From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Talking to friends
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:33:27 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings to all, but most especially Raedwynn, or more properly
Judith, from Terry (who is sometimes Angharad ver' Rhuawn).

Judith posted a long, hurt and angry letter to which my first reponse
was to get angry, because of the accusations it contains, and my second
was to ignore it and hope it would go away.

Judith, this is my third response: to apologize deeply for the first two.

The first two responses both presuppose that your anger and pain are 
somehow invalid, or invalid to express in this forum.  That is simply
false, and something I should never have let myself presuppose.

Let me hand you a little personal background.  For close to fifteen years,
one of my two closest friends in the world was a lesbian.  I don't think
most of you who have not been in that position as a straight woman have 
any conception of the kind of grief _you_ take, let alone your friend.
One of those "if I had nickel for every time" things was explaining, OVER
and OVER, to one person after another, that no, I wasn't gay (even a little),
but no, I wasn't worried about my friend getting "the wrong idea", any
more than I had similar worries about those of my male friends with whom
I had no desire to sleep.

I can't begin to count the number of times I went over the relative 
frequency of sexual assault against _anyone_ by heterosexual males versus
all the rest of the population put together.  I can't begin to count the 
women who looked at who I hung out with and turned away.  My life, though,
was much easier than hers.  I've also had good male gay friends, and I know 
that their road is no easier.

I could say that most of this was before or outside my participation in
the SCA, and that would largely be true.  I do find that although there
is some homophobia in the SCA, it is _far_ less common than elsewhere,
and where I have seen it, _far_ less virulent.  But I can easily see even
the far lower levels here causing pain to the raw and bleeding nerves of
those who must deal with a culture far more homophobic than that of the
70s and 80s that I dealt with in the case of my friend.

What I want to do, other than apologize, is make a suggestion, which is 
not intended patronizingly at all, but rather because I hope there may be
something to be done to make the pain level here less than it has been.
The suggestion is for all to try to remember that on the whole, those of 
us here are friends.

When your friend acts like an idiot, it probably isn't because your friend
hates you.  When people on the Rialto -- me included -- act in a way that
is not sensitive to the pain of our friends, including you, Judith, it isn't 
(at least usually!) because we hate you.  On the one hand, we are not 
sufficiently aware of your pain, and your degree of sensitization.  I do
believe that raising that level of awareness is desirable, so that we may
avoid hurting our friends.  But you are unlikely to make us so by excoriating 
us; you are more likely to make us think that _you_ hate _us_, and shrug, 
and go away.  But you aren't responsible for the problem; this is only a
suggestion about solutions.  The problem is us, not you.

On the other hand, in your sensitized state, I think you do both see
deliberate personal attacks where none are, and see everything through the
lens of one issue, where others may -- legitimately, and without dishonor
-- see several to balance.

We are friends.  We should be able to look at one another's basic attitudes
toward issues and have some respect for those attitudes.  I hope we can
try to persuade, and not to castigate so much as we have all done on all
sides recently.  And more than that, when we cannot, I would like to think
that we can, at least sometimes, agree to disagree without calling each 
other names.

Hoping to help,

-- Terry/Angharad
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca