Posts tagged godless queer commie feminist

Typing this up so I’ll still remember tomorrow when I have the opportunity to bring this up in the relevant forum.

Last Thursday, I got into a debate about feminism with a dude. It wasn’t perhaps the best setting, but I think the conversation was still constructive. Later that day, the same guy said something blatantly false and homophobic and I kind of imploded in a pretty spectacular fashion.

Here’s why the second conversation was so awful:

I have no option but to take it personally when you make statements about “the gays.” Being gay is a part of me, so arguments you may feel are purely academic are actually personal to me. Maybe he didn’t know I was a queerist, but there were like twelve people in that room, the odds are not in his favour. That’s also part of the problem: straight people don’t seem to realise that not everyone is like them.

The other, equally frustrating, part of the situation was that almost everyone treated the second exchange like the first, even though they are fundamentally different. For them, the questions of whether Finland should join NATO and whether the president can be lgbtq+ may be roughly as emotionally engaging, and they don’t understand why not everyone can be so rational.

The thing is, this happens all the time. People talk about same-sex marriage, and seem taken aback when I point out that when they say they’re not sure two people of the same gender should be allowed to marry, what they’re saying is that they’re not sure I should be allowed to get married. They didn’t mean it like that!

Yeah, well, cheers. I don’t really have the option of seeing it like that.

Also: goddamn I’m sick of straight people telling me that being gay is okay and the my relationships are valid. Yeah, I know that, no one asked you. What do you expect me to say? Thanks, so are yours?

Guess who has two thumbs and a head cold and dramatically stormed out of an afternoon meeting today!

So there’s this guy at the hospital. He’s the kind of Republican (seriously, he said Finnish society is rotten and the US is way better) nerd whose opinions and taste in music come straight from the 80s. We got into a debate on feminism positive discrimination during a group. It was civil if heated, and I think the sort of discussion that is healthy and productive. He might not change his mind, but at least the other people around got to hear both sides.

Then, during a music therapy group, another guy played a song by a Finnish artist (who happens to be gay) and talked a little about how the song reminded him of his relationship to his wife. Invisible Mullet said something about how the artist couldn’t possibly be singing about a relationship like that, since he has a difficulty.

I obviously told him that being gay isn’t some sort of disability, and he replied with some story about a family friend of his turned out to have child pornography on his computer. I told him that homosexuality and pedophilia are two very different things, and then the discussion moved on.

Immediately after that we had a daily afternoon meeting, where there was a routine round of everyone saying something vague about their current state of mind. I said that I felt a bit iffy because being ill is tiring, and also that a comment during the previous group upset me. When it was his turn, he said something about being surprised about the backlash he got for some of his comments. I apologised if my debate style was aggressive, and the douche replied with “No, it’s alright, I just didn’t realise you were so sensitive.”

The staff was making noises about different opinions and this not being an appropriate venue for the conversation. This was the point where I started to tear up, but I still made a valiant effort to explain why being offended when someone basically calls your relationships inferior to straight people’s.

To which he responded by telling me to stop being so uptight about political correctness.

That was when I flounced, because the other option was screaming and/or punching something.

I’m mad at him for being a homophobic bucket of wank, a little angry at myself for re-enforcing his mental image of queers/women/feminists as humourless drama queens, and mostly so fucking frustrated.

I’m tired of hearing casual homophobic comments, but I’m even more tired and angered by people reacting to me calling it out as trying to start a debate and being unreasonable about a difference in opinion.

I can take different political views or values. In fact, I think debate on those issues is healthy and interesting. It’s just that when someone treats homosexuality like an illness, that’s not a difference in opinion. That’s someone being a colossal fucking cunt, and telling me to sit down and shut up adds to the problem.

henryviiisensuite:

and here we have the differences between women’s and boy’s/men’s tshirts

(Source: kinghenryv, via astudyinspock)