Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site amdahl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!amdahl!gam
From: gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: GAY SATIRE (Dyer's objections disputed)
Message-ID: <488@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Nov-84 04:46:11 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.488
Posted: Sun Nov 11 04:46:11 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Nov-84 01:07:30 EST
References: <4159@decwrl.UUCP> <1124@bbncca.ARPA>
Organization: Amdahl Corp, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 48

> = /Steve Dyer   {decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer
>
> I think it is important to reaffirm that this ghetto, the worlds of
> closets, Bette Davis, opera divas, "queens", "fairies", "queers" and
> drag, or leather harnesses, baths and VD, are but a small part of the
> gay community, that membership in this ghetto is *NOT* necessary as a
> gay person.  That these are cultural artifices come from terrible
> decades of oppression and discrimination, and that every gay person is
> free not to buy into their distortions and lies.

*sigh*  It wasn't as though it had a big banner saying: "PLEASE NOTE:
this is representative of the entire gay community".  If people can
characterize a group so simply as that, they are already not thinking.
(Already we are putting more intellectual energy into this than it
deserves).

> I wondered whether I was being humorless.  Then I thought about the kind
> of stereotypes it traded in, if not wholeheartedly embraced: we must choose,
> as it were, between the swish or the slut.  Indeed, though I feel the
> intentions of the author and poster are well-meaning, the fact remains
> thay they have presented a gay "BLKTRAN", a similarly demeaning presentation
> of black people presented on the net a while ago which drew an enormous
> negative response.

I think you are being humorless.  Perhaps you think too much.  You
stretch things too far by saying "we must choose ... between the
swish or the slut."  Damn!  Nobody's asking you to choose ANYTHING!
If you didn't find it funny, why subject us to such dry and faulty
``analysis'' of ``what this `joke' REALLY means.''  You didn't
find it funny.  So what.

(I don't suppose that it would help my case to say I didn't find
the BLKTRAN incident so terrible either.  It was a humorous spoofing
of a well-known subculture.  If it was taken to be representative of
all black people that's a defect of the reader not the writer).

>                     It is sad, too, that it comes from within the gay
> community.

A bit of a paradox here.  Should the ``Gay community'' be speaking with
one monotonous voice?  I thought we are all different and not
characterizable in one point of view, or stereotype.

("You're all different!"  "Yes, We're all different!"  "(I'm not)").
-- 
Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!gam

[ This is just me talking. ]