LGBT Community Is Hostile

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d057
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08 Jul 2017, 9:01 pm

I attended Pride for the first time in 2014. I volunteered for my local pride celebration. All I can say is that was a gigantic mistake that I wish not to make again. The organizers for the festival had this "celebration" for the volunteers about a month after Pride. I honestly wish I walked out. They were some of the rudest, shallow and stuck up people I ever took time out of my day to be around.

They had a buffet table with food and I was looking for a place to sit. After looking around I asked where I could find a chair. Instead of politely pointing to where I could find one, one of the staff picked up the chair and slammed it onto the ground. They gave me this look like "you are not part of our clique, go away."

I refuse to take time out of my day to be around people who treat me like worthless garbage.

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C2V
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10 Jul 2017, 1:17 am

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And honestly, I think a lot of queer people want to have an issue. I do not at all deny that there is a very real struggle going on for a LOT of people. But I have seen too many individuals who play at being a victim, and I'm sick of it. There are real people suffering, and just acting like you're one of them to get what you want? That's beyond selfish and entitled.

I get this too. Especially with gendering and pronouns. Its a crappy un-PC thing to write and I'm probably going to be slammed for it but I do see a lot of this raging coming from people who give NO indication that they are queer in any way. So, someone absolutely stereotypically masculine presenting for example, not in transition at all, who lives a male oriented life, has a cis heterosexual female partner, and then starts screaming about someone misgendering them as male or just assuming they're straight.
I'm not suggesting queer people go around wearing signs or that the above example is any less queer than anyone else or doesn't deserve to be treated in the way they prefer (before anyone jumps on my case about it) just that it seems a bit much to get your proverbial nose all out of joint for someone mistaking you for exactly what you present yourself as. Its as quoted - like they want to have a problem. They won't get the crap queer presenting people often get, but they still get to be all outraged when people dare interpret them as they present.
So yeah. I'm an a***hole.

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Mona Pereth
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13 Nov 2018, 12:31 pm

stevens2010 wrote:

For about five years, I have participated as a member of the forum at emptyclosets<dot>com. There is a high degree of conformity and censorship on that site. Furthermore, many users attempt to dominate others with ideological dogma and extreme moralizing.

I think the last straw for me was when it came to light that the charitable owners of the site were reporting people with suicidal thoughts to law enforcement. The incident that stood out the most was when an individual had called a hotline and was discussing his thoughts on the site, and the police arrived and basically outed him to his roommates. They take the typical approach that the psychological professions now are arms of law enforcement, and you can't say anything to one of them without it being reported to Big Brother.

In the case of "the psychological professions," I think they do this for legal reasons. If I'm not mistaken, here in the U.S.A. at least, there are several categories of things they are legally required to report, including:

1) Suicide attempts.
2) Threats to harm other people.
3) Child abuse or neglect.
4) Elder abuse or neglect.

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kraftiekortie
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13 Nov 2018, 12:56 pm

This is known as "mandatory reporting."

There is good and bad in it.....

Mona Pereth
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13 Nov 2018, 1:20 pm

1027brianfm wrote:

In general I don't associate with the gay community. Way too much group think, a lot of airheads, and if you don't do it there way then your not "in the club".

I find it to be very single minded and shallow. I'm not one for clubs as I cant deal with noise and have no one really to go with.

At least in larger cities like NYC, there's a lot more to the LGBT community than clubs.

Here in NYC, there are LGBT community centers (a big one in Manhattan and smaller ones in at least some of the outer boroughs) where lots and lots of different kinds of groups meet. I am sure that someone could start an in-person support group for LGBT autistic people that meets at one of the LGBT community centers, if this hasn't been done already.

It has been several years since I last participated in the LGBT community in any way, but my impression has long been that the NYC LGBT community was genuinely very diverse. I'd be surprised if it has changed all that much.

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13 Nov 2018, 1:28 pm

Kovu wrote:

Because it's s**t.

The homosexual movement is one of the worst movements ever. It's terribly organized and it will never succeed.

Depends where you live, I guess.

Here in NYC I think it is extremely well-organized, with just the right balance of centralizaton vs. de-centralization. There are lots of different groups for lots of different kinds of people. Yet a great many (well over 100, maybe even a few hundred?) of these varied groups manage to participate together in the annual Pride parade.

Mona Pereth
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13 Nov 2018, 1:51 pm

d057 wrote:

I'm very sorry to hear this. Where did this happen? Pittsburgh?

What were the Pride events like generally? How many different groups were involved?

Fnord
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13 Nov 2018, 2:13 pm

@Mona: That happened to me in WeHo, Lansing and Detroit (Michigan), Orlando, and Rome (Italy). It didn't matter how supportive I was, they treated me like a party-crasher. I may as well have worn a KKK uniform.

Mona Pereth
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13 Nov 2018, 3:13 pm

Fnord wrote:

How did they behave toward you, specifically? Were they aggressively hostile, or just very cliquish?

Also, what specific kinds of places and events did you attend?

Cliquishness is, alas, a fact of human nature. Just about any group will naturally tend to become very cliquish unless it makes a specific effort not to be.

Additionally, social clubs that exist for the sole purpose of socializing tend naturally to be, on many levels, intrinsically hostile environments for autistic and autistic-like people.

If you were to go to your local LGBT community and inquire about the possibility of starting a support group for autistic and autistic-like GLBT people, I suspect you would get a better reception.

