(no subject)

[rm]

While there are a hundred reasons why straight people openly specifying that they are straight and also support the rights of GBLTQ people to marry their partners is a useful thing, think of the power of this:

Just saying that you support it. Without mentioning your own damn orientation.

Because I know it's not always or even often distancing when someone says, "I'm straight but I support gay rights," but trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me, when I tell you that's what it can feel like from over here.

Just try saying it without qualification. Picture _that_ as an LJ meme. You know?

Comments

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

(Edited to lol, because that post in conjunction with this icon makes it look like I'm a lover of bricks who supports gay rights. Try that as a meme, people!)

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Really? That seems strange to me. I find it very powerful when someone says, "I'm not part of this group, but I will fight for it." Keith Olberman's recent wonderful video, for example, was all the more effective for me because he prefaced it by saying, "I'm not talking about this because it affects me or anyone I'm close to. I'm saying it because it's self-evidently true and universally important." I've also been a fan of those "straight but not narrow" bumper stickers for a long time, but mostly because I'm a yellow-bellied punsucker. Why does it feel distancing to you? It feels like solidarity to me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I thought it was powerful when Olbermann did it, absolutely, but I think that has to be his job as a pop culture figure.

When I was in college, one of my roommates wrote an editorial for the school paper ostensibly about how she was cool with having a queer roommate. But the whole piece was about all the ways in which she was straight, really, and how I didn't make her gay, really.

I think for many people there's both conscious and unconscious subtext to declaring their heterosexuality before supporting equal marriage rights.

I also think that it reminds people that gay people are "different" -- if we stop starting the argument by emphasizing our differences, maybe our differences will be less important.

[random-girl.livejournal.com]

I often want to qualify my status because a lot of people to whom the argument is made assume that if I am gay, I should therefore have more invested (and in some cases, be taken less seriously because of that investment). The fact that I'm not gay, but I'm still just as invested seems like an argument the people we're trying to convince may pay more attention to. It may encourage questions like "Why are you so invested if it doesn't directly affect you?" This leaves me open to ask them about their investment against the idea, and to tell them about the investment all human beings should have for other human beings, gay, straight, black, white, etc.

My husband and I are going to the Rally march on Saturday here in WA to support marriage in all forms. Really, I want my friend Theresa to be able to visit her partner in the hospital and find out if she's going to live or die because she's a wife and has a right to that knowledge. I want my co-worker to be able to adopt his partner's daughter, that he's been helping to raise for the last six years. I want my friends who are gay to gain that much more safety when they're alone in a crowd of people; if its ok to marry, initially a lot of folks will be upset, but it will help desensitize folks so fewer people get beat up or killed for how they were born.

My apologies if my reasoning (and therefore phrasing) hurt you in my earlier post this week.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nope, not at all. I'm not personally offended by it, so much as frustrated with it, because there are the good reasons -- like those you mention and what askeladden said above about the Olbermann Special Comment -- but I do think those good reasons often mask other subtexts that need to be discussed as a group, if not on an individual basis.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

Thank you. The idea that queer voices carry less weight than straight voices when discussing their own rights as human beings is like a knife in the chest.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You put it far more succinctly and brutally than it had occurred to me to do. Yes, this.

I am not a child, and I am not an animal. But that's what so much of the discourse, even the supportive discourse does to us.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I hear you on that. I guess it's just a question of the straight people being in a hurry to say, "these bigoted straight people don't speak for me".

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're saying, and there is certainly a subtext sometimes when people say, "I'm not gay..."

For many of us, it is intended to show solidarity, but I get that sometimes it just feels like we're distancing ourselves.

So:

"I support same-sex marriage and other gay rights."

And I'll repeat it all over the place.

[wyrdwriter.livejournal.com]

Wow. Shows how much I pay attention! I never noticed whether folks said one way or the other...
I vote FOR gay marriage every time it comes up here.
The whole post that I have been copy/pasting everywhere these days:

I always vote yes for gay marriage.
The bill never passes.
I don't understand people.
The only way I can wrap my head around the ISSUE with Gay marriage is that the Insurance Companies do Not want to have to pay for anything, much less "extra" folk. Period. The Religious Thang is just a Smoke Screen.
If you are "Christian" then you follow the New Test.
OLD Test is where God was crabby and hated gays and pagans...
NEW Test, after His "son" was born, he was much more "Zen"....

