Lgbt

"Class, however, is particularly problematic in the case of Asian gay men. However, it is not so much the kinds of attitudes that Asian gay men have about the class hierarchy (from field experiences, they are more conscious and reverential of class differences) but the imputation of erroneous class assignations to Asian Americans in general. As the so-called model minority group, Asians in the United States are seen as upwardly mobile and occupy a tier just below Caucasians in economic resources and mobility. As a mostly immigrant group, Asians in New York City face particular challenges. While they are generally portrayed as economically prosperous, their immigrant status is often interpreted as lacking or as being deficient in cultural capital such as fluency in English. Informants often told me that Asians are regularly perceived to be naive and innocent of the trappings of gay and Western attitudes and guile. These images tie into the kind of pseudo-pedophilic view of the Asian body as both feminine and childlike."

"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

"In the eyes of Castro and his revolutionary comrade Che Guevara — who frequently referred to gay men as maricones, “faggots” — homosexuality was inherently counterrevolutionary, a bourgeois decadence."

"Some therapists overdiagnose depression in gay men. They pathologize behavior that is normal for this population… Other therapists underdiagnose depression in gay men. They think gay men are unhappy because they are gay, when in fact they are unhappy because they are depressed."

"One cause of the marginalization of black gay men was what scholars refer to as homophobia, or the fear and loathing of subjects identified as gay or lesbian. Early theorists of homophobia linked antipathy to sexual minorities with the ideology of misogyny in a way that tended to obscure additional factors of race and color, while other attempts to connect the two forms of discrimination resulted in an explanation that stressed psychological impulses “rooted in moral attitudes.” Because most historical interpretations of homophobia center on the punishment of the sodomite or, later, the public behavior of the homosexual, they overlook the multiple prejudices converging on subjects living at the intersection of racial and sexual marginalization. Whether they were partnered or celibate, masculine or effeminate, active or passive, black gay men fought not only for civil rights and the end to homophobic discrimination but also against more subtle forms of prejudice that resulted in distancing and disrespect."

"Gay men are often forced to internalize identities that conform to traditional hegemonic conceptualizations of how society believes masculinity should be portrayed. Consequently, gay men are presented with many challenges that prevent them from seeking seeking out their true identities or finding their true selves. For some, identifying as a gay man is not a clear or easy decision."

"The term “homophobia” served to shift the focus from gay people (as alleged perpetrators of immorality) to homophobes who harbor an irrational fear of gay people and, thus, express prejudice against them. Although the term facilitated a shift in social representations of homosexuality, its accuracy in capturing the nature of prejudice against gay men has been the subject of debate. It must be noted that not everyone who manifests hostility towards gay men is necessarily fearful of gay men or of being “in close quarters” with them. Several studies indicate that other negative affective responses, such as anger and disgust, rather than fear, characterize responses to gay men."

"Despite the South’s history of racial segregation and religious fundamentalism, black gay men have carved out a space in which to live productive and fulfilling lives. While they may feel that some things about living where they do are not ideal, they nonetheless have made a conscious choice to remain in the South even in the face of great migrations of many gay men to urban spaces in the North, Midwest, and West and even in light of southerners’ continued conservative attitudes toward racial and sexual minorities."

"Friendship networks are the avenues through which gay social worlds are constructed, the sites upon which gay men’s identities and communities are formed and where the quotidian dimensions of our lives are carried out. It is through the grounded relationships with friends that the personal and the political, the micro and the macro, the individual and the collective, all come together. Friendship may be the central organizing element of gay men’s lives - the mechanism through which gay masculinities, gay identities, gay cultures, and gay neighborhoods get created, transformed, maintained, and reproduced."

