This dad thinks his infant child is gay because he likes flowers and bananas. Toxic masculinity has reached new heights
Small baby with flower in hair. (Envato/Stock image)
Another day, another example of why we should really stop letting straight men be in charge of, well, anything.
A woman – who, on the basis of all available evidence, is bringing up a one-year-old child single-handedly – has been forced to take to reddit for help managing her husband.
Her problem? While she feeds, washes and otherwise does the fairly vital, yet presumably unpaid, work of keeping their infant son alive, her husband is examining the baby’s behaviour for signs that he is “gay”.
The man, 24, seems unaware of the unnecessary strain his unwarranted and, frankly, boring behaviour is putting on his relationship with the person who first of all, had sex with him, and then graciously decided to raise the resultant offspring.
“This has been going on for months,” the 23-year-old woman writes, exhaustion leaping out of every sentence.
“I am tired of it, find it very strange and even though I’ve tried several times he doesn’t seem to understand he’s being ridiculous,” she adds.
The reasons that the man thinks his baby son is gay include: he prefers his mother to his father (honestly, go figure); he likes flowers; he likes books “too much for a boy”; and he likes when the light shines through windows in a way that creates rainbow patterns on the floor (someone please tell this man that the rainbow isn’t a sign of being gay anymore! It’s a sign his son supports the NHS).
Apparently, the final straw for the man was when he watched his son eat a banana and then got angry at the woman for “letting him do something that looks sexual”.
As she rightly says to this: “WTF.”
She continues: “Each time one of these has come up, I’ve clearly disagreed with my husband when he makes his comments… I can’t believe I’m having to have the conversation in the first place.”
Finally, she admits that her “patience is wearing thin” (can’t relate).
Having explained to her husband that little kids “don’t have a sexuality yet” and reminded him that he will love their son whether he’s gay or straight, the woman recounts how her husband has now started making “jokes” to their friends about the baby boy liking flowers.
He’s also tried to get the baby’s granddad to “agree with him about the banana thing”.
“It’s really embarrassing to me,” she concludes. “How can I get my husband to see how weird these comments are and stop making them?”
My (23F) husband (24M) thinks our son is gay, when he's only a year old. https://t.co/DwG8QSXwfs pic.twitter.com/xYnG8fadce
— relationships.bsky.social (@redditships) May 4, 2020
In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, the replies to the woman’s post – while including gems like “is it possible your husband is a bit homophobic” and “your husband would benefit from therapy” – can be summed up in two words: “Dump him!”
This man’s behaviour is, sadly, just the latest in a long line of demonstrably daft behaviour from heterosexual men – remember the one who won’t wash his penis because he thinks that would make him gay?
Or perhaps the straight men using toothpaste as lube, and banana peels as sex toys?
The man who eats his own semen as part of a “magical ritual” (to be fair, in certain circumstances this one could be quite legit)?
And who could forget the straight, fragile man who worries that his girlfriend wearing his boxers to bed makes him gay?
Heterosexual culture is a trip. Anyway, like we were saying: it really is time for heterosexual men to stop being in charge of things.
