|
|
|
timmy
|
 |
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
|
|
|
We see these words all the time. The Gay Community.
Some of us have never met another gay person in our lives. That's nothing to be ashamed of, it;s just a fact.
Some of us are out and proud.
Some of us are peering round the closet door wondering when and whether to venture out
These are examples, only. For you what do the italicised words mean?
Do you feel part of a global and diverse group of gay men? Do you identify as LGBT, not simply gay?
Will you march in a Gay Pride parade? Or have you done so? Is that a community?
Is it a local thing, this community?
Do you join it, or were you always part of it?
If a gay person is hurt somewhere in the world, do you react as an individual, or not react at all, or react because a person has been hurt, not a gay person? Is that what community means to you?
Loads more questions here. Have a go.
[Updated on: Thu, 19 November 2009 00:45]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Is there a 'straight community'?
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I don't think I've ever really been part of it. So, with a pinch of salt:
I think that there are gay social groups, some of them based around gay pubs and clubs, which allow one to drop one's inhibitions and say what one thinks (when normally, in straight society one watches one's tongue so as not to upset people or have them get upset at you). When I was a Stonewall volunteer and when I helped with the local aids charity I was on the edge of this.
There is also 'the scene' which I think is more about picking up people for sex - and even more blatantly that the club scene for straights. But I've never been to a gay club and only twice to a gay pub that I know of.
A third 'group' which also might be thought of as a gay community is the much looser group of internet sites and gay press and bookshops. If that is what it is then I certainly am part of it.
But on the whole I'd suggest that all we are talking about the definition of a phrase that is loosely used and it's not really sensible to nail it down to a precise meaning. When we need to talk about groups of gay people it is quite easy to define the group at the time.
Were you hoping for revelatory insights, Timmy?
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
|
|
|
Insights? No.
But a little more, I think, than what you have said. I am wondering about insulation, self insulation, about whether we reach out or hide within. "We" may be as broad or narrow a church as you wish.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Macky
|
 |
Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
|
|
|
For most of my life, I thought I knew what the gay community was. I saw it as a group of people who was like me. I had an overblown idea of how similar the gay community would be to myself.
In the last couple of years, I've come to see how diverse the gay community really is. I'm impressed by how different I can be from other members of the gay community. So I no longer feel the false sense of family that I once felt towards gays.
There is as much diversity within the gay community as there is outside of it. It is not the comfortable family environment that I once envisioned. It made me realize that I have a whole set of foibles that has nothing to do with my being gay. It's all good. This realization removed the "belonging to a group" crutch that I always used. That frees me to to discover more about who I really am.
Macky
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
|
|
|
I think almost everyone one meets might qualify for that title. Or might not.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I still stick by my question 'Is there a straight community?' I'm just not sure whether it is rhetorical or not.
I feel part of the community that lives in my close. I feel part of the community of the various groups of people I meet with regularly.
But if/when I meet another gay man I do not feel that we form a community for me to feel part of, and doubt whether a straight man meeting another straight man feels any bond with him based on the fact that they are both straight.
On the other hand if a gay man sets out to surround himself as far as possible with gay male friends, then that could be called a community.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I think I pretty much agree with you, Anthony.
Fortunately, it's a phrase I'm hearing less and less of. As individual gay men (and bisexuals and lesbians) feel more free to be "out", the diversity of the kinds of people that see themselves as "gay" becomes more and more apparent, as Macky says.
Actually, I'm hearing a lot less of the phrase " the xxx community" in all kinds of respects - especially "the Asian community", as it becomes increasingly clear here that the values and norms of the first-generation "elders and community leaders" are increasingly at variance with the second and third generation's expectations and attitudes.
All a good thing, I think. Let's scrap the monolithic "the xxx community" in favour of starting to think "many (but not all) xxx's ..."
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
|
|
|
It's odd how we skirt around things. I'll tell you what the words mean to me.
Almost nothing at all.
When I discovered, or at least started to admit to myself, that I am gay, i hoped for a community which would embrace me and my many foibles. There was none. Instead I found hostility on a messageboard that I used to frequent because I can't be gay because I married a woman and have a son.
I wasn't looking for hostility, I was looking for recognition, perhaps comfort.
I opened my eyes somewhat and discovered that communities polarise things. They can be good, like a small English village appears to be. Appears to be. Or they can be self ghettoisation, like the black, Asian, Jewish, Polis, immigrant communities - polarised out of necessity of language and survival in a new land, and bonded by a common birthright.
Well, English village live is not even as pleasant as Miss Marple would have us believe, and I do not have a common birthright with gay people. They, and I, happen to be gay. I would visit them in order to have some sort of social interaction, but I see no community.
I looked, then, at Brighton - famous for its cosmopolitan life and its gay pubs and clubs and bars, its gay sector, if you like.
Brighton claims a Gay Community, and it runs a very good Gay Pride event which brings gay folk from all over the country together. NW and I were in the parade, Deeej and a friend joined us for a while. I think we will all agree that there was no community, just a disparate group of folk who were similarly oriented.
Later, for fun, Deeej and I marched in the Reading Pride march. he and I got, as you would expect, different things from it. He has more chance of joining the Reading Gay Community, of such there be, than I. He is hoping for love and affection. I have mine elsewhere. But that is the key. Joining is what one has to do.
And what does one join? A list of pubs, bars and dating events? Places to get a blow job in the toilet? Tawdry encounter groups? A choir? A theatre group?
Surely these things are artificial social groups of people who really ought to be doing these things in the full world, not some slightly suspect "gay world".
So the words mean very little to me as a place, a group, of refuge, nor do they mean anything as a social scene. Social scenes are not my scene (baby!)
But what I find important is to stand up and be counted as a person who espouses Human RIghts. I don;t have the bandwidth to espouse every cause, but I can espouse those that might affect me negatively. So I state my objection to Iranian state sanctioned murder of gay kids. I state my opposition to the Atlanta Eagle bar raids. I state my opinion about the Purdue University blogger who is being pilloried for his blog about the economic cost of homosexuality (Paradoxically in his favour, though not in favour of his opinion). I lobbied for Gay Marriage, though I find the term incorrect. I blog about gay matters intermixed with other matters. I run a website that encourages opinions to be formed by discussing them, yes even the undiscussable.
To me that is what being a member of this amorphous thing, the Gay Community, is all about. I have no membership card. There are no premises. I attend no social functions (I attended two Pride parades to meet my own needs, not theirs, though I donated money to each). I'm neither proud nor ashamed to be a gay man, but I will stand up and be counted as one when I view it as important. I will hold my peace less and less frequently, partly because I am now unafraid, and partly because I wish to push back things which may oppress me.
But my Gay Community is a community of one. And mine joins with other communities of one to make a persuasive and powerful lobby.
It is by our very ordinariness that we have power.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
