I'm gay, so why do I find the LGBT community more offensive than supportive

[SolemnBoy]

I have similar feelings about Pride, but not for the same reasons. I believe a society can reach the point where the existence of a pride parade is no longer needed and has become rather excessive. As far as I'm concerned several countries have already reached this stage and for them it's time to create a "gay is part of everyday, normal life" mentality rather than a "I'M GAY AND PROUD IN YOUR FACE" mentality.

[Englishman]

I agree Krupt.

[OrphanPip]

Personally, I think your complaints are asinine. The mainstreaming instinct isn't about rights but about becoming part of the in crowd so that you can stand with the moral majority and be indignant about everyone who isn't like you. What is the goal of the gay rights movement? Is it to become part of the same system of sexual discrimination and moral oppressiveness, or is it to really change the landscape of sexual politics? I'd like to hope it would have been the latter. But unfortunately the movement has been increasingly coopted by the self-absorbed, middle-class, white queer who really deep down just wants daddy's approval.

[SolemnBoy]

Personally, I think your complaints are asinine. The mainstreaming instinct isn't about rights but about becoming part of the in crowd so that you can stand with the moral majority and be indignant about everyone who isn't like you. What is the goal of the gay rights movement? Is it to become part of the same system of sexual discrimination and moral oppressiveness, or is it to really change the landscape of sexual politics? I'd like to hope it would have been the latter. But unfortunately the movement has been increasingly coopted by the self-absorbed, middle-class, white queer who really deep down just wants daddy's approval.

I can see where you're coming from but my disregard for Pride parades is purely personal and I'd never even attempt to pose a threat to their existence. Obviously the notion that "the flamboyancy is annoying people and causing more homophobia" is ridiculous. The only thing that'd be worse than for a Pride parade to provoke heterosexuals and cause increased homophobia would be for the gay community to give in to demands of normalization and simply adapt.

However, what I'd like to achieve is a state of, ahem, for lack of better words "sexual apathy" in which the nature of one's sexuality has reached such irrelevance that there can exist neither pride nor shame in it. I simply don't believe in pride related to sexuality. Whether or not I was born like this or not I don't wish to take pride in it at all since it's just the way I am and not the result of anything I can control. Pride parades send out the opposite message. Of course it's important for the LGBT minority in oppressed countries to resist discrimination and assemble but where I live I can enjoy perfectly equal rights and the vast majority of all citizens here will not oppose my sexuality. In other words I can live a perfectly normal life without any discrimination (save for rare individual cases); in other words I don't have anything to take pride in. Where I live the parades are excessive and counter-productive. There are places on earth where they're not.

[john32]

I really don't care if someone wants to parade around naked, but I think there's better venues for that. A pride parade should be about garnering support, not pushing the envelope. These events only represent a very small portion of the LGBT population, but they end up defining all of us.

[Pix]

I honestly feel like I'm an anomaly, like I can't really call myself gay. I only have 2 gay friends, another couple whom we get along great with. Aside from that, all of my other friends are hetero, several of them married. All of them know I'm gay and whenever they have a get together or want to go to dinner/movies/etc. they invite us both, always.

All that leads to the question....why. Am I just too conservative to get it? Is it wrong that I find things like Pride and LGBT bars/districts/events offensive? Or have I spent so long around hetero people trying to be "normal" ("So Randy and I decided to go, just the two of us, to the aquarium. 'Oh, you're..gay?' "Yeah. We went and it was amazing. There's so many exhibits....") that I've turned into the very thing the LGBT community fights against?

I believe many gay people are invisible to you because you sound pretty normal for a gay guy to me. And look at how many liked your post. This leads me to believe that if gays don't make a spectacle of themselves then you don't know they're gay.

I guess it's hard for me to understand because you talk about "family men" and "hetero" but I've been sexually harassed by far more straight men than I have lesbians. Whenever I hear a straight man complain of some randy gay guy coming on to him I tell him, "Welcome to girl world, I put up with that kind of obnoxiousness all the time." Last Halloween I even got kicked out of an office I was helping decorate for Halloween because after about 40 minutes of a straight guy continually making sexual comments at me I told him nicely, "That's enough." He left saying he wasn't going to work with that "stuck up bitch" anymore and I was kicked out for having made a problem. No one kicked him out for telling me to hold a curtain rod still while he inserted another one into it, then moving it back and forth, moaning, "Oh, baby, feels so good!"

And many johns who cater to prostitutes are married heterosexual men. Of course they have swingers and all that, too (IIRC, someone shared recently how there are more swinger clubs than gay clubs in many cities).