"“There are ordinary virile men who just happen to desire other men but are in all other respects entirely ‘normal;' then there are disgusting, effeminate fairies.” This brand of homophobia is unique to gay men (straights do not thus distinguish) and when voiced is meant as a plea to the straight majority, based on a rejection of the effeminate. The “straight-acting” gay man (this term can still be seen in contact ads) asks for acceptance from straight society, and the price that he thinks might be sufficient for this (of course it never is) is betrayal of his fellows. In effect, he says: “I am not like them I am just like you. My being like you is proved by my hating them.”"

"To speak, as we do today, of homosexual individuals would have been quite incomprehensible little more than a century ago. The notion that individuals might be arrayed along a spectrum of hetero-homosexual experience was outrageous when it was put forward in the 1940s. The revolutionary proclamation of gay pride in the 1970s was breathtaking in its audacity… Equally, it is important to situate the responses of gay and bisexual men to AIDS in the 1980s in a very specific historical moment. It is impossible to appreciate the range and complexity of gay men’s responses without some understanding of the community which produced and nurtured them. It is equally impossible to understand the political preoccupations of the gay community with regard to testing, treatment and access to healthcare without an appreciation of the historical relationship between the communities and the medical profession."

"Homosexuality is a sickness, just as are baby-rape or wanting to become the head of ."

"Although gay males were largely without maps for guidance in building their lives at midcentury, with each subsequent decade thereafter, maps of various sorts began appearing: greatly increased visibility and acceptance of gay men, even a few of them in couples, in literature, popular culture, and real life: greatly increased opportunities for gay men to strengthen their own identities through interacting with one another in open acknowledgement of their sexuality. It would - it did - get better, for the gay males in couples, and for those living singly, but at midcentury nobody knew, sometimes feared even to dream, that would happen."

"Many Latino gay men may be quite competent in dealing and functioning within the mainstream gay culture, but affectively and emotionally they feel quite disconnected and ill-at-ease within it for a number of different reasons, ranging from non-standard physical appearance to institutionalized class and race discrimination practices within the gay community."

"Despite the negative stereotypes, most older gay men adapt as well, if not better, to aging than do straight-identified men… Overall, older gay men adjust better than heterosexual men because older gay men have learned to operate independent of traditional societal structures. That is, older gay men have developed coping skills to deal with societal stigma. Because our society tends to stigmatize the elderly, older gay men may be better prepared to cope with that stigma based on their years of living with the stigma of homosexuality."

"John Campbell similarly documented the important role of online spaces in gay men’s culture: focusing on gay Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels, he chronicled the importance of online spaces for gay community formation as well as for identity management and construction."

""Degenerate disorderly conduct," the offense for which the men at Koenig's were convicted, was the charge usually brought against gay men or lesbians found gathering on the streets or in public accommodations, or gay men trying to pick up other men [in 1920s' New York City]. The use of the disorderly-conduct law against gay people was consistent with the intent of the law, which effectively criminalized a wide range of non-normative behavior in public spaces, as defined by the dominant culture."

"Gay men often make friends with women they find attractive or beautiful. Contrary to the stereotype which holds that gay men are gay because they reject or hate women, many gay men have a real appreciation for beautiful women, whether she’s a movie star or his close friend. Gay men love women on many levels, and their simple, unabashed physical appreciation of their female friends is notable."

"Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?"

"I suppose I saw the apparently disproportionate presence of gay men in historic preservation as the stuff of stereotype. And so I failed to take it seriously. If outside of our sex lives we gays are just like straights, then it must be only a stereotypical illusion that gay men are inordinately drawn to being house restorers and antiquarians - or interior designers, florists, hair stylists, fashion designers, and so forth. Now it’s clear to me that gay men really are extraordinary attracted to these kinds of work. Rather than dismissing these realities as the stuff of stereotype, I see them as the stuff of archetype, significant truths worthy of exploration. Gay men are a prominent and highly talented presence in many female-dominated fields that revolve around creating, restoring, and preserving beauty, order, and continuity. It’s a phenomenon that seems to grow out of an essential gay difference."

