[This Is Not Here]

I think homosexuality is accepted pretty much everywhere in the Western world, whether people like it is another thing altogether. As folk have been saying, its all to do with exposure, humans always fear and resent the unknown (especially the English!), so as someone whos well exposed to gay men and women I fully respect it and, to be honest, am a little inclined that way myself. On the other hand, my brother, who has never met a homosexual (or so he thinks!) I was not surprised to learn has some extremely hostile homophobic views. For example, I recently asked him "if there was a gay man and a man convicted of raping a little girl infront of you and you had to shoot one of them?..." he answered "the queer of course". To be honest, I'm not surprised views like this still exist, homosexuality has only relatively recently risen into mainstream consciousness, and with the current gay stereotypes in media I don't expect this to change anytime soon, sadly.

[truncated]

This is both a convoluted response to porky's and Glice's posts, and a meandering monologue of my own thoughts, but a pertinent issue here is stereotyping, as Glice previously mentioned. Imbibing and adopting stereotypes is, I believe, almost inevitable - regardless of what we'd like to believe or how much we think we conscioiusly resist, we absorb the perspectives of our societal comrades like sponges. As an example, when I spot a particularly butch female, I will likely immediately think "lesbian Feminazi (thanks to whomever I stole that word from)," despite knowing and concluding that that may very well be entirely incorrect. Point being, we are imbued with the mentalities of our respective cultures, and I suppose the difference is whether you accept those without question or broaden your own perceptions. We are all at our primal nature, literally, at least in this generation, "taught" by biology and community to have tunnel vision, and I don't think any individual is devoid of this - one either retains it or sheds it.

If that didn't make any sense, fuck off and watch Bill Maher. No one made you read this. Gays are fab 'n that.

(Except for Feminazis. I hope they're all strangled in the night by their cargo pants.)

[sobriquet]

Originally Posted by truncated

(Except for Feminazis. I hope they're all strangled in the night by their cargo pants.)

Suicidal.

[ZEROpumpkins]

In the paper yesterday there was a poll saying "Should boys be able to take their boyfriends to school formals?" and 52% voted no, while 48% voted yes. And you thought Australia was pretty liberal?

[jakeonguitar]

I don't think so.

Just because Europeans don't dress like bums and look like fat slobs doesn't mean they accept homosexuality. I was there a few weeks ago and they didn't act gay. They acted BA.

Originally Posted by Glice

Earnest eschewing of negative aspects of society doesn't remove them, nor does it solve them.

That's right, hence I posted this earlier:

'It's the society we live in, it's the hierarchy that is laid out because of its natural fabric, you can still win small victories and live comfortably in it.''



Right, enough of this now.

Originally Posted by truncated

This is both a convoluted response to porky's and Glice's posts, and a meandering monologue of my own thoughts, but a pertinent issue here is stereotyping, as Glice previously mentioned. Imbibing and adopting stereotypes is, I believe, almost inevitable - regardless of what we'd like to believe or how much we think we conscioiusly resist, we absorb the perspectives of our societal comrades like sponges. As an example, when I spot a particularly butch female, I will likely immediately think "lesbian Feminazi (thanks to whomever I stole that word from)," despite knowing and concluding that that may very well be entirely incorrect. Point being, we are imbued with the mentalities of our respective cultures, and I suppose the difference is whether you accept those without question or broaden your own perceptions. We are all at our primal nature, literally, at least in this generation, "taught" by biology and community to have tunnel vision, and I don't think any individual is devoid of this - one either retains it or sheds it.

If that didn't make any sense, fuck off and watch Bill Maher. No one made you read this. Gays are fab 'n that.

(Except for Feminazis. I hope they're all strangled in the night by their cargo pants.)

There's more to the whole stereotyping thing.

One thing that never comes across is how fags can be suspicious and stereotyping of each other too, which healthly leads some of them to properly understand how the whole ''gay community'' thing is just a pile of kangaroo poo.

Take for example the whole aids thing: When people talk or write about it, generally I get the impression that they expect a united front of gaydom to check that things which might come across as inaccurate, stereoyping, offensive etc etc, are met with unanimous disdain. This is only true to an extent. The reality is that the sort of discrimination against someone with a desease like that is already put into practice by many....... GAYS!

I myself have had to recently question how much I am prejudiced towards something like that when asked out by someone who told me that they are HIV. And so do the majority of gays who I know and are blessed with a cynical streak. You can't help thinking that with infected sperm flying about you might end up being unlucky. Unfortunately I still haven't worked that one out either.

To conclude, in my 34 years of being on this planet I have been called names before and never once I got the impression of someone being actively or viciously homophobic towards me, and even if they were, I can give as good as I get, if not much better.

Baloons and candies for everyone.