Oddly Political
This is gonna come as a shock. I’m gay. I know. Take a minute to digest that, it’s cool.
As a gay man who crashed through his closet doors at the tender age of 14 years old, in the center of Redneck Alberta, my life has been something of an adventure sometimes. But now, living in Edmonton, spending all of my time with my fellows at the University of Alberta, and volunteering with other open-minded types, I have never felt more accepted.
Until just recently.
The recent upholding of Proposition 8 (which, unless I end up studying medicine at UCSF, has no direct of my life) really threw me for a loop. Gay marriage, I thought, was pretty much an inevitability at this point. Something that wasn’t afforded to everyone everywhere, but was pretty much just a matter of pushing the paperwork through the system. I understand the reasons for the decision made by the folks in the supreme court (that is not to say I agree).
So I was already feeling angry when I saw how two contestants of “So You Think You Can Dance” were treated on the show. One gay and one straight, dancing in a way that made me want to touch myself inappropriately - because it was sexy, not because it was even particularly well danced. Not only were they subjected to some very homophobic comments from Nigel, the shows producer, the way their footage was edited was very frustrating - these men were literally a joke, from the choice of music (“It’s a man’s world, but it ain’t nothing without a woman or a girl”), to the way the judges outright laughed at them when one dropped the other. The producers of the show had an opportunity here to applaud these men for taking brave steps to normalize homosexuality, but really went the other way with it.
And really, I have to wonder what percentage of the audience of SYTYCD are gay men? I hope their ratings drop fast - I won’t be watching again, that’s for sure.
And then the straw that broke the camel’s back is the following. Consider ExxonMobile. Oil Giant. I do not know a single person in my department who wouldn’t KILL for an internship there. So imagine my frustration when the most coveted engineering firm in my little academic world doesn’t include same-sex benefits? And that not a single engineer seems to give a flying fuck?
Okay, whatever, it’s a little thing. But it’s all starting to add up. Normally, I can deal with snide looks from asshole waiters when I go out for dinner with my gentleman lover. I can usually put up with learning in my Crisis Intervention Training that gay couples are three times more likely to be abusive than straight ones (I could write pages about how I think that stat is bull, but I want to get to bed soon). Normally, when people stare at my hand, when it’s being held by another man, I feel happy to be fucking them right in the paradigm. But shit, man, there’s only so much a queer can take before he starts to feel like the scared little fourteen-year-old that he once was, running home to cry because “fag” written on his locker door. So here it is, internet, I’m pissed off. I know my twitter feed and facebook statuses have been pretty single-minded lately, I’m hoping that venting this well allow me to be a little more broad in my trending topics. This is turning into a half-drunk ramble, so I’ll start wrapping up.
Right now, I don’t feel like the gay community has much. But we do have one thing: pride.
The community at large, on the other hand, should be ashamed.
