Monday 12 August 2013

Why Are We So Nasty To Each Other?....

I don't get my fellow gayelles these days.

When I came out in 1990  and went to my first gay club, people were friendly, engaging, and, very low on the attitude scale. Now, I find gays - in clubs, out of clubs, in the burbs, basically anywhere - ON THE WHOLE to be nasty, vicious, shallow, spiteful people.  When did this happen?

Or maybe the better question to ask is WHY did this happen?

I am often left bewildered by how dreadfully gays treat each other.  There is derision.  There is racism (and reverse racism).  There is ageism.  There is a serious lack of manners and basic civility.  Which, all in all, means we have now morphed into the worst thing we could have - we are MOSTLY a bunch of nasty, bitter, hateful homophobes.  We have internalised in our own community that which we have externally feared for generations.  We are now homophobes.

Now hate on me if you will - I have thick skin.  But I have NO OTHER EXPLANATION.

We - as Gay men - have become a bunch of men who hate other Gay men.  Hate on other Gay men.  And think up ways to DIVIDE ourselves as Gay men.  This eludes me.  We have the Christian Right in EVERY Western (and some Eastern) countries hating on us.  We have extremists and members of the general population in Russia and the Middle East torturing and killing gays.  We have the Aryan nation in many countries targeting gays and ANYONE of difference with violence and hate speech.  And yet, we hate on each other?

We have become homosexual homophobes.  I am lost.  Truly lost.

I am interested to hear your views.  As I have no rational explanation for this.

D
xox


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's because somewhere along the way, we didn't have a common cause to fight for.

As equality and acceptance grow, there is less to unite us other than our love of todger and bumfun.

with something to fight for, the different facets of our community came together...now those same subgroups are fighting and judging each other.

Anonymous said...

ps..

i think we've always been bitchy and mean (boys in the band anyone?), there are just more opportunities to not have anything to direct that anger and bitterness towards.

which is a huge insult to the legions of men and women who came before...they didn't fight for our right to hold hands safely in public just to have us turn on each other.

LeNair Xavier said...

Actually, I think you said it best in your post. Many in the gay community are "homosexual homophobes". They are carrying around the same guilt and shame that was instilled in them by the religious anti-gay right-wingers before they came out. So they put on a great FAKE face of loving themselves, but in actuality they don't. So it's the same chain of the abused becoming the abuser, the bullied becoming the bully, etc.

For instance, a gay MALE who really loves his gay male self makes an icon or idolizes a male music artist that symbolizes celebrating his manhood. Yet, the gay protocol is to dismiss gay male music artists who do just that. So instead, the "rule" is to love a Madonna, Beyonce, Britney, Lady Gaga, Cher, or any artist who sings songs they DON'T celebrate their manhood, but instead celebrate...womanhood?! And this naivete of gay males following that protocol leads to these female music "artists" using them as dimwitted cash cows.

Also, the gay media plays a great part in this also. Especially in regards to the rampant ageism and racism. For it's too seldom that gay media shows 2 healthy, well-maintained older gay males together. Instead, they show a young guy with daddy issues chasing after an old guy trying to recapture his youth by fucking it out of a younger guy. And the same with racism, the media shows this rule of "If you feel you must, fuck dark and dusk, but if you want to do right, forever admire light". This is instilled in us from some mainstream media first, and since the individual thinking of gay males never took form as I stated in the 1st paragraph, they then become easily convinced that this is the way to go.

With all that said, it's only the best of us who have cut those puppet strings from our anti-gay upbringings, and don't follow these credos where the abused becoming the abuser, the bullied becoming the bully, etc. For we are the few individual thinkers among us.

Lastly, I know this is as long as a blog post. For that, my apologies. I just wanted to be thorough in my commentary.

discodevil said...

Well I'm going to mention reality TV, where I sure some youth learn their social skills!

Damien said...

Thank you all for your comments. I think they all have facets that are contributing to what we are seeing.

Very keen to hear more from people.

Queer Heaven said...

An amazing post and lots of interesting comments.
Myself, I have no clear answer why this still goes on. I think a big part of it is that even totally out guys are not always comfortable with their friends know the type of guy they are having sex with.
And for some reason,even in this day.. there seems to be a real dislike for those who happen to be more flamboyant and fem.
....You see...I can't answer this any better that the others.

Anonymous said...

why indeed

Anonymous said...

You are not wrong, many gay men are homophobic. But this irrational gay hatred of each other does have a starting point, and the reason you're seeing so much of it today as opposed to 1990 can also be identified.

Firstly, the starting point comes from growing up in a culture that teaches people only one thing: to be heterosexual. So automatically, we gays are being taught to be something we are not, and that what we are is wrong. So that's where the gay hatred begins. It's not a coincidence that the most homophobic kids at school turn out to be gay - they are doing their best to deflect attention from their big secret but making sure everyone thinks they are king of the heteros (and what better way than to distance oneself from effeminate boys by attacking them).

As for why it is way more obvious now than it used to be, the answer is: the internet. In 1990 if you wanted to interact with other gays you had to 'come out' and go to the bars. As a result, you were in a space that was all gay, with no prying heterosexual eyes that policed you and criticised you for not conforming to heteronormative mandates. Being free of this gender policing is very liberating, and being liberated makes a person feel happy. Happy people are a lot nicer.

Fast forward 20 years and we have Grindr etc. No longer do people need to go out, they can just jump online. But the problem with this is they never experience that 'liberating feeling'. They are still stuck in their hetero hell-holes, where they are still feeling the need to 'pass', to 'act straight' in order to avoid the scrutiny of the hetero gaze. The problem with this is they then, in turn, treat other people with the same sort of scrutiny because they know nothing better: 'is he masc enough? is he behaving normal enough? is he too gay? is he acting like a queen? is he a real man?' All of this is incredibly deflating and acts as the opposite of liberation. And since most guys are now in the habit of meeting online, when they do actually go out, they bring their prejudices and their 'straight acting' with them. Added to this they've forgotten how to communicate verbally, so a lot of guys get onto Grindr even when they are in the gay bars!

So I think what you are experiencing is real - it definitely is "gay homophobia". It's just not a mystery, it's a combination of heterosexist upbringing with the deterritorialisation of gay spaces that comes with the advent of location-based apps.

What do you think?

Wonder Man said...

interesting comments