Not only do they want to play sports, they want to hump our bloggers.
My friend Mark is going to the Gay Games this weekend to support a friend who is competing. Had we known Ogged would still be in the hospital, he probably could have arranged a big gay leather-daddy delegation to deliver the bear. That would have roxxored.
Yes, Bozell and Graham are idiots and homophobes, and the "point" they are trying to make is stupid. But I don't really get the Gay Games; there are already gay athletes in the Olympics, etc.
Oh noes! As if it weren't enough that Teh New York Times is made up of traitors who want terrorists to kill the Vice-President, they also don't think gays are subhuman!! That's even worse!!!
Gay Games are just the games simpliciter, but with more chances to score.
Nice. Is there a Gay World Cup?
Is there a Gay World Cup?
One wonders if a head butt executed in that World Cup would also result in a penalty.
We've already let them into our games of smear the queer! Sweet Heterosexual Jesus! Talk about letting the camel's nose into the tent.
To SCMT - gays in sports still have a mightily tough time of it. Every year at the lesbian prom (which is what the National Center for Lesbian Rights' annual dinner is like), we honor an athlete who stood up to discrimination. Usually it's some high school girl who faced some pretty horrific discrimination from her COACH (not just students) or the gay coach who gets fired for being gay. And that's a girl. You can only imagine why big strapping guys like pro footballer Esera Tuaolo never came out while playing. The Gay Games are an opportunity for gays to play knowing that their asses may get kicked, but only on the playing field, and not, say, behind the bleachers with the tacit approval of coaches and teammates. Plus, it's a reminder that we're out there and we'd like the chance to play too.
For other examples, you should check this out. (Sorry to get all serious about this but it's an issue near and dear to my heart.)
Oh, and can we just share my thoughts every time I see one of these girls honored?
WHAT idiot tries to remove a LESBIAN from a sports team?!
No red cards for nipple-twisting in gay soccer.
moira:
(Sorry to get all serious about this but it's an issue near and dear to my heart.)
I'm glad you were serious, as I was, too. Aren't the Gay Games roughly the same as the Olympics? I understand the need to worry about homophobia in a day in, day out sort of way (e.g. the NFL), but I would have thought that a quadrennial event like the Olympics would be basically homophobia free. The athletes, after all, have to manage themselves for the intervening four years, and who would care one way or the other about playing with someone gay during a month-long event?
I don't know if I'm saying that very clearly. I was just surprised--I don't know if Louganis is out, and there have always been rumors about Carl Lewis--but at this point, who cares, I guess? Carl Lewis, if he's gay, remains the greatest track and field athlete of my lifetime. Louganis had one of the great "stick" performances of all-time, and probably the one that did the most to make diving seem not gay.
Anyway, I guess I was wondering because most of the other pseudo-Olympic events are ones in which the athletes aren't physically able to compete with the best in the world, and that's clearly not true for gay athletes. Yet, if there is a gay Olympics, then I assume there is a need, but that there is a need means that the event won't get the best gay athletes in the world. That's depressing in all sorts of directions.
9 gets it exactly right.
SCMT, it also does a lot to raise the profile of gay rights activists, and it raises the profile of the athletes involved. I understand (and appreciate!) your attitude that surely, in this day and age, no one is going to care about t3h gay cooties, but lots of people do. I think it's easy to forget that many, many gay athletes live in countries or play in sports where being out would exclude them from in any way being welcomed into a role of carrying the banner of that nation or that team or that city. There are currently no out gay men in professional sports that I can think of (a few who have retired/quit, yes, but not currently on the field) and only a tiny handful of out gay women. These games are, for many of these people, the only time they can compete and really feel like they're doing it as themselves.
I also don't think they're necessarily doing these games for you. I say that gently, though.
It really does do a lot - just like pride marches and gay choruses, and the like - to raise the profile of the movement as a whole. After all, it got us talking about it.
I'm surprised (on the basis of no actual knowledge about the actual percentage representation of Samoans in the NFL, or of how connected the kind of Samoan-Americans that end up in NFL are to traditional Samoan culture on gay issues) that the Samoan influence on the NFL hasn't made it more relaxed about gays. Assuming that Samoan-from-Hawaii would be like Samoan-from-Samoa on gay issues, being gay for Tuaolo should have been absolutely a non-issue growing up -- I'd think enough football playing Samoans would be able to spread the attitude.