"Fairies: Nature's attempt to get rid of soft boys by sterilizing them."

"Scholars writing about “not-women and not-men” have frequently drawn the conclusion that these “not-women and not-men” were this country’s first lesbians and gays. Williams (1992), Roscoe (1988), Allen (1981), and others have concluded that American Indian lesbian women and gay men are these “not-men and not-women” who have occurred among most if not all American Indian tribal groups."

"Many gay men have been subjected to bouts of name-calling, possibly from a time before they even realized what homosexuality was. The over-lexicalisation of pejorative terms for “gay man” which exist (for example: faggot, pansy, puff, shirt-lifter, brown-hatter, fairy, batty-boy, queer, etc.) is further testament to their status as “target.” Faced with verbal abuse from an early age, it is likely that some gay men would have responded by developing both a thick skin and superior ability to remark upon the weak spots or oddities of others."

"The policies of socialist and communist parties and regimes toward homosexuality have been at best ambivalent and often much worse; even so, many gay liberationists have espoused socialism. Indeed, from the first stirrings of homosexual emancipation, a number of its pioneers and most prominent advocates - Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany, Andre Gide in France, and Harry Hay in the United States, to name just three examples - placed their hopes for “liberty, equality, and fraternity” in socialism and resolutely adopted a leftist stance."

"The last and most painful thing I’ve learned from my contacts with gay men is how the war between the sexes looks from the other side. As embarrassing as it is, I finally had to concede that women engage in a lot of behavior that is homophobic or sexist, and that it is women who enforce much of the sexual repression of the children they raise. This doesn’t mean that I think women are equally responsible for their own oppression. Men get most of the goodies from the system and have the highest investment in keeping it running. But I no longer feel that all women are innocent victims, and all men are misogynist monsters."

"The existence of trans people ought to make everyone take a long hard look at their own dearly held ideas about gender, and wonder whether these ideas are quite as stable and certain as they once thought. This would be healthy. The distinction between men and women is often arbitrary. The distinction between ‘binary’ trans men and women and non-binary trans people is equally arbitrary and, in reality, the precise distinction between people we call cis and people we call trans isn’t rigid either. The fact that definitions can be so unstable is clearly deeply troubling to many – which is why it is easier to belittle challenges to binaries than to take on their contradictions, complications and exceptions. ‘We are all non-binary’ is potentially a radical new analysis for how we might reorder society, but conventionally it is used by gender critical feminists to mock those people making political demands to dismantle the binary’s imprint on our culture. Yet those critics provide no alternative for how we would otherwise emancipate society from binary gender stereotypes and roles. Once more, feminist hostility to non-binary people reasserts the notion of an inescapable biological sex that should be given more social and legal credence than a variant gender identity, a notion that merely replicates patriarchy’s own logic."

"Anti-trans feminists’ repeated claims that they were being silenced were in fact highly effective in getting their viewpoints aired on television, radio and in the press."

"There are some who hold onto rigid ideas of biological sex, but I do not expect feminists to be among them. When I hear people refer in code to “biology 101,” meaning the scientific basis of female and male sex difference, to claim that trans women are not “biologically women,” I want to offer in rebuke, “Biology 101? Patriarchy wrote that textbook!” and pass them a copy of Andrea Dworkin’s Woman Hating, a radical feminist text that supports transsexuals having access to surgery and hormones and challenges what she calls “the traditional biology of sexual difference” based on “two discrete biological sexes.” To be so-called gender critical while leaving traditional biology intact tightens rather than loosens the hold of a gender system on our bodies."

