Using that definition as a guide, would Obama be “post-Black?”
Well… yeah.
IMO, “post-gay” is “I’ve got mine, now go get yours, but don’t expect me to help out any”…IOW, “I live in a large urban population center where I don’t expect to be beaten to death over the course of six hours by three other men because they heard I was gay or thought I might be gay because my voice is kind of soft and who won’t ever be actually convicted (or even probably prosecuted) for it because the rest of the people in this podunk town think I deserved it because I was a fag, so it simply CAN’T be that bad anywhere else…”
I’m stopping now before I say something that will really be regrettable…
Gay - it’s raining men.
Post-Gay - it’s partly cloudy with a chance of men-drizzle
Good idea.
Frankly, your opinion is wrong. I felt the exact same way about the situation when I lived in a small town in Michigan as I do now that I live in New York City. The way I identify has absolutely nothing to do with anybody else; it’s simply my reaction (to not make that big a deal of out it) to the circumstance I’ve found myself in (I like guys and not girls).
I mean, it’s true that I really don’t care about people who I’ve never met and who live in shitty places, but that’s not exactly a uniquely “post-gay” viewpoint. I’m certainly not going to pretend to have any kind of solidarity with a group to which I feel no connection just because bad things happen to some people somewhere.
It sounds to me like “Post-Gay” just means the equivalent of when I walked into Metro, looked around and thought “Okay, I’m too old for this.” Not that it wasn’t fun when I was twenty five, but my crowd had moved on to other things.
I got it up until the Anne Heche part. I’m somehow doubting that “post-gay” is meant to be equivilant to “never-was-gay.”
Something else I meant to ask…what gay bar is he going to where there are no girls to talk to? They hang out at every gay bar I’ve ever gone to. (including the leather bars…though they were more rare there)
I understand the concept but I don’t like the simple fact that having a healthy, complex, and multi-faceted identity means you’re “post-gay”. That implies that being gay has always entailed behaving like a one diminsional stereotype and it’s only been recently that homosexuals have been comfortable wearing other hats. But when has that ever been the case?
Calling Obama or anyone else “post-black” causes me to have the same reaction. How would he behave if he wasn’t “post-black”? Why can’t he just be who he is without folks making it seem as if he’s some racially transcendent novelty who is somehow special and wonderful because he doesn’t act like a bunch of stereotypes? I’ve known plenty of people just like Obama and never in a million years would I think to call them “post-black” as if they’ve been cured of some horrible black affliction.
Post gay–just like post black–carries certain connotations that suggest that it’s wrong to be identifiably different than the mainstream. When I see “I’m post gay”, what I hear is “no one knows I’m gay unless I tell them and I’m not like those other gay people and I feel good about myself because of that.”
I see where you’re coming from, and there are definitely people who are proud of not being recognizably gay (in fact, isn’t there another term for that?), but I think where the “post” comes in is a lack of concern with anything like that.
To continue using myself as an example - I certainly have identifiably “gay” traits aside from enjoying sex with men. I don’t pretend that I didn’t listen to the latest Kylie Minogue album for a solid month. And I’m certainly not concerned with being identifiably different from the mainstream - I’m far too much of a nerd to ever be a part of that to begin with, and anybody who can’t tell that I prefer men to women within ten minutes of meeting me must have his eyes closed and his ears plugged.
I don’t think it has anything to do with denying that people who idenfity as gay are complex people who lead fulfulling lives. “Post-gay” isn’t a value judgment at all, although it is clear from certain responses that some people are taking it as something of an insult or expression of selfishness. As I understand it, it’s simply a way of describing someone’s personal identity.
As I mentioned upthread, I believe I see myself fitting the description of a post-gay in that I don’t think of myself as gay despite being homosexual; it’s a quality that can be attributed to me, but it’s not really a component in my personal identity. I feel zero solidarity with “gays” as a group and don’t pretend to do so. I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why that is, but among them are not that I think anyone who identifies as gay is a cardboard cutout, or that I’m trying to say “screw you” to gays getting beaten up in Alabaman or whatever.
I think it comes down to something a gay person I used to know once said to me. He said he wasn’t going to Pride this year and when I asked him why he said that he always hated Pride and that he only went because “gay people are supposed to go to Pride.”
That’s what “post-gay” means to me.
When you see/hear of someone gay acting a certain way publically that you’d consider negative and tres stereotypical (e.g. walking around in chaps and calling everyone honey), or you come across portrayals of gay people in the media that leave them looking cartoonish and extreme and ultra-hysterical, do you feel the same way you do when you come across heteros doing embarrassing things (e.g politicians boning White House interns and then lying about it, stupid macho men, boy-crazy girly girls)?
To me, the question of solidarity is only half the issue. How do you feel when members of your group screw up and/or made to look a certain way? Do you say “meh, that’s him, not me; no need for me to feel embarrassed.” Or do you cringe?
That’s the true test for telling whether you’re “post-anything”. I’m pretty sure Obama has the same reactions that I and other black people do when the 6 o’clock news comes on. We get embarrassed when we hear statistics that seem to support the worst opinions about us. I find it really hard to believe that gay people–who IMO are more stigmatized than blacks–are immune from this internal conflict. And that’s why I’m having a hard time groking that anyone can really be “post gay” when just a few years ago it was taboo to show two men kissing on TV.
Well, since you asked, when a member of “my group” (I think you meant “when someone of your same sexual orientation”) screws up, I’ll go with “meh, that’s him, not me; no need for me to feel embarassed” if anything. More than likely, though, if I have no part in someone else’s social screw up, I don’t tend to even care enough to even think that much about it. And I’ve reacted that way since I first met another gay person at age 15.
I suppose that by your test, I was “post-gay” before I was even “gay-gay.” 
Official statements, tourist warnings and economic sanctions are all perfectly valid, and don’t equal: invasion and occupation.
It gets really meta when that couple goes shopping for a strap on… :smack:
Okay. I’m not trying to start any trouble here, and you’re all probably right that I am unclear on the subject of gender reassignment, it not being a topic that I give a lot of thought to. It’s just that it honestly seems to me that if a man is going to be attracted to women, it’s a bit over the top to become a woman and a lesbian.
Not saying it’s wrong! Please don’t hit me! I just find that particular situation a bit strange.
No worries. I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “over the top” here. Why would it be more over-the-top for a trans woman to be attracted to women than to men?
Transgender isn’t a subspecies of homosexuality, where a guy likes guys so much he becomes a girl to make it easier to get with them. Without wanting to speak for everyone, in general it really hasn’t got anything to do with her being attracted to women; it has to do with her identifying as a woman, regardless of whom she’s attracted to.
People ask my friend Devin, “If you’re attracted to men anyway, why didn’t you just stay a woman?” The answer is because he’s not a woman, he’s a man. A gay man.
Do you somehow believe that a male-to-female transgendered who is attracted to women is not, in fact, transgendered at all but is doing it to, to be blunt, get pussy?
That would be some EXPENSIVE poussay. A straight man who just can’t seem to get laid could probably afford to just go to Mustang Ranch or visit Sam for some Bangkok barhopping a bunch of times for what the therapy/operations/hormones/etc. would cost, not to mention the emotional ordeal and the like and the psychiatric profiling he’d have to fake and the years he’d have to live as the opposite gender.