I've always wondered why Emile Griffith hasn't been canonized in the gay community. World champion boxer, women's hat designer, don't mess with him.
Yeah, I think that's right - closeted gay athletes who are at the top of their sports remain closeted for a variety of reasons, including the fear of negative publicity and loss of sponsorships/endorsements. This being a real consideration when, like you said, they're amateurs paying for a lot of this on their own, struggling to get by and so forth. You come out and kiss goodbye serious money.
Whether the Gay Games will affect this... I don't know. I don't think anything meaningful will happen (beyond generally raising awareness, which is a good thing) until you get a high-profile gay Olympian or professional athlete competing openly. They'd still kiss a lot of endorsement money goodbye though. I don't know if that would ever change.
(I want to say that there was a handball team from Denmark - figures - that was a lesbian couple who had medalled in the Olympics after competing in the Gay Games, but given that it was Denmark, the Berkeley of Europe, and handball, hardly a mainstream sport, that its effect was nil.)
I think it's easy to forget that many, many gay athletes live in countries or play in sports where being out would exclude them from in any way being welcomed into a role of carrying the banner of that nation or that team or that city
That's a really good point.
I also don't think they're necessarily doing these games for you.
No, I get that. And y'all are clearly best situated to know the need for it, and appreciate the benefits. I suppose the analogy I think of is this: it would be depressing if there were a Negro League today. But it would be doubly depressing if there were a Negro League in a world like ours today, because you wouldn't even get the best black athletes in the Negro League. I can certainly understand it as a celebration of gay pride (what's the capitalization rule there?), but as a competition, if I were gay I think I would constantly be saying, "Actually, our best guys are in the pros." I think I would be slightly pissed that people might think that this was the flower of gay athletics. Does that make any sense?
Huh. More on Esera, who, it turns out is ambassador of the Gay Games. And... he's singing.
To LB's point about Samoans in the NFL, I forgot that they are more relaxed about homosexuality but then, they can't be that big of an influence - still quite the minority in the NFL and then there's that pressure to fit in... Men just have it so much harder in sports. (oh, SNAP.)
13: Speaking of pride marches, during D.C.'s pride parade I was talking with a friend who objected to the over-the-top nature of it, what with the leather thongs and whatnot. I said that the design of these parades is to make the issue a more visible one, but her point was that while the parades are all well and good, playing to stereotype is counterproductive. I still haven't really decided what to think about that.
Incidentally, this person isn't anti-gay in the least. She just meant that pragmatically, if you're trying to get across the message of "gays are people too", you shouldn't be emphasizing aspects of the group that make them seem alien to the rest of society.
And I really don't know how much the Samoan-Samoan attitude carries over to people raised in the US; the heavily Christian thing might override the culturally relaxed thing for immigrant communities.
19: On the other hand, it's a parade. What would a parade of pleasantly dull schlubs look like? And the gay movement has historically so much been about flamboyant people refusing to blend in; Stonewall was drag queens, not Log Cabin Republicans.
What would a parade of pleasantly dull schlubs look like?
Like most parades, actually.
To SCMT - yeah, I completely agree. I was thinking of this as I was talking to a friend competing the GG in the marathon. This guy would NEVER qualify for the Boston Marathon. He just wouldn't. The people I know competing in the games don't seem particularly athletic and so I had to do away with the idea that this was about the best gay athletes. It's an opportunity for out gays to compete and to raise visibility.
I do think that the long term goals are to improve the quality of the athletes so that eventually you DO get the best of the best - including, ideally, professional athletes and Olympians. I view this as the early days of the GG in that respect.
To Matt F - I also agree. I'm very active in the gay community and every year I have discussions with folks about why it is we need to include every conceivable marginally gay-related group in the parade. The low point was when the SF Pride Parade included a float full of Furries. I was outraged. Tipsy after several madrases (a delicious beverage, fwiw), I was screaming - WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH GAY RIGHTS? It was as though ever sexual fetish was suddenly thrown under the GLBT banner.