Honestly, In My Experience, Gay Unions last longer than MOST male/female ones. What does that say???
Love is Love.

And the whole WWJD? Jesus, IMHO, would say: Love is Love...
of course, I am Pagan and my opinion of Jesus, in most circles, doesn't count for shit.

[these-3-remain.livejournal.com]

Great point.

[lordrexfear.livejournal.com]

I'm totally down with what you said here.

I also find it strange that Keith Olberman being an internationally recognized news personality has no ties to someone who gay rights would help.

I mean I know above you're all for how Olberman did stuff, but really? He's not just straight... none of his friends or family or gay, bi, trans, confused???

Does it have to be a meme though? Can't it just be a thing? Whenever you feel like it, for whatever reason, you can state that all people should have equal rights, period. (and yes, that actually opens another can of worms... but I actually feel that all people should have the same legal rights...okay, except for self-admitted child molesters, those people can go to hell)

[rm.livejournal.com]

As to Olbermann, I think everyone who's a fan watching went "RACHEL MADDOW, YOU ASS" all at once.

But anyway....

Also, I loathe the LJ meme machine, but after seeing 800 versions of "gay marriage will not harm my straight marriage" I figured those were the terms people were going to understand this week.

[weirdquark]

Several years ago I would argue with people who opposed gay rights over the internet. My profile didn't have any personal information in it, and I put effort into phrasing things so that my gender and sexual orientation remained unclear.

Most of the reason was because I felt that my gender and sexual orientation was utterly irrelevant to the conversation -- I support the right of GBLTQ people to marry their partners because it's the right thing to do. Whether or not laws that discriminate against people who aren't straight affect me? Irrelevant. I found the thinking of the people who didn't want gays in the military to be completely incomprehensible back when I wrote a paper on DADT in junior high, when I had never had a crush on another girl and never considered that this might change in the future. When we had a mini lesson in health class on how to be supportive of a friend coming out to you, I found the necessity of telling us to be supportive incomprehensible. Because why should it matter if someone was gay? I did figure out that not everyone thinks that way, but it's still my gut reaction: why does it matter?

I also kind of enjoyed seeing what assumptions people would make about me based on what I said and how I said it, and whatever they assumed, I never denied or confirmed anything. My gender was irrelevant. My sexual orientation was irrelevant. (And after a while, I found "irrelevant" to be a useful descriptor of both, but that's something else entirely.)

[nekosensei.livejournal.com]

Hey. Did you hear that they're organizing a national rally against Proposition 8 on November 15th? Hmm...

[n-decisive.livejournal.com]

You know, I did that "I'm in a het marriage and not threatened" meme...thing is, I felt it was meant to show those who believe gay marriage somehow threatens those of us in traditional marriages that we don't agree with them. That's the spirit in which I felt it was intended and why I participated.

I certainly didn't mean to offend or to imply that gays need my protection.

[rm.livejournal.com]

And what you said with that meme is something that needed to be said. It's just complicated, because there are other things that need to be said too, and they don't always work in concert well.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I think this is good (you saying this) not just because of the reasons you mention but also because I think part of the reason that (some) people qualify it is because they don't want to be accused of trying to access membership in a group that they don't feel they belong to. You have straight people who write slash, heteroflexible people, etc. - the list of allies is long - and their allegiance can be personally complicated. I mean, just one example is me. I mostly don't post about this issue. And I'm even queer. And so is my partner. Yet it can be uncomfortable to talk about this issue in a public forum because I've got no visible stake in it - nobody's preventing us from getting married. (Well, except me. *g*) So I think there's a lot to be said for activists being welcoming and encouraging folk to remove the qualifier.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

they don't want to be accused of trying to access membership in a group that they don't feel they belong to Yes, this. I fully acknowledge that this may be the intent for some people; it can be a positive thing, to be sensitive in that way. I feel it, too, about a lot of things, including being queer. I've had to fight a long time against "some queers are less queer than others" ingrained in ME, much less in the rest of society. :p

Let's see what happens...

