sosgemini said:

And I don't understand how one group who is persecuted because of a charecteristic they can't help cannot accept that another group who is persectuted for similar reasons would identify with them.

Lammastide said:

Because I'd never equate a way of life, a lifestyle, to someone's ethnic background. Hatred of any group obviously doesn't come from a place of rational thinking, and is evil in and of itself. But a lifestyle isn't analogous to a race of people. I think many people equate it because of some of the similar discrimination practices that unfortunately comes with the territory.

Supernova said:

But sexuality isn't a lifestyle... People aren't straight only when they engage in a heterosexual sex act any more than someone is gay when they engage in a homosexual sex act. We don't approach our sexuality as a lifestyle any more than straight people do. We feel what we feel. And "lifestyle" isnt' the gauge that people used when deciding who to persecute. My persecution began a decade and a half before I ever had sex....

.
[This message was edited Mon Nov 17 17:29:45 PST 2003 by SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy]

Supernova said:

I have to disagree with you on a couple grounds...

First, being gay doesn't necessarily connote a "lifestyle." Supa, for example (and excuse me for using you here, Supa), was harrassed as a gay school-age child -- that's long before he lived a defineable lifestyle different than that of any other school-age kid. He was tormented pretty much only because he had perceivable differences.

But even if a determinable lifestyle could be attached to sexual orientation (and I submit that one cannot... I've seen just about every variation you can think of), is this much different than the notion by many that black people lead some collective cultural "lifestyle?"

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Lammastide said:

And those perceivable differences, whether we agree or not that they are a way of life, are not analogous to a race of people. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Lammastide said:

Thank you Lam for once again perfectly summing up what I fail to say clearly throughout all my posts. The reason I would ever equate the 2 experiences is for the very fact that it wasn't my "lifestyle" that led to me being verbally and sometimes physically harrassed on literally a daily basis. I was singled out because I was feminine and on that basis can understand what someone of color may have gone through because of a clearly distiguishable characteristic that makes one a target of discrimination.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

yeah, i hear ya...i really do...i just, i dont know...maybe im just basing this from my perspectice...i guess i just cant relate to your circumstances...and i look at the severity of mistreating to blacks by this country...and i just cant agree that the abuse was on the same level...thanks for sharing your perspective though...it has made me think about things...

Supernova said:

It's best we do agree to disagree. But I'll be so presumputous as to guess what really gets your goat is that you think race is a biological factor and sexual orientation is a choice. Right? (Nevermind, you don't have to answer.)

sosgemini said:

I'm not saying I had it worse or that I had it better. But I am telling you that I was harrassed daily. I never felt safe. I was always frightened to go to school. I was always trying to figure out ways to avoid people. I locked myself in my bedroom because I was safe there. It was fucked up.

Not that there is anything that can take away the pain of racism, Black people at least had their families to count on, many gay people are hated by their own parents. Again, I'm not trying to diminish the black experience but...well as a gay man you probably know this firsthand, if not from your own family surely from people you've met or known who were rejected by their families. And again, "lifestyle isn't always a gauge because I know one man who was kicked out at 14 and another at 15, neither were sexually active at the time.

Not only is it presumptuous to think anything in this thread "gets my goat", it's VERY intresting in a paranoia kinda way.

Supernova said:

Having known Super for years, I can't actually say that I even know whether or not she thinks it's a choice. I can say that no matter her opinion, she's cool peeps.

Umm I'm gonna try to do this in a way that makes sense, these are just random thoughts that may or may not flow well together. I will do my best to edit as I proceed.

1. Comparative victimology never wins. Each and every experience is unique. They can NOT be inter-changeably used.

2. The persecution of homosexuals and the persecution of blacks has different origins and takes different forms.

With respect to Supa's example, I am not convinced that the harrassment experienced by a child from his or her peers can be equated with race-based discrimination. There are many children who are picked on regularly in school--the nerds, the weaklings, the poor, the not so smart, etc. It is a function of bullying...

But I guess at the origin of my thinking is questioning the validity of the notion of a "gay child" as an identity.

The development of homosexual as an identity label is fairly recent (like 20th century) and western (American/European) and obviously is predated by a long history of homosexual activity in various societies. Only recently has there been a move to construct/identify an actual identity that can be related to homosexuality.

And the attempt to do so has been rather complicated, facing support and resistance from both the straight and gay population. What exactly constitutes a "gay" identity? The difficulty in answering this question without resorting to static stereotypes that are limiting to both straights and gays make the issue of discrimination a difficulty one.

