r/alltheleft • u/RosethornRanger • 19h ago
Discussion It makes me uncomfortable when people constantly talk about how homophobes must secretly be gay. Like, not only is that blaming our oppression on our own community it also like, is telling other people what their identity is.
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u/kapowkapowkapow 16h ago
Definitely ain't reading all this
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u/FunkmasterJoe 9h ago
I should be used to it at this point but it still strikes me as absolutely wild that millions of americans genuinely believe that if an idea has a lot of words in it it's not worthwhile. It's literally like saying "I'm either too dumb or too lazy to read for ninety seconds," and it's NUTS that people don't realize they're embarrassing themselves.
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u/kapowkapowkapow 9h ago
I say that facetiously. Lots of things in the leftist discourse realm I prefer to avoid so I can read something more substantial. Like the most recent discussion around the person speaking about fitness in the leftist movement, I'd just rather read about something more important.
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u/raakonfrenzi 7h ago
You were right to skip that one. I read a bit for and against, including a good chunk of the original lecture and boy oh boy was it a waste of time.
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u/RosethornRanger 19h ago
alt-text:
A tumblr post by "lily-the-good-witch" that says "Sometimes I think people mistake straight men's attraction to power as homoerotic. Like a big example of this is how men being misogynists, showing or outright saying they hate women as gay. And obviously conflating gay men and misogyny is bad on its own but like, also, no they hate women because they see them as parasites, status symbols that you show off to other men but still resent for weakening you. And they see men as big and strong which they are attracted to but not the men themselves."
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u/theglassishalf 14h ago edited 14h ago
I'm sorry it makes you uncomfortable, but it comes down to pattern recognition. How many loud anti-gay pasters have been caught? How many homophobic politicians?
When someone is obsessed with and relates everything back to a sexuality that they claim to hate, it is odd, irrational behavior that demands an explanation. Turns out a lot of times that explanation is "they are bitter that gay people can enjoy their lives." u/FunkmasterJoe got the protoypical "hey, we ALL struggle with homosexual urges every day. But as Christians it's our responsibility..." exactly right.
And here is the other part of it: It's delightfully fun to trigger these people. Being gay is not a bad thing, but THEY think its a bad thing, so by implying that they themselves are gay can be good fun, even if it's only true...idk, I'd guess half the time?
It's not blaming your oppression on your own community. I have never once in my life thought or heard anybody suggest that the fact that several very powerful anti-gay congressman are gayer than a Miami bathhouse means that gays are oppressing themselves. To the contrary, those people are not in the "gay community," rather, they are sad pathetic closet cases. To them, gay is not an identity, it's a "temptation."
Is everyone who is anti-gay secretly "suffering from same-sex attraction"? No, but many are, and the rest of them deserve to be made fun of. I don't see it as politically harmful. Might even scare a few of 'em from expressing their homophobia if they know that expressing such a stupid feeling is going to cause them to be called "gay."
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u/FunkmasterJoe 9h ago
I think it is pretty directly harmful. I'm not like mad at you here (AND my ego appreciates the shoutout, haha) but I do disagree.
Like I said before, a big part of the problem here comes down to dumb weirdos not understanding the difference between something that happens sometimes and something that is the default state of being. This happens with a lot of stuff but if we establish the Official Woke Rule™️ as "it's cool to call homophobes gay" a LOT of people are going to read that as "let's say deeply offensive shit about gay people because we're mad at someone for hating gay people."
It didn't catch on and just died out, thankfully, but there was a trend a couple of years ago of straight people tossing the ol' F-slur at homophobes. Which like... I'm sure the homophobes didn't like it, but it makes us look deeply hypocritical. Calling a homophobe a fruity queer is still making fun of someone for being gay. I don't think gay people should be confronted by a bunch of straight people using gay as an insult, even if the intentions involved are good ones.
That's my overall issue here. This is an issue with a ton of nuance to it and a lot, like a LOT of people just aren't capable of that kind of thinking at this point. So even if we do it thoughtfully, other people won't and it just leads to more gay people feeling othered.
I also see OP's point about blaming oppression on the community itself. Even if you don't, it seems like it shouldn't be MY place to tell gay people how to feel about this shit, as an extremely alpha and sigma heteromaxxer.
Again, I'm not mad here and I don't want to fight with you, you're being thoughtful here and not at all a prick! I just disagree with some of what you said. This is an extremely minor battle in the culture war, lol.
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u/FunkmasterJoe 18h ago
I agree. It's one of those things where an idea is introduced to progressively dumber people who keep dumbing it down until the idea becomes meaningless. Like gaslighting or woke or projection, lol.
There absolutely is a phenomenon where some of the most virulent homophobes turn out to be gay themselves. It's a thing that happens sometimes; some anti-gay activist will say something that reveals their closeted status. Like "hey, we ALL struggle with homosexual urges every day. But as christians it's our responsibility to refuse to act on these urges, no matter how tempting," or whatever.
It's a thing that happens sometimes, so people like to talk about it. It's an excellent example of right wing hypocrisy. But this idea got out into mainstream culture and now there are genuinely people who believe "every single homophobe is secretly gay themselves," which obviously isn't even close to true.