Quote:
Originally Posted by jewels
It saddened me to hear this, though, Martian. I hope you don't mean that literally.
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I don't mean to imply that I don't enjoy sex. Quite the contrary, I'm a huge fan. I just don't understand why everyone gets so hung up about it. Sex is ordinary. Nearly everybody does it, and everybody thinks about it. So far as I'm able to determine the whole 'dirty' side of it stems from our mothers and mothers' mothers telling us that it's bad and wrong. It's not any more bad or wrong than any of the activities I mentioned.
I don't know if I would classify the responses as homophobic, precisely. And as much as I often find myself disagreeing with abaya's semi-militant feminism, in this case I have to give it to her; we definitely do it to ourselves.
I offended a young man the other day. I don't remember what the slight was, although I'm certain it wasn't intentional. His response was to call me a homo; this was, apparently, the worst thing he could think of to call me. I wish I could say that such thinking is isolated, but experience has taught me otherwise. We've all grown past it now, but I seem to recall my step brothers and I would frequently use gay as a derogatory term in our younger days. I know a number of folks who still do, and there seems to be a correlation between them and the individuals who are quick to deny any homosexual tendencies.
I don't think such behaviour is necessarily homophobic. I think Mr. O'Rights, who by the way deserves kudos for being quite up front about it, serves as an example; if I'm reading his post correctly, it would seem that he's perfectly okay with homosexuality, so long as it's not happening anywhere near him. I don't think he's the only one who thinks that way here, but he's been the first to own it. I tend to think of this as a median attitude; as one sheds the culturally-instilled homophobia and moves towards tolerance, one goes through a phase where one can intellectually accept homosexuality but still feels the visceral negative response when confronted with it in the real world. I don't know what's required to move past that phase, but I know a lot of people never do.
For the record, I'm not really bothered by two men making out in public. I don't particularly want to see it, but then I don't particularly want to see a man and a woman making out in public either. Some activities are meant to be private.
One of Magpie's best friends is gay. She complains about the double standard discussed above. She feels that a lot of women (particularly but not exclusively young ones) claim to be bisexual because those women feel that it will increase their attractiveness in the eyes of men. She feels that this in turn belittles the young women like herself who are truly gay, and I can sort of see her point. While I'm all for people exploring their sexuality, I don't think this is how it ought to be. One should perform such exploration for one's own benefit, and not for the benefit of anybody else. Consequently, I'm reasonably sure that pornography is worsening the issue, rather than bettering it.
More thoughts: labels beget segregation. In order to solve a problem, we must identify it. This requires identifying and defining the components of the problem and the very act of definition mandates a label. Social problems, however, create a thorny situation. Without the labels, we can't truly identify the problem. Yet at the same time, the labels magnify the problem. If we say this gay man and that gay man want to have a gay marriage, then we can tell them no. If we take out the label and simply say these two men want to have a marriage, it becomes much more difficult to justify the denial.
Are the labels the problem? Are they part of the solution? Or are they simply another intermediate stage?
No answers, just more questions as usual.