[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Frank Talk on Gay Stereotypes
Damn...I just couldn't resist...apologies for the length of the email.
Here goes...
On Mon, 24 Mar 1997, Anonymous Poster wrote:
> I would like to thank you for this frank and candid posting. It's all too
> prevalent in our little community to take the attitude that any behavior
> associated with being gay is axiomatically Right and that the rest of us
> are obliged to defend it. And if we find fault with any such behavior,
> however deviant or repellant, we are ostracized, marginalized, and the word
> "judgmental" gets used as often as "the" gets used in normal speech.
Anyone heard of the phrase "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse"? It's
what you would call a hyperbole, a slight exaggeration for effect. Well,
the author of the above passage has taken this literary conceit and
increased it by a significant margin. "It's all too prevalent in our
little community to take the attitude that any behavior associated with
being gay is axiomatically Right..."? Come on! Any behavior?
Axiomatically right? I wish people would stop generalizing so much and
base their argument on more than just anecdotal evidence. Another thing
that gets under my skin is how some of the posts in response to this
thread have made the outlandish, and therefore wrong, assumption that
stupid/bad/slutty/shallow behavior is linked to the gay community, as if
there was a causal relation between one's sexuality and one's sexual
behavior. Are there shallow, stupid gay men who practice bad habits with
regards to dating and what not? Yes. Are there profound, insightful,
intelligent gay men who don't? Yes. What about straight men? Are they
the paragons of virtuous behavior? Hell no! So why do some people on
this list still describe the gay community as a group of desperate people
lacking all self-respect? I'm not asking anyone to condone stupid--and
possibly dangerous--behavior. No one is. What I *am* asking is that a
little more thought be given to why gay men (generally speaking) behave
the way they do. It's not because they're gay, I'll tell you that,
because that's just a cowardly answer, an all to easy solution for one's
perceived problems. It's the same argument fundamentalists use to advance
anti-gay campaigns. We are bad because we are gay. Bullshit,
people...bullshit. I refuse to let my identity be summarily explained
by a label and yours or anybody else's perception of that label. You may
already agree with me, which would make this verbal rant unnecessary, but
the way you phrase certain of your statements has provoked me to speak up
(again)...In short, it's not *just* the gay community that suffers from
slimey people. Straight men can be slimey too, which would nullify any of
your arguments that being gay=shallowness. It's a male thing, as I've
stated before...so if you're going to attack, attack all. Don't
discriminate. Be an equal opportunity offender.
> There is a definite trend among some gay men to seek to break apart others'
> relationships. For these kind of men (I observe this most often in
> Scandinavian men), there s an element of victory in prying apart two
> lovers. I am recently the victim of just such a man.
How about there is a definite trend among *men* to seek to break apart
other's relationships. Competition between men is nothing new, dear
victim, so please don't qualify your statements with "gay men."
> But going back to the generality of self-respect; I agree whole-heartedly.
> So many gays feel obliged to live up to the societal expectation that we
> are all fruits, fairies, or deviates and lower themselves to be just that.
Lower ourselves to be "fruits," "fairies," or deviates? Am I stupid, or
did I just see a hierarchical arrangement of what it means to be a "proper
gay male"? Fruits are bad? Fairies are bad? So, unless you're a
masculine/straight acting, pants wearing, cigar-chomping, BMW driving,
three-piece-suit wearing, sports loving, gay male, you lower yourself?
What the hell kind of logic is that?
> I think that this self-degradation peaks in the whole leather/bear thing,
> where we glorify men who don't take care of themselves or who are as
> conformist as girls in a Catholic elementary school.
Not being a leather or bear lover myself, I still don't understand where
your logic is coming from. You're putting a value judgment on sexual
desire...some people like leather. Some don't. Some people like the
missionary position. Some don't. What's wrong with that? You're doing
the same thing a homophobic society does to the gay community. "You like
men, therefore you lower yourself...you're not even human. You're
sub-human." I hope you didn't mean it that way, because it sure as hell
came across that way.
> And the worst offense in this department is the Rice Queen. I am a
> Caucasian who dates Asian men, and I treat my dates with respect and
> dignity and equality. But I follow very often in the footsteps of other
> Caucasians who take advantage of the self-effacing elements of the Asian
> mentality to humiliate, dominate, blackmail, rape, and subjugate the men
> who are supposed to be their lovers. I know more gay Asians who have been
> raped than haven't. It makes me frankly defensive, because by admitting
> that I am white and a top and interested only in Asians has an implication
> that I am in the same category as those shamelessly manipulative and
> predatory men.
Agreed, somewhat. Inequality in a relationship is intolerable to me,
whether you're white, asian, black, or a goddamned Martian. I also have
to say that a relationship is a two-way street. It takes two cars to meet
head-on.
> I maintain that we bear a lot of the responsibility for our own bad
> reputations. Yes there are historical prejudices and living religious
> ones, but anyone who has not made up his mind about us yet who sees men
> walking around in bondage gear and handcuffs and leather is not about to
> write his congressman in support of gay rights.
This is a tricky area. You say that we bear a lot of responsibility for
our own bad reputations. To a certain extent, I agree...but I have to
wonder if buying into this idea is also buying into society's tendency to
place value judgments not on people, but on visual images. Granted, I'm
not a great lover of bondage, S/M, or what have you, but I can also
separate those interests from the people who are interested in them. So I
find it disturbing that you, like the anti-gay folks, are summarily
concluding that the gay community is chock full of bad characters because
there are some who engage in sexual practices that you don't engage in.
Sexual desire and personal fetishes are neutral...they only become more
or less when you look at them a certain way.
> The fact is, most of us are "normal-acting" people who just want to make
> ends meet, find a place for ourselves in the world and someone to share out
> lives with. Yet we are called upon by some twisted notion of solidarity to
> endorse "open relationships," "threesomes," depraved behavior, and the
> antics of people who use being gay to get attention.
Nobody's asking anybody to "endorse" threesomes and "depraved behavior,"
sheesh. As if that kind of stuff doesn't happen in the straight
community...what consenting adults do to themselves is none of my damned
business, gay or straight. None of yours, either. This "normal" stuff is
really a kicker, too. Normality changes depending on the bases of your
definition. If you consider normal as "majority," then you would also
have to say that during the 1800s, supporting slavery was "normal." It's
always risky to use a relative term like normal and start targeting
people...after all, many groups were targeted as abnormal. Targeted by
society. I don't think the entire gay community needs to have that done
by its members.
-khoa
"Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse."
-Cervantes
Khoa Nguyen
<email>
http://www.seattleu.edu/~kwa
-------------------------------------------------------------------