Breaking the Spell: Rethinking queer community

[CherylNYC]

The trade-off with gaining marriage equality is, well, gaining marriage equality. My friends who got married in their beautiful home outside North Hampton, Mass had already been together more than 1/4 century. They had no reason not to get married and lots of reasons to get married, particularly legal ones.

They own two properties together and one of them has had a health issue in the past. They, like all of us, are getting older. Now that it's legal to marry in their state, if they chose NOT to get married they could have signaled to anyone who wanted to challenge the legitimacy of their partnership that they weren't really partners after all. Families have been known to go after properties for lesser reasons after a death.

When we gain marriage equality we give up being allowed to stay together without any legal bond, but with the expectation in a fair minded community, and the hope in one that is less so, that our partnerships will be respected anyway when the doo-doo hits the fan.

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by princessbelle

I admit i do nothing to be seen. I do nothing where my neighbors know i'm a gay woman. Would i maybe change my neighbors mind if their nice neighbor started flying a rainbow flag in my yard? Would they and others slowly start changing their minds on election days, the talk at work watercoolers, the doctrines at church? Would being seen and standing proud to them change their minds? Would it show them that we are ...well, their neighbors?

Per some such study (like I remember!), the degree of a person's homophobia drops each time they meet another gay person/each time they find out someone they know is gay. There is a direct correlation. So, yes, it makes a difference.

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

What are we willing to pay with for acceptance and how will we know when we have finally crossed into the Promised Land?

Cheers
Aj

Brilliant question! Whether or not I realize it, each day I open my eyes and go into the world, I must make the decision "at what cost." I do not "pass." And "passing" is not the objective of many Trans people. I lead a very open life. I am contiually talking with people, coworkers, people in my spiritual community, young people, that come to me with their questions about "Queerness." (I always make it clear that what I say is my experience and not all queers feel and think the same as I do.) The cost is a loss of personal privacy that could make for a vulnerbility that can feel overwhelming and/or put me in harms way. It's worth it, to me.

I will know I have reached the "Promised Land" when I hold respect, acceptance and love for those I once feared and held contempt for.

[Julie]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Per some such study (like I remember!), the degree of a person's homophobia drops each time they meet another gay person/each time they find out someone they know is gay. There is a direct correlation. So, yes, it makes a difference.

I have to agree with you Dapper... It is through education, that we become understanding.

However - When one lives in KKK country - One needs to be a bit careful about who they tell.

Julie

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Julie

I have to agree with you Dapper... It is through education, that we become understanding.

However - When one lives in KKK country - One needs to be a bit careful about who they tell.
Julie

Absolutely. I agree with you.

[BullDog]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Per some such study (like I remember!), the degree of a person's homophobia drops each time they meet another gay person/each time they find out someone they know is gay. There is a direct correlation. So, yes, it makes a difference.

Yes it does make a difference, but safety first. Hostile environments or potentially dangerous situations are not the places to come out to educate.

People sometimes ask me if I am out at work or something like that. I just give them a puzzled look. I never have to come out- all people have to do is look at me to know. I'm happy I don't have to constantly come out, but I do live in Portland, Oregon. If I should end up elsewhere to live or even when visiting, I need to be more aware of my surroundings and also think about the safety of those with me.

When I have been subjected to homophobic threats in the past, I am not thinking about educating anyone. I am thinking about defusing the situation and getting the hell out.

[ScandalAndy]

I dunno, I would go so far as to say it doesn't matter if you're in KKK country or NYC, you should still be careful who you tell. Hate crimes can happen anywhere.


When I lived in North Carolina I didn't have pride stickers on my car. I've been in Philly for two years and I just put a pride sticker on my vehicle two weeks ago. I guess I just reached a point where I am comfortable being open about it again.

[imperfect_cupcake]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

The trade-off with gaining marriage equality is, well, gaining marriage equality. My friends who got married in their beautiful home outside North Hampton, Mass had already been together more than 1/4 century. They had no reason not to get married and lots of reasons to get married, particularly legal ones.

They own two properties together and one of them has had a health issue in the past. They, like all of us, are getting older. Now that it's legal to marry in their state, if they chose NOT to get married they could have signaled to anyone who wanted to challenge the legitimacy of their partnership that they weren't really partners after all. Families have been known to go after properties for lesser reasons after a death.

When we gain marriage equality we give up being allowed to stay together without any legal bond, but with the expectation in a fair minded community, and the hope in one that is less so, that our partnerships will be respected anyway when the doo-doo hits the fan.

