I know you try. Or at least, I know that you think you try. I really do. But goddamn, you can make me so nonplussed and frustrated and angry sometimes, and I'm sure you have neither a clue nor ill intentions. So what am I supposed to do? Try to educate you and risk offending you? Or risk having you come back with a snappy comeback designed to break the tension through another laugh -- again at my expense? Should I leave the room? Should I smolder silently, oppressed into silence by friends and could-be-friends?
I see you nonchalantly bringing up your gay friends and family members to play a role in your "I'm not a bigot!" play whenever you know a gay person is in the room. I know exactly what you're doing, too, even if you don't. And it's awkward, and I feel embarrassed for you whenever you do it, even if you don't have the sense to be embarrassed about it yourself. Here's a bit of shocking news: having gay friends or gay family members doesn't magically make you aware, inoffensive, or somehow unable to oppress me.
Instead of protestations that "we're not like that", what would actually help would be for you to show that you aren't like that. Stop following up your diligent assertions that "I'm not homophobic" by laughing at jokes about how anal sex is inherently dirty, gross, or inappropriate. Stop asking pre-school-aged boys whether they have girlfriends. Stop talking about marriages as if they are a good thing or a universal experience. Stop attributing gender-normative or sexual traits to children too young to know what gender or sex is. Stop being shocked when those children are able to accept gay families and you aren't. Stop being surprised at what counts as anti-gay language. Just, stop.
Just because we don't say anything doesn't mean it's okay. It probably just means we aren't comfortable calling you on it. (It's quite insidious, really, the way that straight ignorance of causing LGBTQ people offense enables them sin repeatedly, but LGBTQ awareness of causing straight people offense will stop us from saying anything -- simply because we're more aware than you are about what's going to offend our hosts, friends, and peers. Straight privilege is such an ingenious system. I'd applaud its creator, if I wasn't busy being strangled by the creation.)
If you want to count yourself as an ally and not just another gay-oppressing asshole straight person who wants a PC reputation, then just fucking educate yourself and think a little. It's just a question of deciding that it matters to stop creating environments in which gay people are left out, made to feel guilty or abnormal, and/or positioned as utterly alone against a tide of chorusing problematic straight opinion. You can do it. You just have to care enough to try.
love,
the un-master, very baited
* * *
And god, but I know it's only going to get worse. The straights in my circle are marrying and having babies, which means an ever-increasing numbers of social engagements featuring the scintillating conversational topics of weddings, marriages, and children from a painfully terrible, heterosexist, anti-feminist vantage point. Someday, someday, I will have a utopia of feminist, actually gay-friendly social engagements. I kinda hope some of them can involve straights, but today? It's looking pretty bleak.
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