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Belief that being gay dictates ones personality [W:185, W:771]

SmokeAndMirrors

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I want to know why people believe this.

I'll preface it with a little story about the first person who came out to me.

I had a friend in high school who came out to me, and then his parents, when we were 14 or 15.

This was a guy that wanted to save himself until marriage, and not even for religious reasons. Mostly just because he was an interminable romantic.

He wasn't into drinking, or drugs, or even partying really. He was an extremely motivated student. Volunteered at the library, knitted, babysat. He was the furthest possible thing from a crazy teenager.

Shortly after he came out to his parents, his mother was driving me home after we'd been hanging out at their place.

She had done her best to be supportive when he came out. And somewhere inside her rational self, she knew it changed nothing about him. He'd always been gay. The only thing that had changed is now she knew it.

But when we got to the front of my apartment building, she stopped, and started crying.

I asked her what was wrong.

"I'm so worried about him now." And then she went on to talking about how she was concerned he would get into party drugs, screw around, and wind up with AIDS.

I said to her, "Why would you be worried about that? You know he isn't into any of that stuff. He hasn't changed."

She couldn't give me a real answer that didn't sound judgmental, because the real answer was that she was worried about it because that is what she believed happened to gay people.

She was so convinced of it that it had completely overruled everything she knew about her son. It overruled her knowledge that he wasn't that kind of boy at all. That there was absolutely nothing about him that suggested he would ever go down that kind of path.

Do I think she was a bad person? No. I think she was just a product of an older generation, and she had never been faced with really having to look at a gay person and realize they are just another person, and they could be all kinds of different things, just like straight people can. She was intellectually supportive of gay people, but she had never had to deal with the issue so close to home.

My teenage brain managed to get to the end of this train of thought, and come up with the most helpful thing it could as she sat in the drivers seat sobbing. "You know, I think people do that because they hate themselves. So maybe the best thing we can do is just keep loving him. Because he loves himself. And as long as he does, he's going to keep being who he is. He wouldn't do that to his life."

"You're right." She took a deep breath, and told me to have a nice weekend. I got out of the car, and we never talked about it again. As far as I know, he's still pretty much the same guy he was then. Last I heard, he was working on a book of poetry.

Minneapolis is apparently one of the gayest cities in the country. I know tons of gay people, just from happenstance. The majority of them are pretty ordinary people. A lot are in committed relationships. Some aren't. Some don't want to be. But I can't say that I know any who have gone down the meth-fueled party route.

I don't actually know any gay people like that. And I don't think I ever have, in any city.

Even the professional gay drag queen I once interviewed -- from all appearances, the height of flamboyant gayness -- lived in a nice condo with his partner, and seemed to be a pretty steady guy.

The only gay person I know who I think is at risk of hurting his life is my cousin, who was raised in a Roman Catholic family that is struggling to accept his sexuality. They are trying, but they aren't doing a very good job.

I think it's interesting that he is the only gay person I know who seems at risk, and he also happens to be the only one I know who doesn't entirely love himself. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Why do some people believe that being gay negates everything about their personality? As if there's some universal gay personality that includes being crazy and self-destructive, and as soon as everyone knows they're gay, this will overwhelm everything else about them?

What if, in reality, this is simply a possible risk of how they might react to hatred when they come out?

And of course, that's a risk that can happen to anyone who is hated, bullied, or cast out, for any reason. For their weight, or color, from trauma, or simply from having a really bad childhood. That can happen to anyone.

I am not as well-acquainted with the older generation of gay people. Perhaps more of them were like this. It would make sense. They got more hate than the current crop have.

What is it about being gay that makes people believe everything about them will be overwhelmed by some pressing desire to do drugs and have unsafe sex?

And why is it that we fail to recognize our own place, as part of society, in making that a reality or not?
 
All parents wish their children would stay away from drugs and premarital sex, nothing unusual about that.

I've known lots of Gays here in Austin [a very Gay town] and many practiced all the things she was afraid of. Maybe that's where she got that idea?

FWIW I too practiced many of those bad behaviors.
 
I agree that it doesn't change anyone's fundamental character but I am genuinely curious why homosexuality seems to be as much of a political position as a sexual preference.
 
I know for a fact that the burden of being a closeted gay person can lead to many psychological issues later, even after being out. Holding onto that lie is too a big a weight to bear for most. I am glad that people are changing, and sometime in the not to distant future, I think we'll see different trends.
 
