Gay History in School Textbooks
09 Dec 2011, 1:18 pm
pandabear wrote:
Can you describe your culture? I thought that homosexuality was about sex. What else is homosexuality about?
You seem to be confusing our defining characteristic (which is about sex) with our culture. Homosexuality is about daily living. I don't stop being a gay man when I leave the bedroom, or walk out the front door of my house. We each carry our respective traits with us 24 hours a day, and our cultures are the sum total of our common practices, art, symbolism, attitudes, values and aspirations.
Each of us lives in a cultural maelstrom where the intersection of sexes, languages, religions, sexualities and disabilities all serves to allow us to identify our diversity. The moment that two people come together and identify commonality that distinguishes them from other people, the seeds of culture are created. The farther that these commonalities are shared with other people, the greater the potential for a vibrant culture to be created.
To completely describe a culture, any culture, is always going to be an incomplete exercise. Even within an insular culture, individuals vary. The customs and traditions of one person or family will demonstrate subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) variations from another's even when they share a common culture. Suffice it to say that the "gay community" could not exist absent a culture. And given that we are not all having sex with each other all the time, clearly there is more to our culture than sexual practice.
Abgal64 wrote:
Culture should not be based on who one chooses to have sex with, or who one has a sexual preference for, for this is basing a culture off a low biological drive. Just look at all the low cultures that people come up with based on their sexuality, leather gay culture, the annoyingly gender stereotype-reinforcing transvestism, swinger culture and sexually-based cultures so stupid and vile that I shall not mention them here; note that inclusion on this list does not necessarily mean I think the practice the group is in is stupid but making a culture based on biology makes for inherently low and silly cultures and thus I think that basing a culture on a shared sexuality is, much like basing a culture on gender or gender roles, at best annoying and stupid and at worst dangerous and harmful to others. It annoys me just as much to hear a 15 year old female say "I am not good at maths", because of the idiotic idea that females do not do maths because of the fact that they are female, is just like transvestites wearing clothes prescribed to people of the opposite gender, because of the idiotic idea that all males dress in leather and denim or that all females dress in tutus and wear gaudy make-up, or for that matter the bizarre practices of some people in enjoying "role-play" in exaggerated gender roles, thus reinforcing those roles.
Let me be clear, I have no problems with people having consensual, decent and reasonable sex with any other healthy, sapient being so long as there equality between the partners. I thus have no problem with swinging, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, homosexuality or combinations of these practices. I do have a problem when people of any sexual orientation make a lifestyle out of it. I am a heterosexual male but I do not go around dwelling in my heterosexuality nor do I choose to associate with other people because of their sexual orientation unless related to the, as of now theoretical, act of sex itself.
Let me be clear, I have no problems with people having consensual, decent and reasonable sex with any other healthy, sapient being so long as there equality between the partners. I thus have no problem with swinging, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, homosexuality or combinations of these practices. I do have a problem when people of any sexual orientation make a lifestyle out of it. I am a heterosexual male but I do not go around dwelling in my heterosexuality nor do I choose to associate with other people because of their sexual orientation unless related to the, as of now theoretical, act of sex itself.
This is one of the most offensive posts I have read in a long time. The more I read it, the angrier I get.
I am not interested in people tolerating my sexual behaviour. It profits me nothing for another person to approve of my private conduct. I am interested in people accepting gay and lesbian people as diverse members of our society. I don't want to be just like everyone else--I am quite happy being gay. I don't want people to see me as no different from straights. I am different. I want to be accepted because my difference, not despite my difference.
Gay people don't stop being gay at the bedroom door. Women don't stop being women at the bathroom door. Sikhs don't stop being Sikh at the gates of the Gurdwara. People in the Deaf community don't suddenly start hearing. The characteristics that define our cultural diversity might have their genesis in a very narrow part of our daily living, but their influence extends to all of daily life. And each of us carries a multiplicity of these traits. It is incumbent, I suggest, on each of us to recognize that everyone's characteristics and accumulated experiences are equally valid to our own, and the myriad ways that all individuals define themselves share equal relevance.
You are, of course, free to think how you like. But when you suggest that my culture may be, "stupid and vile," "low and silly," "annoying and stupid," or, "dangerous and harmful to others," you are setting out on a bath to be deliberately offensive.
