Not that there's anything wrong with that

In society as a whole, the connotation still exists that suggesting that a man is gay or effeminate is a dis, or that suggesting a man is effeminate is a perfectly cromulent way of dissing him for being gay.

This keeps cramping my style.

For example, a while back someone in my office was going around asking people if they had nailpolish. (Q: Why? A: there was a tangle of wires and they needed something paint-like to mark them.) I later asked if I'd found any, and they said "I asked every woman in this office, and none of them have nailpolish!" My inner devil's advocate and my inner Eddie Izzard fan teamed up to come up with "Have you asked any of the men?" But my inner censor vetoed that on the basis that it could be misinterpreted as dissing the men for being gay. Even though none of the men wear nailpolish that I've seen, I don't think suggesting that they might have nailpolish implies that they're gay, and I don't think that implying they're gay is a dis. But an asshole would use those words with that implication, so I couldn't use them.

Then today I found myself wanting to describe someone as the grande dame of his field, but I had to censor myself because, again, it could be misinterpreted as a dis against his sexuality. But grande dame seems to be le mot juste - I can't think of any masculine or unmarked term that does that job, can you?

So my self-expression is limited because homophobes can't keep it behind closed doors.