We're using "straight" an awful lot in this discussion and that's really bothering me for what's hopefully obvious reasons. I'm going to replace that with "cishet" in the following bit.
The problem I still have is that you can't identify a cishet person by appearance or by actions.
So you decide that it's sensible to ask cishet people not to kiss other cishet people and perform certain other activities in Pride. That becomes the culture. Ok. What happens next?
How do you "enforce" this, culturally? Presumably with looks, or with "polite" (hopefully but frequently definitely not) requests to refrain from this activity.
How do you direct that at just the cishet people? If you see what looks like two cishet people making out at Pride, do you walk up to them and ask "Excuse me, but are the two of you cishet? If so, could you refrain from that here please?" I hope you can see how marginalizing, excluding, and downright hostile that would be every time it's not a cishet couple you're addressing.
So you do nothing? Ask ahead of time but then nobody at Pride uses dirty looks or gentle words or anything else to try to make it the culture? Then it's toothless and ineffective. Nothing would change.
And if this activity bothers you specifically, you'll still be bothered every time you see what you think is a cishet couple engaging in this activity, even if it's literally nothing but LGBT people doing this the entire time.
Like it's one thing to vent about this kind of stuff bothering you. Nothing wrong with that at all. But there's no practical way to go about making any of this happen, not without excluding a huge portion of the LGBT umbrella (while ironically including some cishet people like drag queens since they'll seem to fit the presentation).
These are all valid concerns, and I certainly don't have a concrete plan for enforcement or anything. But the problem is also more generalized than just "the presence of anything straight-looking is an affront". As an analogy:
Scenario A. I hear that some queer people are doing a thing at a lesbian bar. Maybe I show up. If someone happens to bring a cishet friend, or a bi girl brings her cishet boyfriend or something, I probably wouldn't really care as long as they're friendly and good-natured. Even if somebody turns out to be kind of a jerk I can probably feel reasonably assured that the venue will handle it well overall.
Scenario B. I hear that some queer people are doing a thing at an unspecialized bar which mostly caters to cishet people. It doesn't matter who goes because I'm going to be staying home; I just don't feel safe in the venue. ESPECIALLY when there will probably be a lot of drunk people around (drunk cishet men are pretty much #1 on the list of people I don't feel AT ALL safe around, unless we're counting esoteric stuff like white supremacists or Westborough Baptist Church members).
Pride, as a venue, has reached a critical mass of corporatization and cishet tourism that it's starting to resemble scenario B moreso than A. I'm not sure exactly what the solution is, but I think the problem is real and deserves acknowledgement. Especially when Pride is often put forth as a symbol of, or driving force behind, LGBT people being more accepted. If the most vulnerable groups of people feel the need to stay home from Pride because they don't feel safe, then they don't benefit from that acceptance and get left behind by the culture. Which kind of has a long history of happening!
We're using "straight" an awful lot in this discussion and that's really bothering me for what's hopefully obvious reasons. I'm going to replace that with "cishet" in the following bit.
The problem I still have is that you can't identify a cishet person by appearance or by actions.
So you decide that it's sensible to ask cishet people not to kiss other cishet people and perform certain other activities in Pride. That becomes the culture. Ok. What happens next?
How do you "enforce" this, culturally? Presumably with looks, or with "polite" (hopefully but frequently definitely not) requests to refrain from this activity.
How do you direct that at just the cishet people? If you see what looks like two cishet people making out at Pride, do you walk up to them and ask "Excuse me, but are the two of you cishet? If so, could you refrain from that here please?" I hope you can see how marginalizing, excluding, and downright hostile that would be every time it's not a cishet couple you're addressing.
So you do nothing? Ask ahead of time but then nobody at Pride uses dirty looks or gentle words or anything else to try to make it the culture? Then it's toothless and ineffective. Nothing would change.
And if this activity bothers you specifically, you'll still be bothered every time you see what you think is a cishet couple engaging in this activity, even if it's literally nothing but LGBT people doing this the entire time.
