Ask the Gay Guy V! (The next generation)

In My Humble Opinion
41

I find this is usually confirmation bias. People remember the one time they see a same sex couple holding hands or something and remain oblivious to the other 1,000 times they’ve seen straights do the same thing over the same time period. Along with this is the majority’s (straights in this case) tendency to expect nonconformist minorities to “mind their place.” I say “fuck that.”

Same with TV. The networks put out a couple gay shows and next you hear complaints about how TV has gone completely gay all the time, everywhere. “You can’t even find a straight show anymore!” In fact, if you totalled up all the gay shows and episodes of shows with gay characters it would be a tiny fraction of TV programming.

42

I’m with antinor on this. Please explain what you mean by “in your face” so that I can answer properly.

43

One example I can think of is gay bars in general. Since all the mainstream acceptance there are a lot more girls showing up. Not just ones that are there with their gay friend, but groups of them. Then they start bringing their boyfriends. One of my favorite little gay dive bars ends up many nights being about 50/50 gay guys to straight girls and guys.

Sometimes I just want to be around a group of other gay people and it used to be that you could get that at a bar. I personally don’t find the ‘Gay bars are so fun, so lets all start going there!’ bit to be a good thing.

44

C’mon guys, you know how it goes:

Straight man displays photo of wife and children in office = how cute they are.
Gay man makes passing mention of his boyfriend = FLAUNTING HIS SEXUALITY

TV audience watches actors pretending to fuck in bedroom scene = how sexy!
TV audience is subjected to seeing gay footballer player kiss his boyfriend = LITERALLY (AND I MEAN LITERALLY) RUBBING THEIR SEX IN YOUR FACE.

Straight person wishes for right to marry who they choose = civil rights, man!
Gay person wishes the same = SO STRIDENT AND TIRESOME.

Straight person doesn’t want to be subject to discrimination in the workplace for their immutable characteristics = right on.
Gay person doesn’t want to get sacked for being gay = STOP GOING ON ABOUT YOUR SEXUALITY.

45

Well, yeah, that’s my default interpretation. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, because I don’t recall this poster posting things like that and it’s POSSIBLE that he means something different. Thus, a request for elaboration.

46

Not speaking for him, but I know several out LG folks who think the culture of pride parades and the like is bad for the gay community (my boss, for example, who goes to the local pride parade every year but wears regular clothes and tuts at the assless chaps types.) I tend to agree with them, but not to the point where I’d concern troll over it.

47

I tend to feel that it’s a pride parade. You know what you might see. Is Mardi Gras or Spring Break in Cancun bad for the straight community?

The reason he and I are able to be so blase now is because of that unabashed culture. It was not proper men in business suits and combovers rioting at Stonewall.

48

This is a terrible question but I was so frustrated with my inability to argue that I want to be better prepared.

What happened was this: I was out to lunch with a fairly younger group of coworkers (20s to 30s) and something came up about gay people, and nobody gasped or said anything disparaging or anything, just a “some people are gay” attitude.

And then, one of them said, “but it’s because they’ve been abused as children, that’s why they are gay.” I was fairly aghast, and said, “no that’s not true; I have heard and read from gay people I know who say they’ve had these feelings since they were children, since before they even knew what sexuality was.” And I got met with anecdotal evidence of a cousin who was gay, but he was molested as a child so that’s why he’s gay, the end.

So I ended up feeling like I was fighting anecdote vs. anecdote and mine was dismissed because I didn’t have facts to back it up. What could I say next time? I want to educate people, and as I said they weren’t homophobic, or judgmental, but at the same time I felt like I let them get away with thinking gay people are damaged. :mad:

49

Well, they were homophobic. As you said, the presumption is that trauma is the source of gay identity.

I would guess that the fundamental mistaken belief is that a non-gay person can become gay. That belief is scary for a homophobic straight person, so they devise a situation that reinforces the belief (abused children get turned gay) and sense of superiority (they’re damaged, I’m not) but also protects their own identity (I wasn’t abused, so I’m safe from becoming gay).

That’s a tough and deeply rooted belief. I don’t think it’s something you could have fought, other than disagreeing with it. Any argument is likely to reinforce it. The only way out is when they have someone they care about whom they know wasn’t abused come out to them as gay.

50

Homosexual men are somewhat more likely to have experienced child sex abuse. However, this isn’t really a correlation, much less anything resembling a causal relationship (the rate among the general population seems to be somewhere between 2 and 5%.)

51

First, you could ask if this cousin himself attributes his sexuality to being abused, or if that’s your co-workers inference.

Secondly, you could note that the causes of homosexuality has been an area of regular study for several decades now, and no one has come up with a definitive explanation for why some people are gay. Something as obvious as a correlation with childhood abuse is a pretty obvious hypothesis, and the fact that people are still studying the subject is a pretty good indicator that it’s roots are more complicated than that.

If your memory is really good, you could quote some of this at them. The upshot is that, while men who identify as gay report higher than average rates of childhood sexual abuse as compared to other men, it’s nowhere near a majority - and is comparable to the rates of childhood sexual abuse experienced by women as a group.

Or you could get one of these and apply it directly to his testicles.

52

Oh my, another risky conversation I feel a need to insert myself into!

