Sexuality: Note to Heterosexuals
This post was submitted by Ben, a native of Maryland who relocated back to the D.C. area after living in Boston and New York. Check out Ben’s previous post: Approximate Living.
1) Stop assuming the myth of Compulsory Heterosexuality…right now. It’s embarrassing.
2) Stop demanding The Gays come out. No homosexual owes you an explanation for, or disclosure of, anything…ever.
3) Stop equating discretion with delusion.
If a “Suspected Stealth Gay” does not “come out” to you that lack of disclosure does not always mean a person is “Gay” and closeted. It very often means that person is: 1) avowedly “Gay” without any intention of discussing it with YOU and acknowledging your offensively suspicious, circumspect manner; or 2) heterosexual and annoyed with your mistake. In either case you’re way out-of-line. People, Gay or straight, simply do not want to deal with your erroneous invasive presumptions about their sexuality.
Stop expecting all Gays owe you some sort of disclosure. Stop pressuring Suspected Stealth Gays to signify as “Gay” or do something “Gay”, when they do not automatically come out to you personally, just to accommodate your remarkably-creepy-need-to-know. This compulsion to “come out” is a heterosexual fantasy and a bigoted function of the closet imposed upon The Gays by you.
4) Stop using the phrase “openly Gay”. Sexual orientation is avowed not admitted.
5) Stop speculating freely and conspiratorially on the sexuality of others. It betrays your grotesque insecurity. It is also called Sexual Harassment.
6) Admit the destabilizing fear, anxiety and discomfort you feel when every single Suspected Stealth Gay you think you know does not personally reveal sexual orientation to you immediately.
7) Face that destabilizing fear and anxiety alone. “The Gays” do not come-out-of-the-closet to accommodate your anxiety and indulge your remarkably creepy need-to-know. Here’s a thought: healthy people have boundaries.
8) Admit your unchallenged belief in Compulsory Heterosexuality is the single cause of that destabilizing fear and anxiety NOT the presence of ostensible, unverifiable, unconfirmed homosexuals (i.e. Suspected Stealth Gays). The solution is simple: 1) stop expecting every person on earth to be exactly like you, 2) stop expecting every person on earth must disclose or explain their difference to you.
9) Stop professing you are “fine with The Gays”. We’re sure you have many black friends too. Please stop telling us about it.
10) Stop forcing homosexuals to tolerate your “tolerance”.
11) Stop extrapolating from personal experience.
Exhibit A: “I like The Gays so all straight people are cool like me. I’ll just indulge my uninterrogated belief that homophobic bigotry is a fantasy and expect The Gays not to be offended by my narcissistic ignorance because, really, my personal feelings and comfort are much more important than the systemic oppression and persecution of an entire class of people worldwide for centuries. Because straight people really are the center of the universe! No, I mean I’m really the center of the universe!”
12) Stop generalizing from personal experience.
Your limited knowledge and experience of your “Gays” is at best partial and, I emphasize, irrelevant to the individual and collective specificity of all homosexuals and homosexuality worldwide.
The Gay “minstrel show” you love is a lazy, fallacious construction of your own uninterrogated delusions which you, consciously or unconsciously, continue to impose on The Gays…unironically. Not all Gays conform to those comforting preconceived (i.e. bigoted) notions you so freely and uncritically swallow.
The truth is heterosexuals freely embrace the comforting predictability of homophobic stereotypes mistaking such “acceptance” as “progressive”. Unwittingly becoming stereotypes themselves. Whether all this is unconscious or self-conscious it is misguided. The soft bigotry of low expectations.
So, stop imposing the claustrophobic “Gay Box”.
Exhibit A: “I have [insert exaggerated number here] Gay friends so I already know what ALL Gays are like. Please don’t expect me to believe you’re an individual or somehow different. You’re exactly like all The Gays I already know. Kind of the way all my Asians friends look and think and act alike. Kind of the way all my Black friends look and think and act alike.”
Exhibit B: Kathy Griffin’s reality show persona. She is being ironic about “her Gays”. Do you get that?
13) Stop defending yourselves.
We know some heterosexuals are cool. Stop reminding us. At the very least personally acknowledge your enormous privileges of marriage, reproductive freedom, adoption rights, hospital visitation rights, military service, no-risk access to housing and employment, tax benefits, personal safety etc. Privileges that are not only guaranteed for you but paraded throughout this and every culture on earth as not just the standard but the zenith of human experience and quality of life. Privileges that are not universal inalienable rights for The Gays. Privileges in exact disproportion to the systemic disenfranchisement of an entire class of people worldwide which you neither understand nor realize.
14) Stop flattering yourself with the “Homosexual Panic Defense”. Gays do not want to have sex with you. This is emphasized for straight men. Really. Look in the mirror, step on a scale, then look around.
15) Stop conflating homosexual with “Gay”. Sexual orientation and cultural identity is not the same thing, especially when the cultural identity in question has NEVER BEEN FORMED OUTSIDE OF OPPRESSION. While all “Gays” are homosexual, not all avowed homosexuals culturally identify as “Gay”.