On issues such as legal recognition of marriage, family-based laws on adoption, custody, etc., it is quite easy to identify discriminatory practices that are rooted in society's moral traditions.

But in housing, employment, school admissions, police treatment, and other practices rooted in racial segregation practices that depend on appearance more than anything else, I am not convinced that the experiences of Black people can in any way be equated with that of gay White people, because I believe that the operative factor in these kinds of discriminatory practices is in fact perceived race, not sexuality.

And within the Black community the same moral traditions that are not friendly to homosexuality exist, just as within the gay White community the same racial segregation tradition can and does fluorish.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

I don't doubt that Supernova is cool peeps. Supernova, I've seen your threads and have no reason to think otherwise.

And while what I said is presumptuous, based on years of hearing this line of debate I don't think I'm too far off.

Still, I was rude and put words in your mouth. I apologize. It isn't like me.
[This message was edited Mon Nov 17 18:06:00 PST 2003 by Lammastide]

NuPwrSoul said:

I respect your opinions. But having 4 straight brothers, straight cousins etc... none of them endured anything remotely close to what I went through. It wasn't just at school, it was in my neighborhood, it was walking down the street, it was being in the store. School wasn't the only place that I experienced my torture.

I understand what you are saying about bullying but in my case, teachers sometimes did nothing to stop the abuse, one even going so far as telling me I deserved it. That was my 3rd grade teacher, I was 9.

I won't assert the experiences are the same, just that many gay people can identify with blacks struggle and pains more than you know.

And for the record, I'm mixed race, not simply white. My light skin didn't give me a whole hell of a lot of advantage as it relates to my childhood traumas....

.
[This message was edited Mon Nov 17 18:15:45 PST 2003 by SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy]

Lammastide said:

But see the issue of discrimination raises the specific question of what is the role of IDENTITY (perceived or real) in discriminatory practices and is IDENTITY inextricably linked to biology?

If someone is phenotypically Black but does not identify as Black, can they escape race-based discrimination? I doubt it.

If someone is biologically gay but does not identify as gay, can they escape anti-gay discrimination? Most likely yes.

NuPwrSoul said:

Most likely yes, but not all gay people escape it. A fair amount experience it on greivous levels. I think the ability to hide is the fork in the road that begins to separate the 2 experiences.

.
[This message was edited Mon Nov 17 18:19:30 PST 2003 by SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy]

This has certainly been a very interesting conversation. Thanks to all who contributed. And thank you RD for broaching the subject.

NuPwrSoul said:

NuPwrSoul, you rule! THIS is the type of exchange I love here on the org.

I have to eat dinner. I'll be back with a response in about 30 mins. or so.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

No, choice is not what I was getting at. But my theories on homosexuality are unorthodox, and if anybody's not secure enough in themselves to discuss without condescension what little I DID say about it already - they sure as hell ain't ready for anything else I may have added.

You guys are so cool! What a great thread.

I just want to say that I as one straight white guy from Australia I really appreciate the debate on this thread. I feel I learn alot. I mean this sincerely.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy

Please pardon my delay...

NuPwrSoul said:

Correct. Comparative victimology never wins, but neither does arranging discrete victimizations along a hierarchy of severity, as some attempt to do. As is your usual message, what’s more important from the standpoint of any consensus effort toward liberation is a focus on the ends, not the divisive means, of societal oppression.



Here I differ with you; or perhaps I agree with you, but think that a fixation on this point undercuts what I’ve understood your previous position to be. You are correct, many children – perhaps all – are picked on in school for any number of reasons, but children who are thought to be gay are picked on for the very same reason a racial minority child would be harassed in school – because they don’t fit the precepts of what has long been considered an “ideal” human (at least here in the USA): a compliant WASP. As no African American, Asian, Arab (or even, until the mid-1900s, a Southeastern European) kid can satisfy the White Anglo-Saxon criteria, no homosexual or Lesbian can satisfy the religious parameters of the Protestant criterion. To that extent, the angle from which we analyze and counter such xenophobic attacks can be effectively the same.



Of all the orgers I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with, certainly you know that the newness of a branch of study, or its Western trappings, doesn’t suggest the prior non-existence or provinciality of its subject.

Along lines near and dear to you, William E. Cross’ model of Nigrescence was introduced as late as 1971 in the U.S. But certainly struggles by individuals toward some personal identification and self-definition as a black person in any number of post-colonial multinational societies existed centuries before that… and even centuries before W.E.B. DuBois in 1903 suggested the existence of a “dual consciousness” of Africans in North America. These fairly new psychosocial analyses, like that of the complementary Negritude movement of 1930s France and Francophone Africa, didn’t at all suddenly create a new African diasporan consciousness or set off observable similarities among those sub-cultures; they simply, finally brought them to light.