Like it's one thing to vent about this kind of stuff bothering you. Nothing wrong with that at all. But there's no practical way to go about making any of this happen, not without excluding a huge portion of the LGBT umbrella (while ironically including some cishet people like cishet drag queens since they'll seem to fit the presentation).
I think that it's not enforceable at all, not without requiring everyone to fill out a giant survey beforehand (that is... broadcast to everyone else?).
Between friends or colleagues, including in discussion places like this, I think it's fine to say "Hey, cishet people, remember that Pride shouldn't revolve around you, and don't overshadow or co-opt this event in your attempts to show solidarity or have a good time." But the message will probably not reach the people it needs to the most. I'd venture to say just about everyone reading this thread has a general understanding of the purpose of Pride and at least understands the concerns around its commercialization or it becoming too "mainstream"
I think the underlying message is less one of actively regulating people's behaviors and more one of asking people to consider how their behavior might be affecting others. A lot of the overarching conversation was poorly worded, which has led to a lot of assumptions on many peoples' parts but I think most if not all of us can agree that actively trying to dictate people's behavior at an event (outside of basic social expectations, naturally) is a very slippery slope and likely to end up hurting people who definitely don't deserve to be hurt. And likewise I think we can all agree that the number one goal of LGBT-focused events is that people within the LGBT spectrum feel welcome, comfortable, and above all else, safe and that the priority for that needs to be those who are the most vulnerable/at-risk.
(I'm gonna use "lgbt" and "queer" more or less synonymously here. Apologies if you aren't comfortable with equating those two terms but that is the language I think in. If you feel that my language is excluding you, please know that that is in no way my aim)
I think the onus of making sure that cishet people don't act out and center themselves at Pride should fall on the cishet people themselves
there's really no way for us lgbt folk to enforce any kind of standard on them without running the risk of marginalizing members of our own community
but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't ask or expect that cishet people stay in their lane and act like guests in our spaces, or that we shouldn't complain when we feel that they are centering themselves
and no, there isn't any way know with 100% certainty whether a person is cishet or queer
but I think it is possible to tell the people who are at Pride to celebrate queerness (be they lgbt or allies) vs the people who are there because they want an excuse to drink and party
and while there isn't anything wrong with drinking or partying per se, doing so without an appreciation for the fact that you are in a specifically queer space can lead to behaviors that make queer people feel marginalized or unsafe at their own celebration
and cishet people definitely do this, whether they intend to or not. All privileged people (speaking broadly, not about individuals) do this if they aren't careful. White people center themselves in black spaces. Cis people center themselves in trans spaces. It's baked into the way we are taught to interact with the world (I say "we" as a cis white queer man) and it takes a lot of care to not engage in it
I don't think it is out of line for queer people to ask that cishet people be aware of this when they come to Pride. And again, I mean on a broad cultural level, not an individual level. It's not cool to assume that a person is cishet and try to police their behavior. But I think it is okay and necessary for queer people to speak out broadly about things at Pride that make them uncomfortable
And I think it is essential that both queer and cishet people need to sit with those complaints and think about what we can do to make Pride better for queer people without spending all our energy dissecting and criticizing the complaints themselves
at the end of the day, Pride should be first, foremost, and above all a safe place to celebrate queerness, and we should all, queer and cishet ally alike, be trying to make that possible
I think what we're all kind of dancing around is cultural appropriation. Or at least i've not seen anyone call it such.
Turns out, it's still a bad thing.
Yes. No. Maybe?
I mean, for all of its drawbacks, American culture chugs forward and assimilates everything it touches resulting in everything that was once not part of the "normal" now being the de facto "new normal." I don't think it's a uniquely American problem, but it's kind of inevitable that any cultural island in America will eventually become part of American culture unless there is a very concentrated and dedicated effort to prevent it from happening.
I think what we're all kind of dancing around is cultural appropriation. Or at least i've not seen anyone call it such.
Turns out, it's still a bad thing.
Yes. No. Maybe?
I mean, for all of its drawbacks, American culture chugs forward and assimilates everything it touches resulting in everything that was once not part of the "normal" now being the de facto "new normal." I don't think it's a uniquely American problem, but it's kind of inevitable that any cultural island in America will eventually become part of American culture unless there is a very concentrated and dedicated effort to prevent it from happening.