I agree that it doesn't change anyone's fundamental character but I am genuinely curious why homosexuality seems to be as much of a political position as a sexual preference.
For the same reason being black was and still is?
 
I agree that it doesn't change anyone's fundamental character but I am genuinely curious why homosexuality seems to be as much of a political position as a sexual preference.

Political position on whose part? Most gay people just want to be left alone to pursue the same things in life. Society has, until very recently, made that difficult to impossible.
 
I agree that it doesn't change anyone's fundamental character but I am genuinely curious why homosexuality seems to be as much of a political position as a sexual preference.

Don't know. My thoughts here aren't political.

If you're talking about SSM, it's political because people have decided to fight it using our political system.
 
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Well smoke I can tell you exactly why your elders have these preconceived notions about what it is to be gay. When I was your age it was the SF bath house scene with group sex and gays parading around in women's lingerie and yes, getting AIDS so forgive us for our bias. Hopefully things really have changed.
 
I had friends come out to me before, and I know gay people where you wouldn't know they're gay based on their personality. I don't think being gay dictates ones personality, but there is definitely a more feminine personality that exists more so among homosexual males (with a masculine one for homosexual females) that isn't nearly as prevalent among the straight population. In a way homosexuality may influence those masculine/feminine roles, but as a general rule I wouldn't say it impacts personality.
 
I want to know why people believe this.

biased fear and ignorance, and in this case love fueled that fear and ignorance and hopeful love will fuel education and common sense to fix it.

gay has an impact to personality no more than straight, gay, bi, black, white, asain, man, woman, etc etc etc

thinking it does impact personality is the same type of nonsensical intellectual void biased logic that allows people to think all Christians bomb abortion clinics or priest molest children or Muslims are terrorists, or gays arent being denied rights etc etc etc etc

Its pure ignorance and stupidity

and many of us are guilty of it in one form or another, the trick is, is it temporary or permanent. Can a person overcome it, push their emotions aside and take off their stupidity and biased glasses and see reality?

some people cant, they will always be ignorant to the facts. But most of us, the rational, educated, honest and civil ones can simply learn from our mistakes, educate ourselves and deal with reality.

I think your friend in the story will do that. Love will enable her to learn and see reality.
 
I want to know why people believe this.

She had done her best to be supportive when he came out. And somewhere inside her rational self, she knew it changed nothing about him. He'd always been gay. The only thing that had changed is now she knew it.

"I'm so worried about him now." And then she went on to talking about how she was concerned he would get into party drugs, screw around, and wind up with AIDS.

What is it about being gay that makes people believe everything about them will be overwhelmed by some pressing desire to do drugs and have unsafe sex?

Well, people draw this conclusion because other people say things like you did, "He'd always been gay. The only thing that had changed is now she knew it."

People hear that from family of gay individuals and conclude that all manner of things are 'different' about 'gay individuals' from the moment they were born. This isn't true, of course, it's more like a comforting little phrase that parents and other tell their selves when they now have 20/20 about it all.

Also, if you DIDN'T know - like - clearly KNOW for a fact someone was gay, then how can you know - clearly KNOW for a fact that they don't do drugs, and don't have frivolous sex? That can be an issue raised about anyone - gay or straight.

My parents didn't KNOW anything for a fact, they just ASSUMED I didn't like boys. (I seemed to have been a strange girl with parents who ASSUMED I was gay, apparently, thus, they didn't think I liked boys and, thus, when I ended up pregnant they wondered how they missed the signs.)

Truth: a lot of children - of any age (even adult) - lie to their parents about who they are, what they're interested in, and how they live.

I write erotica - and yet I told my mom "I can't stand reading stuff like that," a few weeks ago. Knee jerk reaction to create distance and not be judged by her.
 
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I think the manner in which homosexuality was exclusively portrayed in mainstream and popular culture (until very recently) has a lot to do with it too.

Figure what Archie Bunker thought of "fruits" and that was about the "standard"

Add to that the fact that most ordinary rural and suburban people don't have a lot of dealings with homosexual people even today.

Back in the 40s, 50s, 60s it was even more pronounced.

Homosexuals didn't even start "coming out of the closet" publicly in any real numbers 'til the late 70s and 80s, or maybe even the 80s and 90s.