"The way we are all taught, from a young age, to make the link between visible biological sex traits and behaviour can be extremely powerful in shaping our intuitions about other people. This process of interpretation and the way it affects how we relate to and behave towards others is part of the system we call gender. Feminism, though, ought always to interrogate biological essentialism (the idea that a person’s nature or personality is innate; arising from, or connected to, their biological traits). The idea that anyone born with a penis is inherently more aggressive or violent because they have a penis is an anti-feminist idea: it actually suggests that male violence is linked to biological ‘essence’ and is therefore inevitable, immutable, perhaps not even truly men’s fault. Yet anti-trans feminism is forced to rely on biological essentialism in its insistence that there is too great a similarity between trans women and cis men for the former to be regarded legally and politically as women. Transphobic feminism often uses imagery connected to penises (imagined or real) belonging to trans women as a powerful rhetorical tool, to suggest that trans women are exhibiting aggression or entitlement or are a threat."

"Feminism must concern itself with radical possibilities for our future, a future in which gender-based violence and harm is abolished, freeing us all to lead more joyful lives. That cannot begin with barring the freedom to find other ways to look at, understand or do gender."

"TERF ... has expanded to include any woman worried that permitting men who “self-identify” as female to enter women’s changing rooms or refuges unchallenged makes her less safe. TERFs, according to trans activists, are evil. TERF is the new witch. Search on Twitter for "TERFs must die" or "burn in a fire, TERF" and behold a cauldron of violent vitriol. Before the meeting, a trans-woman posted: "Any idea where this is happening? I want to f*** some TERFs up, they are no better than fash [fascists]." Search "punch a TERF" and you will find crowing approval of what happened to Maria. So at Speakers’ Corner trans activists and feminists were chanting and taunting each other. Maria was taking photographs when an opponent grappled with her, snatched her camera and smashed it on the ground. Then a tall, male-bodied, hooded figure wearing make-up rushed over, hit her several times and as police arrived, ran away. I asked a young activist if she was OK with men smacking women: “It’s not a guy, you’re a piece of s*** and I’m happy they hit her”, came the reply. So when is it OK to punch a woman? When she won’t do what you want; when you don’t like what she says. Some things never change."

"Any U. S. politics, no matter how coalitional its compass, that identifies itself in terms of sexual orientation only (e.g., queer nation or lesbian and gay studies for example) will be a white-centered and dominated politics, since only white people in this society can afford to see their race as unmarked, as an irrelevant category of analysis."

"We’re not fighting for equality. None of these conflicts against systems of oppression are fights for equality. They are fights for accurate regard of supremacy. We’re better at sex than y’all. We’re better at art. We’re better at warfare. These are things carried in the old understandings of so-called, whatever-you-want-to-call-it: non-binary, queer, genderqueer, trans, gay, lesbian. Just like the neurodiverse peoples, these people are all sacred beings, superior to other beings."

"To attempt to occupy a place as speaking subject within the traditional gender frame is to become complicit in the discourse which one wishes to deconstruct."

"The existence of trans people ought to make everyone take a long hard look at their own dearly held ideas about gender, and wonder whether these ideas are quite as stable and certain as they once thought. This would be healthy. The distinction between men and women is often arbitrary. The distinction between ‘binary’ trans men and women and non-binary trans people is equally arbitrary and, in reality, the precise distinction between people we call cis and people we call trans isn’t rigid either. The fact that definitions can be so unstable is clearly deeply troubling to many – which is why it is easier to belittle challenges to binaries than to take on their contradictions, complications and exceptions. ‘We are all non-binary’ is potentially a radical new analysis for how we might reorder society, but conventionally it is used by gender critical feminists to mock those people making political demands to dismantle the binary’s imprint on our culture. Yet those critics provide no alternative for how we would otherwise emancipate society from binary gender stereotypes and roles. Once more, feminist hostility to non-binary people reasserts the notion of an inescapable biological sex that should be given more social and legal credence than a variant gender identity, a notion that merely replicates patriarchy’s own logic."

"Transsexuals for whom gender identity is something different from and perhaps irrelevant to physical genitalia are occulted by those for whom the power of the medical/psychological establishments, and their ability to act as gatekeepers for cultural norms, is the final authority for what counts as a culturally intelligible body."