The initial article was about how corporations and cishet folks have co-opted Pride in many cases as a general party, which sounds an awful lot like people appropriating a culture they don't belong to. Which is a real problem for the people who depended on that culture to be a space where they are safe from that "normal", which very explicitly does not make room for them.
It's the same problem you have with gentrification--it's the establishment coming in and taking away something that belongs to people the establishment does not care about, with no real regard for said people. Whether or not it's "inevitable" doesn't change the fact that it's a problem and it's something that should be addressed.
We're using "straight" an awful lot in this discussion and that's really bothering me for what's hopefully obvious reasons. I'm going to replace that with "cishet" in the following bit.
The problem I still have is that you can't identify a cishet person by appearance or by actions.
So you decide that it's sensible to ask cishet people not to kiss other cishet people and perform certain other activities in Pride. That becomes the culture. Ok. What happens next?
How do you "enforce" this, culturally? Presumably with looks, or with "polite" (hopefully but frequently definitely not) requests to refrain from this activity.
How do you direct that at just the cishet people? If you see what looks like two cishet people making out at Pride, do you walk up to them and ask "Excuse me, but are the two of you cishet? If so, could you refrain from that here please?" I hope you can see how marginalizing, excluding, and downright hostile that would be every time it's not a cishet couple you're addressing.
So you do nothing? Ask ahead of time but then nobody at Pride uses dirty looks or gentle words or anything else to try to make it the culture? Then it's toothless and ineffective. Nothing would change.
And if this activity bothers you specifically, you'll still be bothered every time you see what you think is a cishet couple engaging in this activity, even if it's literally nothing but LGBT people doing this the entire time.
Like it's one thing to vent about this kind of stuff bothering you. Nothing wrong with that at all. But there's no practical way to go about making any of this happen, not without excluding a huge portion of the LGBT umbrella (while ironically including some cishet people like cishet drag queens since they'll seem to fit the presentation).
I honestly think what certain folks have been discussing is simply a hypothetical matter of keeping cishet people educated and in-check while we still apply some amount of scrutiny to the events that were made by and for us as a community at large. I really, aside from some poor wording choices that lead to implications in the article CJ initially posted, have not seen anyone in this thread trying to seriously suggest actual countermeasures or barriers to cishet people at Pride.
Personally I really think it comes down to educating, not like in any formal pre-Pride program, cishet people from individuals to groups to mainstream media. You teach them every single day who you are and what you're about through your life and opinions and you show them what this event actually means as both a historic gathering for folks still marginalised across the world, but also as a place that should be about acceptance and community. In saying that I'm not suggesting we only focus on our deaths and losses to hammer home the significance and long, painful road it's taken to get just this far, nobody has the mental and emotional strength to carry that weight everyday.
However if we're going to have the same amount of faith in cishet people who are genuinely coming to Pride as a form of support, then I think we can have some similar amount of faith in their ability to learn from us, over time, what they should take in account with their behaviour at such events as a bare minimum. No matter what the onus is on them, no one else in the LGBTQI community and I hope we can all agree on that.
Unfortunately no matter which way you slice it, this sort of introspection and re-examination of our events and cultural touchstones is always going to be painful, but I feel it's genuinely necessary if we want to maintain its significance to us as a minority community. I say all of this as a bi trans woman who couldn't bear to go to these large events because I felt like I didn't pass at all, who felt like they didn't belong in any space offered to me. Frankly realising that it was cisheteronormative cultural and societal standards that had kept my identity repressed for so long as the actual culprit, rather than any possible threat from inside the community itself, was what gave me that push forward.
Again, I really don't think anyone here has even come close to suggesting ID for bi and non-passing (as much as I loathe to use that term) trans as well as non-binary folks to present at these events, like some of you have cracked wise about. Even the article itself says that trying to check the orientation alone of anybody at things like Pride is unfeasible and wrong. This is just painful critical thinking which I'll say again, I believe is sometimes necessary if we want to move forward together, especially when we're simply considering the role of cishet people in these matters and the concept of gaining all the dressings of assimilation and acceptance into mainstream culture without any of the actual day-to-day benefits and safety nets to protect us.