Until then homosexuality was a deep, dark, ugly subculture in the popular/mainstream mind.

When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s my only real exposure to homosexuals was the couple of really effeminate kids in high school that we all suspected were gay but didn't really know for sure (because if they were they were in the closet) and occasional trips over to the City to cop weed down around Washington Square and St. Marks when things were dry in suburbia.

My parents didn't even have that minimal exposure (because they weren't going into the Village to buy drugs).

Anyhow, given that dearth of any real first hand experience with gay doctors, lawyers, and bankers coupled with the popular depiction of homosexuals are depraved and perverted outsiders at worst (and "worst" was fairly common) and as outsiders at best what impression would people be left to form about the gay community?

I was in my mid to late 20s, this was in the mid to late 1990s, before I even met my first real, bona fide homosexual and at the time it made me uncomfortable.

I was uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality for a long time because I was completely ignorant of what "the gay lifestyle" really was.

I know today that it isn't significantly different than the straight lifestyle with the slight difference that, while holes is holes, some of them smell different than others.

I could care less if someone is gay. I could care less if my sons have gay friends. I think I'd even have a hard time caring if my sons turn out gay.

But that's because I have knowledge today that I didn't have then.

And it wasn't really even just a lack of knowledge (ignorance). It was also that what messages about homosexuality I did receive were pretty much exclusively negative.

The gays that started that whole "coming out" movement were some brave mother****ers.

They opened the door that's led to wide acceptance of homosexuality in the mainstream world.

I won't pretend that there still isn't a long way to go.

Or that many people don't still insist on remaining ignorant (primarily because of adherence to religions that paradoxically teach love and acceptance).

It's still going to be a long haul, but it's a lot shorter than it was back when the only kind of "normalcy" a homosexual could find was to become a member of some big-city gay enclave.
 
Those are some other reasons people make these assumptions about gays: "culture" "lifestyle" "coming out."

:shrug: All these labels make it into something it's not: a different means of existence, like an extra dimension, where they're all a like and do all sorts of strange things together in their queer little communities.

None of it's true, of course - but they still have to 'come out of the closet' as if being 'straight' is also a strange mode of existence.

People think it's dramatic because people say it's dramatic.
 
I want to know why people believe this.

Probably a few different reasons or possibilities. The two most obvious being that flamboyance probably served as a means of fighting back against social standards that were being constantly imposed on them, and the only people likely living as openly gay would be those that were very open and up front about it, with a very loose respect for social norms.
 
Those are some other reasons people make these assumptions about gays: "culture" "lifestyle" "coming out."

:shrug: All these labels make it into something it's not: a different means of existence, like an extra dimension, where they're all a like and do all sorts of strange things together in their queer little communities.

None of it's true, of course - but they still have to 'come out of the closet' as if being 'straight' is also a strange mode of existence.

People think it's dramatic because people say it's dramatic.

Gay people are given no option but to formally come out. They can't simply bring their beau to a family function, like straight people can, lest they want to start the mother of all family melt-downs.

Everyone assumes everyone is straight, and a large chunk of people have an angry or violent reaction to suddenly realizing otherwise.

For the safety of both themselves and any partner they might have, they don't really have a choice but to do a formal coming out. It's a necessary means of damage control, at this point in our culture's history. Skipping it is at the risk and probably detriment of all involved.

And yeah, that's a real pity, but it's also the truth.

Until we live in a society where your average parent's reaction to their un-outted child showing up with a same-sex partner at the door is, "Oh, hi, I'm Nancy, come in," that isn't going to change.
 
Well smoke I can tell you exactly why your elders have these preconceived notions about what it is to be gay. When I was your age it was the SF bath house scene with group sex and gays parading around in women's lingerie and yes, getting AIDS so forgive us for our bias. Hopefully things really have changed.

You know what's really interesting?

You see all these posts on the internet about "crazy pride parades."

If you look a little closer, the majority of these are actually fetish parades, and most of the men in those are straight. But everyone sees a leather daddy and assume it's a gay dude. Because apparently gay guys just wear leather all the time, or something.

I wonder if you hold the same views about straight men. Somehow I doubt it.

Oh, and you know who got more AIDS than gays? Hemophiliacs. Wiped out 50% of them. Them too?

And in most of the world outside the West, straights are more affected than gays. Nationalist too?
 