[spydielives.livejournal.com]

http://spydielives.livejournal.com/1967367.html

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I completely understand the way in which it is offensive, but there's a strong instinct in those who are, or who can pass for, privileged, to be afraid of being called out for claiming minority status. I am most familiar with it from the fat acceptance movement: I am defensive about speaking up because someone fatter than me will say, "What do you know? You're not fat enough." As someone with a complicated sexual identity, but who is in a monogamous relationship with someone of the opposite sex, I am worried about being perceived as gay-for-drama-only, and so I am a little defiant if I dare to call myself queer. As a white person, I'm hesitant to speak against racism, for fear someone will dismiss me as ignorant. There's this perceived tendency, particularly among white liberals, to presume to speak for minorities, and in so doing, deprive them of their voices, which is something I find obnoxious and would prefer not to partake in. (Another example is American soldiers; my sister got very tired during her second tour in Iraq of reading of all these people who were using her hardships and suffering to further their own political agendas, and claiming to be acting in her best interest. "I just want to speak for myself," she said at the time.)
It is probably worth saying that the ones who say, "But you're not fat enough/ not black / not gay enough / not oppressed enough" are usually not the ones whose cause you are trying to discuss, incidentally. But sometimes it is. (Because it's offensive, in a different way than the issue mentioned in this post.)

I just wanted to present that side of it, because it is a really complicated issue.
So no, I'm not straight, so I don't say I am-- and indeed, it can be a little fun to see how confused people get if they press me on it and I say I am not, because they always look at my slender, long-haired, but very tall and bearded boyfriend with an odd questioning look. But I am a little defensive, because I run no risk by being of complicated sexuality but in the relationship I am-- everyone can easily just assume, and if I make a fuss I seem like I'm trying to jump on a drama bandwagon and get all the glamor with none of the risk. So sometimes I do make disclaimers.

It's hard to know what's right to say.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

This.

I have not participated in the memes because I hesitate to say "I am not straight" when I am doing them for fear of offending the people I am trying to help.

[fleur.livejournal.com]

I think things have mostly been said here, but I would agree that identifying myself as straight in this discussion is more about simply saying, people are people, rather than trying to rally around a group who can't speak for themselves.

As a white person, I don't have to say out loud that I'm white but I'm also for civil rights for all races. As female, I don't have to say out loud that I'm a woman and I'm also for equality between genders. But since you can't tell by looking at me what my orientation is, that clarification becomes more about pointing out that humans are humans and thus, discrimination is discrimination.

[emilie1024.livejournal.com]

Ran across your entry in logospilgrim's LJ. Thank you for that. Being someone who does support GLBT rights I'm always "qualifying" that statement. It really doesn't need to be mentioned at all.

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

So that's what bugged me about that meme.

I support you.

[juniperus.livejournal.com]

When I've used the qualifying statement, it's been part of a message that was not specifically intended for the GBLTQ community:

It's a message for those bigots in the straight community who think they speak for me - because they do not.

It's a message for the ignorant who believe the ridiculous lies told using 'protecting children' as an excuse for hatred, because they too easily can (and will) discount a voice of dissent who has no children.

It's a message for those who think that the only people interested in, and fighting for, equal rights are queer.


I don't make claims of 'straight', although I did choose to repeat that meme as written (as it explicitly stated that the wording was important, and the message bore repeating to the audiences I described, above). I simply state the logistical facts: I am female, I am married to a male, we have children. Period. I am not (I am not, I cannot speak for any other individual who might use similar verbiage) making an effort to dance on the edge of a subtext nor send secret coded messages. I, quite honestly, think that the most important voices are the ones that come from the GBLTQ community - but the most virulent opponents automatically discount, ignore, and twist those voices. And I realize I'm likely going to get my ass kicked for saying so, but it seems to me that the message, however ethically correct or powerful it is in its own right, has got to be communicated with the audience in mind - if I want to convince the people who choose to (or are told to) discount your voices, I need to circumvent their automatic selective hearing.

