From: laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Bob Sarver's reply to me
Date: 14 Oct 92 12:47:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.36699
Reply-To: laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco

In article <36697@hoptoad.uucp> laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep23.020754.2805@microsoft.com> bobsarv@microsoft.com 
>>(Bob Sarver) writes:
>>[1] I posted a long response to your initial sheet of questions.
>>In response to that, you totally misread my point, and accused
>>me of having offended blacks.  I did not say anything offensive,
>>and your post spent quite some time dealing with a total non-issue.
>
>(me)	  I didn't accuse you of having offended Blacks.  I accused you of
>	/ having an argument which, flip the words a bit, would offend
>	/ Blacks.  The idea of making that word flip was to have you
>	/ either tell me why that flip was not called for, or have you
>	/ re-examine what it was you said.
>
>>I believe my point was valid, though.  If a black civil rights march
>>were being held, and you (or I) were in the room while the strategy
>>discussion were being held, I think we would see that the organizers
>>would not want people in the parade that played into the old stereotypes
>>of blacks.  They would put black doctors, black businessmen, black
>>artists, black housewives, etc. in the parade, to show that they were
>>the same as everyone else--and deserved to be respected.

What, So Black musicians, white-face actors, and farm workers
are not the same as everybody else, and don't deserve to be
respected?

If I had been an organiser of such a march I would try to make
damn sure that all people, of all colours, *knew where the
march started*,  *knew what slogans to yell*,  and *knew
that we would bail them out of jail, visit them in the
hospital, and invite donations for their medical expenses*
if things got ugly.  (If we were a rich march, we might know
that we had money to pay for those injured, and even have a
fund for the relatives of those who died.  Very few civil
rights marches had such funds.)

I wouldn't go  around saying ``oh -- you're a Black dancer --
we don't want you.  oh -- you're a white musician supporting your 
Black musician friends -- we don't want you.  You bunch of red
neck White sharecroppers, in support of Black sharecroppers!  go away!
we don't want you!  And you Black sharecroppers!  go away and let
us win your liberty for you while you aren't there, because we  
can do it better without you!''

No march or parade I ever had anything to do with would ever
tell people that they could not come out to support the
cause because they fit a bad stereotype.

Maybe you don't understand it.  Freedom for Blacks was won
because of heroic efforts which taught people that it was
very bad and evil to discriminate against people because of
the colour of their skin.  I was not won because there were
Black doctors and Black businessmen.  The Black doctors and 
Black businessmen had hellish barriers to overcome, and
did so valiently, and were shining examples of what Blacks
could achieve, despite prejudice to the contrary.

But White USA did not fall over itself in saying ``ooops,
I just met a Black doctor!  therfore racism is wrong!''
What happened was a whole lot of people decided that
they were going to stuff one idea down the throats of those
who did not already believe it.  This idea is the simple one that
it is bad, bad, bad, evil, wrong to discriminate  against people
because their skin is darker than yours.  The non-segregated
good bathrooms are for Black lawyers and Black entertainers
alike.  

>>
>>They would not put people in the parade who dressed like the old Sambo
>>stereotype, for example.  Also (and please read this slowly, I mean it
>>in a thoughtful way) imagine:  suppose some white person suggested that
>>the parade have a float shaped like a watermelon.  Can you imagine the
>>insult and the outrage that the black organizers would feel?

We've gone from marches to parades, and you are looking at the
Rose Bowl parade as typical.  There is some loss  here.  I don't 
know how to fathom it.  I started to say ``loss of consciousness''
but that is wrong.  The Black civil rights marches have little
to do with Gay pride parades.  All we have in common is that
Gays and Blacks are both oppressed.  Gaypeople are not near
slavery as Black people were.  Nobody is making Gaypeople go
to the back of the bus, or stand when a straight person enters,
or forbid us to go to university, or use bathrooms.  For
Black gaypeople, the parallels may be acute, but for us
not-Black Gaypeople, the parallels, along that line is
tenuous.

There are thousands, tens of thousands of Gay lawyers, doctors,
and businessmen.  Nobody every stopped them from being doctors,
lawyers, and businessmen.  What they want to keep us from doing
is not being very successful college graduates, or using
thier bathrooms, or sitting on the bus -- what they want us
to not do is have sex with somebody of the same sex.

You could be a Nobel Lauriate, you could be on welfare for
30 years.  If you are woman who wants to have sex with a woman,
or a man who wants to have sex with a man, they will hate you
for this, and nothing else.


