From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Year of the Queer
Date: 12 Jan 1993 15:31:41 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <1993Jan12.223143.14722@psych.toronto.edu> 
jarvis@psych.toronto.edu (Brian Jarvis) writes:
> In article <1ivf05INN9ti@mizar.usc.edu>
> adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
> >And I'm still trying to reconcile what possible difference
> >to my life as a gay man in urban North America is the
> >knowledge that in rural Latin America (and elsewhere),
> >a man who often enjoy inserting his penis into another 
> >man's anus would not ever consider himself to be "homosexual" 
> >or "gay" or "queer", precisely because he's the one who's
> >"acting like a man".  So the fuck what?  What does that
> >have to do with "gay pride"?
>
> Indeed, what does this have to do with anything we've been talking
> about?  I'm open for suggestions.

Well, it was suggested by Caroline that some people
in Latin America whom she would refer to as "queer"
wouldn't self-identify that way.  So what?  What does 
that have to with "gay pride" celebrations?

And then, of course, you wrote:

    I'm just trying to reconcile these
    all-inclusive simplistic statements with my knowledge that there's a
    _lot_ of diversity in a population of 5 billion across six* continents
    and a recorded history of more than 5000 years.

Well, yes, there's a lot of diversity.  What does this have to
do with "gay pride" or "gay liberation"?  

> >Stonewall is the event that radicalized gay men, first in
> >New York, then elsewhere.  All contemporary gay political
> >organizations, from Queer Nation to Lambda Legal Defense
> >to the Log Cabin Club to ACT UP, find their origins in 
> >Stonewall.
>
> So these other groups can claim no pride in and of themselves?  They
> have no right to self-identity and must pay homage to the Holy Day in
> sacred rites? 

Excuse me?

> And these groups had no other impetus but Stonewall
> for their creation?  No other societal factors or trends? 

Get a grip.

> What about the
> groups not from North America?  Do they owe 100% of their existance
> to Stonewall too, and nothing from their own culture and society?

Sigh.

> If there were events which preceeded Stonewall, then how can we say
> that gay civil rights marches are exclusively borne out of Stonewall?

So we shouldn't date the Normanization of England to
1066, because there were events which preceded it
the Norman invasion?  Vikings settling in Normandy a 
couple hundred years earlier, but then there's whatever 
it was that got those Vikings in their boats in the 
first place, and then, of course, there's the complicated 
history of the Celts, but then we'd have to talk about 
the Romans, and the Etruscans, too, and the Greeks.  
Speaking of whom, we'd have to deal with the Viking 
mercenaries in Byzantium.  Oh dear, then we'd have to
talk about the Huns and the Vandals and the Goths.
The Carthaginians.

> We *know* there was a gay community before Stonewall and that it
> was radically moved by the Stonewall catalyst:  you and I both agree
> on this.  But doesn't Stonewall then owe anything to what happened before?
> How can Pride Day be the sacred Holy Day of Genesis of Queerdom if
> Queerdom predated the Genesis?

Did someone say "naive"?

> >No, the AIDS crisis began after Stonewall.
>
> Yes, it happened after.  So did a lot of other things.  That's what
> started this entire argument:  it was declared that Pride Day was all
> about Stonewall itself and that the *entire* LGB planet owes its existance
> to that event.

Yes.

> I say Pride Day includes that which happened before,
> during and after Stonewall and that it is possible that there are areas
> of the planet that are not obliged to have the same blind devotion to
> The Blessed Event as we in North America might.

Fine.  Celebrate your shared Queerdom with peasant farmers
in Michoacan.

> >Stonewall was the catalyst for what we have now.
>
> Yes, it was a catalyst.  It was not the beginning and it was not the end.
> If we're looking for a Holy Day of Genesis of Queerdom, this isn't it.

I don't think you'd be satisfied with anything short of the
instant of the Big Bang itself.

> >Do you think there would have been all those Toronto
> >bathhouses in the first place had it not been in
> >the Canadian psyche to slavishly copy from the
> >American example?
>
> I'm going to ignore the slander in the latter part of your sentence, but
> I must say that I had expected better from someone who professes to
> be a human being. 

Touchy, touchy.

> As for the first part of your question, yes, I think
> there would have been bathhouses here, with or without the existance
> of the U.S..  

Snort.

> Bathhouses have been common structures in many societies
> predating the existance of the U.S. in areas where there was no knowledge of
> North America. 

I'm dying to hear about these societies that had the 
equivalent of the Club Baths before the US did.  Please
do tell me about them.

> I'm sure sex in bathhouses was not a uniquely American
> invention.  Do you think it was?

Dear me.

Arne



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