Apologies for the title. I’m not quite sure about the term “homophobia”. What I am getting at is unthinking stereotypes and the privilege to punch down on full display.
In this thread, a question is posed about good names for gay bars. When I first saw the thread, I was somewhat confuddled by the option given but didn’t have a deeper reaction. On further reflection after reading the entire thread, I’m uncomfortable with the topic and the assumptions that go with it.
The thread devolved into crude sex jokes and stereotypes about gay lifestyle that seem hurtful and derogatory to me.
Roderick Femm and Fiveroptic mentioned some of the issues with thread. I think it’s worthy of wider discussion on the Board.
We’ve done a lot of work on misogyny (thank you). I think we need to work on this too.
I just now glanced through that thread-some of the bar name suggestions were decent(I especially liked Adam And Yve’s), but far too many were just an excuse to take the low road.
May I ask if you would consider yourself part of the gay community? Don’t answer if you prefer not to for any reason. I am trying to tease out whether this is insulting or demeaning to that community. The implications of easy sex in dark backrooms (or outright statements) seemed insulting to me. I’d like to know what that community thinks and what our larger community on the Board thinks.
I believe the opinions won’t align and we’ll need to work on this to make the Board a friendlier place to be.
I was kind of creeped out by the recurrent examples of names that were euphemisms for anal sex and other specific sexual practices. Not because there’ve never been any gay bars with such names, but I found those creepy for the same reason. ETA: I think of myself as a newbie participant in the LGBTQIA+ environment but don’t identify as a gay male and haven’t been nominated to speak for them, etc.
I’m not a gay man, but this all seems pretty much in line with the lame jokes queer people make about themselves (trans people, lesbians, and even my gay male friends). My best friend and I have about a dozen really bad store and bar names, some of which are about as bad (e.g. a joke about a nonbinary focused fashion boutique “Transtrendy” which is a pun of “Transtrender” which is a mild slur used against us nonbinary people mostly used within the trans community).
Admittedly there is a power relationship inherent in cis, straight people making jokes about gay people can be in poor taste even if gay people make the exact same joke, just because of the dynamic, but this doesn’t strike me as one of those cases. Most of the jokes are just low brow and lame, but not mean spirited. An actual gay man (Miller? panache?), or especially one who lived in a much more actively homophobic time or environment may have a different perspective though, and I’d value their input more than my own. But personally I’ve seen plenty of actual queer bars with far more problematic names, menus, theme nights, etc than the obvious jokes going on in that thread.
There’s absolutely homophobia on the Dope, but IMO this ain’t it. I did only skim a page though so I may have missed some things.
E: I really didn’t get the sense that there was an implication of easy quick sex in dark back rooms (unless I missed it!). There were sexual jokes in the names of course but like… have you seen how risque even normal ass pub names get? That’s basically part of the “genre” of bar names in general.
Id like to address this as factually as possible. Easy sex in bars/bathhouses/clubs was a fact of life in the 70’s and part of the eighties. Randy Schilts writes of this in his book And The Band Played On. Some men had over 1,000 sex partners a year. So the implications seem true but the jokes are tasteless because the result of this laissez faire sexuality was an explosion of disease that finally culminated in HIV and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
That’s something I hadn’t thought about. I also didn’t get the sense that there was an implication of easy sex in that thread, but to the extent that there is in general life, I can see how it could be a painful reminder of the time of HIV.
I was going to mention that the implication of easy sex seems more misandrist than homophobic. If you believe the stereotype that all men are always looking for sex, then a lot of actual sex, as opposed to a lot of wishing for sex, would naturally occur amongst men who prefer men. I’m not sure if there are a lot of people who think that gay men are hypersexual but grant heterosexual men’s brains some autonomy from their nether regions. (Religious wackoes aside.)
