Gus Van Sant

The journalist is employing the old trope of queer sex as spectacle, the idea that queer people’s sexual lives are open for endless speculation, rumination, ridicule, and evaluation by the larger heterosexual population. This is the trade off of burgeoning queer acceptance. You get straight friends that love and respect you, but who don’t understand that there are days when the idea of having your sexuality arise as the topic of conversation makes you uncomfortable. You are queer in a way that they are not straight, and therefore your sexual identity and your sexual repertoire are specimens of another world, a fascinating world to which you are expected to be the cheerful ambassador.