And it's not just men, though they get away with letting their freak flag fly more, and despite the social stigma females often face they still shamelessly buy Cosmo magazine with erotic titles on the front, and of course that behavior that makes me cringe, twerking (though I don't therefore stay off the internet or post rants such as yours about how everyone online is a freak and thus I'm some poor anomaly).

So as for your definition of "normal" I don't see it as applying to either gay or straight. I know the type of gay people you describe, but I see plenty just like them among straights, too, heck most of their entertainments on even prime time TV show how obsessed and easily titillated by sex they are, and plenty of pop hits are about acting like drunken whores or "riding love sticks."

As for those who aren't so sexualized, plenty of them exist as well, and that includes gay people who talk about the gay experience on the YT where sex is rarely if ever mentioned and yet they have many followers showing me that the stereotype you complain about isn't quite as universally true as you seem to believe it is. But perhaps it's not that you're so conservative but that you're insecure. LOTS of people even in a majority feel like oppressed minorities simply because someone (gasp!) have different thoughts, opinions, or values, and they exaggerate the differences (and make tempests in teapots over them) while overlooking all that's similar as it makes them feel unpopular and/or so fear the condemnation of others. Could that be what you're doing?

[partisan]

You hear this such a lot its a wonder you say you feel alone. Theres plenty just like you, its just they dont run around naked so you dont recognise them, ive never been to a pride but kinda think it would be fun as a one off. And yes personally i dont care for rainbow colours, i dont see why that should represent gay, but im not that bothered i dont feel a part of any lgbt community, and dont claim to be, but if people do thats fine.

[KawaiiKitty]

I dont see how the gay community can bash people who do enjoy Pride events when the gay community has always been about acceptance and inclusion of everyone. Just because Pride event isnt something you like to participate in you know what you can do? DONT PARTICIPATE IN IT? *shock*

You dont want straight people to judge you for the fact that you are gay in your own way but then you want to turn around and judge others in the gay communityf or celebrating their sexuality in their own way?

Being quiet and "normal" has gotten us to where things were up until this week. Gays have been playing the good lil gays and not standing up for ourselves but now that we are we have people in our own community bashing each other for it. How does that even work? Sometimes you have to stand up for your own self and say yes I am different, Im no better or worse than you, but I am different and that needs to be recognized.

The hypocrisy is strong in this one.

[Sylph]

Let me waddle my faggot ass up in this Bitch and Duck walk on you hoes ^o^.

Firstly, as we all very well know,some more so than others, comfort in one's own skin is not an easy task to achieve, especially when placed in a minority or least favourable margin, so the pride of your skin, no matter how it may be displayed, shallow or not, is a beautiful thing.

Sure, some peeps might tear the ass out of it, literally in some cases, but that's them. It's not you, doesn't represent you and is not something for you to judge.

And while on the topic of judging, since inevitably, you will be judged until the day you die and perhaps thereafter if that's your belief, it won't matter how you present yourself or how your "lifestyle" is presented, it will still be judged.

That's why many of these men and women take their day to live it up, because it's the one day they don't and shouldn't have to worry about giving any of their Fucks.

And even still, it shouldn't matter about what people might be thinking about you or being "conservative", because you won't be any better or less in anyone's eyes, at least not mine.

I would sit on a park bench and share a joke with someone conservative, just as easily as I would someone veeery liberal, in fact, I would probably share more than one joke with a liberal person, because I find it more appealing to me personally.

Doesn't mean you have to be ultra slutty, nor ultra stuck up, but it shouldn't matter if you are. Just so long as you are kind.

Pride to me, is appreciating who YOU are and all of your flaws,struggles,achievements and experiences, no matter the form it might take.

If a Heterosexual takes traits seen commonly expressed as a stereotype or behavior to be exhibited by us, then that's on them. We know it's not true, so why do we have to prove anything and degrade the ones who happen to display such traits and qualities?

for my Gay Pride is everyday for me and I couldn't give a Fuck if someone doesn't like how I express my pride. An introduction can be made with my Clit and they can politely eat me out.

Like many others, I've been through way too much for me to care. If I'm proud of who I am,then that's all that should matter and is all that matters to me.

And Ps. Rainbows are cute. I...I wanna ride one ^o^

[Wade]

There is no such thing as "the gay community." Someone made it up and it stuck. It's not a real thing. And you have no obligation to anyone or anything. If you don't wanna go to a Pride parade... don't! You are an individual and not beholden to other people's expectations, be they gay or straight.

Fuck homophobes, fuck Pride, and fuck other gay people who want to dictate how you should feel about things.