… but until they are treated as equals some kind of differentiation will always exist.
Both positive and negative diferentiation are part of the hypocrisy of society. I agree the ideal would be neither to exist.Would it be trite to say that every day in the United States is white heterosexual pride day?
Trite, but somewhat true.
Esprix
Male White Hetero non-Poor day
Isabelle, Isabelle, Isabelle. Sigh. You don’t disappoint, do you?
Do you have issues with scholarship funds for Irish, Italian, Polish and Native American students or is it just the fact you see commercials for the United Negro College Fund and not the others?
I don’t think any one should be singled out.
Well, Isabelle, I don’t think little children should go hungry or that women should be raped. Are you suggesting that all anti-rape laws should be repealed because no one should be doing it in the first place?
Gays get marginalized; blacks have fewer educational opportunities; women get raped. You purport to agree that all three of these are BAD THINGS, but you pretend it’s some kind of noble justice to refuse to do anything about the first two.
Please admit to yourself that you’re just rationalizing your own prejudices.
Well, Isabelle, try this on: You are forbidden to marry. If you are living with a man and consider it a marriage, the Revs. lissener, Esprix, and gobear will be glad to denounce it as merely your inability to control your lusts and your flaunting the fact that you gratify them in front of everybody. There’s a 50:50 chance your boss will fire you if he even suspects that you’re even having thoughts about being with a man. And the same goes for your landlord – he has every right to throw you out as one of those evil sluts who want men – and obviously, if you lost after one man, you’ll lust after any of them. Keep away from those boys – God knows you’ll corrupt them!! Oh, and there’s a remote but real chance that on any given day, if you’re not careful, you’ll get beaten up by slut-bashers. And chances are you have a real low self-image anyway, from all those accusations of being a slut throughout school – and realizing they’re right, because you do want a man. And the President and the leading men of one party are denouncing you and your kind every chance they get.
And we’ll go back to 1863 and identify what property and money your ancestors had at that point. You get to keep only money earned after that date that hasn’t been spent – if they owned a house, it’s gone – we take away the value of it, with compound interest from the date it was sold, if it was. Same thing with any bank accounts or investments they might have had. Any money your ancestors made over double minimum wage – it’s gone too, since they were unlikely to have made that much.
Now, you’re on an even keel with the gay people from the first paragraph, and with the black folks who have mostly made their way up from poverty, or are still there, from the second one. Do you have anything to complain about?
Don’t, though – we’ll point out that everybody’s equal in the eyes of the law, so there shouldn’t be anything “special” for you.
Let me try, Poly.
Isabelle, you live in this alternate universe:
Through some kind of lame literary device that I’m not creative enough to come up with right now, you have grown up in a culture in which heterosexual sex is considered disgusting and sinful; babies are test-tubed, or birthed underground or some such thing; let’s not dwell on the details.
Also, the Civil War somehow shook out so that the African Americans banded together and beat BOTH the North and the South, and you live in a majority-black world, and have had to fight actively for legal recognition of every right you THOUGHT the Constitution guaranteed you.
But there’s a little bit of light in your world: you’ve had a few eye contacts with Toni, the boy across the street from your tenement slum, and even though he PLAYS really gay—goes shopping with his “boyfriends,” makes fun of your wardrobe, waits after school to slap the football captain silly—you think he might, deep down, be . . . like you; that he might LIKE you.
You’re miserable though; all your life your mothers have been telling you to “butch it up,” to get some dirt under your fingernails, to quit taking so many goddam baths—“You smell like a goddam bar of Ivory Soap, fer chrissakes!”
You begin to keep a close eye on him—it helps that you’re both forced to the back of the bus with the rest of the white kids; the first time you’ve ever been grateful for the racism that’s belittled you all your life. And it’s true: Toni sneaks an occasional peek at you, too.
One day you’re in the 7-11, and you see Toni in there with a bunch of his friends (he’s such an Uncle Thomas, you think; always hanging out with the black queens, hoping some of their coolness will wear off on him). There’s a ruckus—Toni gets shoved into a rack and cans of gourmet grits go flying everywhere.
The storekeeper, a large black man whose magenta eyeshadow makes him even more menacing, springs out from around the counter and grabs Toni by the collar, and yanks him toward the door, where you’ve just entered. As they draw near you, you try to shrink into the background, but it’s too late: he sees you. “And take your cracker GIRL friend with you, get your pasty white virgin ass outta my store!”