TLDR: I’m not a member of the LGBT community, but in support of that last paragraph I remember on the old school Usenet where in alt.gothic amongst other places they had “codes” in which you could describe your likes and status in a long string of characters. In alt.gothic they had two separate characters for how homosexual and heteresexual you were. A lot of people were like “lol I’m a hypersexual Goth” so they put 100% and 100%, whereas I put down 0% homosexual but only 80% heterosexual.
Mmm, this may be part of what I’m missing. The people I hang out with are largely born after or at the tail end of the worst of the HIV epidemic. I was too little during the time, and most of my engagement with HIV is a few afterschool specials that were reruns by the time I was old enough to watch them, and some isolated HIV safety lectures in school that didn’t even mention gay people. Of course, it still has a mark on the community (including the trans community, since straight trans women were classified as “MSM” for purposes of giving blood until recently), but me and my peers don’t really have the visceral association that can only be borne by living through it the same way someone who lived through the STOP AIDS era would.
Of course, hypersexuality, and especially predatory hypersexuality is still a very, very pernicious male-targeted homophobic stereotype, but I wasn’t getting that in a malicious from the thread just due to the context being bar names which, again, I perceive as being risque as a matter of course. It depends on context too, gay male-focused drag bars in particular are known for having exceedingly risque names.
I have never truly grasped how much the goth scene has changed since the 90s until this very moment.
I’m glad you recognize the dynamic, but I disagree that this isn’t it. There are gay people in that thread pointing out the problems they have with the discussion, and their concerns are being dismissed rather than accepted.
They are mean-spirited, at least as far as the rest of us participating. They’re playing to a stereotype rather than reflecting who gay people actually are.
(I am, to be clear, using gay as the standard for the discussion so far, but I think it’s reasonable to open the discussion to all LBGTQIA, with apologies if I’ve missed anyone.)
I would be curious to know what you do find homophobic on the Dope? I picked that thread because it’s a very recent example, but we should discuss other instances as well.
Thank you , Sunny Daze. I am a sporadic reader of this MB at best, but that thread stank to high heaven the moment it opened. I could not imagine how the hell
It was being allowed.
Thanks for starting this discussion, Sunny Daze. I was …nonplussed… by the thread in question and want to learn from the thoughtful reactions of people who are on the front lines of dealing with these kinds of issues.
I grew up in the 50’s and learned to hate myself at the age of 7 for being … that. I was also terrified of being found out. I became emotionally stiff because I was afraid of unbending lest some of the queer leaked out in public. Not to go over everything I’ve gone through trying to get over the influence of the jokes and sniggering and sneers I’ve witnessed during my younger years, suffice to say that I still haven’t completely done so.
This is why I find the stereotypes and jibes contained in that thread unpleasant to read. They bring back a lot of ugly memories. I recognize that most straight men would probably not have the experience to recognize the problem. I’m not sure I want the hand of authority to come down on them, I just wish they had some idea how to put themselves in other peoples’ place.
I haven’t participated in the thread, but I can figure out what sort of names were proposed. What’s wrong with seeing that thread title, figuring out fairly quickly that you won’t like it, and then go participate in one of the other threads? Why do you want the board to ban this?
I’m not going to rehash my older threads, but this board has gone to “you can talk about anything” to a whole list of things that now you cannot talk about. The open nature of the board was one of the things that drew me to it in the first place. I don’t believe it is necessary or appropriate to turn it into a left wing safe space.
Yeah. I had approached that thread in all seriousness, as I didn’t find the idea of the thread itself offensive (I merely found the OP’s suggestion nonsensical) and offered what I considered a serious suggestion based on that, but I didn’t return to it once I noticed the prevalence of inane “Back door” suggestions.
I don’t feel any guilt for having posted, though. The thread is not inherently homophobic, just because some posters might be. A comparison was made elsewhere as to whether you’d participate in a “What to name a Black bar” thread and I don’t agree with the comparison - “gay bar with themed name” is a common enough thing in the real world.
I’m bi, not gay, and I haven’t really hung around gay bars much since uni, if that matters.