Thursday 28 March 2013

On presenting as straight and supposedly safe spaces for bigotry

Oh I hear you there, and you know I hear it, not that you care. Because you feel this is a safe space to say your nasty bigoted views. You look around the room, or you look down your friends list, and you see no faces you identify as gay. So this should be a nice safe space to express your opinion. Maybe you think that gay marriage is a biblical sin (neatly ignoring all the other biblical sins you commit during your day, is that suit really 100% wool?  Lev 19:19?) or that homosexual marriage will undermine your marriage (remember when interracial marriage was legalized and everyone's marriages collapsed?) or, and this is the one that makes my blood boil the most, that gays are pedophiles.

So you open your mouth, or you hit "share", or whatever you feel like doing with your standard privileged that the rest of the world will either agree with you, or not want to make waves by disagreeing with you.

But here's the thing. I know I don't look like that "other" you're so afraid of, with my nice opposite-sex marriage and my two kids. But I'm the other.
I'm just what you're afraid of, you might not think of it, but I'm one of the B's in LGBT and when you say that nasty bigoted shit about people who don't identify as straight you are talking about ME.

So now, that's a little scary huh? Your nice safe space for bigotry had an interloper, a stealth queer listening in, getting angrier and angrier by the second. But at the same time being wounded by every comment.

So let me clarify. When you say these hurtful things. When you share something written by a homophobic bigot. When you continue to work on out of date information (whether it's a study that's been soundly debunked, or a book that's 2000 years old) to push a hateful stereotype. You are talking about ME.
Put a face on that queer you're so upset by, it may as well be mine, and think of it every time you hit "post", or press "share", or just flat out open your mouth to say something horrendous.

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