Last night I was in a restaurant with my (female) fiancee, when a man approached me and said 'I saw you from over there, and just wanted to let you know that you are beautiful.' I cooly thanked him, and turned back to my partner. I wasn't rude at this point- it wasn't necessarily clear to him that my partner and I were 'together,' but from my body language it was clear that I wasn't interested.
After I had turned away, he carried on- 'So I want to get to know you.' I told him I wasn't interested. He insisted 'I want to see if I like your personality.' I repeated that I wasn't interested, and that I was having dinner with my fiancee.
At this point his demeanour completely changed, and he bent to shout in my face 'you guys are a couple? You make me sick. You people are disgusting.' The fury was unbelievable. My partner told him to leave, and thankfully he did. We continued our meal, slightly humiliated while other diners threw sympathetic glances our way.
I was talking about it with my partner after he left, trying to rationalise what had just happened. We experience homophobia almost every time we go out together (we live in London), but it usually manifests as dismissiveness toward our relationship, and attacks on our legitimacy as a couple, ie. comments like 'lesbians! That's hot!', 'Don't worry girls, you're both beautiful, some man will want you,' and generally being approached by men in situations where it is clear that we are a couple. But it is the first time I have encountered such fury and hatred before, just through sitting there.
As we discussed it, it seemed as though the interchange was just as sexist as it was homophibic. The attitude was 'you are a woman, I have decided I like you, you should be grateful, and in being gay you have rejected the natural order of things that you should be available for me. Unless, of course, you are 'taken' by another man.' I just can't see any reason why there would have been so much ire toward complete strangers and their private lives unless it had been taken as a personal insult and rejection.
Is this a common part of homophobia- anger at women who are not attracted to men, and I have just been blind to it before? Or is my usual experience more common- that most homophobic people just don't 'get' it, especially when they can't categorise us into boxes they have decided they are comfortable with ie. a butch/femme relationship where they can write one of the women off as 'basically a man'? (Ugh).
I guess I'm just looking for reassurance that this is not a normal reaction- maybe because if people don't understand it because they don't have much experience of it they can learn or change or be accepting if someone they love is gay, but genuine hatred is so much harder to tackle. I'm just struggling to come to terms with the fact that my private life can cause so much bile in a person, when it has no impact on them whatsoever.