Likewise, new studies of gay identity and culture echo age-old notions, accounts, literary and art findings, oral tradition and scholarship, both formally and anecdotally observed…

Back in the 1880s, Oscar Wilde stood as a very visible example of a person who boldly celebrated his non-heterosexuality not only in his infamous sexual exploits, but in his literary and scholarly work, neither of which had a focus on “homosexual activity” (i.e., gay sex). He is noted for having invoked a long legacy of homosexual cultural thought in aesthetics and philosophy that has existed as far back as classic Greece and Rome.

Before Wilde, German law student Karl Ulrich is credited with having coined the term “homosexual” with an 1864 study on fetal development. Piggybacking on embryology at the time that discovered babies of either sex begin with the same genital tissue formation, he theorized that the female biological/psychological “germ” could at times remain in a person that ultimately turned out to be male. The study, called Forschungen über das Rätsel der mannmännlichen Lie spoke to dynamics of same-sex psychological and emotional attraction as much as any physical gratification. Ulrich was imprisoned for countercultural Democratic views in Unified Germany, and his papers were taken by the Prussian police. Eventually, he fled Germany for Italy, but he was ridiculed for the rest of his life for his writings.

Farther back, several legal accounts from various countries tell of homosexual arrests due to long-term relationships as opposed to pointed incidents of “homosexual activity”: In one example, according to James Saslow in his book Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society, there is an account of two Venetian boatmen arrested in 1357 who had reportedly lived together for years. Certainly their documented relationship involved more than mere sex.

Even farther back, Islamic history tells of a Persian Sufi (mystic) poet, Rumi (1207–73), who fell in love with an ascetic named Shams al-Din. Rumi’s wife forced them to separate, but when they eventually reunited, friends acknowledged that their love was so mutual that no one could determine who was “the lover” and who was “the beloved.” Rumi’s friends and students murdered Shams, and Rumi’s poetry in his memory – he describes himself in at least one writing as “the moon,” and Sham as “the sun” – remains as part of Islamic and gay cultural literature. Also, I should point out here that there is little sexual component to these contributions -- if any at all -- because the Islamic mystical tradition held the virtue of Platonic interaction in very, very high reverence.

Even farther back, In Christian history, there are two saints named Sergius and Bacchus (about 300 A.D.). The pair were pre-Christian Roman soldiers and known homosexual lovers who were martyred for not worshipping the god Jupiter. Severus of Antioch wrote in the sixth century that "we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life.” Elsewhere, in an anonymous 10th century Greek account of their lives, St. Sergius is described as the "sweet companion and lover" of St. Bacchus. Even today, there is an icon of the two in the Kiev Art Museum taken from St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. It shows the two robed. Between them is a Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ, himself, is the pronubus. And I won't even mention the Old Testament's David and Jonathon.

Back even farther, a great many Greco-Roman artists left pieces celebrating the male form in both sexual and non-sexual ways – on urns, in temple sculpture, in frescoes. And the idealization of same-sex love and relationships is well documented in poetry, philosophy and even classical mythology, which, we should be reminded, details the very religion of the time and region. While much has been learned about the rite of Hellenistic men engaging in a sort of same-sex romantic apprenticeship with older mentors until time for them to take a wife, accounts also exist of homosexual relationships that continued throughout adulthood. This phenomenon is echoed in stories about central dieties like Artemis in Greek myth (Diana in Roman myth), Pallas Athene (Minerva), Zeus (Jupiter), Dionysus (Bacchus) and Apollo (Apollo) and many others, all of whom were said at times to have lovers (not read “mere sexual partners”) of the same sex. In the case of Dionysus, some ancient writers and orators even embellish stories about his innate bisexuality, having been born both of his earthly mother’s womb and his heavenly father’s thigh. They also mention his feminine demeanor and tendency even to dress as a female while simultaneously remaining as a symbol of virility and male potency. The poetess Sappho, who resided on the Isle of Lesbos, has left a rich legacy of poetry, much of which are romantic lyrics dedicated to other women. And in Plato’s Symposium, Pausanius suggests that love for males is the offspring of heavenly love, embodied by Aphrodite Urania, who is the daughter of the sky titan Uranus; while love for females is the offspring of common love, Aphrodite Pandeumia, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.

So many elements of a gay culture/identity, aside from mere sex acts, while newly revisited, are, in fact, not new at all. Only perhaps the nomenclature is.



