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How rare is the Gay + Feminist combo?

Discussion in 'General Support and Advice' started by CuriousLad, Jul 5, 2018.

  1. OGS

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    It's an interesting way of looking at it. Ironically, I also don't really encounter much in the way of homophobia in my day to day life, really haven't for decades. Would never occur to me that that meant it was over...
     
  2. CuriousLad

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    @tystnad and @Linning this is exactly why I needed a woman's perspective on this. It seems sexism and misogyny aren't as noticeable in the West as they are in the East, but they're obviously definitely there. The problem here however is that some women are complicit. The men around me are of course all unapologetic bigots in general and a man being called 'feminist' was akin to a jibe. They'd actually joke that I became feminist on my time of the month! And fighting them never solved anything, just got me more detention than I could handle. Any self proclaimed feminists (all girls btw) would ignore snide remarks and jump straight to rape culture and the wage gap without fixing the grassroot problems. Keep in mind that this was the Indian upper class which prides itself on being more civil and liberal than the rest of the 'shithole'.
    Anyhow I've ranted enough and maybe we should just be glad that the world (maybe except the US) is moving in the right direction.
     
  3. Andrew99

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    Not rare at all.
     
  4. Lin1

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    I can see your point of view but you also need to try and look at things on their side. I personally always stand up and shut people down if I feel they are being discriminatory/sexist or just a bit of a prick and that, regardless of gender (hence me often being told off for being a bit too abrupt on threads on here! ) BUT I am privileged enough to live in a country where I can speak up against misogyny without risking too much in most cases. I can tell a guy he is being a prick without fearing for my safety most of the time and with the knowledge that there is a justice system who will most likely back me up if someone was to assault me for no other than me stating my opinion. It isn't the case in India, where women seem to have very little rights and say on anything and where physcially correcting/punishing/submissing them is a common thing.

    In the situation you describe, they see you, A MAN, being ridiculed and attacked for pulling up those guys on their questionnable statements. Chances are, they acknowledge that if your voice isn't making a difference theirs definetely won't and probably wonder what will happen to them if they do dare speak up against those guys (and probably don't want to find out). So while they appreciate your effort they probably think it's easier for them to speak about general topics/facts (wage gap etc...) putting blame on the government as a whole than to stand up against specific individuals (men) and I do think they are right to do it that way.

    I think people should fight the fight to the extent they can. I wouldn't expect someone in a mostly machist country to put herself in danger to prove a point. It's my role as someone coming from a country with more freedom and a more protected access to freedom of speech to shed lights on what's going on for women around the world and put a voice to the women who cannot speak up and stand up against their oppressors. I don't think the girls in your country are being complicite, they just don't have the support system women in more modern countries have to actually have the possibility to speak up freely about their ordeal the way we do.

    Keep on doing what you are doing because the sad reality is that for now your voice probably has more echoes than theirs.
     
    #24 Lin1, Jul 7, 2018
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2018
  5. Caraldo

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    I once met a group of gay motorcyclists that were total women haters. Outside of that, I figure a majority of gay men I've met were feminists to some degree. Myself proud to be a vocal gay male feminist.
     
  6. tystnad

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    i fully agree with you on this (and your newer post) and am completely on your side but i do want to point out two things: calling yourself a feminist or calling yourself gay are not really comparable because sexuality is something you have no control over while with political ideals, it ultimately remains a choice - yes, one that is heavily influenced by who you are, but not something you’re well, born with. i also have first hand experience with gay people who thought homophobia was no longer an issue where they live because they were lucky enough to not personally encounter it, and refused to align themselves with lgbt people who continue to be activist (and i know the american alt-right has the support of some groups of mostly gay men who believe the same). i really understand your point but i’m not sure it’s the right comparison to make to prove it. with sociopolitical movements bad rep has always been a concern: it’s why many leftist parties with socialist/communist ideals don’t call themselves socialist/communist and why the alt-right calls themselves, well, alternative, while really being no different from other extreme right movements. is it fair? no, absolutely not - especially because a lot of the reasons not to call yourself a feminist are often rooted in stereotypes specifically meant to discredit the movement. do i think people supporting equality should call themselves feminists regardless because refusing to actually only strengthens those who try to discredit it? absolutely!

    also (this is not just you at all, almost everyone does this, just wanted to clear this out in this thread before worse generalisations in this regard are made!) we need to be careful when making usa vs europe comparisons because the situation in europe is extremely varied. yes, the nordic countries rank amongst the most equal in the world — but it really isn’t all that great being a woman in, say, hungary or turkey at all. and countries that are generally known to be progressive such as the netherlands actually have some significant problems in terms of women in the workforce etc. on top of that, a number of european countries are showing similar problems to the us, with a strong rise of anti-feminism and worsening inequality. even here in sweden, where almost every single political party except for the extreme right calls themselves feminist, the support of anti-feminist movements is quickly growing.
    as with racism, sexism in the US is much louder and more explicit because that’s the nature of US politics and society, but just because it’s more implicit and less talked about in europe unfortunately doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist — ESPECIALLY in countries like hungary or russia where the overall equality (not just gender) situation was never great and is worsening every single day. Orbán (prime minister of Hungary since 2010) has even been called the “original trump” and is frequently used as an example of what trump aspires to be. so with things like this being a little more specific (i.e. not saying europe when we mean northwestern europe) matters a lot (the same goes for other continents ofc but they haven’t been brought up yet).
     
