Keillor, are all Midwesterners Heterosexual Men?
In the sub-title to your recent article, “Good weather, bad behavior,” you stated: “When even we uptight Midwesterners feel the urge to skip town with a cocktail waitress named Amber, it must be springtime.” Congratulations — you have just made a classic writing blunder. In the process you have made public what your unconcious mind probably always held — that the normative person (or in this case more precisely the normative Midwesterner) is a male heterosexual. Because you are yourself a straight guy, you unconsciously write for an audience of straight guys. I’ve been a fan of your for many years and own (and have actually read and enjoyed) probably half a dozen of your books. I would guess that if you look over your essays over the years you wouldn’t have to look very hard to find plenty of other examples of implicitly making straight males normative. Think about it.