_________________
--James
09 Dec 2011, 1:59 pm
visagrunt wrote:
Abgal64 wrote:
Culture should not be based on who one chooses to have sex with, or who one has a sexual preference for, for this is basing a culture off a low biological drive. Just look at all the low cultures that people come up with based on their sexuality, leather gay culture, the annoyingly gender stereotype-reinforcing transvestism, swinger culture and sexually-based cultures so stupid and vile that I shall not mention them here; note that inclusion on this list does not necessarily mean I think the practice the group is in is stupid but making a culture based on biology makes for inherently low and silly cultures and thus I think that basing a culture on a shared sexuality is, much like basing a culture on gender or gender roles, at best annoying and stupid and at worst dangerous and harmful to others. It annoys me just as much to hear a 15 year old female say "I am not good at maths", because of the idiotic idea that females do not do maths because of the fact that they are female, is just like transvestites wearing clothes prescribed to people of the opposite gender, because of the idiotic idea that all males dress in leather and denim or that all females dress in tutus and wear gaudy make-up, or for that matter the bizarre practices of some people in enjoying "role-play" in exaggerated gender roles, thus reinforcing those roles.
Let me be clear, I have no problems with people having consensual, decent and reasonable sex with any other healthy, sapient being so long as there equality between the partners. I thus have no problem with swinging, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, homosexuality or combinations of these practices. I do have a problem when people of any sexual orientation make a lifestyle out of it. I am a heterosexual male but I do not go around dwelling in my heterosexuality nor do I choose to associate with other people because of their sexual orientation unless related to the, as of now theoretical, act of sex itself.
Let me be clear, I have no problems with people having consensual, decent and reasonable sex with any other healthy, sapient being so long as there equality between the partners. I thus have no problem with swinging, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, homosexuality or combinations of these practices. I do have a problem when people of any sexual orientation make a lifestyle out of it. I am a heterosexual male but I do not go around dwelling in my heterosexuality nor do I choose to associate with other people because of their sexual orientation unless related to the, as of now theoretical, act of sex itself.
This is one of the most offensive posts I have read in a long time. The more I read it, the angrier I get.
I am not interested in people tolerating my sexual behaviour. It profits me nothing for another person to approve of my private conduct. I am interested in people accepting gay and lesbian people as diverse members of our society. I don't want to be just like everyone else--I am quite happy being gay. I don't want people to see me as no different from straights. I am different. I want to be accepted because my difference, not despite my difference.
Gay people don't stop being gay at the bedroom door. Women don't stop being women at the bathroom door. Sikhs don't stop being Sikh at the gates of the Gurdwara. People in the Deaf community don't suddenly start hearing. The characteristics that define our cultural diversity might have their genesis in a very narrow part of our daily living, but their influence extends to all of daily life. And each of us carries a multiplicity of these traits. It is incumbent, I suggest, on each of us to recognize that everyone's characteristics and accumulated experiences are equally valid to our own, and the myriad ways that all individuals define themselves share equal relevance.
You are, of course, free to think how you like. But when you suggest that my culture may be, "stupid and vile," "low and silly," "annoying and stupid," or, "dangerous and harmful to others," you are setting out on a bath to be deliberately offensive.
How are you different from strait people beyond your sexual preferences, which of course are fine? This is what I am trying to get at in the same way I was trying to get at the fact that other oppressed groups, like females, have no universal culture, just various subcultures. That would probably have been a better word than culture. I see cultures in a complex hierarchy, most are better than most others in some way but all are overall ranked as superior, inferior or equal to other cultures: I feel the same way about Afghani culture's inferiority to Bhutanese culture, in fact largely because of the Bhutanese traditional respect for knowledge and education, alongside a good, by developing world standards at least, gender egalitarianism and treatment of homosexuality, unlike the Afghanis, who make women wear ridiculous contraptions and often throw acid in their faces when they try to read, both of which are expected by the Taliban, which is still dominant in much of Afghanistan. And sexual orientation has nothing to do with how I feel about sexually based subcultures: It is the level of dwelling in their sexuality that does. All of the sexual orientations I mentioned, including homosexuality and heterosexuality, I consider equal in every possible way. A hard-working, cultured and well-educated homosexual is certainly superior to a lazy, trashy and ignorant heterosexual but equal to a hard-working, cultured and well-educated heterosexual. What I do not get is why sexual minorities often feel the need to obsess about their sexuality in a way many, though certainly not all, heterosexuals do not. Why can homosexuals not just marry, when they are granted that basic right of course, a person of their preference and not make a big deal about it? Why need gay pride parades any more than female pride parades, if both are not a choice and in no way inferior to or superior to being heterosexual or male, respectively?
_________________
Learn the patterns of the past; consider what is not now; help what is not the past; plan for the future.
-Myself
16 Jan 2012, 9:03 pm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... eyond.html
The book "One Nation Under Sex" seems like it would serve as a decent resource for homosexual history studies.
Buchanan and Lincoln--who knew?
17 Jan 2012, 12:04 pm
Abgal64 wrote:
I apologize, I must have been misunderstood, at least to a certain extent: I see homosexuals as equal to heterosexuals, bisexuals and asexuals, not as "tolerable." I accept them and I demand problems with homosexuals being treated as equals, just as I have demand females be treated as equals to males. I am fine with you being gay, by all means, have sex with whomever you please as I am quite sure you follow my universal rules for all sexually active people. I greatly respect your opinions on this forum, by the way, and you seem highly reasonable and well thought out. I had no intentions of offending you, just explaining my twist on antisexualism.