    #26 tystnad, Jul 7, 2018
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  7. Mihael

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    But you can't force anyone to be an activist just because they are gay. Not everyone has the right personality for it.
     
  8. Mihael

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    Anti-feminism is a story of its own. Do you know such types yourself? They are not coping well in life and are blaming women and feminism for it. They represent little as human beings. And they are looking for an enemy to blame for their own personality and intellectual flaws and for someone to rob of goods they cannot produce themselves.

    Burt all that being said in the West... India must be a totally different story, given its social development.
     
    #28 Mihael, Jul 8, 2018
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  9. CuriousLad

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    Just to be clear, I'm not demanding activism from the millions of subjugated women.
    To understand the women in question, I'll ask you to forget everything you know about women in India. All the lack of healthcare, education, sanitation and safety that India is famous for, only applies to the lower and lower middle classes that possibly take up more than 98% of our population.
    But these girls are far, far above the rest and wealth gives you a LOT in developing countries. You're suddenly as privileged and safe as any girl in a developed country, if not more. My school bred children to take over their family businesses (No idea how my folks afforded it) and trust me, these girls have NONE of the restraints you're talking about.
    (By the way to give you an idea, my classmates are effortlessly paying their way through the Ivies, Oxford and Cambridge as I we speak. And since intelligence comes from hard work which in this country comes from deprivation, no they're not that smart.)

    Physical and sexual abuse is rampant in this country but every single victim and culprit in the newspaper is almost always poor. For example I can actually identify the north and west as the poor areas in my city and also the hotbeds of crime. This of course includes huge and populous rural India as well.
    Also law enforcement and the justice system are rigged in their favour so no man would dare threaten them.
    I know all this sounds crazy but it's the reality of the other side of inequality - the lucky side.

    It's precisely because they have so much that I expect them to bear a moral responsibility towards millions of underprivileged women. And there's no way they don't understand that social implications of their silence. You can use present day America's example to see how bigotry from the top unleashes bigotry across the populace.
    Maybe these girls still acted in the way they did to get along with boys. After all apparently there's no way sexist men would actually date 'uptight' women. I also don't speak for all girls or boys, rich or poor. The people I was personally acquainted with and came out to were as progressive as me, albeit a little less aggressive. So yeah, don't go "sexist!" the next time you see an Indian on the street.
    Educated people might be innocent themselves, but they're still guilty for refusing to change the conversation which inspires the less privileged to commit crime.
    And it really just takes one ignorant girl to make every boy in the room think it's okay even when there's a furious bisexual screaming otherwise from across the room.
     
    #29 CuriousLad, Jul 8, 2018
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  10. Mihael

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    Honestly, I have no clue what kind of situations you are talking about. I have never witnessed something like that. This just shows we have vestly different backgrounds, where I live there is little social ineqaulity compared to India or the USA. That is what I'm talking about when I say 'totally different story'.
     
  11. Siegfried

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    Men in general are less likely than women in most countries to call themselves "feminists", but attitudes about most gender issues seem to vary far more across countries than by gender within countries. A lot of people who support gender equality also refuse to accept the label "feminist" (see https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default...Polls/global-advisor-feminism-charts-2017.pdf for some poll results). It wouldn't be too surprising if attitudes of gay men towards gender equality and feminism are broadly similar to those of other people in the same culture, but I don't know of any results either way.

    Personally, I support gender equality, including equal rights under the law, paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers, state financing of childcare, health and education, laws against gender discrimination, etc. -- basically traditional social democratic policies. I'd be hesitant to call myself a feminist, though, because of the extremism of some third- and fourth-wave feminists, and the growing link between feminism and intersectionality, which I think is socially destructive nonsense. The insistence on changing language is also problematic (in English, it's mosly pronouns, but in some languages, it can require using ridiculous formulations equivalent to, for example, "my male-colleagues and female-colleagues" or "my feMale-colleagues" instead of simply "my colleagues", every time you want to refer to your colleagues).

    If modern feminism (at least in western countries) is concerned more with intersectionality and dividing populations into supposed "oppressor" groups and supposed "oppressed" groups (with the natural result that the supposedly oppressed people will hate the people they think are oppressing them) than with equality of opportunity, which does not necessarily lead to equality of outcome across groups if there are systematic differences in distributions of relevant traits, then I think it is no longer useful.
     
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  12. CuriousLad

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    Hey sorry I think I misquoted you. I actually thought you were trying to defend those indefensible princesses. But you're lucky to be born wherever you were. We're making strides towards social justice but it's still a fantasy for the poor.
     