I'm going to give Target a pass because apparently they're losing money over the bathroom stuff and there's been pressure on the CEO to reconsider but he hasn't caved yet.
Not going to begrudge a company that is actually putting something on the line for their principles.
EDIT: Maybe I should just praise that specific dude instead of the company as a whole
some of the pressure has come from threats of violence and at least one attempted bombing as a response to their policy
I am super not well informed well enough (either academically or from experience) about this issue to give constructive criticism. But... maybe both sides of the argument should stop putting words into each-other's mouths? Cause like that's just gonna get people pissed while circling around what you actually want to discuss.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Does anyone else think that the LGBT thread getting completely dominated by talk about cishet people is incredibly ironic?
Does anyone else think that the LGBT thread getting completely dominated by talk about cishet people is incredibly ironic?
Sadly it's not even an uncommon occurrence.
True but in this case the talk was (or at least seemed to me to be) mostly among LGBT people, rather than cisgender-hetero folks talking about themselves, which I think makes a difference, and how people in the minority feel about the way the majority interacts with them is important
It feels like it's pretty much impossible to reconcile Pride as a celebration of love and sexuality expression up against communities who are still facing a whole bunch of shit.
Trans people saying they're not safe being out at pride is kinda indicative of how alot of LGBT culture has come far in acceptance while trans people still face murder, violence and absurd legislation targetted at them.
And this is CLEARLY a conversation we all need to start having because we are coming close to some really scary ideas in here.
Also, to anyone and everyone who feels uncomfortable around cis het crowds, please don't take anything in this conversation as saying you are wrong to feel that way. I would be surprised if we don't all feel that way still and it's 100% understandable.
Came out to my tabletop/board gaming group recently. Forgot to post about how I was mulling that over for a few weeks, heh. Anyway it went super well! Probably helps a handful them are LGBT themselves! (Which was cool to learn!)
Now that pretty much leaves a handful of friends and the extended family to come out to... the latter of which is not going to be easy nor pleasant. Wheee.
A poster of typical "hot guy in jockstrap" pose:
- no mention of whether there's a cover for your event, or you're selling tickets at the door. It's Pride, so it's assumed there's a fee, but I had to find out from an outside source that was "giving away tickets" through their site that there is now obviously a charge to attend, and still no word of how much it'll cost
- it's being held in one of the smallest bars on the street
- on a Thursday night (granted, Friday is Canada Day, and most people will have it off)
For supposedly being one of the bigger international bear parties with events frequently around US and Canadian cities, they really did a poor job marketing this one. If it costs anything more than $10 to get in, my friends and I will not bother and just wander the street for a bit, then go and play boardgames somewhere.
Last time I visited my family we went out to dinner in Provincetown, MA and saw tons of posters and banners and such up for "Bear Week".
I got to joyfully tell my parents what they meant by that. It was pretty great. Me, just walkin' through the gayest little town in New England with my size and my beard... fun times!
Posts
Scenario A. I hear that some queer people are doing a thing at a lesbian bar. Maybe I show up. If someone happens to bring a cishet friend, or a bi girl brings her cishet boyfriend or something, I probably wouldn't really care as long as they're friendly and good-natured. Even if somebody turns out to be kind of a jerk I can probably feel reasonably assured that the venue will handle it well overall.
Scenario B. I hear that some queer people are doing a thing at an unspecialized bar which mostly caters to cishet people. It doesn't matter who goes because I'm going to be staying home; I just don't feel safe in the venue. ESPECIALLY when there will probably be a lot of drunk people around (drunk cishet men are pretty much #1 on the list of people I don't feel AT ALL safe around, unless we're counting esoteric stuff like white supremacists or Westborough Baptist Church members).
Pride, as a venue, has reached a critical mass of corporatization and cishet tourism that it's starting to resemble scenario B moreso than A. I'm not sure exactly what the solution is, but I think the problem is real and deserves acknowledgement. Especially when Pride is often put forth as a symbol of, or driving force behind, LGBT people being more accepted. If the most vulnerable groups of people feel the need to stay home from Pride because they don't feel safe, then they don't benefit from that acceptance and get left behind by the culture. Which kind of has a long history of happening!
