(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

[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

[weirdquark]

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.

Yeah. Although it's not so much that I sometimes feel like I don't have the right to identify as queer because I'm not queer enough (even though that sometimes is the case) as that since I've never had to fight to be accepted as a queer person, I don't feel I've invested very much in that identity.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah-- that's what I was trying to say, below, more wordily and less clearly.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Talking about it in public creates that stake though.

[obligatory Jack-like witticism here]

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I do so love it when you... stake me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

With a mouth like that, and I'm the one who cosplays Jack? How does that work? Oh, right... staking. Got it.

*eye roll*

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this regeneration is a little...cheeky.

*blinks innocently*

And you offered me up "a mouth like that"? *grin*

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think you were actually doing the offering up. I was observing.

[magnetgirl.livejournal.com]

Brilliantly fucking said, my dear, as always.

Yeah you know, us next-generation lesbians TOTALLY don't count...heck, we might as well be PFLAG!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I'd rather have everybody on board feel that it isn't necessary to be queer to support queer rights as human rights, but I can see how there might be some weirdness there.

But frankly, I'm kind of flailing at the idea that somebody wants to "pass" as queer in order to claim some kind of queer privilege? Really? Are queers that cool now? Because that's awesome in a kind of freaky way.