I've actually gotten this question from friends and family. Why do you have to shove this in our faces? Why do you have to advertise it? Why do you force us to confront something we find distasteful? Why can't you just keep it to yourself? Why can't you be satisfied with civil unions and leave marriage alone?
Well, with Davey Wavey's help ("borrowed" from his Break the Illusion Blog), here's what I hope will be a new perspective on those questions.
The Heterosexual Privilege
As I’ve mentioned more than once, I think being gay is pretty awesome – and it comes with a number of benefits, including never having to deal with tampons. But let’s face it: When it comes to privileges, straight people definitely take the cake.
The Heterosexual Privilege Checklist is a list that helps straight people get a better understanding of what it’s like to be gay in a very hetero world. It makes it a little bit easier for straight people to put themselves in the shoes of their gay friends and family. I encourage you to share this article, which I’ve reproduced below, with your nears and dears in the hopes of facilitating some meaningful dialogue.
On a daily basis as a straight person…
I can be pretty sure that my roommate, hallmates and classmates will be comfortable with my sexual orientation.
If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented.
When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others.
I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences.
I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE f*g tag or smear the queer) [I actually heard one of these phrases from a friend just a week or two ago. He realized what he'd said and immediately apologized. Just goes to show you how entrenched this stuff is.]
I am not accused of being abused, warped or psychologically confused because of my sexual orientation.
I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation.
I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual.
I can be sure that my classes will require curricular materials that testify to the existence of people with my sexual orientation.
People don’t ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation.
People don’t ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation.
I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It’s assumed.
My sexual orientation was never associated with a closet.
People of my gender do not try to convince me to change my sexual orientation.
I don’t have to defend my heterosexuality.
I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual.
I can count on finding a therapist or doctor willing and able to talk about my sexuality.
I am guaranteed to find sex education literature for couples with my sexual orientation.
Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass me.
I have no need to qualify my straight identity.
My masculinity/femininity is not challenged because of my sexual orientation.
I am not identified by my sexual orientation.
I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my sexual orientation will not work against me.
If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has sexual orientation overtones.
Whether I rent or I go to a theater, Blockbuster, an EFS or TOFS movie, I can be sure I will not have trouble finding my sexual orientation represented.
I am guaranteed to find people of my sexual orientation represented in my workplace.
I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare.
I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation.
I do not have to worry about telling my roommate about my sexuality. It is assumed I am a heterosexual.
I can remain oblivious of the language and culture of LGBTQ folk without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
I can go for months without being called straight.
I’m not grouped because of my sexual orientation.
My individual behavior does not reflect on people who identity as heterosexual.
In everyday conversation, the language my friends and I use generally assumes my sexual orientation. For example, sex inappropriately referring to only heterosexual sex or family meaning heterosexual relationships with kids.
People do not assume I am experienced in sex (or that I even have it!) merely because of my sexual orientation.
I can kiss a person of the opposite gender without being watched and stared at.
Nobody calls me straight with maliciousness.
People can use terms that describe my sexual orientation and mean positive things (IE “straight as an arrow”, “standing up straight” or “straightened out” ) instead of demeaning terms (IE “ewww, that’s gay” or being “queer” ) .
I am not asked to think about why I am straight.
I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job.
All of this isn’t to say that straight people have it easy by virtue of being straight. We all have our challenges and obstacles. But the heterosexual privilege may help some straight people get a better and deeper understanding of what it’s like to be gay in today’s society.
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if you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you'll just end up miserable.
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Straight Americans
need... an educationof the heart and soul. They must understand - to begin with - how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul.
Bruce Bawer
The Advocate, 28 April 1998
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There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
- Hamlet
I am oppressed by the uncertainty of my future, but I cherish the lively hope of seeing my dreams fulfilled, because the Lord cannot place thoughts and desires in a person's soul if He does not really intend to fulfill them, to gratify these longings which He alone has caused.
- Blaise Pascal
What we insistently desire, over time, is what we eventually become and receive in eternity.
- Neal Maxwell
Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others' opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
- Hamlet
I am oppressed by the uncertainty of my future, but I cherish the lively hope of seeing my dreams fulfilled, because the Lord cannot place thoughts and desires in a person's soul if He does not really intend to fulfill them, to gratify these longings which He alone has caused.
- Saint Padre Pio
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
- e. e. cummings
Whose boat drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.
- George Gordon, Lord Byron
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I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?
- Everett Ruess
It’s the loneliest feeling in the world. It’s like walking down an empty street, listening to your own footsteps. But all you have to do is to knock on any door and say ‘If you let me in, I’ll live the way you want me to live and I’ll think the way you want me to think’, and all the blinds will go up and all the doors will open, and you will never be lonely, ever again.
- Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind by Robert Lee
Marriage is a civil contract. You might as well make a law to say how many children a man shall have, as to make a law to say how many wives he shall have. It would be as sensible to make a law to say how many horses or oxen he shall possess, or how many cows his wife shall milk.
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Only regret what you don't learn from.
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Others sing your life
But now is a chance to shine
And have the pleasure of
Saying what you mean
Have the pleasure of
Meaning what you sing
Oh, make no mistake my friend
All of this will end
So sing it now, sing your life
- Morrissey
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use" - Galileo Galilei
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"I see their knavery, . . . to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid." - Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene 1
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"Know Thyself." - Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and a bunch of other really smart people
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3 comments:
If anyone gives you any trouble, Rob, I'll take care of them. After I finish rioting in the streets, of course.
Re: it comes with a number of benefits, including never having to deal with tampons.
Three problems with this observation:
1. Most straight guys don't have to "deal with" tampons. Unless it's somehow onerous to discover that there are tampons in your bathroom cabinet.
2. Some gay people do have to deal with tampons. Because some gay people are women.
3. Dealing with tampons is actually not that big a deal.
I want be with you on this. But, honestly, I think you need to ask yourself what kind of privilege you're exercising when you can write a post like this -- listing off all the ways straight people thoughtlessly look down on you -- and not even feel a speck of irony at including a "joke" about how gross women's bodily functions are.
I think being gay is pretty awesome – and it comes with a number of benefits, including never having to deal with tampons. But let’s face it: When it comes to privileges, straight people definitely take the cake.
right. Because people who might have to deal with tampons--women--are NEVER in the same category as gay. The only flavor of gay that exists is male.
Did that really not occur to you? And can you think through your own male privilege a bit here?
I'm just so flabbergasted.
Those poor straight men--how awful for them, being attracted to creatures who ooze blood and other grossness. It's not as bad as the oppression gay men suffer, but it's still pretty awful.
How do you stand it?
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