People around here (the North East) are all very aware that their background is a far more manual and labourious one than that of the south, the coal mining and ship building industries. The entire area was built on those. I would guess that long hair is not an asset in these conditions, as well as the fact that accompanying the work would be a social life involving a great number of men in a pub, my guess would be so many men that being forceful about your heterosexuality is a must, to the point of paranoia of what others think. And it's important to remember that the men down those mines weren't some discant relic of the past, as it often seems, but these dumb kids' fathers. Those of us moving here from the south are far more comfortable with who we are, for myself to the point of foppish dandy-ism, I find the trick to looking gender confused hassle free is to A) be broader than them and B) strut like you own the goddamn town. Still, the charvs make us look like freakin' Oscar Wilde, what's not to love?