From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Too straight looking to be gay
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 15:55:07 GMT


In article <vanyel.715158769@camelot>
vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alan Williams) seems to want to
distance himself from the positions of Sarver, which is a
very good thing to do; he writes:

>In <1992Aug29.214119.871@tc.cornell.edu>
>shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:

>>Boob has completely bought
>>into the notion that you're only entitled to your rights if 
>>you're popular, and he's asking you to buy into it, too.  He'd 
>>much rather participate in the marginalization of those who 
>>are different than put effort into ending it.  He thinks it's
>>politically important to be liked, as if there's a committee
>>out there who will protect his job, his housing, etc. if he
>>bends over really, really far and lets the bigots have their 
>>way with him.

Sarver published a list of things he supports.  They all
looked like good things.  He got flamed for saying
misogynistic things (for which he apologized [I thought just
sort-of]).  He holds, so he says, a number of positions that
clearly do *not* support all the good things he claims to
support.  

It would seem the sticking point is not the strategy but the
tactics.  He buys into the "good fairy" concept, tactically,
I expect for about the reasons Melinda mentions.  But in the
process he becomes an oppressor himself, glibly throwing
many, probably most, of us to the wolves.  Instead of
attacking the institutions of oppression (homophobia,
sexism, the sensationalist press, etc.), he attacks other
LGB people for being themselves while injuring no one.  

He admanantly refuses to concede that his positions injure
us.  This makes him a class traitor, and of course he gets
crisped for it, quite properly, in my view.  He hates
queens, et al, (not an overstatement, I believe); that makes
him a raving homophobe, in the process undermining (well,
demolishing!) credibility in his claims of support for us.

Along comes Alan.  He says, in essence, queens make him
queasy.  Shades of Sarver.  He defends this as a personal
choice, a matter of his personal tastes.  Hotly crisped, and
unlike Sarver, he backtracks.  And that's where we are just
now.

>My impression has always been that Bob has taken a personal
>dislike -- something he's allowed to have, whether you like
>it or not -- and converted it into a statement proscriptive
>of a certain section of the populace.

Close enough.

>I can understand and accept Bob's likes and dislikes.  I
>can't accept his conclusions as valid extensions of those
>likes and dislikes, because it seems he's ignoring the basic
>right of people to be who and what they are.

I can't see any reason for you to accept his biases.  You
can understand them, but I think you have to be opposed to
them.  They're poison.

Some of your further argument turns on issues connected with
distinctions between what you think, what you do, and what you
are.  Sarver says *some* of the right things; but he has
no credibility at all, because homophobia is so evident
in his personal tastes.  Now, what I believe has happened
to you ...

>Lately I've been on the heated end of this debate for
>supposedly saying the same things.  I wanna clear the
>record: I don't condone discrimination.  Point and period.
>I make my decisions based on *personalities* of
>*individuals*, much as many of you may think to the
>contrary.

... is that your credibility has been severely compromised.
Evidently you want to respond to that (makes sense to me) by
getting disentangled from Sarver (good idea) and at least
being judged as yourself only.

>There's also a big difference between reacting to
>individuals and passing judgement on them.  

I think this premise is highly questionable.

>I try to do the
>former.  I'm not perfect; the result is that I sometimes do
>the latter instead.  But then again, that's a part of being
>human, isn't it?

It's common enough, though I don't agree it's "part of being
human." Racism, homophobia, sexism and so forth infect most
people on the planet in varying degrees.  Because it's so
common, there's a tendency to think it's a universal, an
aspect of "human nature." But ultimately, these terrible
social problems do permeate everything we feel, everything
we think, everything we do, and everything we are, speaking
broadly.

I think you'd like to create a division of an inappropriate
sort.  You want to legitimate your private tastes so that
they are not subject to criticism for their implications.
I don't think you can make that work.

>We aren't demigods out to champion a cause against a horde
>of demons.  We're people dealing with other people.  

Actually, I think both those statements are true.

>We
>don't have to like all of our "allies," and some of our
>"enemies" may be more appealing than we'd like to admit.
>But like it or not, our allies *are* our allies -- no matter
>how psychopathic, nelly, butch, or paranoid those allies may
>be.

In practical terms, psychopathic may be going a bit
overboard.  To do a little backtracking of my own, I would
not call Sarver a psychopath.  I do think he's emotionally
extremely conflicted, mentally quite unhygenic, and
significantly sociopathic.  Him I could not trust as an
ally, he seems too prone to selling us out for his personal
gain.

>Maybe it's time to gather the allies together for the
>assault.

Isn't that what we're doing? :-)

<> People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep
<> one foot on the ground. -- Marcel Proust
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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