Text 10670, 132 rader
Skriven 2007-01-24 22:53:07 av Angelika Tobisch (14105.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 10662 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (14097.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My Presidential Pick for 2006
=========================================
Vorlonagent schrieb:

>>> I agree that there is discomfort with and even some prejudice against 
>>> gays
>>> abroad in american culture.  What I can't understand is why the gay
>>> presentation of itself PLAYS to those stereotypes rather than seeks to
>>> dispel them.
>>
>> There is no one gay presentation. Parts of the gay community are pretty
>> much indiscernible from "normal" people as long as their not with their
>> partner, other parts are more flamboyant. As I understand it you're
>> asking why "normal" gays don't prevent the flashy ones from being
>> flashy. There's a two-part answer to that question.
> 
> Actually, I'm wondering aloud what the flamboyant gays are hoping to 
> accomplish by publicly playing to the very stereotypes that continue their 
> aleination.

They're not hoping to accomplish anything, they simply are. They
obviously like being that way so why would I want to stop or even just
judge them?

> The quiet gays are just that: quiet.  We don't know they're there unless we 
> happen to know one personally.  (I know or have known gays of both types)
> 
> All society sees is the flamboyant side, however.  I believe that acceptance 
> lies in greater awareness of the gays who are just trying to live lives like 
> everybody else.
> 
>> 1. You can't very well ask other people to accept you in spite of being
>> different and at the same time shun people who happen to be more
>> different than you are. Well, you can, but it would be highly
>> hypocritical to do so.
> 
> Even more obviously, you can't control what someone else chooses to say.
> 
> But you can put your own POV across.  No repudiation of flamboyant gays is 
> required for quiet--"normal" if you would?--gays to put out a different 
> message.  Something that reminds people that there's more to the story than 
> the flaming-queer, sexual fetishism or eternally-angry activist?
> 
> Is that too much to ask?

So you're saying the "quiet" gays should be quiet more loudly?

You want "normal" gays to be more visible. That's a paradox. They're
pretty much invisible _because_ they're so "normal".

>> 2. What you're suggesting amounts to an approach of "Look, we're not
>> really different. We're being nice, we're well adapted, we're just like
>> you, so please, please be kind enough to grant us some of the little
>> things we're asking for." This is not what the movement for gay rights
>> is all about. It's about "Yes, we are different, we have a right to be
>> different, so you better learn to deal with it because we're not going
>> anywhere."
> 
> That's your way of putting it.
> 
> Mine is:
> 
> "What the hades does being gay have to do with how I do my job?  I'm human 
> like everybody else.  Get out of my way and we'll all be happier."
> 
> The key difference is you are embracing being "different".  Meaning no 
> disprespect, gayness is not that special.  Everybody's different and to some 
> degree alien from each other.  If it's not gayness, it's skin color, 
> glasses, gender, intelligence, charisma, beauty, subculture...the list goes 
> on and on.

You're absolutely right there and I happen to embrace all those
differences (well, I could get used to not needing glasses...), not just
those regarding sexual orientation. I want people to be different,
anything else would be spectacularly boring.

Yes, I think I'm special and I've thought so long before making that
particular discovery about myself. I also think everyone else is
special. I'm in no way more special, which is pretty far from what you
seem to be implying about my view of myself.

> That also means that gays aren't the only ones to feel the sting of 
> alienation.  I'm not referring to race or gender or any politicized minority 
> when I say this.  People can and will inflict alienation on anybody for any 
> reason.  Yesterday, I saw a truck with a bumper sticker that read, "It's not 
> a crime to be a biker".

Yeah, great, so far I've not heard of anyone being treated differently
_by the law_ for being a biker.

> We're all human first.  Then these other properties attach themselves. 
> Acceptance means gayness is another one of those properties.  It's another 
> pigement in the pallet of how people are painted.
> 
> To embrace being "different" is to embrace your own alienation.

Sorry, but that's bullsh... People will always be different. Embracing
the differences just means to see them as opportunities rather than
drawbacks. It doesn't create them.

>  You aren't 
> "different".  You're one of us.  You're human.  Come inside for a glass of 
> tea and tell me how your day was.

I am different and still am one of us. I don't think people have to be
the same to be treated according to the same set of principles.

>> If someone had approached Martin Luther King and offered him a pill to
>> make him white, therefore granting him all the rights white people had,
>> do you think that would have been the way to go to win that fight? I 
>> don't.
> 
> I don't either.

If denying that pill doesn't qualify as embracing ones differences than
what is it?

> King asserted his essential humanity and that his skin color wasn't all that 
> big a deal by comparison.  I see King's dream every now and then when I see 
> black and white and hispanic kids or walking home from school talking and 
> laughing like any peer group does--oblivious to how which-knuckle, caught 
> breath this kind of association might have been 30 years ago.
> 
> And that's why I'm not a liberal anymmore.  Liberalism these days is about 
> accenting the black, underlining the gay.  About choosing to be separate. 
> It's how liberalism derives its power after all.  If everybody's human, 
> equal and accepted, what happens to interest-group politics?

Ah, I see, and since we all know that gays are equal and accepted, there
obviously is no more need for any interest-group politics there.

Angelika
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)