How are you different from strait people beyond your sexual preferences, which of course are fine? This is what I am trying to get at in the same way I was trying to get at the fact that other oppressed groups, like females, have no universal culture, just various subcultures. That would probably have been a better word than culture. I see cultures in a complex hierarchy, most are better than most others in some way but all are overall ranked as superior, inferior or equal to other cultures: I feel the same way about Afghani culture's inferiority to Bhutanese culture, in fact largely because of the Bhutanese traditional respect for knowledge and education, alongside a good, by developing world standards at least, gender egalitarianism and treatment of homosexuality, unlike the Afghanis, who make women wear ridiculous contraptions and often throw acid in their faces when they try to read, both of which are expected by the Taliban, which is still dominant in much of Afghanistan. And sexual orientation has nothing to do with how I feel about sexually based subcultures: It is the level of dwelling in their sexuality that does. All of the sexual orientations I mentioned, including homosexuality and heterosexuality, I consider equal in every possible way. A hard-working, cultured and well-educated homosexual is certainly superior to a lazy, trashy and ignorant heterosexual but equal to a hard-working, cultured and well-educated heterosexual. What I do not get is why sexual minorities often feel the need to obsess about their sexuality in a way many, though certainly not all, heterosexuals do not. Why can homosexuals not just marry, when they are granted that basic right of course, a person of their preference and not make a big deal about it? Why need gay pride parades any more than female pride parades, if both are not a choice and in no way inferior to or superior to being heterosexual or male, respectively?
How are you different from strait people beyond your sexual preferences, which of course are fine? This is what I am trying to get at in the same way I was trying to get at the fact that other oppressed groups, like females, have no universal culture, just various subcultures. That would probably have been a better word than culture. I see cultures in a complex hierarchy, most are better than most others in some way but all are overall ranked as superior, inferior or equal to other cultures: I feel the same way about Afghani culture's inferiority to Bhutanese culture, in fact largely because of the Bhutanese traditional respect for knowledge and education, alongside a good, by developing world standards at least, gender egalitarianism and treatment of homosexuality, unlike the Afghanis, who make women wear ridiculous contraptions and often throw acid in their faces when they try to read, both of which are expected by the Taliban, which is still dominant in much of Afghanistan. And sexual orientation has nothing to do with how I feel about sexually based subcultures: It is the level of dwelling in their sexuality that does. All of the sexual orientations I mentioned, including homosexuality and heterosexuality, I consider equal in every possible way. A hard-working, cultured and well-educated homosexual is certainly superior to a lazy, trashy and ignorant heterosexual but equal to a hard-working, cultured and well-educated heterosexual. What I do not get is why sexual minorities often feel the need to obsess about their sexuality in a way many, though certainly not all, heterosexuals do not. Why can homosexuals not just marry, when they are granted that basic right of course, a person of their preference and not make a big deal about it? Why need gay pride parades any more than female pride parades, if both are not a choice and in no way inferior to or superior to being heterosexual or male, respectively?
I bristle at the notion of "subculture." I am a participant in many cultures--the culture of my nationality (Canada), the culture of my municipality (Vancouver), cultures of my ethnic heritage (Scottish and Cornish), the culture of my religious heritage (Jewish), the culture of my sexuality (gay), the culture of my neurotype (Aspie), the culture of my professions (medicine, law and public service), the culture of my creative expression (theatre). They all intersect, but none are subordinate to the others. All Scots and all Cornish people are British, but that does not mean that British culture is hierarchically superior.
I think we go down a very dangerous slope when we start to ascribe behaviours to cultures. Yes, there are Talibanis who commit atrocities against women, and Taliban culture relegates women to an inferior place. But there are equally people in our culture who commit atrocious acts and who relegate "others" (of one kind or another) to an inferior place. We can condemn criminal acts, and we can encourage cultures to embrace equality. But identifying them as inferior simply because they fail to adhere to our standards is what got colonial powers into trouble in the first place.
So to the roto question. Why do we obsess about our sexuality? Because the world around us does not yet accept our sexuality. When heterosexuals hold hands, it's, "cute." When homosexuals hold hands, it's, "flaunting." So long as double standards like these continue to exist, we will have to continue to agitate.
_________________
--James
| Similar Topics | |
|---|---|
| The 30 year predatory history of Jay-Z |
20 Dec 2024, 9:20 pm |
| History of being a survivor of violence |
25 Dec 2024, 3:43 pm |
| History of womens work |
23 Dec 2024, 3:12 pm |
|
Question about my history of depressive experience.
in Bipolar, Tourettes, Schizophrenia, and other Psychological Conditions |
09 Nov 2024, 12:11 am |
