Quote:
Originally posted by perth
i dont go around telling people im straight.
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Of course not. You don't have to, because everyone simply assumes that you *are* straight...after all, isn't everybody?
And that's kind of the point. If you hold hands with your girlfriend on the street, nobody accuses you of "flaunting" anything; it's an act with no political significance. But if I hold hands with *my* girlfriend in public, all of a sudden I'm "getting in peoples face's with my sexuality". How rude of me. A well-balanced, *nice* queer would simply crawl back into the closet and not upset people. It's uppity queers like that that give queerness a bad name. Right, Philgump? :-)
There is no way to have an ordinary, everyday expression of queer sexuality without it being controversial...whereas straight sexuality is publically expressed *constantly*...so much so that most of it passes pretty much unnoticed. This is the value of a space like the Gay Games, or a Pride Parade, or places like Key West or the Castro or Provincetown. There, routine expression between two people (hand-holding, hugging, etc.) of same-sex affection isn't politiczed, it matters only to the people involved.
Of course, I could also hold hands with a boyfriend (don't have one at the moment but that could change) and get flack from some gay people for being bisexual. "Fencesitter! Don't camoflage! Accept your true queer nature like the rest of us have!"
"How queer is that?" :-)
The normative collective cultural pressure is "don't ask, don't tell"...that way you don't ever challenge people's cherished assumptions, or stir up any repressed emotion or cognitive dissonance. It make it possible to continue the fallacy that "almost everybody is straight, so it's OK to assume that everybody is".