I'll be sure to let you know. My point is that just because a group exists with greater failings than our own, we shouldn't stop trying to improve ourselves.
I'm with you there - but what I'm trying to say (albeit badly) is that we shouldn't go beating ourselves up for not being a part of a perfect community. All we can do is our own little bit.
I've heard many people post about how unfair it is that we have to announce being LGBTQ. Straight people don't have to come out as straight because it's just assumed. What if we treated our sexualities the same way? Instead of making big announcements and setting aside time to individually tell our friends and families, what if we just casually said "Oh, I'm gay" like it was no big deal. Just a thought. I feel like the LGBTQ community is perpetuating a process that it hates. When I return to university, I don't plan on making a grand announcement. The next time someone asks me if I have a boyfriend, I'm just going to say "I'm actually gay."
Feminism came in three waves. The First Wave was the original women's rights movement. Around the 1960's came the Second Wave of Feminism. Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (i.e. voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.[4] At a time when mainstream women were making job gains in the professions, the military, the media, and sports in large part because of second-wave feminist advocacy, second-wave feminism also focused on a battle against violence with proposals for marital rape laws, establishment of rape crisis and battered women's shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law. Its major effort was passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution, in which they were defeated by anti-feminists led by Phyllis Schlafly, who argued as an anti-ERA view that the ERA meant women would be drafted into the military. Many historians view the second-wave feminist era in America as ending in the early 1980s with the intra-feminism disputes of the Feminist Sex Wars over issues such as sexuality and pornography, which ushered in the era of third-wave feminism in the early 1990s Many of the big names of Second Wave Feminism Loathe Transgender people, particularly transwomen. See: The Master’s Tools: Why Suzanne Moore is stooping to David Cameron’s level « Kaite Welsh And then there is Third Wave Feminism, of which I am a proud member. Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but are often marked as beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present. The movement arose as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by Second-wave feminism during the 1960s to 1980s, and the realization that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and cultural backgrounds". The third wave embraces diversity and change. In this wave, as in previous ones, there is no all-encompassing single feminist idea. Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper-middle-class white women. The shift from second wave feminism came about with many of the legal and institutional rights that were given to women. In addition to these institutional gains, third-wave feminists believed there needed to be further changes in stereotypes of women and in the media portrayals of women as well as in the language that has been used to define women. Therefore, third-wave ideology focuses on a more post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality. In "Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," Joan W. Scott describes how language has been used as a way to understand the world, however, "post-structuralists insist that words and texts have no fixed or intrinsic meanings, that there is no transparent or self-evident relationship between them and either ideas or things, no basic or ultimate correspondence between language and the world" Thus, while language has been used to create binaries (such as male/female), post-structuralists see these binaries as artificial constructs created to maintain the power of dominant groups. Third-wave theory usually incorporates elements of queer theory; anti-racism and women-of-color consciousness; womanism; girl power; post-colonial theory; postmodernism; transnationalism; cyberfeminism; ecofeminism; individualist feminism; new feminist theory, transgender politics, and a rejection of the gender binary. Also considered part of the third wave is sex-positivity, a celebration of sexuality as a positive aspect of life, with broader definitions of what sex means and what oppression and empowerment may imply in the context of sex. For example, many third-wave feminists have reconsidered the opposition to pornography and sex work of the second wave, and challenge existing beliefs that participants in pornography and sex work are always being exploited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism
I'm assuming biphobia is just a dislike for people who claim to be bi? I have seen some of this, but I'm out to so few people that I've never had anyone be forthright in being skeptical with me. Either way, were someone to not believe I was bi I would have nothing to say beside the fact that I'm attracted to men both sexually and emotionally and attracted to women mostly emotionally and (rarely) sexually as well. I personally don't have a better label for myself. It's hard to believe that people could be not understanding about that!
We could start by actually having solidarity. Then we could try understanding privilege, and those of us who have privilege should check it...