On another note, I will openly admit to occasionally having problems with heterosexual transexuals being included in certain gay events. It feels odd to be leered at by a F-to-M at a gay rights dinner. (They often out-macho most straight men I know.) This, of course, might be the topic of another post. I'm not alone in this sentiment within the community, incidentally. Just that few will discuss it publicly.
If you're going to be out in a parade, you should be out any way you wish to be.
There's still an unconscious bias in thinking people should be gay in a certain way, or that they need to inhibit themselves to get across a message that "gays are people, too," or that they should even be held to the need of getting across an obvious message like that.
Whose benefit is the parade for? Theirs or people who aren't comfortable about them?
17: I take your point, and it's a good one. I think a better analogy for how I view it, though, would be the existence of BET on cable. If there's going to be a culture that drives a movement for equality, that culture has to have spaces where it is the dominant or only expression so that it can build social and political support infrastructure it is otherwise denied by the overall majority or the pressures of an aggressively opposed minority that claims to represent the majority.
That doesn't mean your point is invalid, or that there aren't lots of queer folks who agree with you. The self-segregation debate has been going in the queer "community" for a long, long time, and many glbtq people see events such as the Gay Games as tools of alienation. I disagree with that view, but I understand how someone would end up with it.
To 25 - exactly.
The self-segregation thing goes on, not just from the straight community but within the gay community. Some resent gays who live in gay ghettoes; those in gay ghettoes look upon gays living in Pacific Heights or Danville as self-hating sellouts. I'm weak on this issue: I think it's better for us as a whole if we indeed do live EVERYWHERE - raisins in raisinbread! to know us is to love us! - but that said, I would hate being one of 4 lesbians in a 50 mile radius. There comes a point where I just get tired of being the Only Lesbian They Know In Town, and just want to live my life in the most fulfilling way possible. Which happens to mean living in or near a large gay community. I mean, recruiting housewives gets old quick.
Also, Adam Ash and moira get it exactly right on the parades. Let folks let it all hang out however they want to - when are they going to get a chance like that? - and people who view the parades as meant to be equivalent to the high school band marching down Main St. the day after Thanksgiving are crazy. I like Pride best when it's a parade in the same sense that Mardi Gras is a 'parade.'
On the other hand, it ain't Furries Day.
I would hate being one of 4 lesbians in a 50 mile radius.
If you were one of four in a fifty mile radius, would you consider dating ogged? I mean, he's waifishly thin at a buck thirty, and he's Iranian, so it's not like his penis is going to be very noticeable.
moira - please tell me you've watched Little Britain. I didn't love it enough to TiVo it, but 'the only gay in the village' was a pretty funny idea.
I've only seen bits of Little Britain - but I now HAVE to find that bit. Sounds brilliant.
If Ogged waxes, we'll talk.
Re gay Furries, most appeared to be sports mascots of some kind, so I would assume they were straight. (ANNNND we're full circle.)
I would hate being one of 4 lesbians in a 50 mile radius.
It could be worse.
many glbtq people
Isn't that now glbtqF?
And once you add the Q to GLBT, aren't you just inviting the F?
Craving a sandwich right about now.
35: Only if the F's are GLBT, and even then can't we find room for them in our already-expansive lettering scheme? Here is where I post the rough drafts of various potential gags I don't have time to work into something worth presenting as finalized:
--The F's who are T's have it the worst, since we all know it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
--Something about a (person in a) squirrel (suit) gathering nuts.
Moira, your point about MTFs is one that it seems is very hard to talk about, in that there doesn't seem to be a way to have feelings about it that aren't offensive. On one hand, I know many MTFs my age and older who, like most grown men, don't ogle or grope, but a young student of mine has been hanging out with some young MTF friends who constantly talk about finding some chicks to get drunk and fuck, etc., so they go to lesbian bars, where they get kicked out for harassing the patrons and calling them misogynistic/homophobic slurs.
There's no way to talk about this later group of MTFs without making some pretty offensively Freudian comments about the desire for patriarchal power. But in what other language can one talk about it? My student keeps coming to me with concerns as she has begun transitioning with them, and all I can say is, "But you told me you were raped! How can hanging out with these guys be fun for you?" And she says, "It's a way of not thinking about it like that, I guess."
heterosexual transexuals
I am confused. This would be (in your example) a woman who will transition to a man, and will then date women, correct? Does a hetero-transexual date women when still a woman?
