Kurt drew two lines on the board. At one end of each line he wrote “masculine.” At the other end of each line he wrote “feminine.” Above the top line he wrote “you.” Above the bottom line he wrote, “sexual attraction.”

He turned and faced the class. “Last week I mentioned that gender was a continuum. Regardless of your sex, no one is wholly masculine or feminine.  You can be a man and be quite feminine; you can be a woman and be quite masculine.  

"Contrary to popular opinion, your masculinity or feminity may also be divorced from your sexual attraction. To understand this, let's start with a frequent stereotype from the old West: the cowboy and the schoolmarm. The idea is that the man--because he is a man--should be uber-masculine."  Kurt chalked an X on the far masculine end of the you line.  "He is the hero to which all men are meant to aspire. He is tall, strong, rough, and rugged. Of course, this kind of guy, so the media would have us believe, is attracted to the girliest of women—someone who is sweet, soft-spoken, very femininely attractive—right down to her hoop skirts—and somewhat helpless without a man." Kurt chalked an X at the far feminine end of the sexual attraction line.  

“My experience is that this stereotype—one that is commonly presented in some form in the media—is almost never the reality. For example, my friend No…..Norbert, um, my friend Norbert is very masculine. He works out all the time, he doesn't care how he dresses, he drinks and swears, and he's pretty much what a lot of women would call ‘a pig.' But Noah…I mean Norbert…isn't attracted to the extreme feminine. He likes women, but he likes women who are more along the masculine end of the scale—women who are strong and domineering.”

“There's nothing wrong with being dominated,” piped up a voice from the back that Kurt recognized immediately.

“What's that, Blaine?” Kurt asked with affected sweetness. He was not going to let this frat boy heckle him, even if he was sex on a stick and Kurt wanted to lick every inch of him. You do not get to think about licking your students, Kurt scolded himself.

“Well, what I was thinking,” Blaine responded without a hint of embarrassment, “is that it may be difficult to pinpoint where you are on that line. I mean, I'm a mans man. I like to box, and I like sports, but, at the same time, I also care about clothes, and I like someone else to take control. So I don't know where I am on the line. And it may also be difficult to pinpoint exactly which kind of woman or man…” Kurt was sure that Blaine emphasized the word man, and his pulse jumped a bit, “…that you're attracted to.”

“That's right,” said Brittany, who was wearing a cheerleading outfit (thank God) with an even larger hair bow, if that was possible. “I like men and women, and I don't really care how masculine or feminine they are, as long as they're hot, and they like me.”

Kurt worried that the guy sitting next to Brittany—Kurt was pretty sure his name was Artie—was going to fall out of his wheelchair upon hearing Brittany's confession of bisexuality.

“That's good, Brittany,” Kurt encouraged. “People are assumed to have a type—a set of human characteristics that they find attractive, but it's more like eating. Some people like to eat everything…”

The entire class erupted into catcalls.

Kurt waived them down. “I'm talking about food. Some people are omnivores and some people are very picky eaters. We can be like that with attraction. Some people like a whole range of characteristics; other people like just a few. Some men, for example, will only date blondes. Some women will only date men who are tall.”

“I like me a cowboy,” said a large black man with a surprisingly girlish voice. Kurt knew the guy's name was Wade, but it didn't fit him at all.

“Not me.” It was Blaine again. “I like a man…” He definitely said man that time, and he was staring straight at Kurt, “…who isn't too masculine. I want a man who is soft-spoken and a bit fragile with soft skin and delicate features but one who is hard in all the right places.”

I will kill the little bastard, thought Kurt, shifting uncomfortably in his pants and walking across the room until he was standing fairly obscured behind the lectern.