Editor:

Call me old fashioned, but I thought queer-baiting went out with leg-warmers and poofy hair. Apparently not.

Tuesday night, at the intramural basketball tournament, members of my team were slandered as lesbians.

True, several women on our team may not conform to the standards of normative femininity. But since none of our opponents, nor their supporters, had ever met any member of our team, their cognizance of the inner contours of our bedrooms seems quite unlikely.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand and support the reclaiming of pejorative terms as expressions of empowerment, but to be called a “dyke” to my face, I must admit, was a little unsettling. One would hope that the name-callers, women and men who seemed to pride themselves in knowing the latest and greatest in athletic fashions, would catch up as well to the demands of contemporary common courtesy.

The good news is that the damage was at least not too extensive–not all of our opponents participated in the name-calling.

Still, I find it particularly curious that a group of women athletically dressed, who didn’t look entirely unlike me, and who were engaged in the same activity as I, should deign to call me a lesbian.

Perhaps they do protest too much!

Chris Talbot

Adjunct Instructor, History and Gender Studies