From: read@athena.mit.edu (Read Weaver)
Subject: Re: There was this sign in the window...
Keywords: @$#!% NewsWatcher bug...
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 22:57:26 GMT

In article <84006@netnews.upenn.edu>, sfsmith@pennsas.upenn.edu (Sandy F. Smith, Jr.) writes:
|> The organizers of the [Philadelphia] Pride Parade contract with a local ambulance service to
|> provide emergency care for the marchers.  The ambulance brings up the rear in
|> case anybody ahead needs assistance.  This year, according to an article in
|> the _Philadelphia Gay News_, the two-man ambulance crew put signs in the
|> windows reading "We're Straight" in response to what they said were unwanted
|> advances from people along the parade route.  According to the crew (as quoted
|> in the article), bystanders were asking if they could "do it" with them in the
|> back of the ambulance and yelling phrases like "try it, you don't know what
|> you're missing."
|> 
|> The parade organizers complained to the ambulance company, which suspended the
|> two drivers and pledged to have them undergo sensitivity training.  All of this
|> was duly reported in the pages of _PGN_.
|> 
|> [letters saying this is a reasonable response to sexual harrassment]

|> On the surface, the letter-writers are dead on.  Nobody should have to submit
|> to unwanted advances, regardless of the sex or orientation of the advancer or
|> advancee.  If the drivers were indeed propositioned, their response was rational
|> and (you'll forgive me) straightforward, and they should not be punished for
|> that.
|> 
|> But reading the ambulance crew's remarks, a little alarm goes off in my head:
|> "Something's amiss here."  My experience observing Pride Parade crowds suggests
|> that the sort of out-and-out propositioning they describe is the exception,
|> not the rule.  Furthermore, the sort of remarks attributed to the bystanders
|> brings up that old "recuritment" bugaboo fundies throw in people's faces all
|> the time.  At the risk of trivializing the issue of sexual harassment yet
|> again, I can't help but wondering if their explanation wasn't just a cover for
|> the discomfort they felt surrounded by all those queers, and that perhaps the
|> sensitivity training is called for.

Oh, dear. Yes, this is sexual harrassment. But the response doesn't seem
to be about sexual harrassment, it seems to be about the harrassers being
men. I would argue that this is an important distinction.

Certainly my first tendency is to side with the ones being harrassed. But
I find it hard to believe that these boys were inundated with sexual advances.
I also can't see why they couldn't just keep saying "No thank you," or even
"No thank you, I'm straight" (tho' ideally that wouldn't enter into it).
If they were getting so many propositions that they were starting to go
hoarse with the No thank you's they could've made a sign that said
"Already taken" or some such. I'd've even sympathized with "Fuck off,
I don't want to have sex with you," but I think most people, and
especially employers, would have said that was unprofessional. But to be in
a gay pride parade (even if you're doing it as your job) and to make a point
of telling the world, or even the participants, that you're straight is tacky.

(I'll grudgingly make an exception for the "proud of my lesbian daughter" sort
of thing, tho' I'm not particularly fond of it.)
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