Gay segregation, community building & phobism

[Atahualpa]

For the record, I, too, am in computer science, and I know MANY gay guys.

Well, you'd be pretty poor if you don't

You were ABSOLUTELY sure someone like Asher wouldn't be gay. See how far that got you?

Yeah, but then I don't know Asher that much that I know my friends. I just believed I could categorize him on what he posts, which went a bit wrong.
Then of course you could say the same thing about my friends... ****

Let's be honest, here: despite huge strides, gays are still very much second-class citizens in even most of the Western world. While urban areas are often islands of total tolerance, large swaths of the rest of the world are not. Gay bashings still account for an inordinate number of hate crimes committed each year in the U.S. and Europe.

hmm, well I can't say that really. The german political landscape emerged some gay people already and AFAIK none of them did it hurt. Berlin's mayor for example:

Before his spectacular coming out -- reportedly to head off tabloid newspaper attempts to discredit him -- Wowereit had few claims to fame either inside or outside the SPD. But his coming out made him instantly recognizable and madly popular in the city.

http://www.datalounge.com/datalounge/news/record.html?record=17363

Westerwelle has just been the biggest political figure yet.

But of course gay bashing... hmm well it's difficult. I think I have pretty much stopped using the word gay as a negative attribute. Though every now and then you'd still hear it.

Find some gay people and become comfortable around them. I've seen this attitude before, and it's simply one of fear of the unknown. You haven't had any known encounters with gays, so you are weirded out by something that yous view as very alien. Once you actually get to know some gays as people, you'll find the fundamental truth: we're all human beings.

Well now that I think of it, I had encountered a gay already. But..., he had just betrayed his boyfriend and his mate was still lying in his bed. Not a really good encounter
It just made me come to the believe that this "sexual openness" probably leads to more open relationships in general, but that doesn't really hold as I found out later and so far the empirism that this is based on lacks the ground a bit.

So of course you are right, I will have to meet some gay people to sort things out. I knew that when I was writing the thread starter, but I thought I post it anyway, since it probably provides a good ground for discussion and after all I wanted to meet gays and here on the board are several that would respond.

For what it's worth, no one has EVER guessed me to be "a gay" before in my life. Everyone is pretty-well stunned when I come out to them.

That's why you probably know more gay people than you know, there's tons out there like me. Many choose to just stay closeted to most people.

I think that's because you show a certain kind of aggression sometimes that I'd never think gays would have. Another prejudice that fell.

The stereotype doesn't hold very well, either.

Yes that's what I had to learn over the last half year or so.


So still what annoys me a bit now is that I get categorized as/called "straight". I don't really feel straight, I don't identify with straight livestyle (which is what?).
I want to say that probably the whole gay comming out will follow an identity crisis of heterosexual people. Because I get (or could get) called straight by a growing number of people, yet I don't know what being straight is about. I don't felt particular well on the eurogames page reading about straights and recognizing that'd mean me.
And probably that is why the gay community that we know nowadays was created in the first place.
Any thoughts?

edit: qoute

[Al B. Sure!]

While urban areas are often islands of total tolerance, large swaths of the rest of the world are not.

bah... most urban italians, irish, puerto ricans, and blacks are no friends of homosexuality... maybe the gentrifying whites are but not the rest

[Agathon]

I remember this mad woman called Firestone (yeah, that was her name) who thought IIRC that Australia should be turned into a lesbian only colony where women could engage in "polymorphous perversity".

The moral of this story is that there's always going to be some people out of any minority who will support some form of radical segregationist chauvinism. It's a bit like those deaf people who think that there's something wrong with people who can hear and think that looking for a cure for deafness is evil.

Find some gay people and become comfortable around them.

Isn't that a bit gross? It's like making a point of hanging around black people to prove you aren't racist, when doing this is a sign of a major racist hang up. I don't think I'd like the idea of someone trying to be a friend just to make themselves feel less bad.