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You know what's really interesting?

You see all these posts on the internet about "crazy pride parades."

If you look a little closer, the majority of these are actually fetish parades, and most of the men in those are straight. But everyone sees a leather daddy and assume it's a gay dude. Because apparently gay guys just wear leather all the time, or something.

I wonder if you hold the same views about straight men. Somehow I doubt it.

Oh, and you know who got more AIDS than gays? Hemophiliacs. Wiped out 50% of them. Them too?

And in most of the world outside the West, straights are more affected than gays. Nationalist too?

No reason to get all snippy, I was just telling you why the older generation has some of the biases towards gays that they do.
 
You know what's really interesting?

You see all these posts on the internet about "crazy pride parades."

If you look a little closer, the majority of these are actually fetish parades, and most of the men in those are straight. But everyone sees a leather daddy and assume it's a gay dude. Because apparently gay guys just wear leather all the time, or something.

I wonder if you hold the same views about straight men. Somehow I doubt it.

Oh, and you know who got more AIDS than gays? Hemophiliacs. Wiped out 50% of them. Them too?

And in most of the world outside the West, straights are more affected than gays. Nationalist too?

You're claiming that most of the more outlandish people in gay pride parades are straights pretending to be gay? Gonna call bollocks on that.
 
You're claiming that most of the more outlandish people in gay pride parades are straights pretending to be gay? Gonna call bollocks on that.
Nope. Having attended many pride parades, there are just as many straight people doing outlandish (and more outlandish) things as there are gay people.

Or, for example, when I moved to Chicago, I was taken by surprise that the gay bars here actually have gay people in them. In a lot of places I've lived the gay bars are full of straight people just acting ridiculous, which makes it difficult to interact with anyone, because you meet a person in the bar ... and well, good chances are that they're straight.

When you refer to "gay events" like pride parades, bars, parties, etc., they are by no means exclusively gay.
 
Nope. Having attended many pride parades, there are just as many straight people doing outlandish (and more outlandish) things as there are gay people.

Or, for example, when I moved to Chicago, I was take by surprise that the gay bars here actually have gay people in them. In a lot of places I've lived the gay bars are full of straight people just acting ridiculous, which makes it difficult to interact with anyone, because you meet a person in the bar ... and good chances are that they're straight.

When you refer to "gay events" like pride parades, bars, parties, etc., they are by no means exclusively gay.

I don't think for a second that "gay events" are exclusively gay, but it seems hard to swallow (no pun intended) that the majority of people acting...peculiar...are actually straight.

Do you think that there's a movement out there of straight people intentionally trying to sully the reputation of homosexuals by acting absurd?
 
I don't think for a second that "gay events" are exclusively gay, but it seems hard to swallow (no pun intended) that the majority of people acting...peculiar...are actually straight.

Do you think that there's a movement out there of straight people intentionally trying to sully the reputation of homosexuals by acting absurd?

Hey..I always wear leather chaps with the ass cut out..So???
 
Hey..I always wear leather chaps with the ass cut out..So???

628130d1329407662-just-bought-45-5-po-232-30-46-21-01-001-pics-included-simpson-pics-didnt-happen.jpg
 

I get some funny looks at work..that's for sure..but then I am a straight person trying to devalue gays..and their lifestyle..I take part in many gay parades...

Part of the conspiracy!!

Shhhh!:cool:
 
I don't think for a second that "gay events" are exclusively gay, but it seems hard to swallow (no pun intended) that the majority of people acting...peculiar...are actually straight. Do you think that there's a movement out there of straight people intentionally trying to sully the reputation of homosexuals by acting absurd?
SmokeAndMirrors wasn't saying anything about which "majorities" are acting peculiar, which is how you interpreted the post. What SmokeAndMirrors was saying is that the events labeled as "gay" -- and let's pick the IML (International Mr. Leather) conferences, for example -- aren't actually gay events. IML conferences involve both straight and gay people and doesn't cater to any particular sexuality. But those who quote "oppose the homosexual lifestyle" still get all upset over IML and demonize it as a bunch of peculiar gays in leather. They miss the reality of the event completely.

What I was saying that even if you DO select a gay event to criticize -- e.g. a pride parade -- you still can't say that everyone acting peculiar is gay, because even those events aren't exclusively gay.
 
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