I think that it's not enforceable at all, not without requiring everyone to fill out a giant survey beforehand (that is... broadcast to everyone else?).
Between friends or colleagues, including in discussion places like this, I think it's fine to say "Hey, cishet people, remember that Pride shouldn't revolve around you, and don't overshadow or co-opt this event in your attempts to show solidarity or have a good time." But the message will probably not reach the people it needs to the most. I'd venture to say just about everyone reading this thread has a general understanding of the purpose of Pride and at least understands the concerns around its commercialization or it becoming too "mainstream"
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
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Turns out, it's still a bad thing.
I think the onus of making sure that cishet people don't act out and center themselves at Pride should fall on the cishet people themselves
there's really no way for us lgbt folk to enforce any kind of standard on them without running the risk of marginalizing members of our own community
but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't ask or expect that cishet people stay in their lane and act like guests in our spaces, or that we shouldn't complain when we feel that they are centering themselves
and no, there isn't any way know with 100% certainty whether a person is cishet or queer
but I think it is possible to tell the people who are at Pride to celebrate queerness (be they lgbt or allies) vs the people who are there because they want an excuse to drink and party
and while there isn't anything wrong with drinking or partying per se, doing so without an appreciation for the fact that you are in a specifically queer space can lead to behaviors that make queer people feel marginalized or unsafe at their own celebration
and cishet people definitely do this, whether they intend to or not. All privileged people (speaking broadly, not about individuals) do this if they aren't careful. White people center themselves in black spaces. Cis people center themselves in trans spaces. It's baked into the way we are taught to interact with the world (I say "we" as a cis white queer man) and it takes a lot of care to not engage in it
I don't think it is out of line for queer people to ask that cishet people be aware of this when they come to Pride. And again, I mean on a broad cultural level, not an individual level. It's not cool to assume that a person is cishet and try to police their behavior. But I think it is okay and necessary for queer people to speak out broadly about things at Pride that make them uncomfortable
And I think it is essential that both queer and cishet people need to sit with those complaints and think about what we can do to make Pride better for queer people without spending all our energy dissecting and criticizing the complaints themselves
at the end of the day, Pride should be first, foremost, and above all a safe place to celebrate queerness, and we should all, queer and cishet ally alike, be trying to make that possible
Steam | Twitter
Yes. No. Maybe?
I mean, for all of its drawbacks, American culture chugs forward and assimilates everything it touches resulting in everything that was once not part of the "normal" now being the de facto "new normal." I don't think it's a uniquely American problem, but it's kind of inevitable that any cultural island in America will eventually become part of American culture unless there is a very concentrated and dedicated effort to prevent it from happening.
Like that's the only thing you do in public or that's the only place you do blow jobs?
The initial article was about how corporations and cishet folks have co-opted Pride in many cases as a general party, which sounds an awful lot like people appropriating a culture they don't belong to. Which is a real problem for the people who depended on that culture to be a space where they are safe from that "normal", which very explicitly does not make room for them.
It's the same problem you have with gentrification--it's the establishment coming in and taking away something that belongs to people the establishment does not care about, with no real regard for said people. Whether or not it's "inevitable" doesn't change the fact that it's a problem and it's something that should be addressed.
I honestly think what certain folks have been discussing is simply a hypothetical matter of keeping cishet people educated and in-check while we still apply some amount of scrutiny to the events that were made by and for us as a community at large. I really, aside from some poor wording choices that lead to implications in the article CJ initially posted, have not seen anyone in this thread trying to seriously suggest actual countermeasures or barriers to cishet people at Pride.
Personally I really think it comes down to educating, not like in any formal pre-Pride program, cishet people from individuals to groups to mainstream media. You teach them every single day who you are and what you're about through your life and opinions and you show them what this event actually means as both a historic gathering for folks still marginalised across the world, but also as a place that should be about acceptance and community. In saying that I'm not suggesting we only focus on our deaths and losses to hammer home the significance and long, painful road it's taken to get just this far, nobody has the mental and emotional strength to carry that weight everyday.
