Gays a Minority Within LGBTQ+

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Woke progressives don’t like drawing attention to how gay people are a now a minority among those using the LBTQ+ or “queer” labels to identify themselves, which is a good indicator of why it’s important to focus on this development.

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11 Comments for “Gays a Minority Within LGBTQ+”

  1. posted by Edward on

    Merry Xmas/Happy Hanukkah!

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Not news. G’s have been a minority within the *G** community ever since gays allowed L’s into the movement, introducing intersectionality with female issues such as equal pay for women and reproductive freedom.

    • posted by Jim Michaud on

      Tom, you’re usually spot on with your comments. But this one is pretty sexist. And oh, how quickly you forgot: the lesbian community raised awareness about AIDS, assisted the sick and was willing to sometimes put their own issues on the back burner occasionally. Maybe it was different in Wisconsin.

  3. posted by Agee on

    “Not news. G’s have been a minority within the *G** community ever since gays allowed L’s into the movement…”

    Stephen clearly was using “gay people” to mean gay men and women (i.e., lesbians). Do you not know that lesbians are also gay people? Remember the Time magazine Ellen comes out cover, “Yep, I’m Gay!”?

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Agee: “Stephen clearly was using “gay people” to men gay men and women (i.e., lesbians). Do you not know that lesbians are also gay people?”

    Jim Michaud: “Tom, you’re usually spot on with your comments. But this one is pretty sexist. And oh, how quickly you forgot: the lesbian community raised awareness about AIDS, assisted the sick and was willing to sometimes put their own issues on the back burner occasionally.”

    My comment was intended as sarcastic but it has a point.

    If you read back a few years on IGF, Stephen and other conservative homosexuals have loudly complained about the movement’s embrace of “intersectionality” (the idea that cultural discrimination cannot be isolated into conceptual silos that stand in isolation), embrace of “wokeness” (the idea that cultural discrimination is in some senses systemic), and inclusion of people other than gays and lesbians into the movement.

    Before Stonewall, the homosexual rights movement was not a “gay/lesbian” movement, in the sense that the two major homosexual rights groups at the time (Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis) were distinct, cooperating occasionally but operating independently most of the time. After Stonewall, younger activists began to dominate the movement, and both gays and lesbians started to play a more-or-less equal role in shaping the movement.

    With integration of gays and lesbians in leadership, intersectionality (in the sense that issues of importance to women as women rather than as lesbians, and not necessarily important to men) became an integral part of the movement, as did inclusion of bisexuals (women, as the quoted study is one among many that demonstrate, are much less binary than men in terms of sexual orientation). As early as 1971, “female rights” and “female power” groups started showing up in pride events. That’s important because the battle over intersectionality as lost 50+ years ago, whatever Stephen and other conservative homosexuals might think.

    As time went on, the movement has moved away from “pure” homosexuality as a focal, and I think that trend will continue. As the quoted study suggests, younger people are more fluid in terms of sexuality, but identify with the struggle for equal treatment of people who are “not straight” but who are also not “pure homosexual”.

    That seems to drive conservative homosexuals crazy, but I think that conservative homosexuals miss the point. The movement is not turning back, and the movement, in my opinion, is stronger as more and more young people recognize the complexity of their own sexuality and ours.

    I think that conservative homosexuals who complain so loudly about the movement’s expansion beyond strictly defined binary categories of straight and gay/lesbian, are trying to return to a past that never really existed.

    I had an interesting experience last month. The drama department at the college I attended in the 1960’s is putting together a series of one-act plays telling the stories of gays and lesbians who attended the college in that era, intended for production next Spring. I was one of the gay men interviewed (in my case, three and a half hours) to get our stories of what life was like at the college for us, along with our lives more generally during that period of our lives. After the interview was completed, I spent about an hour talking with students involved in the project, and I was surprised to learn how little “categories” mattered to those students.

    The categories were much more important when I was that age, and the caution which with we had to live severely cramped our self-understanding and growth. I was not surprised to have learned in recent years, that most of the men I was close to in those days knew that I was gay (as in “You never made much of a secret about it …”) but silence was part of the package. If I’d come out, even to one or two straight friends, I would have been a pariah. Young people, in most of the country no longer have to live with that level of silence. I’m glad that period is gone for all practical purposes, and I hope that it never comes back, despite the efforts of conservative homosexuals.

    I am very much aware of the important contributions that lesbians have made to the movement over the years, but I am also very much aware of the arguments and disparities between gays and lesbians during the 1970’s and into the AIDS era. The movement always seemed to be on the verge of tearing itself apart over the differing goals and tactics of gays and lesbians active in the movement. AIDS changed everything, but the change was temporary.

    As we moved into a time when AIDS became a disease that could be managed long term, and not a 6-month death sentence, the old divisions seem to be returning, as Stephen’s post indicates.

