Safe Spaces for Me but Not for Thee

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I’m so old, I remember when The Advocate celebrated gay male subcultures (other than drag) and gay male eros, for that matter.

6 Comments for “Safe Spaces for Me but Not for Thee”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    But women’s only spaces, that’s entirely different and if you disagree you’re a bigot who is upholding the patriarchy and perpetuating violence.

    I’m not quite sure what the point might be (the article has nothing to shed light on this bitter observation). I assume that a lesbian bar that enforced a “gender matching” ID policy would be similarly criticized. Maybe not.

    I’m so old, I remember when The Advocate celebrated gay male subcultures and gay male eros, for that matter.

    You are old, and you are getting crotchety, too.

    The Advocate still celebrates “gay male subcultures and gay male eros, for that matter”, but doesn’t do so exclusively.

    The problem, for Stephen and other old men, is that lesbians and transgendered folks are also celebrated. That really sets them off. They yearn for the 1970’s, like an aging jock yearns to repeat his high school triumphs.

  2. posted by David Bauler on

    I dont subscribe to the Advocate. I imagine that showing hot male bods is probably just capitalism 101.

    I have not been to a designated gay bar in awhile. I thought they were no longer hip with the gays living in comfy urbane, political ‘safe zones’.

    Its curious that ‘safe spaces’ are bad, except when they are darn useful.

    Gay Republicans often like living in blue-purple zones where they quite safe politically. These safe zones are, apparently, OK.

    Frankly, I think that the LGBT community has bigger problems then this.

    Lets talk about how we can protect civil rights and religious freedom.

    Lets talk about a VP who jokes about killing gays (isis?) or a President unsure whether or not privacy rights should include gay people.

  3. posted by Dale of the Desert on

    I’m so old I remember when we spoke of Gay Liberation, in the aftermath of Stonewall. But liberation sounded more like “leave me alone,” and it didn’t take long before we morphed into “gay rights,” which sounded more like “leave me alone and get out of my way.” “Gay” in those days meant homosexual men and women of all stripes, but it wasn’t long before lesbians said they were going unnoticed, so it became “Gay & Lesbian Rights.” But the women felt they had been pushed to the background too long, and so it became “Lesbian & Gay Rights.” Then bisexuals and transsexuals wanted their own specific recognition as well, so it morphed forward into “LGBT Rights.” Then bit by bit, little by big, we grew alphabetically to LGBTQCIA and on and on. But fertilized by our common history of societal abuse, the zygote of our movement became the blastomere, the morula, the blastocyst, the trophoblast, with increasing complexity and yet a unity that has developed into a beautiful baby, still growing, still maturing. And I’m grateful to have been a small but no less purposeful part of the process.

  4. posted by David Bauer on

    Heck, if we are going to complain about silly stuff, allow me to join in;

    In World of Warcraft, it seems like people don’t know how to organize a decent raid. Heck, the recent game set in Middle Earth is stepping away from literary canon. I blame real life political party x, and I can probably find some stoned students to agree with me….now where I’d my six figure book deal and lucrative lecture circuit gig?

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    But fertilized by our common history of societal abuse, the zygote of our movement became the blastomere, the morula, the blastocyst, the trophoblast, with increasing complexity and yet a unity that has developed into a beautiful baby, still growing, still maturing. And I’m grateful to have been a small but no less purposeful part of the process.

    As am I. I’ve been privileged, as you have been, to experience the history from Stonewall to Obergefell as an adult, contributing to that history as it unfolded in the legal arena and in Wisconsin politics, in small but nonetheless meaningful ways.

    I suspect that that my experience, although having a common core with the larger, national movement, is quite different than the experience of gays and lesbians who lived in the hotspots of gay/lesbian activism — New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco — and in the Alphabet Street swamp. Most of the controversies that swept through the hotspots along the way from Gay Liberation to LGBTQCIA had little impact on either the legal fight or gays/lesbians living outside the hotspots, and I am often amazed at the fuss and bother over issues/concerns that I consider irrelevant to the slow advance toward equal treatment under the law.

    But that is sideshow. I’ll tell you what makes my heart sing in my 70’s. Young neighbors (twenty-somethings, just out of graduate school and in their first real jobs) live happily as a young married couple, open to all the world and making no effort at all to live in the shadows. When I was in my twenties, couples like them had to live in the shadows or face disaster. Every time I see the two of them, I can’t help but think that all the struggle, all the cost, all the work that was needed to get from Stonewall to Obergefell was worth it.

  6. posted by JohnInCA on

    I’m so old, I remember when The Advocate celebrated gay male subcultures and gay male eros, for that matter.

    … And did you see that as a good thing? Cause that celebration is kind of a regular source of complaints from conservative gays every summer.

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