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13 Nov 2018, 3:33 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

Fnord wrote:

How did they behave toward you, specifically? Were they aggressively hostile, or just very cliquish? Also, what specific kinds of places and events did you attend?

They were openly hostile, contemptuous, and exclusionary when they weren't ignoring me outright. These were just the planning meetings for rallies, parades, and other events. Mutual friends would bring me in and introduce me as a sympathetic consultant (I like to organize things, and had a lot of experience at university and in the Navy).

The "You ain't one of us, so you wouldn't understand" mantra was prevalent at every such event. Each such event ended up being a "Let's get loud, proud, and in their faces" kind of event.

Never again. Groupwise, they're on their own.

Mona Pereth
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13 Nov 2018, 3:54 pm

Fnord wrote:

Were you giving advice that the events become something radically different from what they had been in the past? That kind of advice, from outsiders, is almost never welcome in any group of any kind.

LGBT Pride parades, for example, are always loud and proud. That's one of the main points.

Fnord
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13 Nov 2018, 5:54 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

Were you giving advice that the events become something radically different from what they had been in the past?

It rarely got to the point where I had an opportunity to share any ideas at all. The hostility started almost as soon as I walked in the door -- usually right after the introductions. It seemed that just by showing up, I became the embodiment of everything that everyone had ever done to them, and without any of them knowing anything about me except my name and why I was invited.

Never again.

Never, ever again.

Mona Pereth
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16 Nov 2018, 11:41 am

Fnord wrote:

It didn't matter how supportive I was, they treated me like a party-crasher. I may as well have worn a KKK uniform.

[snip]

They were openly hostile, contemptuous, and exclusionary when they weren't ignoring me outright. These were just the planning meetings for rallies, parades, and other events. Mutual friends would bring me in and introduce me as a sympathetic consultant (I like to organize things, and had a lot of experience at university and in the Navy).

The "You ain't one of us, so you wouldn't understand" mantra was prevalent at every such event.

In a subsequent message, you wrote:

Fnord wrote:

If the introductions were what sparked it, I can only guess that perhaps you were getting caught in the middle of longstanding arguments between the people who introduced you and other people there?

Did you ever discuss, with the friends who introduced you, the behavior of the other people at the meetings? If so, what did your friends have to say about it?

Mona Pereth
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16 Nov 2018, 12:01 pm

puddingmouse wrote:

That said, I do wish more bisexual people were out and talked about their experiences more, because I do think there's an epidemic of bad mental health among people of my persuasion. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on why that is, but it's (mostly) not because the LGBT community is hostile to us. You get a lot of 'bi-activists' whose main focus seems to be whining about biphobia among the gay community and trying to get politicians and local authorities to use inclusive language. I think that's a waste of time. We need to talk about what it's like to actually live this stuff.

Although the biphobia of all too many L&G's may not be the number one problem faced by mentally ill bisexuals, it is (or, at least, can be) a significant hindrance to the political (and other) organizing necessary to address other, worse problems. So I don't think bi-activists are misguided in trying to counteract bi-phobia among L&Gs. I'm just very sorry to hear that this is still an issue after lo these many years since the L&G community explicitly became the LGBT community in the late 1980's or so.

Mona Pereth
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16 Nov 2018, 12:32 pm

Capulet wrote:

AspieUtah wrote:

Despite succeeding on marriage equality, nondiscrimination and hate-crime protections, too many LGBT people still "eat their own" by abusing each other, particularly those who don't comply with their expectations of conformity (political, social and professional). "Diverse and inclusive," my ass. They are now, too often, the abusers not the victims.

As an LGBT advocate for 35 years, I hate to admit it, but it might take a generation or more for LGBT people to grow up.

Its very satisfying to see this- I agree with all of this but have felt very alone in my opinions. I want LGBT people to be kind and open and accepting and welcoming so badly (I'm gay myself) yet in my personal experience they have been extremely petty, condescending, entitled, and I want nothing to do with any of that. It really sucks. I feel like its a recent development too- from where I'm at the past ten years its gotten really bad. I have a theory as to why this is but I don't have time to get into it now.

I would be very interested to see your theory on this, if/whenever you do have time to get into it.

My own hunch is that people in general naturally tend to be cliquish except in situations where they happen to see a good reason to make a sustained, systematic effort to avoid cliquishness. Cliquishness is most people's natural state, it simply takes much more effort to be friendly to newcomers -- especially to those newcomers who might seem a little strange.

One of the things that can motivate people to be non-cliquish is a perceived need to build a community. Due to the many important victories that have been won by the LGBT rights movement, e.g. legal recognition of same-sex marriage, I think many LGBT people have come to take the LGBT community for granted, hence don't feel an overwhelming need to help build said community, hence don't feel an overwhelming need to friendly to newcomers.

IMO, what the LGBT community needs is to grow some new branches. Like, maybe, groups of neurodivergent LGBT people?

Fnord
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16 Nov 2018, 3:03 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

If the introductions were what sparked it, I can only guess that perhaps you were getting caught in the middle of longstanding arguments between the people who introduced you and other people there? Did you ever discuss, with the friends who introduced you, the behavior of the other people at the meetings? If so, what did your friends have to say about it?

Did you ever think you were over-analyzing the situation? Did you ever think that your attempts to blame the victim of open hatred and contempt would be offensive to that victim? Do you ever get tired of being an apologist for a culture that is contemptuous of well-intentioned people from outside that culture? Did I ever ask you to root out the cause of their contempt?

:roll:

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