[Atahualpa]

Isn't that a bit gross? It's like making a point of hanging around black people to prove you aren't racist, when doing this is a sign of a major racist hang up. I don't think I'd like the idea of someone trying to be a friend just to make themselves feel less bad.

Good point! That's why I expressed this "on purpose" feeling that I would have when I'd do that.
But on the other hand, I'd not make contact to feel less bad, but to get an opinion about a group of people that is not completely made up.

[Bosh]

1) It's easier to meet a potential mate when the odds of the person swinging your way is 20:1 rather than 1:20

It surprised me that it took this long for someone to bring this up. A major reason people join clubs is to find people to ****, this applies to all kinds of people.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Once you actually get to know some gays as people, you'll find the fundamental truth: we're all human beings.

Something so simple, yet so difficult for some people to fully embrace this fundamental concept.

[Agathon]

I don't know if you have to do anything. I decided long ago that I simply didn't give a toss about homosexuality. If someone tells me that they are gay, I usually say "So what? I don't care." or "as long as you aren't a Jehovah's Witness."

[Atahualpa]

Yes Agathon that was my original plan as well. But it doesn't always work. You cannot just shrug it off so easily. What if one of your friends would come out as gay? Wouldn't that disrupt your knowledge about the world a bit?
Or can you really put aside sexual preference as a whole and not let it influence your behavior at all. I probably cannot, since there is a picture of "a gay" in my mind that I will try to project onto homosexuals when I hear about them. I mean that's probably what everyone will do. Don't we all think in categories?

[Spiffor]

I disagree with Agathon on this one. If an acquaintance gets out of the closet, it'll be news for me. Just the same as if the same acquaintance just got its driver licence, got married, got a disease, got a degree, or whatever. Nothing to brag about, but a news worth caring for a person worth caring.

[Agathon]

I was thinking more of people who you meet for the first time and who make a point of telling you they're gay.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by MrFun



Something so simple, yet so difficult for some people to fully embrace this fundamental concept.

Coming back to this rape fear thing. Sure everyone is a human being, but some are more dangerous to me than others.
If you look at women the rape-fear is quite strong with them and it happens often enough to justify it.
That's why it's just the very very basic (theoretic) of a fear that I feel, but if I listen closely it is there. Nobody can explain that?

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Agathon
I was thinking more of people who you meet for the first time and who make a point of telling you they're gay.

I don't think that happens all too often. As Spiffor mentioned it, I hate people bragging about something wether its being gay or something else so if some of them unknown gays would come up and tell you they are gay I would shrug as well. But I think this view has not much to do with reality. Take Asher as example:

Originally posted by Asher
For example, most people at school don't know I'm gay. I'm not the type to flaunt it...

Other, public people like politicians, also don't come out in such a way. Westerwelle for example showed up at a party with his boyfriend. He didn't make much fuss about it and it seemed to be he was thinking it was normal and okay. I think he did it right that way. Hardly anyone likes when people brag.

[Last Conformist]

For the record, I've never personally known anyone who was openly homosexual. However, since several percent of the population is supposed to me homosexual, it seems reasonable to assume I've known several closeted ones, or ones who I simply never ended up with in a situation where their sexual orientation was made clear.

I do not particularly fear gay men. This is probably related to the prejudice that gays are not "real men", and thus unlikely to beat people up.

I'm taken for a homosexual with some frequency online, and occasionally in real life. The later might be because I have less aversion to male-male body contact than most men from Northern Europe*, but I am at a loss to understand the former.

* I actually kissed a guy on a party a while ago. Someone was going to make a photo, and he suddenly turned as to kiss me. I obliged him, which he had clearly not expected. His girlfriend threatened to kill me should I do it again.

[Solly]

To build a community like gays try to, they need to exclude and divide society. They don't help themselves in this way.

[Atahualpa]

they only exclude themselves from society and what you mean with divide is probably divide between them and "straights" so that's just a different word for exclude.

The reason for all that I can understand. Long enough it was not tolerated. Why should they stay with a society that generally doesn't want them?