Men with boobs.

[Bit]

I went to the Advocate and read the whole article. Here's the part which seems most relevant to me.

If there was any surprise among Nixon’s fans upon seeing her with Marinoni, it was that she’s clearly different than the women we’re used to seeing Nixon with. Marinoni dresses in men’s clothes. She looks butch. She’d clearly be the odd woman out at brunch with Miranda, Samantha, Charlotte, and Carrie.

“She’s basically a short man with boobs,” Nixon says, laughing.

http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Cover_Stories/Cynthia_Nixon_is_More_Than_Just_Sex/

It seems to me the interviewer led Nixon to this statement; to me the interviewer was saying, "most people see you as this character in a show, and they expect you to be seen with other similar characters... what do you think people will see when you are out with your partner?"

I read her response as saying, "most people will see a short man with boobs." Now I get it that she actually said "she's basically a...." but I think that was clumsy language. When people are laughing, they're not necessarily careful how they phrase their sentences, yanno? It really seems to me that she meant that people would expect to see her with stereotypically beautiful actresses, and would think she was instead with a man who had boobs.

Because that's the way I read the article, it also seems to me that she herself was not categorizing her partner as much as she was commenting on the way other people categorize her partner. People have categorized some of my exes in a similar way; I mean seriously, how can a person look at someone wearing women's earrings and a pink women's sweatshirt, someone who has a nicely prominent female chest, and say "sir"? How can they continue to say "sir" even after the person speaks in a clearly female voice?

So if this is the way Nixon intended to be understood, then I have a shared experience with her because I also have seen other people assume that a lesbian is a man with boobs. It was diminishing to the lesbian in question, and she was quite vocal about hating it... but I have also known other lesbians, especially Butches, who have had similar experiences and have just laughed it off.