Not if your country recognises legal domestic partnership for any sex couples. There may be a registry or you may claim it by filing taxes together.

However, since in both cases the government legitimises one's partnership in order to grant legal rights (which is kind of necessary cause it's more difficult to prove after the fact, in court, the agreed depth and responsibilities of said relationship) there's not a hell of a lot of difference in my mind between them. Neither need a ceremony, both involve paperwork, both are ligitmised by the government.

My mom was the Domestic Partner of my step-dad. She didn't want to get married again. It allowed them legal rights in that she gets his pension now he's dead and they each had their own house, though he lived in hers and let his daughters live in his.

Marriage equality does not necessarily mean loss of recognised partnership in any other way. Many of my stright mates don't opt for marriage as they think it's terribly old fashioned and needless, seeing as there is domestic partnership laws. But they still have to declare their partnership on a tax form!

[Apocalipstic]

I am very Out. I will kiss a woman in public and hold hands....but no stickers of any kind on my car.

[atomiczombie]

I have lived in the SF Bay Area all my life, up until 3 years ago. Now I live about an hour away from Oakland, up on the Sacramento Delta. It's a tiny, almost completely white, tea-party kind of town. Back when I lived in the bay area, I had some not so cool things happen to me, but only once did I ever feel like I might be in physical danger (followed from my car to my apartment by a bunch of sneering teenage boys). Here in Rio Vista, I haven't had anything in the way of harassment.

My old car had an HRC sticker on the bumper for several years, and someone tried to scratch it off at one point (unsuccessfully lol). My new car, which I got last November, I have yet to put any stickers on it. However, I recently went back to the Bay Area to have lunch with a buddy of mine, and we came out of the restaurant to find someone had keyed the front of my car on the hood and headlights. So, even in the SF Bay shitty stuff goes on. There is just less of a chance of physical harm than, say, parts of the mid-west or the south. But it happens. Even in the Castro in SF, gay men get bashed occasionally. Does that mean I think people should be closeted for their own safety? Depends on the level of safety or lack there of. But being in the closet doesn't ever help us get more acceptance. About that I am very sure.

[SecretAgentMa'am]

I've heard quite a few people, even before this thread, say that tolerance is not enough and they will accept nothing less than acceptance. I'm sincerely confused by this. Why isn't tolerance enough? Keeping in mind that we're dealing with human beings, and human beings are notoriously fickle, ethnocentric, xenophobic, and hateful, how do you expect to ever get there? I honestly can't picture a world where everyone likes me. That's just not something that can reasonably be demanded of humans. There's always going to be some asshole who thinks his personal deity requires him to hate me and everyone like me. Unless someone invents a super duper mind control device to wipe out all dissenting thought, I don't think we're ever going to get there. And really, if someone did invent that device, I wouldn't want them to use it on anyone, ever. I really don't care too much if that asshole hates me, as long as my wife and I have the same rights he and his wife do and he doesn't get a free pass to make his hatred my problem.

It seems to me that "tolerance is not enough" basically means you're setting yourself up for frustration. It's kind of like saying "I will accept nothing less than an amusement park on the moon." That sounds fantastic, it would be the most epic vacation of all time, but if that's the only vacation you'll accept, you're never going to go on vacation.

[Slater]

Originally Posted by SecretAgentMa'am

I've heard quite a few people, even before this thread, say that tolerance is not enough and they will accept nothing less than acceptance. I'm sincerely confused by this. Why isn't tolerance enough? Keeping in mind that we're dealing with human beings, and human beings are notoriously fickle, ethnocentric, xenophobic, and hateful, how do you expect to ever get there? I honestly can't picture a world where everyone likes me. That's just not something that can reasonably be demanded of humans. There's always going to be some asshole who thinks his personal deity requires him to hate me and everyone like me. Unless someone invents a super duper mind control device to wipe out all dissenting thought, I don't think we're ever going to get there. And really, if someone did invent that device, I wouldn't want them to use it on anyone, ever. I really don't care too much if that asshole hates me, as long as my wife and I have the same rights he and his wife do and he doesn't get a free pass to make his hatred my problem.

It seems to me that "tolerance is not enough" basically means you're setting yourself up for frustration. It's kind of like saying "I will accept nothing less than an amusement park on the moon." That sounds fantastic, it would be the most epic vacation of all time, but if that's the only vacation you'll accept, you're never going to go on vacation.