"I'm non-binary, which means it's not just that I'm challenging the binary between male, female, man, woman, but between us and them. And in your statement, you said, "why don't I help them", as if this struggle is not your struggle too. The reason you don't fight for me is because you're not fighting for yourself fully. And any movement that's trying to emancipate men from the shackles of heteropatriarchy or emancipate women from traditional gender ideology has to have trans and non-binary people at the forefront, because we are actually the most honest. We're tracing the root, where did these ideas of manhood and womanhood come from? They come from a binary structure, and so that's why people like me, who are visibly gender nonconforming, who are both feminine and masculine and none of the above, we experience the brunt of all of these collective fantasies that were created that are killing other people, that are also killing us, it just looks different. And so one of the things that I try to do in my work is say, "don't show up for me because you wanna protect me, or you wanna help me. I don't need your help. I have an unshakeable and irrevocable sense of who I am, because I am divine." [...] I don't need to be legitimized, or I don't have anything to prove. What I want us to rephrase the conversation is, are you ready to heal? And I don't think the majority of people are ready to heal, and that's why they repress us as trans and gender variant people, because they've done this violence to themselves first. They've repressed their own femininity, they've repressed their own gender non-conformity, they've repressed their own ambivalence, they've repressed their own creativity. And so when they see us have the audacity to live a life without compromise, where we say there are no trade-offs, where we say we actually get to carve in a marrow of this earth and create our own goddamn beauty, instead of saying "thank you for teaching me another way to live", they try to disappear us because they did that to themselves first."

"When non-binary people ask for legal recognition or a rethinking of gendered language (for instance through neutral pronouns, or new words for new genders), they are asking for more freedom for us all. In one sense, the claim that everyone is non-binary isn’t wrong: the binary is a powerful and pervasive myth, and everyone is somewhere on a spectrum. ‘Non-binary’ is only useful insofar as it is a term which can be used to make such ideas legible to policymakers, families, schools and societies. It is a term designed to make conversation easier; it is not the end point."

"I came out as gay to Scarlett first moment alone when she was recovering at the hospital. "I love you, Val" was all Scarlett said out loud, and her knowing gaze said everything else. I'd wanted to come out to my parents that afternoon too, but they spent so much time praying at my sister's bedside that I knew I should wait. A couple days after Scarlett was home, I knew I had to make my move so I could get everyone to adjust to our new normal instead of returning to our old normal, where I had to be closeted. I sat my parents down in the living room and came right out with false confidence. It was tricky to tell if they already knew. I had thought about all the times my father would say "He's a queer" as an insult or how my mother suspected any single older man must be gay if they weren't married with kids. There weren't any knowing gazes from my parents like there were with my sister. But there were lectures- lots and lots of lectures with the headline being that I'm doomed to damnation if I choose sinning over Christ. Will my parents still tell me I'm going to Hell once they discover it's my End Day? I'll get my answer soon."

"Funny how unimportant being gay became once I told somebody. All I had to do was open up to my best friend, and when she accepted it I saw that I could as well."

"The initial shock of coming out was strange and a bit uncomfortable. But after a few weeks, everything got so much better. The best way to describe it is that I simply felt light, free of a burdensome secret that was weighing on not only my mind but my entire being. After I was able to utter the words "I am gay" to other people, I was overcome with relief, as if saying those words purged built-in toxins from my body. I felt alive again. Healed from the inside. Renewed. Empowered."

