LGBT Community Is Hostile

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I'm not attempting to blame you here, just trying to understand the situation.

Based on what you've said so far, it sounds to me as if the most likely possibility would be that, if anyone is at fault here, it might be the friends who introduced you, perhaps intending to drag you into the middle of arguments they were having with other people in the groups. My most recent question to you was intended to determine whether that might be the case. I'm sorry if my wording was not clear on that point.

I agree that the LGBT community tends to be cliquish. However, what you say you experienced goes beyond cliquishness and beyond even prejudice against outsiders; hence my attempt to figure out what might be causing such extreme hostile reactions.

The situations you described struck me as extremely odd. For one thing, in my experience, people in general are usually more polite to people they've been introduced to than they are to strangers off the street. This leads me to suspect that there may have been something else going on behind the scenes that you may have been unaware of (and that was probably NOT your fault, but probably ALSO not representative of the groups' behavior toward everyone else, either).


No, but the sheer oddness of the situation aroused my curiosity.

If you prefer not to discuss it further, that's certainly your right. However, in that case, please do not judge the LGBT community as a whole based on your highly strange encounters with it.

I would prefer to at least be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to reporting on what special-interest groups are really all about -- they are not the all-inclusive, all welcoming, "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" happy-clappy fellowships that their apologist (like you) want outsiders to believe them to be.

Christian churches? Political parties? The Gay Rights movement? All are exclusionary to the point of supporting and passively promoting a "Them Versus Us" mind-set among the membership.

Never forget it.

To Fnord:

I never claimed that everyone in the LGBT community is "all-inclusive, all welcoming." In other posts in this thread, I have talked about cliquishness in the LGBT community and biphobia on the part of gays.

However, the particular situation you described is just weird. I'm not saying it didn't happen; I was just speculating that perhaps you might have been unknowingly used as a pawn (by your friends), resulting in you getting caught inadvertantly in the middle of a nasty ongoing argument. Even very prejudiced people don't usually express it in the extreme way you described, especially when being introduced to friends of friends.

Anyhow, despite its flaws, the LGBT rights movement has served very valuable purposes. Do you deny that?

Sorry, I haven't been able to log on as much lately. Yes, it was in Pittsburgh. The Delta Foundation of Pittsburgh is now the organizer for Pride. Like I said, it was my first pride festival. I was still new to being gay at that time.

That was basically my experience at Pittsburgh Pride. They want pride to be a loud party.

I know this thread's rather old, but I do feel I don't really belong in the LGBT community. Unlike the average LGBT person, I don't hate capitalism, I don't wish for Trump to die (even if I don't like the guy), and I don't really consider myself full-on liberal but more of a centrist politically. I worry about sharing political opinions for fear of being yelled at or silenced, which I have seen happen.

Of course, there's many different groups and communities out there that are more open-minded politically, but the majority of LGBT people I come across are radical left and aren't too friendly to those who have differing opinions. If you try to disagree with them respectfully, you could get shouted at and called all sorts of names under the sun, which is pretty toxic to me.

I don't think I relate to the LGBT community because they called me uptight for not wanting to f**k guys who ask me for sex within seconds of meeting me for the first time.

My older sister, who is gay, doesn't like the LGBT community or pride. Like me, she thinks the whole movement is far too radical and that the LGBT community forces you to have a label of some sort. Supposedly, they (at least) act like they hate straight, cisgender people. It wouldn't help being asexual, either.

I think a lot of the radicalness comes with both the coming out process, and a younger age. When a lot of people "come out", they come out with a vengeance. I know I did. I used to think I couldn't just be gay...I had to be GAY! (if that makes sense?)

I also think people like to label and box up others. I mean if you think about it L's G's B's and T's and all the other gender, orientation, and identity labels we tend to use really are different. Sure there are commonalities, but there are differences too. I think that's where a lot of the hostility comes from, we don't all think the same things or feel the same ways, or love the same people. We need to support each other, yes and share in our sameness, but also respect the things that make us different too.

Yes, they should support each other. But, there are many in the community with issues that they take out on people that they should be friends with. Aspies with social issues are easy targets.

No arguments there. I agree. It's hard to catch hate from all sides, I know

I think they tend to have emotional problems alongside like bi-polar or something. A few of them can overreact to things.

Aside from my experience I mentioned earlier in the thread, I had a friend who was gay and she had AS. She made things up that I'd done that never happened and I don't think she could help herself. I found her hurtful and she had no friends.

I saw a YouTube video recently in which someone commented that gay males with ASD may have it difficult in a romantic sense because males in general tend to have less patience and understanding than females.

As a lesbian I'll have to agree with you on this. From micro-labels that make us look like a joke and outright discrimination, the community is an absolute mess.

My sister has a pride flag even though she thinks pride is too radical. I won't get involved because of both that and the fact that I identify as heteroromantic asexual anyways.

Yeah, that and the fact that when we went to school 400 years ago we were terrorized for being different, but they write you off now because you weren't buying full size billboards in high school proclaiming you were queer. Then they go into full blown denial if you so much as bring up that there still are threats to your well being, from haters everywhere. The evidence is in the suicide rate, which now is even worse than when I was younger.