Of course not but there is heterophobia in it and I have seen and experienced it. I was trying to feel out the community for experiences where they saw gays bashing straights.
Yeah... as if the insulting and inappropriate gay parades weren't enough, we just needed to show the straights how we needed to be amongst our own kind to compete in athleticism. I understand the good it did and does but I still hate GLBT themed things that separate them from others.
I'm going to assume you mean this in a direct and not sarcastic manner because there are no smileys to guide me. With that said, I agree, and will use this as a turn to try and get your thread back on track by arguing that having these kinds of events, the games and the giant embarrassing parades, are a form of heterophobia. They served a purpose, perhaps, at a time, but the dynamic is different now. We have won huge gains in social acceptance. It's time to put these things aside and stop making ourselves separate, because that's what these things do. They say, "Screw you guys, we're gonna' do our own even more fabulous thing over here and only the cool people are allowed in." It's a step in the wrong direction that we need to start correcting.
There is one central truth about the "phobia" tag. There is a close correlation between hate and fear. The trouble is, it's not always clear which side of the mirror is doing the fearing and hating. If I perceive fear of me in you, am I perhaps really seeing my own fear of you, reflected?
@Wreybies No sarcasm. I like the idea of having things that celebrate us but the footage I've seen of some of the parades from big cities is just terrible. The olympics, I think we should just forget them. I think gay athletes are well accepted enough that they don't to be separated like that. Though, sports is a bit different. Lots of gays can't be sport stars because a homosexual doesn't promote the "happy American family". @Cogito As I mentioned previously, the phobia was probably a very real thing back way when before it turned to hate and prejudice.
Duchess, you are a smart cookie. I do agree with this. Those who are "homophobic" may simply find it ludicrous to imagine putting the shoe on the other foot; however, those who passively allow mistreatment, misunderstanding, and ignorance to pervade our society may yet be able to sympathize.
What the video did to me was that I could strongly relate to the girl since I've been that girl (had a crush on a boy in high school), I just haven't been that girl in an "opposite world," but for a brief moment I was and I got to experience the hatred, prejudice, and discrimination people who are "different," as they say, have experienced (be it of the "wrong" size, color, sexuality etc). It got me thinking, again, how awful it would be if I was deprived of the right to love whoever I wanted, man or woman. Sometimes one just takes their privileges for granted. I think because of the close proximity of Russia and its terrible atmosphere towards anything QUILTBAG (which is ironic since t.A.T.u was Russian...), I'm not "tired," so to speak, of gay activism. I hope to see similar acceptance there (and, of course, in other countries too where they can still hang gays) as we can nowadays find in many European countries, North America, etc. There are children in Russia who don't even know they have two moms who sleep in the same bed, but think their mom just has a female roommate. Heterophobia as such doesn't seem like a very real concept, especially when the definition of phobia doesn't exactly allow it to be used in this context anyway, as others have pointed out. I haven't encountered anything like that, but on the other hand, there aren't many gays in my social circle so I'm not likely to encounter any anti-hetero attitudes... except from other heteros, like two straight guys going "man I wish we were gay, it'd be so much easier to get laid. Being straight sucks!"
Heterophobia doesn't seem like a very sound evolutionary strategy, either (at least not as portrayed in the video). I mean no disrespect to anyone, I promise, but surely we can find better ways to make a point than coming up with ludicrous, non viable situations? Why do we have turn a serious subject (that is, the real discrimination and hate toward a community) into a make believe circus? This is just my ignorant opinion, but sometimes I feel some of these "minority supporting" campaigns are more patronizing than anything else.
Hey I've been to gay bars with my wife and some gay friends. I had this conversation with Wrey before where I was made feel really uncomfortable and totally unwelcome. No violence, no nasty words just horribly treated. Wrey explained it was some kind of territorial stance "This is our place - what are you doing here?" Do you find it odd if gay people go to regular bars? In france the gay bars always have a rainbow or gay-friendly sign outside, I've never seen a bar with a straight-friendly sign. I think sometimes gay men and women can be a little paranoid and need to get out among straights more. Of course this is not everybody, I have plenty of gay friends, guys and girls but some have real attitudes. Of course straights do too about gays - they all need to cop on.
What people are calling "heterophobia" is really just a strong rejection of anything "hetero-normal." I can say "homophobia," which does not quite fit as a phobia anyway, at least has it's roots in some form of fear due to ignorance and misunderstanding that pushed towards prejudice. But to even call the rejection of the "hetero-normal" conventions and lifestyle any kind of -phobia is lame. It's a viable movement, and deserves a name that can be taken more seriously. calling it "heterophobic" seems like a way to undercut what it's trying to do and pass it off as something comedic or even a childish reciprocation of prejudice.
Amen. LGBT's aren't five-headed freaks with no elbows, they're people, so why is there a separate Olympics for them? Last time I checked, being LGBT didn't make you better/worse than a straight person.
I would normally agree with you, but I think the big reason, gay people are pushing to form their own communities apart from hetero society is because of the extreme prejudice in said society. Think about the U.S. just before and through the civil rights movement. Black people in America were held to the bottom of society and forced out of normal communities, so we formed our own just to function and keep the peace, more or less. We still wanted change, but we were content to have our own communities and businesses. There was even a "Black Wall Street," which was bombed and destroyed do to white unrest about black success. Because of this segregation, blacks obviously had trouble integrating in white society, but a white who happened to wander too far into "black territory" was in equal danger of prejudice and possible violence. You see it around the world in caste societies where people are born into fixed classes and class cultures and tensions are born and maintained over the years. The rich may hate the poor, but the poor may also hate the rich. The only real solution here in the States is for straight people to let their guard down about gay people being a part of society not as second-class citizens, but with full, equal rights and recognition as normal human beings. Then gay people might be able to drop their guard about protecting certain space from non-gays. It will take a cultural paradigm shift far deeper than politics, so it will take some time. As you can see, we're still working on racism.
It'll take some time. We humans--particularly within the white-dominated part history (no offense to anyone, as it is a phenomenon that has existed for centuries)-- have a tendency to discriminate against "the other." There is this need to identify who is like us and who is not, and try to fit them into an ethnocentric reference frame. They are not different, biologically; nether were Blacks or Native Americans. Skin color was just the easiest observable difference to justify anxiety and separation. In our staunchly "Christian" society (we claim to be a non religious nation, but religious beliefs act as an invisible hand in everything we do here), there is this fear that homosexuality will corrupt communities and damn everyone to destruction. People don't realize that up until about 100 years ago, everything the western world knew and accepted as proper sexuality was defined by the church. But religion fuels ignorance and strokes the ego, so we cling to it to claim some semblance of knowledge and to justify ourselves. I don't like things that are designed to isolate or categorize people into groups--men, women, gay, straight, white, black, foreign, etc.-- because it teaches us to think of ourselves as separate and different. We are all one people who just haven't learned to come together in open love. But let me stop before I start preaching! I talk too much.
