Re: Is this anti-homophobia tactic sound?

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 03:12:11PM -0800, kellan wrote:
> I think as tactic to get a person to talk about their homophobia and work
> through it, this would be a bad one.  Not something you want to use next
> time your leading a mens group.

Heh, certainly not, but homophobic displays in that context are rarely as
vehement. And usually (at least after the initial meeting) you aren't in
such a group with *total* strangers.

> However, a public mailing list is not going to be the place to have that
> conversation, and someone posting under the moniker "Uncle Bob" hasn't
> exactly approached the group with any sort of trust, and desire to learn.

Well, people have weird Internet nicknames, I didn't really put any stock
into the "Uncle Bob" bit.

However, I take it to be an extremely hostile and significant act when
people go off to total strangers in just the way that "he" (presumably) did,
especially since it was directed specifically at the question of Dru's
sexual ambiguity.

In other words, I wouldn't use this tactic in response to *any* and all
gay-bashing, but this instance seemed very much the expression of a deeply
repressed, perhaps gay man, that I thought it was *potentially* appropriate.
But since I wasn't sure I sought out some advice from others.

> I think its a fine tactic to use in a hostile situation, and one that
> injects a bit of humor (at least on our side) into the situation.  It
> turns, as Bijan points out, on ones one conception of homosexuality, it
> would *never* occur to me that pointing to this statistic is homophobic,
> and certainly not on Bonobos.  (Where we have just been subjected to one
> of the more subversive critiques of Christianity I've run into recently :)

Subjected to... hehe, well, sometimes I just can't help it. :>

But, seriously, I would hope that, having just published after editing (and
I think Dru can confirm that I edited his piece to make it more politically
biting, rather than pulling its teeth) Dru's piece and responded in some
detail to religiously-couched homophobic bigotry, I might get some benefit
of lingering doubts about my sincerity and my claims to it. (Which had as
their point not some coloration of how Uncle Bob would take up my
hypothetical response but, rather, precisely foreclosing the idea that I was
responding in any sort of glib or flip or sarcastic way. I wasn't.)

But what else are you going to do by way of responding? I don't find simply
ignoring it to be very (personally) satisfying nor politically appropriate.

> Also, I think it would be false to put it in some ghetto as a "gay only
> tactic", that merely plays into the idea that there is some strong divide
> between straight and gay.  If society looks at you and sees "straight
> man", maybe it time to show up to a few more ActUp events, and keep them
> guessing, until they stop perceiving a dichotomy.

Well, yes and no. Not every tactic is appropriate for every person to use, I
think. Ones that appeal to the subjective, first-person experience of
systematic oppression are, in my view, off limits to people like me. I might
report on the first-person accounts of others, minimally, or, better,
*point* to such reports. But I can't make such a report.

There are likely other tactics that are appropriate for people who are
identified with socially oppressed groups and the like.

But this tactic doesn't seem to be one of those. The empirical likelihood of
gay bashers being repressed about their desire is, if it's trustworthy at
all, to my way of thinking a public fact that anyone can appeal to.

At least, that's how it seemed to me and I have yet to hear anything that
suggests otherwise at all persuasively.  *However*, I would like to hear
from others, especially if they think it's a tactic straight guys like are
best off avoiding.

Best,
Kendall