I can only tell you my POV from a woman’s side.

When I was young I was attracted to both boys and girls. I did not realize I was attracted to girls at the time, just thought I had a weird obsession with tom boys.

I have been in 3 relationships. 2 with females and one with a male. I guess that would label me a “bi-sexual”. But I hate that label. It just sounds insulting to me, as if you have sex with both men and women. Relationships are sooo much more than that. I guess I am old fashion, and when people ask me my preference, I tell them my heart does not have a preference, I can be attracted to, and fall in love with either a male or female.

As for pride parades, I sure miss them. Yes, the ones I went to were over the top, flamboyant, and just plain crazy! But what fun they were. I think unless you are part of the culture you may not get it. Not to insult anyone honestly, but those parades were just over-the-top crazy and fun. Good clean fun? No. But fun for our community. Everything about the parades were taken to the extreme. We were all in on the joke, so it was o.k. by us.

I believe we are who we are. I struggled with this for a long time. From the time we are in the womb, and all the good and bad about life, makes us who we are. I do not think it is one thing (i.e. being molested as a child) that makes us what we desire, but can be a whole lot of things.

Now that I am older, I have a take it or leave it mentality. I no longer hide my past if someone asks me about it. I do not hide it from my children, even though we have never discussed it. I have asked them if they want to, and they have not been interested, maybe someday they will have questions, but I do not hide anything from them. I also raise them to see everyone as individuals, no matter what gender preference, what race, what social economic class one might fit into.

One thing I can tell you from experience, being in a same sex relationship is HARD! You are judged over and over and over, no matter where you go. It seemed people always avoided me, or overcompensated how much they were “good with the gays”.:rolleyes: Maybe for some it is easier, but it is really still very tough, no matter what media, etc. will tell you.

To be honest, I would be sad if one of my girls were gay. Not doing with anything about their preference, just that I know how hard life can be for someone who does not fit into what is still considered the “norm”. :frowning:

53

This is a very, very common belief. My own mother has told me that she believes ‘something bad’ happened to me when I was too young to remember it. Although she doesn’t know what, when, where or by who.

One missing factor from those studies showing higher rates of abuse for gay guys (which they acknowledge) is that a lot of straight men aren’t going to report having been molested by another guy. It’s the same thing as a lot of guys not ever talking about having had any sexual contact with another guy. I don’t know how you’d control for that in a study though.

54

There isn’t really a rebuttal for that particular line of argument. :smiley:

55

Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’ve given up on the pride festivals because they’ve gotten boring and too commercial. There’s no sense of a community coming together, it’s companies trying to sell us their shit. While in some ways it’s a positive move, that is to say they see us as a positive place to market, it is pretty much ruining the events. I’ll go to LA pride this year, but not the festival or parade…I’ll just hang out at the bars with friends.

56

There are banks advertising their mortgage services at my local pride festival. If that doesn’t scream boring mainstream, I don’t know what does.

57

Yep. Mortgages, timeshare companies, cell phone companies, etc etc.

Although we did have an amusing happening last year. The singer Ciara was served with a subpoena while performing.

58

No, but that’s because there is no straight community. Spring Break does look bad for the college community, and Mardi Gras has made people think New Orleans is some sex pit.

I’m actually more okay with Gay Pride parades, since they at least have a social goal. But if you think that goal has been accomplished, I can see not liking them as they currently are. They still promote the idea of gay people as some sort of “other” rather than a part of mainstream society. The stereotype is that gay people are indiscriminantly sexually provocative. Gay pride parades were great for getting recognition out there, but I think they helped promote that stereotype to a generation that otherwise would not have ever even thought about it.

I mean, every gay person I’ve known has been into serial monogamy, just like everyone else. I would not know about the stereotype at all if not for the parades. Heck, if not for Will and Grace and similar, I wouldn’t know they were supposed to act all “camp.”

I mean, I’m all for the sexual revolution in the 60s and 70s, but that doesn’t mean I am forced to respect the “free love” communities.

And, yes, I know, I’m a straight person from a fundamentalist Christian background, living in a small town. But I think it gives me an outsider perspective. I’d never say that Gay Pride parades are bad, but I can understand someone, even a gay person, not liking the more ostentatious parts of them.

59

I have travelled 43 nations for 50 years, many multiple times and many underdeveloped. I don’t know whether so-called “gays” here have any idea that for millenia men have had intimate relations with other men without ever having a parade, flag, insufferably overwhelming publicity, constant whining and making demands and perpetual and infinite outrage at anything and everything. Many, possibly the vast majority were not even homosexual in the longer term.

But now, largely because of the U.S. and Canada, men in non-western countries fear being labelled as “gay” if they do what young men have done for all time. For so long, men did not want to be labelled, but now the label is suddenly so important, arrogant and militant.

I read of a great mayor of some town in Sicily who said he is not “gay” just homosexual. He wants nothing to do with parades, gay marriage etc. Hats off to the mayor for refusing to hop on the lemming band wagon.

60

And when your hero gets caught doing “what boys have always been doing” he gets persecuted and executed. How nice. I’ll take the gay activists, and your hero can suck it. If straight guys want to get paranoid and homophobic about guy-guy intimacy, that’s just something they’ll have to deal with in their own heads.