the pool of gay men:

Full post as published by Althouse on January 07, 2011 (boomark / email).