For me the phrase "tolerance is not enough" refers to societal and institutional relationships with us, rather than each and every individual asshat. And in that context I agree that tolerance is not enough. Because tolerance is temporary. Tolerance is "for now because I have to" or "for now because it's more trouble not to." When the conditions around the "for now" change, the tolerance can go away. Acceptance is more like "okay, this is the new reality." And while on the individual asshat level, I'm fine with the former, on the institutional level I definitely want the latter.

[Slater]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

So, even in the SF Bay shitty stuff goes on. There is just less of a chance of physical harm than, say, parts of the mid-west or the south. But it happens. Even in the Castro in SF, gay men get bashed occasionally. Does that mean I think people should be closeted for their own safety? Depends on the level of safety or lack there of. But being in the closet doesn't ever help us get more acceptance. About that I am very sure.

Agreed. I would also like to note that being closeted takes an emotional toll, it is psychological violence in a way. So it's a balancing act between the threat of physical (or financial) harm vs the emotional harm of the closet. Each person has to determine where that balancing point is for themselves, of course, but being closeted isn't necessarily "safe" so much as exchanging one type of risk for another.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Sometimes during a nice dinner I have to "tolerate" other peoples gross kids as I try to enjoy my meal to be honest I can't really say I do that because I will ask to be moved so I don't have to tolerate it.

So for me when I hear or someone implies they are tolerating my presence it does not sit well with me. I don't want society to just *tolerate* as if I am somehow mucking up their cozy space and experience in every day life. I want to have the same rights they do when they walk out the front door every morning. I want to be able to eat at a restaurant and not have some douchbag stare at our family because they are all sitting there looking like someone shit in the room.

Tolerance does not equate equality to me, I'd like to walk out the door, visit my partner in the hospital without 34566 questions, claim them as a dependent, and ffs just walk the dogs without it seeming like we somehow brought property value down. Tolerance equates me walking out the door and the sneers happen or the cars get broken into lord knows if we don't cut the grass they report it to the city why are these dykes/queers living near us turn your back here they come. It's about my rights not tolerance.

[weatherboi]

Tolerance creates hierarchy and acceptance creates equality. Through an effort of empathizing, sympathizing and understanding, acceptance creates togetherness. Tolerance creates sides and separation. This is just an opinion of mine.

[Dominique]

Sad isn't it...i/e Snow's post. I live in the city with all walks of life. Good thing, because I'd wager two thirds of my neighborhood wouldn't be tolerated
in the suburbs. There's a drive by shooting on my street every day, ya'll. That is absolutely not true, but some people would have you believe that. At the end of the alley behind my house, there is some *tagging*, you know...spray painted art work (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) so I must live in the HOOD. The teenager three doors down, spray paints her hair in stripes and just put an earring in her nose and eye brow for her first day of school tomorrow (as a freshman)....Oh, her father
he, has some of the nicest ink work, in the form of a sleeve, and wears his hair very short. Do you think he's a skin head? Well, don't over look me....I must have a DUI or sum tin, I have a car I never use, but always ride a bicycle. Lezbo and all, theres always a shim over here....I know there was a Palin for President sign in my front yard. Thats just why no houses sell around here. Spend five minutes here and you'll see. Talk about property value coming down.

[dreadgeek]

SA Ma'am;

This is one of those sad truths about our species that I wish were not true about our species. The *best* we can do is make certain that whatever the person's prejudice, they cannot make it *our* problem. Let us admit that unless we are willing to see society become extraordinarily *less* free--which I guarantee you would rebound to our sorrow--all we can do is make the discrimination illegal. After that, it is on a one-to-one basis. We win people over, one interaction at a time. It is illegal to discriminate in housing, education, employment and public accommodation based upon the color of one's skin or one's gender. Has that stopped people from holding bigoted or sexist views? No. Has it made any nation that has adopted such laws a paradise of racial harmony? Not hardly. It has drastically raised the stakes for behaving in a bigoted fashion in the aforementioned. As a *process*--and that is what I think we can change directly are processes--we can constrain by law whether or not someone can decide to not rent to transgendered person purely because they are transgendered. We can mandate that the relevant factors for, say, employment do not include race or sexual orientation or gender presentation or what-have-you.

We cannot make it so that those laws are unnecessary. Not without severely restricting the freedom of others to express beliefs that we might find abhorrent.

