On-Topic Is Being Counter Culture a Viable Choice for All Gay People?

[Rolyo85]

Mitch, I don't really have a problem with your perspective and most of what you say, but I can't agree with you on terminology and oversensitivity.

1. If you tell someone you are gay, they will NOT think you mean you're happy, and no amount of explanation that you mean happy will change that. In the same way, when we discuss behavior of gay males, "straight-acting" just has THAT meaning, and simply because you weren't aware of it (I can see how it might not be as popular a term in the UK as it is here), doesn't change that. You didn't know about it. Now you do. Let's move on, I suggest

2. "That's gay" is wrong. This is not about correctness and sensitivity, it's just not ok. I use it on occasion too, but it's different, because I am an obviously confident gay male, and any time I say it, there can't be any doubt that it's an intertextual joke. But the wide-spread use of the expression is not ok. Even for people who don't consciously hate gays, or maybe even like them, it still subconsciously reinforces the notion that "gay" is something to be laughed at, lame, wimpy, girly, pathetic. While as an eastern European I'd be the first to admit many things are geographical, this one absolutely isn't.


And in the end, some gay guys are just more feminine. It's not a statement, it's not culture, it's how they are. In previous decades and centuries they would hide it and mold themselves into stereotypes of masculinity as much as they could, but now they have the choice to be as they are. And while I am also attracted much more to masculinity (I am, after all, a child of the last two decades), there have been a lot of more feminine guys that I've found smoking hot. There is a difference between giving me feminine boyishness, and giving me girl. There are guys like that too. And they do nothing for me. But I am not ok with gay culture shunning them because they're not "chill" and "masc" enough...

 

[JayHawk]

did you honestly just say I say it but it is ok cause i am gay..... does that mean wanna be gays must say gey?

 

[Rolyo85]

did you honestly just say I say it but it is ok cause i am gay..... does that mean wanna be gays must say gey?

Um, no I said that to use the term "gay" when saying "lame", "silly" or any of the other meanings that pop culture uses it for, is only ok when you are gay yourself and thus make it self-deprecating. Because he was saying that "That's so gay" is ok because, um, they use it in the UK...

 

[Rolyo85]

Actually this usage is related specifically with homosexuality. It is bad, negative, less, so you can call bad, negative, less things "gay". Your examples are just as bad, even though they differ from how it's used in the states.

 

[bankside]

The expression "That's lame" is not intended to be insulting to "persons with reduced mobility" to use the more delicate phrase.
The conversational meaning today barely crosses paths with the meaning of that word at the time the phrase came into being, but people would at least recognize another meaning of the word "lame."

However a lot of people saying "I got ripped off! That asshole gypped me out of $100" would not even realize the ethnic slur behind the word "gypped." It's not that they "know what it means but didn't mean it in a rude way so lighten up." They have absolutely no idea that it could ever have been rude because they don't know the origins of the word.

Which brings us to "That's gay."

When I'm around people who I've noticed saying that before, I take a moment to complain about something useless by saying "This is the dumbest project we've been given so far. It's totally straight." The reaction is usually "What? Wait… Ohhh…Hahah….Hey! I think I should be insulted here!. Oh."

And then you don't usually hear "That's gay" out of them any more, because they've decided that even in good fun, it's insulting to hear "That's straight" used to describe something shitty and useless.

And it's not my call; people can say what they like, but it's interesting how straight people come to the conclusion that it's rude to say "that's gay" once they hear how it sounds when the shoe is on the other foot.

 

[Kulindahr]

If you're broken, it's not something inherently related to being gay. I don't know you, so I can't tell. But you ARE different. You might not feel different, but the differences are often subconscious and hard to see from the inside. They don't need to be visual or outward at all, but I can promise you that your mind works in a different way. It had no choice but to develop differently, growing up.

Kuli, I completely disagree that "heteronormative" is bogus. The entire mainstream gay culture right now is trying to be as "straight" as possible. And if you go on a hook up site, the heteronormativity becomes glaring.

They may be trying to be straight, but that's no different than a new generation of immigrants trying very hard to look native: it doesn't work, and all it achieves is making many people look like idiots. What follows it inevitably is a return to their own culture. Of course that culture has now been seasoned, if you will, by marinating in the wider culture, but in turn the wider culture has taken flavor from the immigrants, so what results when equilibrium is reached is a culture that is neither of the two from before.

Merely by trying to look hetero while many people know they aren't, they're participating in a process whereby culture will cease to be heteronormative (or homonormative) and become something new.

 

[Kulindahr]

You agree with Rolyo that every action you have taken has been a result of being a gay man?

Take a ship. Put a dent in the hull.

Every maneuver of that ship will be influenced by the dent in the hull. The only way the dent will make no difference in the steering of the ship will be if it's dead in the water -- except even then, the way it drifts and turns will be shaped by that dent. The ship will not, and cannot, function as it would without the dent.

 

[Kulindahr]

Wait do you deny that gay men are more promiscuous than straight men? It isn't some homophobic rant. It is reality. Whether that reality is based on the inability to marry or simply a different viewpoint on life is unknown until we have marriage but as Maxpowr posted above the idea of promiscuity has died in his view in Mass. (At least i think that is what he stated)

That reality is because straight men are after women.