Hey, it’s not my theory.
It feels like I’m just digging myself in deeper here. I assure you I meant nothing bad.
But although I am often the only one in a room to see the irony of a certain situation, it does feel odd when it happens in here. 
I know it wrecks the joke, but explain the irony to me.
No, I think I’ll just bow out as gracefully as I still can. As Louis Armstrong said: “There are some folks that, if they don’t know, you can’t tell 'em.”
“Bowing out gracefully” now means “leaving with an insult”? I was never pissed at you but I’m getting to be.
That was not meant as an insult, and I’m sorry if you took it that way. I was speaking in general, actually.
But okay. Now. Now I’m bowing out before I piss too many others off.
I can’t even begin to say how offensive I find this. It smacks of privilege. If you don’t want to spend all your time hanging out a gay bars or Pride, big f-ing deal. Like that’s some grand revelation. I’ve never done Pride, but I don’t feel the need to go around telling people about how I’m in some special category of gays who don’t do Pride.
But saying that homosexuals have “won their battle for acceptance” and telling people to “calm down”? What a tool. That might be the case in 20 years, but it’s not the case today.
Thank you! “It smacks of privilege”! That’s exactly the thing that gets under my skin about “post-gay”, and why the very concept makes me so angry. It’s like they want to have all the good things about being gay without the bad things. They’re outsourcing the price of being out. They can play but don’t ever have to pay the piper, while the rest of us are working like hell (and have worked like hell) to create the world in which they can play without being stalked down an alley and beaten to death. And the ones who work the hardest are generally the ones they’re most embarrassed about…some of the leather clubs and drag courts are the hardest-working community ambassador/public service clubs in the gay community. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to massive amounts of charity/community outreach work. The moto clubs and leather clubs are mostly service organizations, where the membership is required to participate in so many hours of community service projects run by the club. The drag queens at the Stonewall riots were the catalyst and the pioneers of the gay liberation movement, and did more for the cause in six hours than the Mattachine Society, with their serious suits, had done in 20 years at that point.
“Post-gays” may not think they owe anything to the gay community they prefer to pretend doesn’t exist, but they do. They owe the fact that they can walk down the street in Chicago or New York or Miami to the people who came before, all of them, drag queens and leather daddies and femmy twinks and radical fairies.
No, if you re-read the quote, it goes:
In a post-gay world, homosexuals have won their battle for acceptance and are now free to move beyond identity politics.
I don’t think the author was suggesting that we are in a “post-gay” world now.
:rolleyes: I have little more to say than “I respectfully disagree with your assessment.”
I read your post and my eyes flicked up to your username and for a fat second I thought you were Lekatt. That really shook my preconceived notions and I think that’s a good thing.
BING! Best description ever, and it gets so far up my nose. Actually, I wouldn’t mind that much that people simply benefit from the work that’s been done and don’t really give back; not everyone’s in a place where they can do that kind of work. What pisses me off is this business of not only profiting from the hard work of those of us who’ve been fighting for fifty years, but spitting on us as they do so - in this case, going so far as to create an identity to disavow those of us who’ve been working to keep them from going to prison, the hospital, the mental ward, and the homeless shelter for being queer.
This is very frustrating, Siam Sam. Nobody was insulting you or had their claws out. (I admit I snarked at you a bit in my first post, but only because I was a bit riled by the business of “unclear on the concept.”) I would have been happy to discuss the subject with you further, because to me, and to a number of people I love, it’s neither theoretical nor a joke.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but is it possible that this schism developed because some people of a more personally, not politically, conservative bend are embarassed by the over the top flamboyance exemplified by the Pride parades? Hell, I’m straight and I’m embarassed by it and feel it plays right into the hands of the anti-gay people by emphasizing cartoonish stereotypes. (Note: I’m an upper-midwesterner and come by my ability to be embarassed by the flamboyance of strangers naturally.)
Can’t you accept that there are people who really don’t want to define themselves by who they want to fuck without accusing them of pissing on those who came before? How can you be sure that some “post-gays” are not grizzled veterans who had seen how successful they had been and passed the torch to the younger and more energetic? Some people tire of being constantly in confrontation mode; it’s hard on ones heart and can leave a person bitter.
Or do you wish to keep them in a Gay Ghetto, either real or psychological, until every last gay person worldwide is safe?
Also, what’s a banji boy? I googled the term, and didn’t get anything. Tried googling images, and got some weird dolls.