Tolerance, to me, is living in a nation of people where some non-trivial number of them believe, things that I might find either offensive or blindingly wrong, but not letting that get in the way of having good interactions with them. Acceptance is simply not allowing some trait to have unnecessary meaning. By that I mean, as I've stated when talking about 'color blindness' that the problem isn't that someone notices that I am black. The problem is caused when they attach *meaning* to my being black beyond what that characteristic can justify. My blackness gives no one any insight into my character, competence, intelligence, generosity, honesty or any other relevant trait. Bigotry is when someone takes my being black to mean that they *do* have insight into my character, that their insight is accurate *because* of my race, and to then treat me accordingly as someone lacking in one or more desirable character traits.

If my neighbors are giving me the stink-eye, then they are not tolerating me. What is happening is that they are restrained from making their feelings known to me in a more direct sense only because of the law and social stigma. If my neighbors invite me over for BBQ, say hello and generally treat me as just another neighbor, then they are *at worst* tolerating me and if they are not already accepting, then may very well be on the road to acceptance. Acceptance, to me, is when my neighbor, upon hearing someone make a derisive remark about queer people says "you know, the ladies across the street are nothing like what you say and given that they're really nice and you're obviously an asshole, I'd prefer their company over yours any day".

All the above can be true without, even once, us ever having a conversation on the topic of "do you accept homosexuals".

My forty-five years black in this nation has certainly taught me that bigotry cannot be legislated away. The direct expression of bigotry can be legislated away and then, slowly, painfully, never-fast-enough, people's minds are changed. As was pointed out by a couple of people, the *best* predictor for how someone feels about enshrining equality for queer people under the law is whether that person has an intimate who is queer. It cuts across most other demographics. Laws--or really just folding us into most existing anti-discrimination laws--can create conditions *enough* that contacts will happen. After that, what will happen is that people will start working next to the queer guy and he'll *stop* being whatever bigoted image the person was raised with and become the guy who helped them out when they were under the gun at work. They'll start living next to a queer couple and they'll no longer be the folks who are a threat to families but the one's who, when the kids got home and no one was there, contacted the parents and drove the kids to the babysitter. That makes them a neighbor.

Look, let us say that there are, essentially, three sides in the national argument about the place of queer people in society. There's our side. Their's the anti-queer people. There's the vast majority of people who hold no active hostility about queers but haven't really thought about us very much. The preference of the first two groups is to win by fiat. The religious right, if given half a chance, would simply make being queer illegal and be done with it. If given a chance, particularly after some infuriating outrage, we would take the easy route and simply pass a law making it illegal to be anti-queer or express such sentiments. The religious right can conceivably have their way. We *never* can. We simply lack any possibility of a majority. So we must win by persuasion. We must win over as many people in the non-aligned group as we can. We do not need ALL of them, we need enough that they are allies and we and our allies are then a majority. This is, essentially, the strategy any numerically overwhelmed group must do--win the argument.

That means that while our opponents *never* have to be realistic, we *always* have to be realistic. That means we have to determine not what the best world would be, but what is the best *achievable* world given the species we have to work with and the fact that we cannot impose our will upon the majority.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by SecretAgentMa'am

I've heard quite a few people, even before this thread, say that tolerance is not enough and they will accept nothing less than acceptance. I'm sincerely confused by this. Why isn't tolerance enough? Keeping in mind that we're dealing with human beings, and human beings are notoriously fickle, ethnocentric, xenophobic, and hateful, how do you expect to ever get there? I honestly can't picture a world where everyone likes me. That's just not something that can reasonably be demanded of humans. There's always going to be some asshole who thinks his personal deity requires him to hate me and everyone like me. Unless someone invents a super duper mind control device to wipe out all dissenting thought, I don't think we're ever going to get there. And really, if someone did invent that device, I wouldn't want them to use it on anyone, ever. I really don't care too much if that asshole hates me, as long as my wife and I have the same rights he and his wife do and he doesn't get a free pass to make his hatred my problem.

It seems to me that "tolerance is not enough" basically means you're setting yourself up for frustration. It's kind of like saying "I will accept nothing less than an amusement park on the moon." That sounds fantastic, it would be the most epic vacation of all time, but if that's the only vacation you'll accept, you're never going to go on vacation.

[dreadgeek]

Snow:

That is not tolerance. If your neighbors were tolerant you would never know *what* they think of your being queer. Breaking into your car is not an act of tolerance. Going out of their way to give you the stink-eye is not an act of toleration. Toleration would mean them nodding as you see one another leaving for work, saying Happy Thanksgiving when you see one another walking the dog, and largely not engaging you very much. If your neighbors tolerated you, they would not respond to your presence in a negative fashion.

