From: robertl@luciano.Stanford.EDU (Robert Lodenkamper)
Subject: Re: Redefining masculinity
Organization: Stanford University
	<1992Aug14.004858.29347@microsoft.com>
	<1992Aug14.172347.3647@microsoft.com>
	<1992Aug17.181137.2755@microsoft.com>
Date: 17 Aug 92 21:39:22

In article <1992Aug17.181137.2755@microsoft.com> bobsarv@microsoft.com
(Bob Sarver) writes (all attributions lost, due to broken app):

   /Which feminine gays?  How can you tell from a posting?  

   By reading it, and what they say in it about masc. gays.

OK.  After I've finished, tell me whether I'm "masculine" or
"feminine".  I'm simply *dying* to know.

   /they are only concerned that
   /we aren't what THEY want us to be - it doesn't matter if we're nellie,
   /butch, masculine, feminine, feminine-acting-masculine, masculine-acting-
   /feminine, alternating-between-the-two-every-other-day, etc, etc, etc, etc.

   Actually, it matters quite a lot.  The dozen or so straight people who
   know I'm gay were surprised and quite hard to convince.  The uniform
   remarks I heard were:

Twelve people?  Are they your apostles, perhaps?

   1.  "But you don't ACT gay."
   2.  "Are you sure?"
   3.  "If more gays acted like normal people, I don't think that society
	would have such a problem with it".
   4.  "How come [feminine gay name] has to act like that?"

Item 3 is demonstrably false, and item 4 is none of their damn
business.  Item 2 is a stupid question, and item 1 simply restates a
fact.

While hardly the most enlightened response, it is far from the worst
imaginable.  Now do a little thought experiment --- think about
telling twelve OCA activists you are gay.  Think about living in the
Oregon the OCA would give you and having them find out you are gay.

Now do you really think the fact that you can "pass" is going to cut
any ice with them?

   Being gay should be no more of an issue than being left-handed;
   something that is definitely not average, but not a glaring
   difference, either.  And a difference which should carry no weight
   in employment, housing, etc.

It's easy to state the goal.  Now how to get there?


   [...]Yeah, right.  This is another variation on the well-known
   group chant:

   IF (confrontational) 
	   THEN (homophobe)  

Yeah, right.  I prefer the following version.

IF (someone dismisses pointed criticism of worthless positions as
groupthink) 
     THEN (said person is most likely a clueless yahoo)

   You have mastered this equation perfectly.  Unfortunately, it's a
   little stale.  You need to learn the difference between honest
   disagreement and paranoia.  It would also help if you leaned a
   little more on logic than on guilt-by-accusation.  Trying to
   silence all the people who disagree with you by calling them
   homophobic is cowardly; try facing the issues instead.

Oh, we finally get to "face the issues time".  My pleasure.

It is abundantly clear that your strategy for gaining acceptance is to
sacrifice anyone who might "offend" the straights in order to be
accepted yourself.

Now before I start in on the questionable ethics of this position, let
me ask one little question:

After you have stood by idly while the straights eliminate drag
queens, leatherfolk, nellies, bulldykes, people who engage in
outrageous same-sax PDAs, radicals, etc. etc., leaving only yourself
and others who don't want to "offend" the straights, how will you ever
avoid being eliminated yourself?

And you delude yourself if you think that question is rhetorical,
since our enemies don't hate us for how we act.  They hate us for what
we are, and they will never be satisfied until we are ALL gone.

As for the ethics of your position, there are basically two
possibilities.  Either you sincerely think the straight mainstream
values are better, which makes you a homophobe, since straight society
is homophobic to the core, or you realize that societal homophobia is
wrong, but you are prepared to sacrifice others to it in order to be
accepted youself, which makes you a traitor and a hypocrite.

It would seem that those who called you homophobic may have been
jumping to the more charitable conclusion.

   Unification is useless if it means being united on something that is
   erroneous.  We can all be united in our belief that the earth is flat;
   it won't win converts and it won't change the shape of the earth.

You are so right.  We can't unite on the premise "appease the
straights to gain acceptance", since it is fundamentally erroneous.
We may be able to unite on the premise "invidious discrimination based
on irrelevent characteristics or behaviors should not exist".

   People like you want to use "unification" as a sledgehammer to force
   conformity.  That is also wrong.  This isn't a political convention
   where we all back a candidate, in spite of his/her flaws.  Smells too 
   much like groupthink to me.

Is it groupthink to sneer at the "appease the straights" strategy?  Or
have a lot of people thought about it and more or less independently
come to the conclusion that it is a giant crock of shit?

I mean, it's not like a very high order of thought is required ---
being able to see the bleeding obvious is all it takes.  A precocious
mollusc could probably figure it out.

   /As long as there are assholes like you trying
   /to tear us apart because you can't "handle" the fact that people are
   /different than you we will get nowhere with the people who deny us
   /our rights because we are "different" than them.  Do you see the
   /very obvious parallel there?  

   No.  And, as I have already said, I do not advocate denying anyone
   rights because of how they act / dress / whatever.

Oh really?  But you'll let the straights do it for you.  Thanks ever
so much.  Do remove your head from the sand, or your ass, or wherever
you mislaid it.

   This discussion is not about denying rights.  It is about the most
   effective way to advance gay acceptance in general society.  I
   maintain that the bizarreness that is so prevalent among many
   extreme gay functions works AGAINST that acceptance.

Don't you see that we will never be accepted by general society
without fundamentally changing that society?  You seem to think it's
so easy --- simply stop the outrageous behavior and everything we want
will be given to us on a silver platter.  You are wrong.

   And, as I suspected, people like you insist that if anyone doesn't
   like the way you act / dress, then obviously the problem *must* be
   with the other person.  After all, you are *clearly* in the right,
   and it's simply a well-known fact that it's not possible for you to
   be contradicted, isn't it?

They don't have to *like* it.  But they have no right to eliminate
whatever they don't *like*.

- Bob (my annual clapping for Tinkerbell exercise)
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