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Re: Frank Talk on Gay Stereotypes
At 11:54 PM 3/24/97 -0800, Anonymous Poster wrote:
>Khoa wrote:
>" 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. "
Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a fair and just world?
We don't.
Come on, Khoa, get real. Sure, there is all kinds of straight misbehavior,
although the gay community takes the worst of the straight world as its
starting point, as its norm, and heads south from there. But there's a
critical difference.
Sure, there is straight slime, there are straight leather people, all of
that. But they have the luxury of not having their misbehavior reflect on
their entire community. This is a sociological reality, and batting your
doubtless lovely eyes innocently will not make it go away. If a white man
rapes a woman it's an article in the newspaper; if a black man rapes a
white woman in Omaha, black men are shot at from cars in Atlanta. Same
with Us and Them. Nobody read about Ted Bundy and considered him to be
representative of heterosexual men; nobody sees one of those truck drivers
with the silver silhouette of a naked teen girl on the mud flaps and thinks
of him as a typical straight man.
How I wish we had that luxury. We don't.
In our case, one bad apple does spoil the barrel. People who have not made
up their minds about gays see one of our local Bondage Buddies on Broadway
and make up their minds on the spot: gay people are sick. This isn't fair,
it isn';t right, I don't endorse it, but we ignore this sociological
reality at our peril. It is ESPECIALLY incumbent on us to present positive
images to the rest of the world, not to see how badly we can frighten them.
Chris
=============================================
"When a man lies, he murders part of the world"
-- Merlin
"When the unreal is taken for the real, the real becomes unreal."
-- Tsao Hsueh-chin, Dream of the Red Chamber
"The problem with the wise is they are
so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain."
-- Bertrand Russell
"Nevertheless, it moves"
-- Galileo, responding to the Inquisition order that he recant his
observation that the earth moves about the sun
=============================================
Chris Fox
Woodinville, WA USA
Senior Software Consultant
One return per function
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