So if they are not being tolerant what are they doing? They are trying to do as much as they can get away while not bringing the law around them (which is why the car break-in, it's relatively easy to get away with) and at the same time, trying to find some way to use the law to punish you for being queer. The critical thing, however, is that *they* are restrained by the law. Given that they have broken into your vehicles, that means that they would--if the law did not prohibit it--likely break into your home. But they haven't because the law precludes them doing it. There is no law that says "you cannot break into straight people's homes but queer people, go for it". The law says 'you cannot break into people's homes' and has done with it. What I believe should be our focus is to make certain that queer people are covered equally by ALL laws.

What you should do about your neighbors, I don't know. I *do* know that what they are doing is not showing toleration. They are showing that they do not want the law to come down around their ears. That's not toleration. That's being restrained by the law.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

Sometimes during a nice dinner I have to "tolerate" other peoples gross kids as I try to enjoy my meal to be honest I can't really say I do that because I will ask to be moved so I don't have to tolerate it.

So for me when I hear or someone implies they are tolerating my presence it does not sit well with me. I don't want society to just *tolerate* as if I am somehow mucking up their cozy space and experience in every day life. I want to have the same rights they do when they walk out the front door every morning. I want to be able to eat at a restaurant and not have some douchbag stare at our family because they are all sitting there looking like someone shit in the room.

Tolerance does not equate equality to me, I'd like to walk out the door, visit my partner in the hospital without 34566 questions, claim them as a dependent, and ffs just walk the dogs without it seeming like we somehow brought property value down. Tolerance equates me walking out the door and the sneers happen or the cars get broken into lord knows if we don't cut the grass they report it to the city why are these dykes/queers living near us turn your back here they come. It's about my rights not tolerance.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I'll point that out when someone says their only tolerating it cause they have to.. In Spanish if someone tolerates you it's never a good thing.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

I'll point that out when someone says their only tolerating it cause they have to.. In Spanish if someone tolerates you it's never a good thing.

Snowy:

I didn't say it was a good thing. I'm not describing the world as I would like to see it. I'm trying to discuss the world as it appears to be. No, tolerating isn't the ideal. But what is living in a society but tolerating people and ideas and things you would much rather not have to? I don't *want* to live in a world with racists. But I *do* live in that world and since one of us has to act right, I will extend to a bigot all the tolerance I am able to. Tolerance is also not a switch, it is a slider. I will tolerate some things more than others.

You have said what you do not want but you have not said what you *do* want. What is tolerance to you? What is acceptance?

Let me illustrate what *I* mean by tolerance. We live in a religiously plural society. I am an atheist. As it turns out, I tend to think that the case against there being a divine being is much stronger than the one that can be made for there being one. I have to deal with people who believe, quite wrongly, that the Earth is 6,000 years old. I tolerate that. We live in a complex society filled with lots of people many of whom, perhaps large swaths of whom, believe or behave in ways we do not like. We do not have to like them. They do not have to like us. We DO have to get on with one another because they aren't going away and we aren't going away. I do not expect, for instance, a Christian to be thrilled about there being atheists. I do not expect her to think that I might have a point. In fact, I *fully* expect her to believe that I am wrong, to put it mildly, and seriously deluded. But we still have to work next to one another and so we must *tolerate* one another.

The Constitution does not promise that people of different religious beliefs will see one another's point, it says they must tolerate one another. That means you don't go about passing laws designed to make the other lot's life miserable. That means you do the job in front of you and focus on the commonalities.

Again, I do not believe that our rights come FROM our identities. Our identities are--or at least should be--completely beside the point. I am not ever going to live in a society populated by people entirely like me. I do not feel like living inside a hermetically sealed bubble where the only people I associate with and who feel comfortable associating with me are people who are like me or very close approximations of me. I can't have it, wouldn't like it and so must live in a society where we will disagree but where we must get along in spite of all that.

In a world without prejudices tolerance would truly be a bad thing. This is not a world without prejudices. There will, for any foreseeable future where the human brain works like it appears to now be bigots. There will, for as long as there is commerce, people who are better off than others. There will always be an uneven distribution of talents and depending upon completely arbitrary variables of time and place, one's abilities or talents may or may not be valued higher or lower. We cannot, not in any society where people are treated more-or-less equally before the law, have equality of outcomes. We can't. Believing we can is believing that one can make the garden grow not by planting and watering but in believing that unicorns will take care of it all. So the question I think we have to answer, as a community, is what *can* we achieve. If you think that we can have a world where people who hold the attitudes that your neighbors do can be eliminated, I would be interested to hear *how* we get there from where we are.

Cheers
Aj