sir.rutthed said:
So, are people who like me who don't automatically hate gay people for being gay but don't like the 'in your face' attitude surrounding a large part of that culture homophobic? Or is it acceptable to draw that distinction?
Well, probably yes..
However, the actual meaning of homophobia has been forgotten to a large degree. People who use the word often don't realize that the vast majority of the human race (including many gay people) are homophobic, and it's not really a very bad thing. It's certainly not as bad as being prejudiced or discriminatory.
Now, let's talk about privilege for a second.
A lot of you claim you "don't flaunt" your sexuality. I'll tell you, unless you actively closet yourself (by never being seen with your partners in public, by never describing someone as your wife or girlfriend, by never talking about your children. In short, by deliberately hiding your romantic or personal life altogether, and even then you're not really closeting because no-one will ever assume you're gay without evidence) then you are "flaunting" your sexuality. The reason you don't see yourself as taking part in a "culture" is because that culture is the one we all live in, it's mainstream mass culture.
A gay person has a very clear choice ahead of them, they can
not talk about their sexuality, which means being 'closeted' (and often having quite unpleasant social consequences from ultimately being 'outed'), or they can talk openly about it, which means "flaunting" it. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority choose to undergo the scorn of people like those who seem to have descended upon this thread and "flaunt" their sexuality
as if it's something worth being proud of, because from an outside perspective it's very easy to see how proud you all are of your sexuality - you tell everyone about it all the time, the only reason you don't see yourself doing it is because 'everyone else' does the same things.
Now, the second thing that really bugs me about this argument.
Why do gay people have to be so
different? Why do gay men have to be all flamboyant and camp? Why do gay women often adopt exaggerated 'masculine' (or ultra-feminine) styling or wear piercings? Why do people have to wear leather at pride parades? Why do gay men have to wear makeup? Etc.
The answer, they really don't and if you were to actually involve yourself in a gay lifestyle you'll realize that such people are the tip of the iceberg. However, once again, this is about closeting, these are very useful and easy ways for someone to delineate themselves visually. These tropes are actually, for the most part, based on old stereotypes about gay people (particularly the idea that gay people are by by nature less masculine/feminine, or that this has more to do with them as people than it does with the definition of masculine or feminine).
The interesting thing about those stereotypes is that they highlight a rather weird (when you think about it) conflation which lies pretty close to the root of homophobia, the association between
homosexuality and
gender non-conformity. I don't want to call the self-conscious adoption of gender non-conformity in the pride movement a conscious protest because it doesn't rely on everyone who does it understanding it, but it is a very political adoption. If there is no room in our culture for a little gender non-conformity, there will never be room for men to have sex with men or women to have sex with women.
So basically, yeah, what are you upset by?
Call me wrong, but the way I interpret your point (and I'm by no means excluding everyone who responded, because some of you badly need to check your insecurity) is that gay people need to shut up and be more 'normal'. Just bear in mind that you live in a world where being "normal" means being "straight", absolutely and by definition. There's no way around that.
For the record, I don't like mainstream gay culture. I'm just not stupid enough to call it 'gay culture' as if there's no way to blend being countercultural with being gay (because, you know, movements like the original 'counterculture', or later punk and goth, modern anime geek culture etc. never provided any kind of shelter for people to be open about their sexuality before Lady Gaga so much as crawled out of the womb). I like mainstream "straight culture" (or "culture", as we call it) even less, but I'm not stupid enough to assume that no straight people feel the same.
But the right to be non-conformist, whether in gender or lifestyle or sexuality. That's something I can get behind, be careful you don't stamp on it.