>>>[2] You also gave a personal story about helping defend an Arab-owned
>>>store.  But my whole point was that it becomes easier
>>>to empathize with people's troubles once you get to know them.  Becuase of
>>>this, I couldn't find any reason why you would offer that story as evidence.
>>
>>
>>/ My argument was more along the lines of ``you will find hatred
>>/ wherever you go, and as you find it, you should resist it in
>>/ so much as you are able''.
>>
>>Your argument is correct; I never meant to say otherwise.
>>I have no complaints with this statement.  But just because hatred
>>will never ever go away totally, that should not be a reason to stop
>>trying to change SOME people's hearts & minds.

I never said otherwise.  But if you think that they hate you
because you are a Gay and all Gays lisp and cross-dress,
and they hate lisping and cross-dressing, then you are
making a very grave error.  The folks who really hate you
hate you because you want to have sex with men.    

That is the intrinsic.  it doesn't matter that you don't
lisp or cross-dress.  Nobody builds a law which discriminates 
against lispers and cross-dressers.  It's the homosexuals they want
to get, every last one of them, including you.


>>Do you believe that getting to know people who are different from you
>>is a good way to break down prejudices?  That is really all I am saying.
>>And, when the prejudices break down, it starts to "hurt the conscience"
>>to say mean things or make bigoted jokes.  I used to make black jokes.
>>But now I have so many black friends who have helped me, or stood
>>by me in hard times, that I cannot ever bring myself to make a "nigger"
>>joke.  Every time I think about it, the face of one of my friends comes to
>>mind, and I think about how they would feel if they knew I were telling
>>the joke.

Aha!  I may be wrong, but I believe that I see in this paragraph
the reason for this entire sequence of postings.  Believe me, please,
when I say I mean this most seriously and sincerely.   

I believe that you are suffering because you used to believe
stereotypes about African Americans and are justifiably embarrassed
because you used to believe them.  The mistake I believe you have
made is to believe that most people who discriminate against 
Gaypeople do so because they were exposed to similar stereotypes
about Gaypeople as you were exposed about African Americans.

I do not believe that this is the case.

Some people indeed have this problem, but they can be
easily educated.  I've turned a lot of people from
``I can't stand gays'' to ``I couldn't give a shit about 
Gaypeople''.  This is the first victory.  The next one
is ``I don't like them, but why should what they do
bother me?''  At this point, I usually quit.  Other people
are big on more education, but this is the limit I
shoot for.

Having no-cross-dressers and no swish voices, and no
leather-Bears wouldn't help me pass the message 
(Taken from Leighton's second book on Feynman) 
``What do you care What Other People Think?''.

That is the one to floor them with.
>>
>>/ Boy, do we have problems conversing.  I didn't pick up ``his line
>>/ of argument'' -- I maybe picked up his thread, but I have my own
>>/ rather different line of argument.  I don't know why it is that
>>/ you do not see the differences.  I believe that you see my
>>/ arguments and Fritzs' as of the same cloth.  I think that mine
>>/ are different.  I wonder what Fritz thinks, and indeed what the
>>/ rest of all of you think.
>>
>>Okay, that is possible.  There has been a lot of people talking past each
>>other instead of talking to each other.
>>
>>>You showed an example where it did not work, and from that example
>>>concluded that the principle had no validity whatsoever.


Have you ever seen a British comedy show called ``Yes Minister?
In about the second episode (alas, I wish I could credit the
writer, help?)  there was a wonderful scene where the belaboured
leader of the Civil Service, on listening to what this new
Minister of Government said in his astonishment of getting a
ministery said:

He's got a bad case of governmental logic.
``Something must be done!
This is something!
Therefore we must do it!''.

Governments fail most spectacularily on this dictum, because they
have a built in habit of following failed policies with more
spending for the same failed policies.

But individuals and companies fail on this as well.

Companies tend to go out of business if they do too much of
this.

I keep using this phrase to keep me from making too much of
an ass of myself. 

I fear that you have fallen right in.

Something must be done about homophobia!
Keep People from Cross-Dressing!
Therefore we must do it!

I was not objecting to a particular case, I was objecting
to the fact that your solution was irrelevant to the problem.
Banning cross-dressing solves nothing.

We don't want to stop people from hating cross-dressers,
though that would be nice.  We want them to
stop discriminating against all  Gaypeople.

We don't need them to love us, just recognise the bigotry there,
and not follow up on their feelings.


