It is painful to watch my fellow well-meaning liberals in the wild "other" someone while trying to demonstrate how supportive and with-it they are.
I'm not gay nor am I a straight bachelorette party attending women, but I can see how this would be grating both on a cultural and physical level. The ignorance and sense of entitlement in some people is simply astounding.
I used to work at a restaurant that where one side was a deli and the other half was a mostly low key gay bar. I was on of two token straight men in the front of the house. As all restaurant people do, I partied with the rest of the staff often, sometimes at the nearest bar and sometimes at a gay bar. Now that I think about it, I had gone out to gay bars with other restaurant staff well before I had that gig.
It wasn't a spectator thing which I think makes it totally different from what the writer is talking about here. I was hanging out with gay people the bartender had seen before and I wasn't declaring my sexuality, just hanging out with friends. Gay bars are easy places for men to hang out. Most everyone is friendly, the music is good and the bar culture is usually fast and consumer oriented.
I felt much less comfortable when some southern girls I worked with took me to southern style honky-tonk bar. I stood out like a sore thumb and didn't feel at all like I should be there.
I've spent a lot of time in both gay bars and lesbian bars, and there's a difference between the two if you're a guy.
When you're a straight guy going to a gay bar you have to announce your straightness otherwise no one is going to know.
When you're a straight guy going to a lesbian bar you're much more out of place, sometimes. I've been to "lesbian" bars that have a pretty broad mix of folks and everyone is friendly and there's nothing awkward about it, but I went to a lesbian event at a lesbian bar with a group of friends (all lesbians) that, for a bunch of unimportant reasons, decided to leave me there alone for 1.5 hours. I hung out for about 5 minutes before I went outside to wait for them to come back. I ended up going home instead, but that was more to do with how long I'd be waiting outside than feeling out of place once they came back. While I was outside I overheard them turning groups of straight people away at the door, and this more or less confirmed my suspicion that I wasn't really welcome there without being anchored to a group of lesbians.
No one said anything to me, but it just felt weird. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, and I got the feeling that I might have been, although I don't think I would have been kicked out if I had decided I wanted to wait it out. For me it didn't make a lot of sense to kill other people's vibe while also feeling pretty awkward myself, so I booked.
I feel like this could happen in all kinds of situations and rowdy bachelorettes are annoying to absolutely everyone except annoying bachelorettes. When I went to gay bars I was usually with gay friends, but for a while a sister club of the one I worked at in my early twenties did a gay night that was on an off day of mine and a coworkers and we would always go hang out and have free drinks. We could have easily passed for a couple and we never bothered anyone; had a great time, danced with gay dudes, and there was never any drama. We were both pretty easy going, though, so YMMV.
Anyway, segregating bars by sexuality isn't going to happen unless you're doing a private event. Dealing with obnoxious twats is something that is going to be a requirement at any bar. If you're having issues anywhere, as a performer or as a guest, you should try to get the staff to take care of it for you. If they won't, you may need to find a different place to do your thing. That's just how it goes, for the most part.
As a queer woman in lesbian bars I've experienced the opposite of your story. All I can say is that straight guys, I could usually tell why they were there. Some just lived in the neighborhood, it was their local watering hole, and never bothered anybody or hit on anyone. Some came along with their lesbian friends. The only time I had a problem with straight guys in a lesbian bar is if they were hitting on the women there. So, if I'd met you in one of these bars, I'd be ok with you.
I much prefer mixed bars. More variety, more open-mindedness. And the mixed softball teams are way more fun.
The one thing about straight women going to gay/lesbian bars is that lesbians have a much harder time figuring out which women are straight, and who is gay. You can't always tell just by looking. (Male sexuality, I've found, is much more overt, direct, while female sexuality is more subterfuge-like.)
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I may not have put enough emphasis on this, but I only ever felt out of place when I was alone at a very aggressively segregated lesbian night.
If anything I've found it easier to talk to women at lesbian bars because there isn't a weird sexual cat and mouse game going on and I feel like I can just put on a casual persona and chit chat. I don't think that I would necessarily seek out a lesbian bar without a lesbian friend (actually I know that I wouldn't,) but if my neighborhood bar happened to be one I'd probably feel comfortable enough getting a drink once in a while. The sexuality of the clientele would never really be me first concern anyway.
So basically the problem stems from a lack of respect and propriety found in an ever increasing portion of society? No surprise there.
What's not touched on is the other motive for straight women to go to such places: they feel safe from the attention of straight males with no respect for boundaries. Is that ironic?
Is it really the best place though? I mean... If a girl has deliberately gone to a gay bar in order to avoid the plethora of annoying straight men hitting on her, then running into annoying straight men at a gay bar probably isn't going to work in the man's favour...
In fact, I would hope that it's more likely that the straight men would be hit on quite a bit and find it uncomfortable and leave... :P
I've always been amazed by what, to me (as someone who doesn't partake of this), seems to be the absolute lack of anything resembling common decency or respect of boundaries that is the bar hookup scene for men:
"Women have become sick enough of being objectified at bars that they've gone to a space designed to provide a place for homosexual men to meet and greet. I will internalize the fact that the women who are frequenting these bars likely have no desire to be hit on and would be likely more offended that they are being approached in a space that is the metaphorical equivalent of a neon sign saying "Take the Hint" than if I had attempted to do so in a regular bar.
Now let me throw that logic out the window and continue to follow my dick."
I would love for someone to explain this to me because in my twenty-something years on this Earth it is something I've never understood.
Here you go:
Women go to gay bars because they want to be able to let their guard down. Therefore, a woman at a gay bar has her guard down.
QED.
"more offended" does not mean "more likely to reject advances" because the entire mating dance is a combative ritual predicated on aggravation and posturing. You can dislike that but it won't change the fact that men wouldn't do it if it wasn't a successful ploy.
Don't hate the playa hate the game.