    #32 CuriousLad, Jul 8, 2018
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  13. Lin1

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    I think you misunderstood me? In my gay analogy, I was only referring labels and how people misusing them don't take away from the actual definition of the word and how it shouldn't stop (and in fact doesn't stop) people from using them.

    I use the label bisexual for example. A label that is grossly misused by lots of people and have plenty of negative stereotypes associated by it. Should I stop referring to myself as bisexual even though I fit the definition because some bi-curious/straight people (and else) have been misusing it giving bisexuality a bad rep? Or should I say "actually this is what bisexuality is all about and no those people aren't representative of bisexuals."

    And I believe that feminism is exactly the same. There is a definition to the word, people will and have been misusing the label but I don't believe people should stop using the word (if they fit the actual definition) and erase the movement just because some people haven't made good use of it. People don't stop calling themselves Christians because some Christians aren't actually following Christians teachings for example.

    So that was my point.

    Regarding the whole Europe/USA I didn't specify on my last post because people had been referring to "the West" throughout the thread (assuming northern/western Europe , The US/Canada and similar countries) so wrote my posts in continuity of this. Obviously not talking about Europe as a whole.
     
  14. CuriousLad

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    @Siegfried Thanks for posting the link. The data seems pretty comprehensive. I will say however that asking women if they're getting enough rights is sometimes too subjective. For example, you can go to a remote village in some backward state in my country and ask the same to a woman there and she'll say she's privileged enough. She's come to terms with not having been sent to school, being forced into marriage and later being abused by her alcoholic husband. All out of gratitude for not having been a victim of female foeticide. This is an extreme example but even in other highly developed countries like Japan, many women are okay with being paid less and playing off sexual harassment as playful behaviour that men are entitled to.
     
  15. Lin1

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    Taking into account the backgrounds you have just added it's very well possible that if those girls are living very privileged life, they do not really relate/realize what feminism is about or care much about it because their life would be very lowly altered by it. People seem to be more involved when they are directly and heavily negatively impacted by something. Rich people also very much benefit from their status in society so it's not really in their interest to mend the gap hence why rich people tend to stick to conservative parties who are more likely to protect their capita. I have rich family members and their vote are heavily based on taxes, they care very little about the bigger picture and society as a whole. And having lived in a country similar to India in terms of disparity amongst wealth and social status I saw first hand how people who actually had the financial means and time to help where much more pleased to make the most of a system where labour/home service is dirt cheap and people are happy to work long hours for a misery as a salary than to actually try and make a difference.

    It's sad but the reality is most people aren't keen to give up on their privileges hence why equal rights still isn't a thing in 2018.
     
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  16. Lin1

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    I am interested to hear why you think intersectionality is such a bad thing? I am an intersectional feminist, mostly because I don't have the choice to be, being a queer woman of colour but also because you will be surprised but not all act of feminism benefit all women. Did you know that when (Caucasian) British women fought for the right to vote for example they actually weren't fighting for ALL women to vote but just themselves and the second they obtained this right were pleased enough and weren't the last bit shocked or bothered that women of colour didn't have access to the same right and had to wait for a few decades for it.

    Feminism that isn't intersectional isn't feminism to me. Feminism is either equality for ALL or it's not equality. It's why feminism should be intersectional in my book. It's not about who is the most victim of opression ( though yes as a queer woman of colour I do believe I have more battles to fight than even just a Caucasian queer lady) it's about saying that if feminism only benefits some type of women then it is pointless. Saying that some people are more opressed than others is a fact and a fact that should be known and acknowledged because you can't move forward if we don't acknowledge it and actually tackle it.
     
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  17. Siegfried

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    You're welcome. I think you make a very good point, that perceptions of what is equal vary with beliefs and expectations. In India, for example, almost 50% of women report believing that women are inferior to men (a higher percentage than men in India who believe the same), and only 19% disagreed that they have equality with men. If they believe they're inferior, then they may not have the same view of what "equal rights" means as someone who does not believe they're inferior.

    It's also worth noting that the Ipsos survey was carried out using the internet (see slide 20), so samples are only generally representative in developed countries where internet penetration is high. In Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Africa and Turkey, the samples are richer, more educated and more urban than the overall populations, so the results reflect more the views of urban middle classes than the overall populations. My guess would be that the urban middle classes are more in favour of gender equality etc. than many poor and rurual populations. I don't know if they tend to be more or less satisfied with the current situation. It is probably worse for poor/rural women, but they may also have adjusted to it.
     
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  18. CuriousLad

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    I totally agree and I'm sure you'd agree that being rich doesn't make it any more excusable. At the risk of sounding socialist, I just wish I could put the whole lot in veiled saris and drop them off to some backward village to see what reality is, outside their pretty mansions.
     
  19. CuriousLad

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    Ah that skipped my mind. Internet here is pretty expensive in relation to the per capita income.
    Might I also add that we have a right wing lobbyist who's been on record saying that sexual assault can be controlled if girls in villages stopped using mobile phones (as they were in the past when the rates of assault were low because no one bothered to compile proper data in villages)
     
  20. Mihael

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    It's alright.