>>>
>>>But since I had ALREADY stipulated that it does not work with all people, I
>>>could not figure out what the problem was:  were you just not reading my
>>>posts?  Or did you not understand what I wrote?
>>
>>/ I may not have understood.  I have read your posts.  I probably still
>>/ don't understand, but am working very hard to try to.  I don't think
>>/ that already stipulating that something does not work with all
>>/ people gives you carte blanche to continue in a futile policy.
>>
>>How do you define "futile"?  If a medical procedure only saves 60% of
>>its victims, is it "futile"?  Do you abandon the procedure just because
>>its success rate is less than perfect?

I don't think that you advocate a procedure with any sort of
succcess.  The people who only dislike gay men because they
talk swish and dress funny  can be covinced with the basic
argument ``why do you care what other people think''.  Providing
non-swish, straight dressing role models may help this, but
banning those who choose to talk and dress funny will not
help.  Remember always, they do not hate you because of how you
dress and talk, but because of who you chose to have sex with.

>>
>>Any minds that you can change are better than changing none at all.
>>True or false?

If I could change minds by saying that gay men, those who do not
dress or talk funny, are okay, because they do not talk or dress funny,
are okay ... that is no victory for me.

The only victories I count is when I take somebody who hates fags
to somebody who couldn't give a damn whom they fuck, as long as
it isn't that somebody.  Or any step down from that to being
supportive on gay issues.

you aren't talking about changing minds -- you are talking
about fitting in so that the issue won't enter.     

>>/ If the more flamboyant queers have to closet themselves in order for
>>/ the more staight appearing to win over a certain fraction of straights
>>/ is that a victory?

No No No!  It's avoiding the issue.

>>But the problem with that viewpoint is that it has no endpoint; no checks
>>and balances for truly obnoxious or ridiculous behavior.  If you want
>>to have green hair and wear lizardskin shirts to draw attention to yourself,
>>then that is your right.  However, other people have the right to
>>deny you their respect.

We don't need respect, we need tolerance.
I'm sure that the most flamboyant among us don't give a flying fuck
for universal respect, they have the respect they want from
their peers.... But a nice dose of tolerance, so they need not 
fear being beat up when they go out in camp dress, is vital.

Universal respect would be nice.  Admiration would be adored.
Tolerance is what we aim for.   This goes for flamboyant and
not flamboyant Gaypeople both.

>>And the more we emphasize our differences, the more we loudly proclaim
>>that we are a separate and privileged group, the more the us vs. we
>>cries from the Religious Right will increase.  When we set up our
>>own divisions and declare ourselves separate, whose fault is it if
>>the Religious Right agrees with us on that?

I don't give a damn whether the Religious Right thinks of us as
separate.  I don't give a damn whatever they think.  They get
to think what they think, and I get to think what I think.

When they start passing laws against me loving women, then I get
pissed.  I have no problem with the RR being out there -- it is
when they interfere with my life that I think that they have
taken their opinion above and beyond the rule of law.
The problem with the RR is not so much that they exist, but
that they want to make the religious precepts of their religion
laws for the rest of us who do not believe their religion.

There is no way to appease the religious right.  In their Holy
Books it says that homosexuality is immoral, a sin against
God, and no amount of reading Boswell will change their 
minds.  Don't worry about it.  We just have to
live with it.  You could join a church group like
Dignity, and try to reform from the inside -- me, I have
other fish to fry.

>>We can't say "we gays are just like the rest of society", and then turn
>>around and say "we are different, so just get used to it".  It doesn't wash;
>>it is a contradiction.

We are only ``different'' if you think that having same-sex is
``different''.  Aside from that we are just same.  No contradiction,
unless your mind is finely tuned to who-has-sex-with-whom.

Look at the cross-dressers as the whacko, in your face, on
the fringe element.  (The ones I know would cheer not
frown on me for calling them this.  Complaints welcome.)

They don't represent you.  That's fine.

Can you find a representative Democrat or Republican?
Stereotypes are right out.

Can't you see how the media likes a shrink wrapped
image to present?   We've had pleanty of pride
marches with hundred of thousands of not campy dressers --
but the Judy Garland lookalike gets on CNN.

This is televison hell.

Do you think that banning camp from the next SF pride week
would make us become better viewed nationwide?  More
likely we would have no coverage at all.
>
>Laura
>
>-- 
>    Since Ryan White was buried in April 1990, his grave has been vandalized
>    four times.
>
>    (this news courtesy Rod Williams rjwill6@pacbell.com)
>
>Laura Creighton 
>toad@toad.com
>hoptoad!laura


-- 
    Since Ryan White was buried in April 1990, his grave has been vandalized
    four times.

    (this news courtesy Rod Williams rjwill6@pacbell.com)

Laura Creighton 
toad@toad.com
hoptoad!laura