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I want to talk about "The LGBTQ+ Community" for a sec and how I feel our internal prejudices have become more of a problem since we've become an actual community.
Ok so we've always been here. That's not a matter of dispute but we haven't always had the community we have today.
Ok so we've always been here. That's not a matter of dispute but we haven't always had the community we have today.
There was a time when being who we are was illegal. I'm specifically talking about western countries for the sake of this thread. When being who we are was illegal in these countries, we still here but very much underground. There's a long history of places we'd gather...
clandestinely. It was all very cloak and dagger. Before that, we were very much isolated and kept apart from each other. Many of us living our whole lives without ever coming into contact with another queer person. Living "straight lives". Being of the "forbidden class" if u...
will, over time we found each other. The gay underground clubs and bars began to spring up. Often raided by cops, we were arrested, tossed in jail if not executed in some places. It was dangerous to be us. Still is but not quite the same way. While we were forced to hide...
Do you honestly believe that we were fighting over who was "gay enough"? I mean most of us had to live double lives anyway so no one was pointing fingers and shouting about "gold stars" ffs. The common ground of being persecuted for who we are held us together. Time goes by...
and we slowly begin to win rights (through hard fought battles) to be ourselves, in the light. While we were in hiding, we were apart from the cis-hets. They're opinions of us were things we feared and rightly so in those days.
What kept us together in those days was a strong sense of survival. It was life or death. So we're here now, with all the rights, which to be clear, we still have to defend but it's undeniable that things are better than when we were forced to hide and stay far away from..
the cis-hets. These days, they come into our bars, our clubs, our lives. We have friends who know about us and we live openly. I feel that with this openness and freedom has come a lot more issues with dealing how they feel about us. We aren't so focused on the need for...
solidarity as we were back when we were underground. The bickering, the infighting that we see so often these days over fucking stupid shit was so far from our minds back then. We NEEDED each other and so accepting each other as we are was easily done.
It didn't matter back then who was a lesbian, who was gay or bisexual because we all had to live so far in the shadows that it was the last fucking thing on our minds. It's 2020 now and we have freedoms that those who came before could only dream of. With that freedom, has come..
the ability to form a more public community. The LGBTQ+ community as it stands today is NOTHING like it was back then. Because we're out in the light, our priorities aren't the same. We've become pawns in political battles to be played with by politicians. They pick us up when..
they can use us for votes and they throw us away when they're done. It happens over and over with every new election cycle. Our rights are constantly being challenged by religious zealots and their elected officials. Bigotry is more open because we're more open and visible.
Somewhere along the way, from that time when we were underground and solidarity was the only way we could survive to now, when we have the freedom we do, we've forgotten that we still need that old kind of solidarity. That strength of unity that kept us together and was...
the biggest source of our power as a community is being eroded by cis-het interference and influence. Back in those days when we were hiding, they couldn't put a dent in our solidarity. These days tho, since the 2nd wave & before, we've become INFECTED with cisheteronormativity.
It's crept in to our minds and we've allowed that shit to influence us. Comphet has always been a thing we've had to work through but I'll be damned if it hasn't got WORSE the more public & visible we've become. Biphobia, transphobia, panphobia, acephobia, all the damn phobias...
that we ourselves are harbouring towards members of our own community all come from cisheteronormativity. I wish you all could just stop and think about that for a minute. Work through it and fucking deal with it because it all comes from the same place and that place is not US.
The more open our community has become, the more some of you are buying into cisheteronormative prejudices fam. Every time 1 of us bitches about labels, about not being "gay enough" or takes a pop at another member of this community... that's feeding the cis-het way of thinking.
You all need to walk that shit all the back & stop. How long are we going to keep doing the bigots work for them? You really need to think about that cuz holy shit, we're beating each other up with THEIR words & THEIR prejudices. Isn't time we stopped letting them divide us yet?
When I say we've become INFECTED with cisheteronormativity, I really mean INFECTED.
That shit is like a disease and eating some of you up whole.
That shit is like a disease and eating some of you up whole.
Some of you are posting that there's always been infighting. If you read the thread, I acknowledged that (since the 2nd wave & before). You're missing my point that it's always been cisheteronormativity at the root and that it's WORSE now cuz our community is more exposed.