You fall in a double tangle on the sidewalk; passersby whisper about “ghetto punks” and “crack” and “ABBA.” You try to sit up, but Toni’s limp; dead weight. You can’t get him off of you, and you’re terrified that he’s dead somehow. But he’s not—he’s moving; he’s – he’s crying!
You roll your eyes; you figure he’s just posturing so no one thinks he’s too tough. But as you struggle, he remains limp sobbing, and you gradually realize he’s not faking it: he’s really crying!
“Toni! Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
A couple more sobs, and Toni says “No, he didn’t hurt me. I already hurt.”
You help him up and take him out behind the store, and sit leaning against the wall. You feel guilty; you feel dirty, because you feel a thrill of joy where his arm rests against your leg. “Toni, are you OK?”
“I just want to die.” You’re horrified: oh my god, he knows what I’m thinking—he hates me! He wants to hit me—to KILL me! But you can’t tear yourself away: this is the first time you’ve ever really felt happy, and you can’t even figure out why. “Toni, tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t help me. I’ve tried. I’ve tried everything. I just want to kill myself. Because he’s—they’re—they’re right! I am like that! I am straight!” He stops, a choked silence. You both freeze: he’s said it, he’s said it out loud. Neither of you moves or speaks; you both stare straight ahead, away from each other.
Suddenly you realize you haven’t breathed since Toni’s revelation. “Toni—“ you whisper “Toni—I’m—I’m straight too.” You remain still; looking away from him.
“Oh, Isabelle, you don’t have to say that, just to make me feel better.”
“I’m not Toni, it’s true. You’re the first person I ever told. I don’t think I’ve ever even admitted it to myself.”
Slowly you turn to look at each other. You both cry silently, and then fall into each others’ arms. At the sound of footsteps, you leap apart, burning with shame. Each of you runs off in a different direction.
Years later, after you’ve moved to the big city, where you find that people are more willing to accept you for who you are—or at least, just too busy and self absorbed to bother about you, which is as close as you’ve ever come to tolerance, let alone approval—you get a job. You’re not using your degree in White Studies, but hey, who gets everything out of life? The life of an auto mechanic isn’t so bad; your Moms are both so proud of you, and you don’t have the heart that it’s just a front; it’s just a cover because you still live with the shame they taught you to feel about yourself.
One day you see a story in the local underground Het paper, “La Difference.” A straight man has been killed. Apparently a gang of queens had come in from the affluent suburbs to try to score some wine coolers from the ghetto, and saw a young man duck out of the darkened doorway of a sports bar. Your blood boils as you read it—you really shouldn’t read such stuff; there’s nothing you can do about it and it just makes you angry—and then you sit, suddenly and hard. The victim’s name is Tony. You realize you knew it all along, as soon as you saw the paper, or maybe you’ve just always been haunted by the inevitability of it, and now suddenly it’s true.
But you experience a little glow of warmth as you cry quietly for your first love. At least he lived a better life than you’ve lived, locked in your dark little closet of a life. He’d found courage, a courage you envied him, even in death. He’d finally had the strength and pride to spell his name with a Y.
Isabelle, you have actually read this thread, haven’t you?
Gay people are still discriminated against - hence they often feel the need for one day where they are not the minority, and they can state that they are proud of who they are, as small compensation for the other 364 days where they have to hide.
While there are still negative consequences of being in a minority group, then the few positive consequences must be preserved. You don’t get rid of the bad by doing away with the good first.
I’m pro-gay people. My bestest long-time friend is a gay guy, and I was raised in the Unitarian Church (a very liberal church that has a lot of gay members).
Anyway, I don’t understand the need for Gay Pride Days, etc.
I realize that there is nothing shameful about being gay, but there has got to be an alternative to the word Pride.
When you are proud of something, it implies that you’ve accomplished something, or did something heroic or whatnot. Being Gay doesn’t put you in that category. You just ARE gay. There is no -pride- in that, nor is there pride in being Irish, Italian, etc… because you didn’t accomplish anything to be that, you just ARE.
If Gay People would conduct themselves with CLASS, go on about their business, and not focus on their sexuality as a major part of who they are, instead of one small part of who they are… and focus on things EXTERNAL to themselves, they would be better off. Unfortunately, the flamers who insist on looking like a halloween costume gone horribly wrong give a bad name to Gays (in general). THere are MANY gay people who go on with their lives in as normal a fashion as anyone else… and are accepted by society because they don’t make a big deal out of their sexuality.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. They are who they are. Everyone can think of at least one effeminent boy in their grade school. He didn’t choose to be that way. He just WAS. And no amount of you beating him up changed him, right?!