    • posted by Jorge on

      This is well argued and it doesn’t really change my mind on the existence of the problem, only the cause or solution.

      There is something about the nature of intersectionality discussion that conservatives (I’m talking the US population as a whole) find alienating, even though when they talk long enough they describe the exact same situation. They simply find it abhorrent when liberal notions of inclusivity is applied to the problem.

      It’s a repeat of one of the basic divisions between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives favor symbolism and policy that promotes this country as a melting pot, where people of different experiences come together to do mostly the same thing and everyone adjusts to create one good result. Liberals favor symbolism and policy that promotes this country as a patchwork quilt, where each person of different experiences comes together to create something that binds stronger together, yet each individual patch has its own meaning.

      Each side disdains if not hates the other symbol, and it’s not for no reason. The melting pot and patchwork quilt each hide problems that when unaddressed are very destructive: an invisible underclass in the case of the melting pot, a unifying principle of look out for number one in the case of the patchwork quilt. It is over such tensions that both liberals and conservatives exist, that these problems might be someday be solved more effectively.

      Based on what I am reading on Etsy and Twitter, this flag design is either by or promoted one person using his own method, which is the very best that he can do. I don’t agree with him, but he has said that he’s gunning it his own way for reasons, and that others will do the same. It is worse than useless to try to turn a liberal into a conservative (gay or otherwise) after he has ceded the far side of the field to conservatives. So I accept his invitation: I will do me. It will be enough.

      • posted by Jorge on

        “this flag design is either by or promoted one person…” >> either by or promoted by one person…

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    “It’s a repeat of one of the basic divisions between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives favor symbolism and policy that promotes this country as a melting pot, where people of different experiences come together to do mostly the same thing and everyone adjusts to create one good result. Liberals favor symbolism and policy that promotes this country as a patchwork quilt, where each person of different experiences comes together to create something that binds stronger together, yet each individual patch has its own meaning.”

    The melting pot theory of America was the prevailing view in the 1950’s when I grew up. It was what we were taught in school. The underlying assumption of the melting pot is that America is a nation built of Northern European Protestant values, and that immigrants should and would, over the course of a generation or two, adopt Northern European Protestant values and become indistinguishable from the then-prevailing majority, embracing a rigid social/cultural structure based on the supremacy of Northern European Protestantism as it existed from time to time during our country’s history.

    The melting pot theory of America depended on two false assumptions.

    The first assumption was that racial, ethnic and religious minorities, recogtnizing the inherent superiority of Nothern European Protestant values, would abandon their heritage in order to blend in. To one extent or another, many/most did not entirely do so.

    The second assumption was that racial, ethnic and religious minorites would be allowed to blend in. In reality, many/most could not blend in because the majority refused to allow them to blend in.

    I think that what scares conservatives in general, and conservative homosexuals in particular, is Northern European Protestants are an emerging minority in our country at present, and that the melting pot theory has collapsed under its own weight.

    Conservative homosexuals, advocates of assimilation for as long as I can remember (for example, the underlying assumption of Bruce Bawer’s “A Place at the Table” that gays and lesbians will be accepted by conservative Christians if but only if we fully assimilated), have been, I think scarred by the fact that over the course of 50-odd years conservative Christian hostility toward gays and lesbians has not abated. In fact, I think that it can be argued that conservative Christian hostility toward gays and lesbians has increased in the last few years. Conservative homosexuals have, as always, remained silent in the face of “Don’t Say Gay” laws, book banning and other similar conservative Christian attacks, and joined in other attacks, such as the propriety of drag.

    Speech has power. Words do not fade. What begins as a word ends in a deed.

    I have watched with dismay the increase in anti-Semitic violence in our country over the last few years, an increase which has resulted in many/most synagogues, Jewish religious schools and other Jewish venues hiring armed guards to protect the lives of Jews against the unhinged right. The increase in anti-Semitic violence correlates with the increasing chorus of anti-Semitic rhetoric from the mouths of MTG and her ilk on the unhinged right.

    We have also seen an increase of anti-gay violence in our country over the last few years, and it is just a matter of time until we have to protect ourselves and our venues against attack from the unhinged right, just as Jews have been forced to do. In recent weeks, armed fringers from the right have begun to show up at drag events, met with armed counter-protestors. It is just a matter of time until the killing starts.

  6. posted by Edward on

    So, are white, homo conservatives saying that they are entitled to be in the rainbow majority?

  7. posted by Edward on

    Also, why does it matter how many people are gay vs bi vs trans?

  8. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Also, why does it matter how many people are gay vs bi vs trans?

    If the goal is equal treatment under the law for all citizens, including but not limited to ending targeted, government-sanctioned discrimination against some but not all citizens, it doesn’t matter at all.

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