Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Chris Crocker: Gay on Gay Hatred Exists

Chris "Leave Britney Alone" Crocker is back and for once I didn't want to scream listening to him talk.

In this YouTube reappearance, Crocker lambasts the tension between feminine and masculine gays as discrimination and urges "straight-acting" gay men to come out to the world. 




This is a topic which hits home with me.  I'm fairly obvious as a gay man and always have been.  Like Crocker, people told me I was gay before I even knew what it was.  People within the gay community can and still do tease me because of some of my effeminate behaviors, and it's this kind of internalized homophobia that can make things very uncomfortable for people like me. 

It's not just in gay situations that this crops up, of course.  I feel uncomfortable visiting certain parts of town late at night because I'm easily identified as gay, and I get exceedingly tired of being called "girlfriend" by straight women.  No, I don't do hair, and no!  I don't care about your wardrobe.  I don't drink Cosmos (whisky, please!) and I couldn't care less about Lady Gaga.  So please, be cognizant of the possible misconceptions you may be placing on a person based on the effeminacy of their behavior.  You're honestly putting them in a box and probably against their will, and who wants to sell someone short like that?

2 comments:

  1. I agree with your viewpoint... However, everyone is not the same, so no matter how much the gays want to be noticed or not, they will be under scrutinization by their peers as long as there's diversity and people who care about those things you mentioned... But, you must understand that those who want to be recognised for who they believe they are should always know that there's always haters and those who put themselves out there need to realize that life is not a battle for attention or acceptance, it's a battle to learn and accept everybody for who they are individually.

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  2. I was thiiiis close to doing a post on this too. Still may, as I feel that its a ridiculously important cultural issue to flesh out. Much the way members of the african-american community can internalize the racist perspectives of the dominant culture, those in the gay community can be just as homophobic as the larger culture we exist in. Want a weekly re-hash of this as an example? Spend time discussing the character of Kurt Hummel on Glee and you have a bunch of people singing his praizes and just as many talking about how his "prissy", "fem" ways make him hateable.

    All these "NO FEMS" "STRAIGHT ACTING ONLY" posts on OkCupid tell me a few things about the poster, but chief among them is that they're not as "easygoing" as they pretend to be.

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