I'm wondering if anyone has had this experience:

I'm seeing a woman who identified as a Lesbian when we met. She has since changed that to Queer (no pushing on my part, who am I to mess with someone's identity?) However, she has many friends who know her as a Lesbian, and when we first started dating she avoided pronouns for me, so most of them assumed I was a very Butch Dyke and treated me like a masculine woman.

Male friends of hers would hug me. My family is Italian and everyone is naturally "huggy" so it didn't phase me at first, but I started to notice that they wouldn't hug each other, only the women. We have since worked out proper pronouns but I feel like the hug expectation is still there, and it weirds me out a little.

Does anyone have thoughts on how to deal with this? Or how to smoothly escape a hug and go for a handshake without being offensive?

Try doing the bro hug, were you grab hands and pat the other guys back twice

I haven't had this for a while but generally I keep my feet planted and extend my hand for a hand shake - make no further advancement, other wise do as suggested above and go for the bro hug. Just be firm about it until it becomes second nature for the other guy if he is still adjusting etc...

j.

Guess I need to practice initiating the bro hug lol, thanks for the responses, guys.

Ugh. I hate the bro hug. I understand taking advantage of it for this particular situation though. The bro hug is just so homophobic, like guys are afraid the other guy will feel their erection through their pants or something. "Oh no! Mustn't risk getting turned on by close proximity to another guy!" It's mild affection converted into mild violence. So typical for modern guys. hehe. I suppose the bro hug is less homophobic than avoiding guy-on-guy hugs altogether.