If you have a problem with gays, don’t associate with them and just don’t have sex with them!. If you have a problem with what they do in private, stop thinking about it – it’s not your business anyway. It’s not that difficult! But it’s not your job to beat the crap out of them or murder them just because you don’t like what they do.
And gays, if you want to be treated decently, don’t make your whole focus of your life about you being GAY. So f’ing what if you’re gay. You’re also a whole lot MORE than just gay. Explore the other parts of you and emphasize those things too.
/solving the world’s problems one at a time.
It is EXACTLY sentiments like this that make Pride events so necessary.
For one thing, you misunderstand the nature of Pride. It is not “look at us, we’re GAY!”, but “we are holding our heads up as equals in this society.” We are not allowed to legally marry, we are
not allowed to serve openly in the military, we are deprived of our childfen by biased judges, we are often discriminated against by landlords and employers. In the face of that, I am not inclined to be quietr and passive.
Moreover, I find your comment that sexuality is not a major part of who we are to be offensive. Do you have a photo of your family on your desk at work? Then you “flaunting your sexuality.” Do you talk about your SO with others? Flaunting again. Do you hold hands or even kiss discreetly when you are out of your house (like giving him a peck on the cheek when you drop him off at the subway station)? Again with the flaunting.
In addition, the comment about “flamers” is also deeply offensive. I may be a masculine gay guy, but I am not going to be “accepted” over the backs of my queenier gay brethren. It has to be everybody or no deal.
Until people like you amend your attitudes, I and others will continue to speak up.
The ideas expressed in your post, feistyALgal, are among the worst kind of bigotry, in my not so humble opinion. In order for you to accept someone for who they are you want them to fit into some Wonderbread-esque ideal you’ve established?
Gay pride, as I understand it, isn’t about pride in being gay it’s about pride AND being gay. Gay people in this country are maginalized and often made to feel ashamed of who they are by many people in this country. To hold a Gay Pride parade means to reject the notion that there’s shame in being gay. It means to celebrate that one is gay and proud or, in other words, celebrating who one is.
Have you ever seen a St. Patty’s day parade? Have you ever seen how some of the people dress and act? I’m sure you have beef with them, though, too, right?
Because they’re less likely to get other forms of scholarships, historically, and had to come up with a separate means to make sure their people could get post high school educations.
The reason behind all those sorts of African American groups find their genesis in some sort of anti-black bigotry. Similarly, all the gay-related things can be traced back to some sort of anti-gay bigotry. The persecuted respond by taking care of their own.
In addition to what spectrum said, the UNCF has a number of scholarships for which being a minority is not a prerequisite.
Ok, I can admit when I am wrong. When it is explained the way you both explained it (you and the poster above you), things make more sense… and yes, I will change my stance.
I was under the hallucination that I had ‘the’ answer. I was grossly mistaken.
And my apologies about the term flamer. My gay friend uses that all the time. It was in bad taste on my part and I should’ve been aware of the audience.
Since it won’t let me edit my own post, I will make an addendum:
I was referring to gobear when I said ‘you and the poster above you’.
All this time I thought I was ‘so cool’ thinking I was pro-gay people, when apparently I was shooting myself in the foot.
Well, I’ve learned something new today.
fALg, I hope you’re not being sarcastic, and that you really have had occasion to reconsider your views on the subject.
That’s OK. I just wanted to let you knwo how you came across. We’re cool.
Absolutely not. I’m totally above board on this.
I realize I don’t have a history here (yet) so it’s difficult to judge my sincerity.
It kind of hit me like a ton of bricks when I read both of their posts. I thought I was pretty darned smug with my answer – I was in a true hallucination that I was the best darned champion of gay-rights out there. Somewhere along the way, my perception got skewed.
Because I truly believe that everyone should have the right to love who they want to love, ‘do’ who they want to ‘do’, and marry who they want to marry, gay/straight/bi, etc…
I was just going about it all the wrong way. And it took 2 eloquent posters to point out where I was f’ing up with my logic.
I’m not one to immediately jump to the other side of the fence in a discussion. It takes some powerful wordsmiths to change my mind. That’s why I’m a bit blown away at what happened… and kind of ticked off at myself for being such an arrogant explitive about it.
Great post, lissener.
And thanks for learning something today, feistyALgal. If you want to learn more, check out the “Ask the Gay Guy” threads.
(Why do I sound like a PSA? 
)
Esprix