From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Cretin Visitors (was Re: Private antidiscrimination)
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 93 21:13:31 GMT


In article <32@bbx.basis.com> scott@bbx.basis.com (Scott
Amspoker) writes:

>[of Cramer and more recently Walter Smith:]

>Eventually they ended up sulking about how they now
>understand why gays are hated so much.

Well, perhaps we can get something at least a little useful
from that sort of thing.  Such people operate by playing on
insecurities many of us have or have had, when we realize
just how pervasive, how overwhelmingly *anti* the majority
society is.  If they truly made up their minds to it, they
could crush us just about any time, because they have so
many of us in the thrall of their values already.  After
all, the fear of bashing, burning, and murder is more than
real enough, and I suspect there are not many of us, the
pits of whose stomachs don't tighten when we hear or read of
these incidents.  Yet -- how many times have we seen it
right here? -- many of our own people try to convince
themselves it isn't "as bad as all that." Well, it is, it is
that bad.  It's worst in the bad places, but not so much
better in the best places.

If I chose to, I could live out the balance of my days in
relative security, because this is (for the moment) one of
the better places, protected by both state statutes and city
ordinances from the grosser forms of harassment.  But
bashing and murder occur here too, laws or no laws, witness
a particularly grisly execution-style murder not long ago,
the perpetrator of which told the police right out that he
came here from the Twin Cities "to kill fags." He has been
sent to prison, but he will get out, one day.

Much that we don't need or really want comes into our lives
because people can play on our real fears.  In his perverse
and obsessed way, Cramer is pretty good at that.  Walter is
just one more in a long train of idiots --articulate but
idiots nevertheless -- whom we tolerate in our midst in the
hope of reaching him with some sense of reason or fairness.
When at last -- it's inevitable -- their true colors
surface, we are already set up to feel guilt if we should
behave with anything suggesting intolerance, gawd forbid.

So we debate boycotts, we fear backlashes (it will be there,
why doubt it?), and we fight among ourselves over the
stupidest things, huge numbers of LGB people attacking Queer
Nation "types," ACT-UP, and god knows what-all not very
revolutionary splinter groups in our midst, because so many
of us want to suck up to the oppressors in some dumb-ass
hope they will not hurt *us*, the "good" queers.  We hope,
vainly, I am quite sure, that they'll leave us alone if we
don't make too many waves.  So we scuttle like cockroaches
into various closets of our own devising, hiding out so the
terror that is sure to be there won't find *us*.  Of course,
we feel it even more when it does find someone.  At that
point, we're close to destroyed already, I think, ready to
sell out.

The Cramers and the Smiths, let them be the warning bells.
They tell us when we're cutting our own throats.

<> Some would sooner die than think.  In fact, they often do.
<> -- Bertrand Russell
-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
[---------> Discrimination, Bigotry, and Hate are not Family Values <---------]
Newsgroups: soc.motss
From: nigel@stonewall.demon.co.uk (Nigel Whitfield)