The only thing that I would change is how active the younger gay generation is. Everyone wants to change something and everyone seems to have a problem with something, but unless people get out there and change it then those thoughts and opinions mean absolutely nothing. And I get it, its hard because we are expected to be both activists and people, but it just has to be done. Also, I would love to get the message out there that our community doesn't speak with one single voice and that is fine if two queer people want to go two different ways about an issue. We have PLENTY of movements within the queer community that go with, against or in a completely different direction than the "mainstream" gay movement, but people simply don't know about them so they feel like they are the only person who feels that way. And this!
femme lesbians who are awfy bitchy/mean about butch women. butch women are not men like some think. they are women, just because you like women with long hair/dresses e.t.c that is fine it doesnt make those who dont have long hair/not dress the way you like them to any less womanly or less 'gay'! girls who bang on about being gold star, that it somehow makes them more gay than those who are not. no it does not. i know far too many girls like that idk how to change it tho :tantrum: (apart from not assosciate with them)
only on EC and to best friend i am out to on FB do i tell how much I have issues with girl, daughter, she, her, woman. In actual life I say very little. I shrug it off, or say "girl? again?" I have only "thrown a tantrum" well it was actually calm and logical...when an in the closet lesbian Christian in person would both flirt with me...and she's married...and call me woman, and in texting admitted she refuses to say even neutral words like just my name not "woman" the one word i told her all my life i hated. I think standing firm to when others purposefully say they don't care they will call you names is not the same as yelling, blowing your cool, getting red faced. I think it means I have a right to be respected, not force anybody to change religious beliefs, just not say words they know I hate purposefully, I have a right to not be called names I don't like. ---------- Post added 9th Jan 2013 at 04:42 AM ---------- Ive done that, like being trans is no big deal though it is. And it gets a good reaction. If you are cool they usually are too. Do try it, I think you will like it.
Get rid of the sexism, racism, and classism of the movement. It's still far too focused on white, middle to upper class gay men.
Ok, I see lots of discrimination against LGBTQ from within the community (if not more than from the outside). I've wondered and observed, trying to figure out why. Then I found out what I believe is the main origin of the discrimination from within our own community: troubled lives and suffering, that is. As in, when a topic brings sensitive triggers, people will be a bit less logical and a bit more defensive on their stand point, it's only natural. From that point of view I say LGBTQ people should stand back and be more accepting of other people, even if said people have different views/ways; to stop taking things so personal. Basically, more Live and let Live. And admit that every single type of person can exist. To stop denying the existence of types of people, stop assuming that they somehow have it wrong, stop thinking that they have it easier than you do and more importantly, stop stereotyping. I think the straight cisgendered community judges a bit less because for the most part, they don't care to give it much thought. We could learn from them and Let Go.
This is essentially what happened to me. As times changed I became more open and visible. I never did come out as such. I just lived my lesbian life as I saw fit and people happened to pick up on the fact that I kissed a particular girl a lot and we lived together. Once I figured it out which was a daunting task back in the late sixties and early seventies I was out their in my private life. At work we were inhibited for years but even there many knew. I have always questioned the idea of coming out as such. If a person came home with her or his date and said mom and date I want you to meet my partner my lover or whatever. We than have self respect. We say I am not ashamed of who I am. The LGBTQ community would do well to teach this.
I would like to see God at the centre of LGBTI communities. In a lot of gay events ive gone to, there seems to be a sense of desperation and total hopelessness. A cloud of depression. Because of this i havent attended my LGBTI group in months. They seem stuck in the past, wallowing in their self pity, while im wanting to move on and start living a happy and full life. Has anyone else found this?
Another way we can improve is to end any and all FAAB and MAAB discrimination against one another by Transpeople anywhere on the gender spectrum. See my news article for info. This kind of has me scared because I'm concerned I'll run into it at college.
This does give me a new outlook and that would probably work for me. ---------- Post added 12th Jan 2013 at 01:58 PM ---------- ^All of this too. It makes me said when certain LGBT members discriminate against others (i.e Biphobic gays, transphobic gays etc.) It's highly hypocritical. Like have these people learned nothing from the discrimination they themselves have faced.
That would make me (and anyone else who is agnostic, atheist, or of a religion that does not believe in god) feel most unwelcome. So I cannot consider that an improvement.
oh god where to start.... Can we just stop focusing on white cis gay men? That would be a step in the right direction. (Oh, and with the Trans community: NON-BINARY VISIBILITY PLZ :dry ---------- Post added 12th Jan 2013 at 07:51 PM ---------- Oh jesus I hate that. We should really be focusing on the fact that pretty much all the hate we get is from the same people and that they always have stoopid reasons :L. Not fighting over Etymology.
