Breaking the Spell: Rethinking queer community

[The_Lady_Snow]

Sometimes during a nice dinner I have to "tolerate" other peoples gross kids as I try to enjoy my meal to be honest I can't really say I do that because I will ask to be moved so I don't have to tolerate it.

So for me when I hear or someone implies they are tolerating my presence it does not sit well with me. I don't want society to just *tolerate* as if I am somehow mucking up their cozy space and experience in every day life. I want to have the same rights they do when they walk out the front door every morning. I want to be able to eat at a restaurant and not have some douchbag stare at our family because they are all sitting there looking like someone shit in the room.

Tolerance does not equate equality to me, I'd like to walk out the door, visit my partner in the hospital without 34566 questions, claim them as a dependent, and ffs just walk the dogs without it seeming like we somehow brought property value down. Tolerance equates me walking out the door and the sneers happen or the cars get broken into lord knows if we don't cut the grass they report it to the city why are these dykes/queers living near us turn your back here they come. It's about my rights not tolerance.

[weatherboi]

Tolerance creates hierarchy and acceptance creates equality. Through an effort of empathizing, sympathizing and understanding, acceptance creates togetherness. Tolerance creates sides and separation. This is just an opinion of mine.

[Dominique]

Sad isn't it...i/e Snow's post. I live in the city with all walks of life. Good thing, because I'd wager two thirds of my neighborhood wouldn't be tolerated
in the suburbs. There's a drive by shooting on my street every day, ya'll. That is absolutely not true, but some people would have you believe that. At the end of the alley behind my house, there is some *tagging*, you know...spray painted art work (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) so I must live in the HOOD. The teenager three doors down, spray paints her hair in stripes and just put an earring in her nose and eye brow for her first day of school tomorrow (as a freshman)....Oh, her father
he, has some of the nicest ink work, in the form of a sleeve, and wears his hair very short. Do you think he's a skin head? Well, don't over look me....I must have a DUI or sum tin, I have a car I never use, but always ride a bicycle. Lezbo and all, theres always a shim over here....I know there was a Palin for President sign in my front yard. Thats just why no houses sell around here. Spend five minutes here and you'll see. Talk about property value coming down.

[dreadgeek]

Snow:

That is not tolerance. If your neighbors were tolerant you would never know *what* they think of your being queer. Breaking into your car is not an act of tolerance. Going out of their way to give you the stink-eye is not an act of toleration. Toleration would mean them nodding as you see one another leaving for work, saying Happy Thanksgiving when you see one another walking the dog, and largely not engaging you very much. If your neighbors tolerated you, they would not respond to your presence in a negative fashion.

So if they are not being tolerant what are they doing? They are trying to do as much as they can get away while not bringing the law around them (which is why the car break-in, it's relatively easy to get away with) and at the same time, trying to find some way to use the law to punish you for being queer. The critical thing, however, is that *they* are restrained by the law. Given that they have broken into your vehicles, that means that they would--if the law did not prohibit it--likely break into your home. But they haven't because the law precludes them doing it. There is no law that says "you cannot break into straight people's homes but queer people, go for it". The law says 'you cannot break into people's homes' and has done with it. What I believe should be our focus is to make certain that queer people are covered equally by ALL laws.

What you should do about your neighbors, I don't know. I *do* know that what they are doing is not showing toleration. They are showing that they do not want the law to come down around their ears. That's not toleration. That's being restrained by the law.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

Sometimes during a nice dinner I have to "tolerate" other peoples gross kids as I try to enjoy my meal to be honest I can't really say I do that because I will ask to be moved so I don't have to tolerate it.

So for me when I hear or someone implies they are tolerating my presence it does not sit well with me. I don't want society to just *tolerate* as if I am somehow mucking up their cozy space and experience in every day life. I want to have the same rights they do when they walk out the front door every morning. I want to be able to eat at a restaurant and not have some douchbag stare at our family because they are all sitting there looking like someone shit in the room.

Tolerance does not equate equality to me, I'd like to walk out the door, visit my partner in the hospital without 34566 questions, claim them as a dependent, and ffs just walk the dogs without it seeming like we somehow brought property value down. Tolerance equates me walking out the door and the sneers happen or the cars get broken into lord knows if we don't cut the grass they report it to the city why are these dykes/queers living near us turn your back here they come. It's about my rights not tolerance.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I'll point that out when someone says their only tolerating it cause they have to.. In Spanish if someone tolerates you it's never a good thing.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

I'll point that out when someone says their only tolerating it cause they have to.. In Spanish if someone tolerates you it's never a good thing.

Snowy:

I didn't say it was a good thing. I'm not describing the world as I would like to see it. I'm trying to discuss the world as it appears to be. No, tolerating isn't the ideal. But what is living in a society but tolerating people and ideas and things you would much rather not have to? I don't *want* to live in a world with racists. But I *do* live in that world and since one of us has to act right, I will extend to a bigot all the tolerance I am able to. Tolerance is also not a switch, it is a slider. I will tolerate some things more than others.

You have said what you do not want but you have not said what you *do* want. What is tolerance to you? What is acceptance?

Let me illustrate what *I* mean by tolerance. We live in a religiously plural society. I am an atheist. As it turns out, I tend to think that the case against there being a divine being is much stronger than the one that can be made for there being one. I have to deal with people who believe, quite wrongly, that the Earth is 6,000 years old. I tolerate that. We live in a complex society filled with lots of people many of whom, perhaps large swaths of whom, believe or behave in ways we do not like. We do not have to like them. They do not have to like us. We DO have to get on with one another because they aren't going away and we aren't going away. I do not expect, for instance, a Christian to be thrilled about there being atheists. I do not expect her to think that I might have a point. In fact, I *fully* expect her to believe that I am wrong, to put it mildly, and seriously deluded. But we still have to work next to one another and so we must *tolerate* one another.

