Outside the Venn Diagram

The football World Cup is back and unlike millions of others I am not excited in the least. This shot from The IT Crowd, one of my favourite TV shows, pretty much summarises my feelings on it:

As an English man in my twenties I really ought to be into football. Virtually every man I know of my age has an interest, especially in the World Cup. I was thinking about much I simply don’t conform. I am not your typical English guy by any stretch of the imagination.

The sport thing is just the tip of the iceberg. Probably the next big thing after being into sport is being into drinking beer down the pub. Now I’ve done some drinking in my time but I’ve never been a huge fan of going out. I also detest beer and would really struggle to finish a pint of the stuff. The closest I get is cider but I’ll just have happily have some kind of spirit or wine.

Then there’s my career choices. A typical man’s job depends on his level of education and goes up from some form of construction to a sales or management position or something that can be broadly described as “scientist”. I chose to go into the field of education, a field largely dominated by women. I’ve never minded and saw it as a bit of a plus when I started uni but it just shows how out of place I usually am.

I’m also terrible at DIY, that other stereotypical man-trait. I kind of blame this on my dyspraxia causing me to be hopeless at any form of construction- witnesses to my attempts to assemble some flat-packed furniture earlier in the week will support this statement.

I sometimes wonder why I am different. Perhaps it is because I am part of that subculture of “nerds”. I’m into science-fiction and comic books and generally things which are considered ‘cult’. Popular culture would surmise that nerds are either very small or very tall and very thin but I am neither. Whilst I am extremely unfit my appearance is pretty masculine. I’m fairly tall and quite broad. I’m pretty good at heavy lifting and over a short distance I can run really rather fast (it always surprises on the rare occasion I do some sprinting). So I don’t entirely fit into that category either.

I realise many of my traits fall into the stereotype of what a gay man is like but I don’t fall into that description due to the simple fact I am only attracted to women.

In the Venn diagram of society I am that guy outside the circles. I think most people feel like that to some extent but few as extremely as me. At least most people can be grouped together with the people that do the same job as them but seeing as though I am unemployed I don’t even fit that category.

But then again, why should we stereotype people? It is part of human nature that we can automatically assume attributions from someone just by knowing their gender or nationality or religion or whatever. But actually we all know that every human being is completely different and that is the wonderful about being human.

Well I think that vague idea for a post has turned out rather well. Why don’t we have some audience participation here, let me know if you fit into the stereotype people expect you to be!