And AWB, you're talking about the exact opposite move, right?
SCMT means 'date' in the Biblical sense, of course.
40: I'm pretty sure Moira and AWB are talking about the same thing -- people born female and now identifying as male, sexually pursuing women.
42: "When correctly viewed/Everything is lewd/I could tell you things about Peter Pan/Or the Wizard of Oz...there's a dirty old man!"
Robust:
I was assuming the Q tacked at the end of GLBT was "Queer." My point was only that queer is an awfully vague term.
I was also assuming that the furries in question are the so-called "erotic furries," people who get off on having sex in animal costumes. Regardless of whether such people belong in the pride parade, I will claim that they are a bone fide sexual minority. They have enough social organization that individuals can really identify themselves with this group and this practice. Even if it is silly.
moira says "F-to-M" and AWB says "MTF." I think they're opposites, LB.
45: I know. I kid, I kid. "Queer" is a vague term, but intentionally so. I used it as part of the acronym, but really I meant it to encompass "all of these things and anything I'm forgetting."
And it may be my own prejudice showing, but I think if furries want to have a parade, more power to them, but they should have their own parade. Everything I usually see at Pride is pretty directly related to or derived from same-sex attractions and issues of gender roles and gender identity. I don't really see furry...dom? Furriness? Hirsusexuals? Whatever. I don't see it as the same thing. We may all be in the fruit bin, but we didn't come from the same tree.
46: You're right, but I think it's a typo -- in context, AWB really seems to be talking about FTM's as well. (I actually read right past it without even noticing the typo, if it is one -- I had to look back to realize you were right.)
Re. gay ghettos--I get the arguments about isolation and self-segregation, blah blah, but, eh. I lived in a gay ghetto (that over the years I was there became less so) and everything from the bookstore to the street culture was just comfortably gay. Hence the breeders like me who started to move in (and breed) were pretty queer-friendly. And I have to say that the gay bookstore was, in fact, one of the best independent bookstores I've ever seen, and selfishly one of the results of my just wandering in and browsing the place was perceiving gay authors as much more mainstream than a lot of them actually are. Also cool re. raising kids who don't find gay couples in any way remarkable.
Anyway, my experience was that the gay ghetto was definitely about way more than self-segregation. It was just a subtly different culture altogether, mostly in very positive ways.
but her point was that while the parades are all well and good, playing to stereotype is counterproductive.
Mmm. Tell that to the drunk Irishfolk (or ever better to the wanna-be Irish) at a St. Paddy's Day Parade or to the Italians at a Columbus Day Parade. Aren't parades all about embracing and exorcising stereotypes? (I suppose I could get all Bahktinian about this, but I've drunk too much wine to do so and I really don't know my Bahktin that well anyway.)
Still, I think Furries at a Pride event would disturb me.
45 - Some people use the Q at the end of GLBTQ to mean "questioning", not "queer", especially when talking about teenagers.
Didn't know there were furriephobes, too.
Dude, everyone is freaked out by furries. Them and people who dress up as clowns. ::Shudder::
Maybe there should be a separate parade for furries and clown-o-sexuals.
They'll need more numbers than that, though. Who else belongs at that celebration?
The people who get vampire teeth permanently installed?
Okay, no. Those people should really not get a parade.
Besides, a parade would require them to leave their apartments.
"apartments" s/b "basements"
Also, OK, as long as we're being honest here, furries freak me out.
Is Clown'gist a clownosexual? One who gets off on clowns who use ether, perhaps? Inquiring minds want to know.
Perhaps the parade should also include furnies.
No, we like the gays. It's the furries we're bashing.
I just wanted to put the phrase into circulation.
Oh, right. Well, as long as it doesn't promote furries, I'm all for it.
Try not to unleash the fucking furries, ok?
Just as I was reading this, the song "Get Up" came on my stereo:
Do you think I'm an animal?
Am I not?
Do you like fur?
Do you wanna come over?
Just as I was reading this, the song "Get Up" came on my stereo:
Does that make "Get Up" a furnie, or more of a techie?
Oh, of course. Thanks, apo.