"The common experience of being gay is deeply individual. You discover your sexual identity yourself, your closet is your own, your coming out is individual. Coming out represents a decision to transform one's life from the inside out, choosing the natural over the conventional at great personal cost. The process of coming out is harrowing, but it can leave in its wake an unshakable core of certainty of self. Coming out is more than an acknowledgement, acceptance, or even announcement of one's sexual identity. It represents a continuing process founded on an act of compassion towards oneself - a compassion, alas, seldom shown by one's own family or friends, let alone society. That act is the acceptance of one's fundamental worth, including, and not despite, one's homosexuality, in the face of social condemnation and likely persecution. Coming out is the process through which one arrives at one's values the hard way, testing them against what one knows to be true about oneself. Gay men and lesbians must think about family, morality, nature, choice, freedom, and responsibility in ways most people never have to. Truly to come out, a gay person must become one of those human beings who, as psychiatrist Alice Miller writes, "wants to be true to themselves". Each gay man and woman has to come to terms with his or her homosexuality, decide whether to accept it, deny it, or try to change it, and face the consequences of the choice."

"Though the fact seems little known, the clitoris of one woman may be stimulated nearly as effectively by the vulva of another woman, as can the penis of a male with the vagina of the female. The female emotion resulting from stimulation of the clitoris by another woman (as apparent in the behavior of women prisoners) seems fully as extensive as the male emotion resulting from stimulation of the penis. In this type of physical relationship, both women most frequently experience simultaneous stimulation of the clitoris with appropriate emotional states following. Neither woman, of course, receives stimulation of the mouth of the vagina."

"That naughty old Sappho of Greece Said: “What I prefer to a piece Is to have my pudenda Rubbed hard by the enda The little pink nose of my niece.”"

"Being transgender is not a trend and transgender people have a history that spans centuries. Over the past few years, transgender visibility has increased dramatically, a sign that our society is becoming increasingly accepting of diverse gender identities. This is a positive sign, as more and more transgender people feel that they can live openly and receive support. Like the LGBTQ community has seen time and time again, increased visibility often leads to increased attacks by those who wish to shove us back in the closet. Lesbian, gay and bi+ young people should be free to declare their sexuality without others doubting them. The same should be true for young people who have a diverse gender identity."

"By reducing our movement for liberation to a system of commercial products and institutions—bars, publications, gyms, fashions, cruises, ... we become accomplices in an economic system that causes untold suffering for others. Not surprisingly, these others fail to see us as comrades in the struggle for justice."

"Speculation of whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take a case to overturn same-sex marriage at the federal level is mounting after embattled Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis pushed the effort as far up the legal chain as possible. Davis' attorney, Matthew Staver, previously told Newsweek he is optimistic the court will again rule on Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark case that guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage nationwide. William Powell, the attorney who represented the couple that sued Davis, previously wrote in a statement provided to Newsweek that he is "confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis' arguments do not merit further attention." Obergefell v. Hodges, as part of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in June 2015, guaranteed that same-sex couples can marry by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Prior the Court's ruling, equal rights and protections for same-sex marriage was already established in 36 states by statutes, court rulings, or voter initiatives. Davis made national headlines just two months after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. After being elected clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, in 2014, she was defeated by Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in 2018."

"Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some businesses may discriminate against LGBTQ+ people on First Amendment grounds, a Texas judge is once again arguing for her right to refuse to marry same-gender couples. Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco, has refused to sign marriage licenses for same-gender applicants for years. After the state Commission on Judicial Conduct sanctioned her in 2019 for refusing to perform her duties impartially, Hensley unsuccessfully sued the panel for damages, arguing she could not be compelled to violate her religious beliefs. Last week, the Texas Tribune reports, Hensley filed a petition with the Texas Supreme Court citing last month’s 303 Creative decision — which held that a private business could not be compelled to provide services related to same-gender weddings — as precedent to award her $10,000 in damages. The court agreed to revive Hensley’s suit against the commission in June, days before the 303 Creative decision was made public."

"The people of Virginia have spoken by a margin of 57-43. They’ve already enshrined in the Virginia Constitution that gay marriage is not permitted, so unless there is another effort to change the Constitution, that matter is settled. That is the law of the land and, look, reasonable people can disagree on these things. That’s what the law is now. That’s something that I support. That was the right decision."

"New Rule: Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex."