Q of the Day

[asterroc]

What is the most anti-LGBT encounter/interaction you’ve ever had?

Whether you're straight, gay, ally, queer, heteronormative, whatever, I'm curious what you've experienced. You're [always] welcome to do it anonymously if you don't want your name on it.

I haven't experienced/witnessed any physical violence. Besides being glad it hasn't happened, I'm glad for my own safety. I really hate anger in other people, and I can't stand losing my temper, and what makes me do it is biases against my people. I may not be LGBT myself, but I'm an ally and I've enough peeps who are that it would make me snap.

Students of mine use "that's so gay" all the time, and I usually make it a point to comment that it's not appropriate to say things like that, use the term in that manner, just like I would if someone used the N-word in my class, or if they called someone girly. Worst is when I had a coworker tell me when I was arguing for LGBT rights that we had more important issues to be fighting for. The individual in question is heteronormative rather than outright heterosexist I believe. It's frustrating. Blinders for their specific bias/diversity issues.

Thanks to xtina_rss for the meme.

Comments

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

"that's so gay" is about as homophobic as i've encountered, too. i'm lucky, i guess. 05.2, CTY Halloween, i was sitting at an activity with my arm around Beans, and this jerk [who continued to bug us for the rest of the session] walks up to us, gives us a weird look, mutters "what the hell" and walks away. although the "what the hell" could have been in reference to the fact that i was dressed as Draco Malfoy and she was Emo Harry Potter.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

When people say "that's so gay" online, I post the following (NSFW): http://www.gemini6ice.com/lj/gay-hotshot.jpg

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* Now I want to go around saying "that's so straight."

[blue102.livejournal.com]

Off-topic, but it also makes me really angry when people say "That's so retarded".

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

*nods* It doesn't push my buttons quite the same way, but I do try to discourage it as well.

My high school (grades 7-12) had a mentorship program where 10's could be Big Sibs to 7's and 8's. I got a 7th grade class, and one of the girls her older brother was running for school president, and he had epilepsy. He actually had a seizure during the election debate. One day a student in the class called another a spaz, and the girl in question came to me later and asked me what that insult meant. It put insults in an entirely different light for me. She honestly didn't know, and I did explain it to her, but it was awkward.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I've had some rather weird conversations with ignorant, but well-intentioned people. My mother, for instance, once told me that all women thought that women were sexy but that didn't make them bisexual, and that bisexual women weren't really bisexual if they ended up with men. Once, when I was depressed in high school, she asked me if I was depressed because I was a lesbian (!). She also got very upset when she learned one of my boyfriends was bisexual because she thought he would give me HIV (nevermind that he was a virgin until we started dating, and we were monogamous at the time!).

I think actually meeting someone who thought that homosexuality was a serious sin was a kind of intense experience, and I am at least glad that that person was otherwise pretty nice and also openly condemned people who were mean to gay people.

Other people I know have had much worse experiences. One had swim teammates who wouldn't let her in the locker room until they'd all finished changing, because she was a lesbian. Another, when marching in a gay pride march, had actually had a counter-protester grab her pride ring necklace and yank them in a possible attempt to sort of strangle her. She was incredibly jumpy about people, even friends, touching her pride rings after that.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I forgot about some things my Mom has said. She thinks that my having a short haircut will make people think I'm a lesbian, and that worries her. She doesn't say whether it's that she doesn't want me to be lesbian or she thinks I'd get hurt. She always says explicitly aloud that she'd be supportive, but then again she said last year or something that she thinks gay people are more likely to be child abusers. This was said in context of the Catholic priests, but then I named one of her former students who we both knew was lesbian and asked Mom if she thought that woman was more likely to be a child abuser than me.

[blue102.livejournal.com]

heh... I like the idea of saying "that's so straight!"

Outside the Mormon church, my workplace is one of the least sexually tolerant places I've ever been (I work for a defense contractor). We have a transsexual working in another building. She's beautiful and extremely intelligent, but the whole first week she was there, groups of people in my building went on little scouting trips to "check out the tranny", then came back guffawing and making really awful comments. I also had people in management tell me how they thought she shouldn't be working there, solely on the basis of her gender identity - and as I'm not any sort of management, they shouldn't be talking to me about that at all.

The upside is that she's established herself as the brilliant, capable, and friendly radar expert that she is, and the fuss has died down, for the most part.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

That's re-fucking-diculous! Just like your gender doesn't affect how good a physicist you are, neither does hers! That's just so... straight!

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Two summers ago, my two roommates both sublet their rooms for the summer because their summer jobs sent them elsewhere. One of the subletters became a very close friend of mine (Roommate A). The other... not so much (Roommate B).

Roommate A had to leave New York halfway through the summer, when her plans changed. She found a replacement, a nice young man who had just transferred to Columbia and needed a place to stay until school started.

So picture the three of us roommates, sitting around the kitchen talking about our day and discussing our plans for the near future. And Roommate A mentions that she suspected that her replacement was gay. She wasn't sure, but it was a possibility and she wanted it to be mentioned. (It must be noted that all three of us were, to some degree, religious Jews, but I was the most observant of the three. Thus, from a certain point of view, I was the one to whom the warning was mostly being directed.) I thought about it for a moment, shrugged, and said I had no problem with it. Roommate B flipped out. Absolutely flipped out. We had to spend the rest of the night trying to convince him that the new roommate wouldn't try to rape him but more importantly trying to convince him not to say anything homophobic in the new roommate's presence. And when the night was over, we were not totally convinced that we could rely on him to show that simplest amount of tact. He was just that freaked out at the possibility of living in the same apartment with a homosexual man.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Oh my. Would he have been ok w/ a fugly nympho woman?