However if we're going to have the same amount of faith in cishet people who are genuinely coming to Pride as a form of support, then I think we can have some similar amount of faith in their ability to learn from us, over time, what they should take in account with their behaviour at such events as a bare minimum. No matter what the onus is on them, no one else in the LGBTQI community and I hope we can all agree on that.
Unfortunately no matter which way you slice it, this sort of introspection and re-examination of our events and cultural touchstones is always going to be painful, but I feel it's genuinely necessary if we want to maintain its significance to us as a minority community. I say all of this as a bi trans woman who couldn't bear to go to these large events because I felt like I didn't pass at all, who felt like they didn't belong in any space offered to me. Frankly realising that it was cisheteronormative cultural and societal standards that had kept my identity repressed for so long as the actual culprit, rather than any possible threat from inside the community itself, was what gave me that push forward.
Again, I really don't think anyone here has even come close to suggesting ID for bi and non-passing (as much as I loathe to use that term) trans as well as non-binary folks to present at these events, like some of you have cracked wise about. Even the article itself says that trying to check the orientation alone of anybody at things like Pride is unfeasible and wrong. This is just painful critical thinking which I'll say again, I believe is sometimes necessary if we want to move forward together, especially when we're simply considering the role of cishet people in these matters and the concept of gaining all the dressings of assimilation and acceptance into mainstream culture without any of the actual day-to-day benefits and safety nets to protect us.
Happy(?) note, the bombing wasn't related to Target's bathroom policy, it was someone who was bad at mixing drugs.
Sadly it's not even an uncommon occurrence.
The talk is about how the LGBT community is reacting to them, not "about cis het people".
Trans people saying they're not safe being out at pride is kinda indicative of how alot of LGBT culture has come far in acceptance while trans people still face murder, violence and absurd legislation targetted at them.
Also, to anyone and everyone who feels uncomfortable around cis het crowds, please don't take anything in this conversation as saying you are wrong to feel that way. I would be surprised if we don't all feel that way still and it's 100% understandable.
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Yes.
Came out to my tabletop/board gaming group recently. Forgot to post about how I was mulling that over for a few weeks, heh. Anyway it went super well! Probably helps a handful them are LGBT themselves! (Which was cool to learn!)
Now that pretty much leaves a handful of friends and the extended family to come out to... the latter of which is not going to be easy nor pleasant. Wheee.
Here are some things I did not know. Especially about bears.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160624-we-have-the-wrong-idea-about-males-females-and-sex
It is absolutely right and fine that you do this.
</cis-het>
Okay there's some really interesting stuff in that article.
Was expecting a different sense of "bears" than the article talked about, but informative none the less!
I didn't spend 25 years whoruming to not learn how to bait a link.
A poster of typical "hot guy in jockstrap" pose:
- no mention of whether there's a cover for your event, or you're selling tickets at the door. It's Pride, so it's assumed there's a fee, but I had to find out from an outside source that was "giving away tickets" through their site that there is now obviously a charge to attend, and still no word of how much it'll cost
- it's being held in one of the smallest bars on the street
- on a Thursday night (granted, Friday is Canada Day, and most people will have it off)
For supposedly being one of the bigger international bear parties with events frequently around US and Canadian cities, they really did a poor job marketing this one. If it costs anything more than $10 to get in, my friends and I will not bother and just wander the street for a bit, then go and play boardgames somewhere.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/29/two-transgender-candidates-both-named-misty-just-made-history-by-winning-house-and-senate-primaries/
[edit] though this statement seems a little ridiculous, "LGBT people tend to say: 'Aren't we past all the firsts?'"....|: |
I got to joyfully tell my parents what they meant by that. It was pretty great. Me, just walkin' through the gayest little town in New England with my size and my beard... fun times!
A queer party featuring boardgames or a party featuring queer boardgames or...?
But for me, it was a Tuesday
So when are you coming to Baltimore
I dunno. Driven through a couple times! I hear you have a nice aquarium.