In fact, you’re right, but understand that from the time of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic insurgences of Europe, Asia and North Africa until very recently in scattered parts of the Western world, homosexuality was necessarily clandestine – it was punishable by imprisonment or death. With that, the only possible means (risky in itself) of engaging one’s more comprehensive psychosexual nature if one was gay or lesbian was quick instances of sodomy on the sly. Just think about that for a minute: For over 1000 years (and even now in some parts of the world) it’s this singular expressive activity that was caught, punished and feverishly vilified, so it’s this behavior that makes up nearly the whole of what the world now knows about “what gay people do" and what they're all about.

As it were, though, I don't find the limitedness or stagnance of answering "What constitutes a gay identity?" to be a bad thing. If it's limited, that's because it probably should be -- free of just the sort of stereotypes you mention, as well as any sort of absurd political attachments either side may try to affix. If it's static, that's a good thing. Who needs ephemeral, temporal, subjective and confusing definitions of what "gayness" is? We've seen this sort of thing in the African diasporan community, and it only serves to divide us further.

As for an answer, gayness constitutes a deep-seated psycho-sexual-emotional attraction, desire and gratification by the aesthetic, ethos and sexuality of the same gender. A gay identity, then, simply suggests some self-recognized affiliation with the body of people who throughout time have engendered this sort of orientation. All else to me is frill.



Again, though, what’s the real difference between oppression based on perceived race and oppression based on perceived sexual/gender orientation? Both can be either very obvious or very deceiving. Both identities can be embraced or denied. Centuries of science suggest, but can neither confirm nor deny, the hard-and-fast biological markers of either. And even if science could empirically confirm the biological determinants of one and disprove those of the other, what bearing does either have on the welfare of a person who takes a baseball bat to the person who engenders them? Zero.

And while, again, instances of gay suffering and instances of African American…or Jewish…or Asian American…or disabled… or female… or impoverished (ad infinitum) suffering can never be said to be identical, certainly all groups have taken it on the chin far more than they should ever have had to.

Where gays and lesbians are regarded, the battle for equal domestic rights has been heavily trumpeted (as if that weren’t bad enough), but never think we haven’t also been denied housing, employment, school admission, proper police treatment, etc., based simply on whom we fall in love with…

Housing: According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, about a third of lesbian, gay and bisexual people have suffered some form of housing discrimination. Also, do a Google search about Fred Sternbach and Steve Miller, a gay florida couple who filed suit after being denied housing by a Boca Raton apartment complex, "The Royal Colonial," I think, for being gay.

Employment: See Shahar v. Bowers, regarding a Georgia attorney's suit for being fired from her law firm when her superiors learned she would be celebrating a private commitment ceremony with her longtime girlfriend.

School Admission: See "School will fight back: Baptist acdemy lost bid for vouchers over stance on gays," by Nancy Mitchell in the Oct. 22, 2003, Rocky Mountain News.

Police treatment: You’ve no doubt heard of Jeffrey Dahmer? Well, what many people might not know is that his first victim actually escaped, but was returned to Dahmer’s house naked, disoriented, unable to speak and bloodied by police, who said they thought the two “lovers” had just gotten into a "quarrel." Also, see “An Uneasy Existence,” an article by David Reyes that ran in the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 2, 1987.
[This message was edited Tue Nov 18 11:59:56 PST 2003 by Lammastide]

I would like to mention that somewhere the original inquiry of RD's thread got jacked.

GREAT thread.
Good read.

AaronUniversal said:

If your posts just reach ONE person, it's not in vain.
I value BOTH your insights and comments. They psuh me to think a bit further than my own little backyard, even if I do not agree with it all.

Allthough most times I do. You kewl peeps.
[This message was edited Tue Nov 18 1:32:26 PST 2003 by gooeythehamster]

I just skimmed this thread...but I think it's way cool that rdhull is gay!

2the9s said:

ahh what the heck

Lammastide said:

Yeah, everyone dancing around the elephant in the room with these fucking essays and shit, like were at Yale etc.

rdhull said:

I live for this stuff! I feel like we're actually getting somewhere. It certainly beats "What's your favorite sexual position?" or "What's your dog's least favorite ice cream flavor?"
[This message was edited Tue Nov 18 8:56:03 PST 2003 by Lammastide]

Lammastide said:

I agree too, dont get me wrong. Im just sayin'...we can pontificate for days and write therories and personal testimonials...and it is all legit and wonderful as part of a dialogue. But there's still the matter of that darn elephant in the room that we keep tripping over.
[This message was edited Tue Nov 18 9:22:31 PST 2003 by rdhull]