-FrL-
I don’t see how that question is relevant. If one person is executed because he is gay, that is bad. What do murder rates amongst demographic groups have to do with that?
-FrL-
Frankly, the goal is equality for all, not just the socially acceptable. Period.
As for the second paragraph, if they are old veterans of the fight, then they’re not “post-gay”. That’s not what “post-gay” means. And one of the hallmarks of “post-gay” is that they ARE pissing on the community, and the pioneers…they distance themselves from their own history.
There is no reason for them to be in a “gay ghetto”. It’s not about that. I don’t demand that they keep a sizable collection of Judy Garland records or Broadway cast recordings on their shelf. I don’t demand that they utter at least two "Fabulous"es a day. I don’t really demand anything. But when they act like they hit a triple, when they were CARRIED to third base by 40 years of the gay liberation movement, and subsequently flip it out of their pants to pee on all the folks on whose shoulders they’re standing, then I get justifiably upset.
I’m not really sure I’d consider those things equivalent, really. I have zero issue with gay guys (or straight guys) who want to adopt ultra-flamboyant personalities, or bears, or leather dadies, or what have you. That’s their choice, and more power to them. I don’t get embarrassed and offended by Jack on Will and Grace or Big Gay Al on South Park or anything, becuase those things honestly have nothing to do with me.
I’m honestly having a difficult time thinking of something I would consider embarrassing behavior on the part of someone else motivated entirely by their sexual orientation. I do understand what you’re talking about; I do sometimes feel embarrassed by various members of subcultures of which I’m a part (comic book geeks, video gamers), but I don’t really think of gays in the same way.
As I understand it, “post-gay” isn’t a label that people use to idenfity themselves. It’s just a way that some people use to describe a certain group of homosexuals. It isn’t as if I actually think of myself as “post-gay” either; the fact that I can probably be described by that term means that I don’t really think about it much at all (except, obviously, in a thread like this). I think you’re imagining airs of superiority when none exist.
Likewise, I think that jayjay’s view of the term assumes a mountain of offense where none exists.
As do I. Because I don’t happen to define myself primarily by my sexuality, doesn’t mean that it’s irrelevant or a negligible part of me (it’s more important than my blood type or which hand I use, for example). I don’t go to pride myself but I certainly don’t look down on people who do, and I would be very sad to hear if it was abolished (for whatever reason) because I think it’s important that it happens.
jayjay - you seem to be saying that anyone who isn’t fully campaigning for gay rights is spitting on those who are. I’m sure that’s not what you actually think but it’s what is coming across. I’ve done my fair share of campaigning for equality but as far as I’m concerned the battle for legal equality in the UK is all but over, and I don’t see what is left to be accomplished as a “fight”. Does that mean I’m in some way negating all the struggle that occured on my behalf in the past by others?
I’d just like to note that I haven’t called anyone participating here “post-gay”. I’m reacting to my understanding of the term, from previous experience both in person and through reading about it.
I really don’t understand, though, how one can NOT feel any connection to the gay community whatsoever if one is gay. Maybe I was undersocialized to the straight society when I was a child, but the day I actually stepped into the gay world is still one of the memories that’s guaranteed to remain indelibly marked on my mind and heart. It’s one thing to know intellectually that there are people who share your orientation and attractions. It’s another thing entirely to actually MEET a heretofore unbelievably large number of those people. My first LGBSA (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Student Alliance) meeting at Penn State back in 2001 was that moment…I still feel a little of the awe I felt, that overwhelming emotion (I’M NOT ALONE!). Then again in 2003, at the Pride March in DC (Not only am I not alone, there are a fuck of a lot of us!).
I just don’t get how someone doesn’t have those experiences if they’ve grown up gay (especially in my generation or previous ones). You (and the other people who’ve said this about not having any connection) mystify me (and that’s not meant as an insult, just an observation).
I went through very similar things and completely understand what you mean. I would like to see it get to where no one has to have that experience. What I mean by that is no gay child would need to have the feeling that they were the only one, they would grow up in a world where it was OK that they were gay and that it was just accepted as part of who they were.
I’m not suggesting that we forget the struggles, the people that fought, the drag queen that started the riot at Stonewall or anything else that has gone before. The awe and emotion upon first meeting other gay people is fantastic and I wouldn’t trade that experience…but I also wouldn’t wish it on anyone else because of the other traumas and trials that precede it.
I have no such equivalent experience, and I find your feelings as odd as I imagine you find mine. “Stepping into the gay world,” for example, has little meaning to me.