The need to call out homophobia
One of the many many things about homophobia that make me rage is how readily tolerated it is - and how ready people are to excuse it, defend it and deny it.
It saddens me that I need to repeat this - but, if you think gay people are worth less than straight people, if you think we deserve less than straight people, if you think we don’t have the ( Read more... )
Part of being an ally is learning, growing and understanding.
Right. That's part of being a human, gay, straight, white, black and purple with yellow dots. I try to do that too, and not put blinders on and automatically assume every straight person is a priviledged idiot I have license to abuse like I've seen some people in the gay community do. And IMO, people don't like to be preached at, patronized or told how ignorant they are, that cuts off the possibility of learning, growing and understanding from the onset because it puts them on the defensive. It's human.
It's not always ideal - but can we really ask the hurt people to suck it up and deal?
Being abused doesn't give me license to abuse others, that sounds like the serial killer getting off easier because he whinges about his bad childhood and shifts blame on that. Being a victim doesn't give me liberty to victimize others, that's just not an excuse. Again, I'm not talking about self-defense in the face of an attack, I'm talking about exchanges with friends, as I have been the entire time. I get the impression some of us are fanning the flames we claim burn us ourselves, so that we can wallow in a persecuted victim mentality, abuse others and spread the hatred and dissent. Your friend Leah here is a prime example of that, it's irrational behavior and accomplishes nothing aside from causing strife where there normally wouldn't be any. I'm embarrassed for people like that.
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I think it is importsant to call friends out though - because all too often people give friends a pass on problematic behaviour. But even then exhcnages wiuth friends are very different because of past relationship
Every straight person is privileged, and they are likely to be ignorant simply because that is what privilege means. And while we don't have a right to abuse, I think we do have a right to react angrily when they throw that privilege at us. I don't think a duty to be calm and educational all the time is possible - or even desireable both in terms of mental stress and in terms of necessary passion
People make their own paths and set their own way for their own reasons and by their own methods - we have 101 pathways and hopefully all add something. No-one has the need, or even right to be embarrased by someone else methinks.
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If it has to do with something affecting me personally, it's an instinctive response, even if I try to have sufficient self-control not to act on it, and it's something that also makes me angry because while passion is good, fanaticism never is. How and why is that different than having an instinctive response to something subjectively hurtful someone else has said, and why do I have the right and reason for one and not the other?
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