Understand this fantasy of “Gay” identity is arguably dysfunctional: the post-traumatic-stress-disorder of sexual apartheid and centuries of oppression. “Official Gay Culture” is a massive exercise in behavior modification. Nothing more than a compromised reaction-formation desperately constructed ONLY in the last few decades to negotiate and adapt to centuries of consistent persecution and disenfranchisement.
Acknowledge the grotesque personal, psychological damage such universal persecution produces in an entire class of people. Understand that celebrating the resultant dysfunctional “cultural identity” is neither deferential nor transformative.
Acknowledge your complacence with that caste system.
Acknowledge your collusion with the very hegemony that produced and perpetuates it.
Acknowledge sexual apartheid.
16) Do not challenge the masculinity/femininity of The Gays.
17) Do not make The Gays defend the right to get married. What are your own reasons for wanting to get married? There’s your answer.
18) Do not make The Gays defend the right to raise their own children and create their own families. What are your own reasons? There’s your answer.
18) Do not make The Gays defend the right to serve their country.
19) Stop pretending Gay is a choice. Did you choose to be heterosexual? There’s your answer. The day heterosexuals can “change” will be the exact same day homosexuals can “change”. Got that?
20) Stop asking what “causes” homosexuality, as if it is a disease. Pretending heterosexuality is genetic and therefore “natural” but homosexuality is magically aberrant betrays a remarkable sense of entitlement. The question is not what causes The Gay. The question is: what are the biological determinants of sexual orientation in general, as a universal human trait and characteristic?
21) Stop pimping The Gays in your elections and ballot measures.
22) Stop pretending The Gays are filthy, disgusting, promiscuous, disease vectoring, predatory whores out to destroy you and your children.
23) Stop terrorizing, attacking, beating and killing The Gays in your streets and your schools and your courts and your legislatures.
24) Stop pretending The Gays imagine your tyranny, conveniently absolving yourselves of guilt while projecting delusion and culpability in one genius stroke.
That you have absolutely no knowledge or interest in how Gay lives are confined, restrained and coerced every moment of every day because of you is insulting. Recognize ignorance and complacency as your exclusive hegemonic privilege. Explain this to your friends and stop being part of the problem.
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You reference me to ‘keep it clean,’ but it’s really hard when I just puked all over my keyboard in disgust after reading this. Calm the eff down.
Also, we get it: you went to college, you use big words.
“Conveniently absolving yourselves of guilt while projecting delusion and culpability in one genius stroke.”
Ugh.
WTF? Stop being so pretentious. Also “Ben, a native of Maryland who relocated back to the D.C. area…” Stop living in the suburbs.
Thanks for lumping all of us heterosexuals together as a bigoted, close-minded group that’s out to out the gays!
Can you write the counter-article to this? “Note to homosexuals”? Because one of the things on the list should be “Reduce the size of the chip on your shoulder because while many people can agree that gays have been dealt a tough one and are still struggling for equality, being constantly angry and confrontational gets you nowhere.”
And then you can put a picture of your face next to that point as a visual example.
Here is a note to you – stop being so goddamn bitter, not all straight people are alike, nor are the bad.
Hey Ben-
Please stop assuming that The Heterosexuals hate The Gays. As one of The Bisexuals, I can relate to some of your sentiment… particularly 17, which in just a few words describe the bottom line: WE (The Gays) are just like YOU (The Heteros). But your categorization of The Heteros as pompous, status-obsessed bigots puts you in the same group that you apparently detest: people who stereotype. In short: simmer down, open your mind, and forgive the ignorance. Can’t we all just get along?
“your remarkably creepy…” not “you’re.”
I really do think The New Gay needs some proofreaders. Errors distract from content.
Straights: as a homo, I officially grant you permission to disregard this article. It is nutz.
If you are complaining about this article, or saying it’s bitter or unnecessary, whether you are straight or gay, I hope you’re okay with being trampled over when the revolution comes. And it will come.
Oh good Lord. Go get a drink or something. Also Brevity is the soul of wit. This is a blog not an exercise in mental masturbation. This sort of nonsense is why I avoid queer theory people.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a hetersexual as delusional or malicious as the person addressed in this article. Most of those complaints should be addressed to gays who write/read/comment on a number of celebrity gossip blogs….
Blago, I agree with you.
As a gay agnostic, the very first thought that entered my mind after reading this post was “Good God, Moses himself brought down only TEN commandments.”
I will mention a couple of things though. Gays NEED to come out. Most of my friends are straight and accept me as I am and I’ve been intimate and close to a few of them–men, mind you.
I tell anyone who asks me if I’m gay the truth. If they can’t handle it, that’s THEIR problem, not mine. This society is changing, Ben, believe it or not. The onus for most of society in the U.S. is not on gays to explain themselves, but homophobes to explain themselves, and they can’t do so very well.