And I hope you realize that I post this not to discount what you feel, and why, nor to disagree with your statement about those feelings. But if I had marched for civil rights in the 60s my very physical appearance would have made the point that I was not a member of the group and yet I fought for, and side by side with, members of the group... but it would also have separated me from them. The words would not have been necessary for the former, and there was no way to avoid the latter. In a text-based medium, if the (former) argument is made then the words are needed: if the words are used, there runs the risk of the latter repercussion. I don't see a way around it - I think that fighting against and solidarity with are two very different actions, and I don't know how they can be simultaneous. I am not discounting the need for both, by any means, but I don't know how to achieve that.

[raaven.livejournal.com]

Bravo!

Subtext is a really strange thing. Sometimes, people note their straightness in order to distance themselves from queers, but others, it is in order to distance themselves from the assholes who claim to speak for all straight people in condemning and dehumanizing queers.

That said, unqualified support is always a wonderful, wondrous, and terribly important thing.

[morning-stand.livejournal.com]

I have camapigned against prop 8 and I don't think I ever mentioned my orientation.

although, I do think its important to be an advocate for those who are discriminated against. I mean, I'm white, and if you saw me its obvious. But I use my being white to my advantage to let people know about problems that people of color have.

so while I didn't say 'Im straight and I believe in equal rights', if I would have it might have helped my cause a little more.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

I think it makes sense to say this if you are discussing the issue with an obnoxious het person.

Trust me, I'm not going to hit on someone just cuz she says she's for gay marriage without any qualifier :-P And that's the subtext.

[blackbird-song.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that I haven't read any of the other replies to your post yet, so my apologies in advance.

I'm always torn about this one. I would always prefer to do as you ask, both because I agree with you (and can really understand what you're saying about it, for a number of reasons), and because I've seen how well this can work, in person and in popular culture. (I very much approved of the QAF actors who kept their orientations to themselves until the end of the series, and disliked Hal Sparks for breaking ranks.) However, there are times when I feel that I must identify myself in the way that you dislike. This happens most often for one of two reasons:

1. I'm talking to another straight person who is bleating about how gay marriage is going to ruin the institution of marriage, or their heterosexual marriage, in particular, and it seems as though the most effective way to confront them is to challenge them by revealing my situation. I view this as (I hope) a temporary and transitional tactic to be used in limited situations.

2. For many years, I've been told by many people who are G,L,B,T, and/or Q that I must always be clear about my orientation. I have been told that it can be insulting and deceptive if I don't, and that no matter how much good my presence and support may do, my position as an ally is tolerated strictly on sufferance. I actually feel very leery of this view of things, but feel that I must listen to and be respectful of it, because there may be something that I don't understand.

My gut tells me that your position is correct, but my life experience tells me that if I do as you say, I shall be hated by and possibly hurting in some way those most affected. I'd appreciate any thoughts you'd care to share. It's easy to be confused in this situation, and the issues at stake are far too important to me to be complacent.

Catherine

Edit: Upon reading a few of the comments here, I also have to confess to posting that marriage meme thing, with full knowledge of its flaws, and the understanding that it was a challenge to heterosexual married people to out themselves and where they stood on the issue. While I had some misgivings about it, I felt that it was the right thing to do, given the timing. I am sorry if I stepped on toes by doing that. It was never my intent to imply that any group of people was weak or helpless. I do know, though, that for laws to be passed or defeated, a majority is needed, and this seemed a way to challenge the underlying assumptions held (it seems) by a current majority group.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Yeah, wouldn't want to be mistaken for one of *them*, would I.

Personally, I vote for "Put your money where your month is and either donate money or volunteer for queer rights", but I'm a damned radical.

[eac.livejournal.com]

You know, some of us do that. :)

[demotu.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, I come at it slightly from the opposite direction. I am bi, but my family and most of my friends don't know it. And I am very, very vocal about gay rights. So I sort of feel like I should be appending, ''and I AM queer'' to the end. But I don't. SDER.

But that's just me. I see where you're coming from, not that it's always bad but when it comes with the suggestion that ''I support gay rights but still am not really okay with gay people'' as opposed to ''I support gay rights even though it doesn't personally affect me''.