The Constitution does not promise that people of different religious beliefs will see one another's point, it says they must tolerate one another. That means you don't go about passing laws designed to make the other lot's life miserable. That means you do the job in front of you and focus on the commonalities.

Again, I do not believe that our rights come FROM our identities. Our identities are--or at least should be--completely beside the point. I am not ever going to live in a society populated by people entirely like me. I do not feel like living inside a hermetically sealed bubble where the only people I associate with and who feel comfortable associating with me are people who are like me or very close approximations of me. I can't have it, wouldn't like it and so must live in a society where we will disagree but where we must get along in spite of all that.

In a world without prejudices tolerance would truly be a bad thing. This is not a world without prejudices. There will, for any foreseeable future where the human brain works like it appears to now be bigots. There will, for as long as there is commerce, people who are better off than others. There will always be an uneven distribution of talents and depending upon completely arbitrary variables of time and place, one's abilities or talents may or may not be valued higher or lower. We cannot, not in any society where people are treated more-or-less equally before the law, have equality of outcomes. We can't. Believing we can is believing that one can make the garden grow not by planting and watering but in believing that unicorns will take care of it all. So the question I think we have to answer, as a community, is what *can* we achieve. If you think that we can have a world where people who hold the attitudes that your neighbors do can be eliminated, I would be interested to hear *how* we get there from where we are.

Cheers
Aj

[The_Lady_Snow]

I thought I had, I simply want to be treated as I treat others. I don't walk out the door with no other intent than having a good day, being friendly, polite, kind, work hard, go to the kiddo's boxing, do my walk and sweat and curse cause it's hot. WITHOUT some ass hat being grossed out or look like they are cause of who I am.

I could even throw in there that as a woman I want my space and place to be equally valid if not more valid than the guy next to me who gets it just cause he's a guy.

Sometimes I think I'm expecting to much when I try to take my place in the world but I'll be damned if I won't take it it's mine and my right. I don't just want it for me me me, I want it for alll women, childrens, queers, geeks, underdogs, poor, forgotten people out there.

Sounds kinda corny huh?

It would be nice to not be treated differently because of the gay. I'm still thinking and typing.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

I thought I had, I simply want to be treated as I treat others. I don't walk out the door with no other intent than having a good day, being friendly, polite, kind, work hard, go to the kiddo's boxing, do my walk and sweat and curse cause it's hot. WITHOUT some ass hat being grossed out or look like they are cause of who I am.

I could even throw in there that as a woman I want my space and place to be equally valid if not more valid than the guy next to me who gets it just cause he's a guy.

Sometimes I think I'm expecting to much when I try to take my place in the world but I'll be damned if I won't take it it's mine and my right. I don't just want it for me me me, I want it for alll women, childrens, queers, geeks, underdogs, poor, forgotten people out there.

Sounds kinda corny huh?

It would be nice to not be treated differently because of the gay. I'm still thinking and typing.

Okay but since we cannot *force* people to behave that way, what then? Are you saying that until any person you encounter, anyone particular person taken at random, is utterly unconcerned with your being gay or Latina, etc. we will not have reached--not the best imaginable place--but the best *achievable* place? Again, I can imagine a perfect world but I cannot drag all the rest of you into it and, trust me, many of you would NOT like my perfect world. Since I can't have a perfect world and since no one else can either and since history is quite literally bloody with all the attempts to create utopias, I want to aim for the best achievable world.

That's why I keep coming back to this idea that we cannot have a world where your neighbors are simply *incapable* of giving you the stink-eye. It appears you want to live in a world without bigots. While that would be nice, I see no way to get there. I do see a way to get there through creating laws and processes that treat people equally. No bias and no favor. Since that is *also* not possible for humans, the law should be as non-biased as limited humans can manage.

I'm trying to deal with the world as it is, with the human species we have to work with. We cannot make a world where no person is poor. Poverty is relative at any rate and unless we make certain that everyone has the same outcomes--a prospect very few would willingly sign on for--there will always be *some* people who have less resources than others. What we *can* do is have a society where people are treated fairly and equally. Where people have access to those things that allow oneself to be economically empowered--things like education, laws to protect one from workplace exploitation or bigotry.

All societies are a series of trade-offs. So what does this society you wish for look like? What are the trade-offs? What are you willing to give up in order to have a society wherein your neighbors are simply not *capable* of being anti-gay? Or anti-anything for that matter?

And no, it doesn't sound corny, Snowy. It sounds vague. So you want some asshat to not *appear* to be grossed out when he looks at you. So what does that world look like? Is that a world where he simply does not think--because the category is foreign to him--"there is a homosexual, I don't like that"? Or is it a world wherein he dare *not* think that thought for fear of the consequences? Or is it a world where the thought is not thinkable? Or where it's expression is what; illegal? Socially unacceptable?

Walk me through this, Snowy. In your world, please explain how this works:

1) You walk out your door, your neighbor sees you. What does he do?

2) You walk out your door, your neighbor sees you and sneers. What happens then?

In your world CAN your neighbor think a thought that is anti-gay? If he can't, why can't he? if he can, what are the consequences of him doing so. You say this is your right to have this. So what does a world in which your right is protected look like?

Cheers
Aj

[The_Lady_Snow]

I'm going to give this some thought A LOT to be exact I'll be back laters it's late (kinda) and there's still stuff for tomorrow that needs to be done (kids take up A LOT of time) thanks Aj for the push to keep thinking.