Want proof? How about the number of GOPs in the closet who were forced out by scandals because they couldn’t admit to others their sexual orientations? And then, like in the cases of Mark Foley and CA state senator Roy Ashburn, coming out of the closet at incredibly awkward times. You don’t want to come out of the closet when a criminal case is pending against you. Would you want them to still be in the closet because gays should demand privacy for these anti-gay voting public officials? Is hypocrisy on this scale allowable and excusable in your world, Ben? Would such hypocrisy extend to the friendships you would want to create?
You completely overlook a major factor in homophobia, Ben—closeted queers. From Roy Cohn on down to some of the current GOP, many of those fighting against gay rights are gay themselves. And in the most homophobic presidential election in 2004, when the anti-gay marriage amendment was THE hot topic, even during then–one in four gays voted for BUSH. Start talking to some of them. Now.
There is growing support in the straight community for equal rights for gays, including even gay marriage, which was inconceivable fifteen years ago. As more people come out of the closet, walls continue to tumble down.
Are there going to be some issues between gays and straights? Yes. Remarkably, your 24 commandments did not include the eradication of using the word “gay” to describe something lame or stupid. This offense is rampant in our society, yet you seem to be blind to it. (My solution: use the word “gay” for something great to counteract the meaning and usage of the word).
Friends, regardless of sexual orientation, appreciate honesty. I WANT to share my life with my friends, not shoo them off with this “none of your business” nonsense. When straight people get to know me and like me, they become more supportive of gay rights. One of my closest straight friends was homophobic in high school. After being my roommate for a few years, he marched openly in my local gay pride parade next to me, putting his own job in jeopardy. I was so proud of him. People DO change, so don’t assume anything with them. But if your friends ask you and they can’t handle an honest answer—find. new. friends.
And Ben, if you want to work at killing assumptions, stop assuming that straights asking you if you are gay is so incredibly intrusive. They’re not asking you about what you do in bed. THAT’S intrusive, and would require a reply in very equal measure (and believe me, I can think of several).
So if I continue to give money to the Courage Campaign or to Equality California or the Human Rights Campaign, does that mean I’m being patronizing to the GLBT community and am insulting their intelligence because I’m heterosexual? I’m guessing that it’ll be considered dirty money based on what’s posted here.
Gross. Just really, really gross.
Right on, Raphael.
The gay community does a lot of great things, but also needs to address issues of sexism, looksism, racism and ageism that pops up within the community itself. And please, the world does not revolve around gossip columns and material goods.
All these comments strike me a very narrow-minded. Yeah, this is a pretty aggressive piece, but try living in a place like upstate South Carolina and then try to jump all over Ben.
Live somewhere where you have maybe one or two gays friends, Tea Party rallies openly accuse one of your state Senators of being blackmailed for being in the closet, where the other senator said gays (and single mothers) shouldn’t be allowed to be teachers, where a guy who (maybe) committed a “hate crime” gets 3-months in jail for, even though the victim died.
These are angry claims I make at least once a week, circumstances I deal with more than anyone ever should.
Thanks for this.
Listen, what you are experiencing from the gay and bi people is a little thing called “protectionism”. We are meant to protect het people, het institutions, het culture and mores (het hegemony even). That means that when you write something radical, that people are going to react poorly instead of understanding what you are saying.
1) We are in a different world. I welcome the idea of gays not having to come out… but just BE out. Also, coming out never stopped this idea of “str8-acting” of the dehumanization of feminine gay men.
2) If you are heterosexual and feel hurt by this, you are being a part of the problem. The intent of this post is to root out heterosexism which is the idea that heterosexuals are better than homosexuals and thus treat homosexuals as curiosities, at best. We need better allies. Allies who don’t get all butt-hurt when we are talking about the shit we still get from het people and institutions.
3)Doing the right thing (all the stories of these heroic straight people who hung out or did something with their villainous gay friends) is it’s own reward and not worth all the g-d gratitude pouring out.
[...] recent epistle posted to LGBT blog The New Gay, entitled “Note to Heterosexuals,” has courted some controversy on the site itself and around the web for focusing on [...]
I just StumbleUponed this post, and I love the way the comments completely validate the author’s claims.
Acknowledging privilege doesn’t make you a bad person. But it’s patronizing at best and offensive at worst to deny that such privilege exists, or that a member of the hegemony always (perhaps unintentionally) plays into the continued existence of that hegemony, or that by virtue of being a member of that hegemony in the first place, one has been and continues to be the recipient of privileges and virtues not afforded to those who go against that hegemony. An oppressed people’s bitterness or anger should not and cannot be legitimized by members of the hegemony, nor should it be apologized for by such an oppressed person.
When one’s bitterness or anger becomes one’s defining characteristic, then it becomes a problem for one’s own emotional health and one’s relationships with other members of society. But simply expressing that anger by acknowledging it (and perhaps venting about it, which is fine, seeing as how nobody forced you to read this post in the first place) is not tantamount to letting one’s negativity dictate one’s behavior.
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