Will there come a day when being gay isn't a stigma?
- Thread starter earllogjam
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Maybe? Think we've made a certain amount of progress in that direction over the last 20 yrs or so - but, imo, as long as the majority are straight, it may always be viewed with a certain amount of ignorance or lack of understanding (same with any minority issue?).
ColonialBoy
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Yes, it will come ... 2000 years ago in ancient Rome.
Homosexuality in ancient Rome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Homosexuality in ancient Rome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Did you even read the article you linked to?
Quotes from it include:
Basically the Roman stance was free born men were allowed to fuck slave boys but the slave boys should not enjoy it (legislated rape, anyone?) and lesbians couldn't exist and if they did they were to be killed.
Yes - all very free of stigma, that.
helgaleena
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I believe it will come. I write and edit same sex love stories so that it will spread the love until one day the average literate person will wake up and realize that love is love, no matter who it is doing the loving.
I think the day will come when gays aren't stigmatized. It will be when an anal massage every month or so is part of the culture.
B_jdunhill
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I just finished watching this documentary, which I think will certainly not get enough eyes on it. Should be required viewing to anyone under 40. The movement at stonewall in my eyes really was when the worm turned so to speak. The fat was in the fire and until there is some kind of unifying factor to unite an otherwise very fragmented segment of minority population? Big change and stigma will go hand in hand.
I just finished watching this documentary, which I think will certainly not get enough eyes on it. Should be required viewing to anyone under 40. The movement at stonewall in my eyes really was when the worm turned so to speak. The fat was in the fire and until there is some kind of unifying factor to unite an otherwise very fragmented segment of minority population? Big change and stigma will go hand in hand.
helgaleena
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I think we are already at the age where gay is the new black, but i think there will always be a certain stigma attached to being gay as there will always be people against for various reasons
Thedrewbert
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I know I keep bringing up Argentina all of the time. But for an old man who remembers reading the original New York Times reports on Stonewall riots as well as the editorial summary in Time Magazine in 1969, and who spent his late teens and most of his 20s living free and letting it hang in San Francisco, I can certainly attest that the "stigma" may not be completely going away in Buenos Aires, but it's not attracting much attention and or being a major focus of worry by the majority of the citizens of that particular city.
In the last decade, a time during which middle-age good Argentine catholic mothers have resorted to prostition just to feed their families, transvestites and the Yankee dreaded defeat of "My son is homosexual!" have become accepted into mainstream culture far greater than, say . . . Lyp Synka or Rue Paul have been in Manhattan. When a local hails a taxi and tells the driver he (or she) wants to go to the red light district, the driver has to ask which particular flavor. There are the taxi boys who now have to ply their trade along Avenida Santa Fe instead of Marcelo T (they changed the bus routes and direction of traffic), the "swinger" neighborhood in a less tony part of Palermo Viejo, the regular heterosexual-type hookers down by the Congresso Train Station, the surgically complete transexuals working the rebuilt Puerto Madero's upscale cocktail lounges, or the parks along the river north of Airport Newberry where the most stunning transvestites with best plastic surgery and the biggest cocks hang out. And the taxi driver asks this without any sense of surprise or batting an eyelash.
The Squeeze and I have no problem walking arm in arm any time of day or night in Buenos Aires or Barcelona. Although when in his home town he still tends to behave like a typical chongo (pseudo straight mail who prefers sex with men or men who look like women), especially if we're in the neighborhood he grew up. But he's had or given a blow job to just about every street cop in his neighborhood over the years. And most of those police are married with kids.
In BsAs we're welcomed into popular family restaurants as a "couple" just as all the heterosexual couples are often fought over by waiters (primarily because couples over tip). But they are all flattered when we call a familiar waiter/waitress regardless of sexual proclivity (usually straight) as "tio" Cecilio or "tia" Pilar if we know their first name.
And the two ancient heterosexual divas native to Buenos Aires, Susana Jimenez (in her late 60s, lots of plastic surgery, looking good, and wearing out studly 30-something polo players) and Mirtha Legrand (blonde bombshell in her mid 80s who knows her left side is her best face shot) are being replaced by up and coming self-effacing transexuals and transvestites who have become famous celebrities in every Buenos Aires household as actresses on locally produced soap operas, game shows, and "Entertainment Tonight" gossip TV. The City is lousy with these amazing femalesque confections who have major marketing campaigns, their own talk shows, cosmetic brands, and provocative nude posters that boys, men, grandfathers, (and some women) of all ages find perfectly acceptable fodder to pin on the bedroom wall and enhance their libidos while masturbating. Rue Paul should be so lucky.
I'm not exactly a demure and feminine type. I come across as a serious, introspective male who vaguely resembles a younger version of Anthony Hopkins. But my urologist asked as for practical health matters if I was hetero or homo sexual as he took down my medical history. When I answered "homo" he responded with "¡Qué bueno!" And when it came time to insert a catheter he was kind and used the narrowest one possible. The physician who originally detected tumors in my prostate during a somewhat annoyingly painful session of biopsies gave me a strong, almost too personal, hug the next time he saw me after the results came back from pathology. The main thing is no one in Argentina or Spain has ever treated me as if I had the cooties once it was established I was gay. They have been more concerned than I'm content and happy.
Same with the terminally cheery guy with the Italian last name I can't pronounce who yanked out my gall bladder at Hospital Austral just outside of the city of BsAs (good-looking male nurses be there). Without any previous discussion, my perky, half Italian surgeon told me I had made a good choice for a life partner, noting that The Squeeze was a keeper because he had been so thorough grilling the him regarding what I could and could not do for two weeks or so after the surgery. Rather than be concerned about a "homosexual agenda" that surgeon is straight with six kids and his biggest problem is keeping his swimming pool the right temperature. We should all have such heavy burdens to complain about. And the moncas (catholic sisters) caring for those of us under the weather and having to stay in a Catholic hospital or clinic go overboard to have your same-sex partner not feel self-conscious when they fetch him or her to be in the recovery room as you come out from under general anesthesia. In fact, they sometimes appear envious.
If there comes a day when being gay isn't a stigma and we're accorded same accepted status as normal, in the sense that being black, asian, or Canadian is normal I'll bet good money it will start in Spain or an industrialized Latin country such as Argentina or Chile . . . possibly Brazil?
One thing for sure, if a gay male or lesbian politician ever becomes President of the United States of America, he or she had damn well better have multiple copies of his or her original birth certificate ready to pass around to anyone frothing at the mouth wanting to question the legitimacy of their citizenship and patriotism. Might be a good idea to have an NRA membership card ready and waiting in the wings, too.
In the last decade, a time during which middle-age good Argentine catholic mothers have resorted to prostition just to feed their families, transvestites and the Yankee dreaded defeat of "My son is homosexual!" have become accepted into mainstream culture far greater than, say . . . Lyp Synka or Rue Paul have been in Manhattan. When a local hails a taxi and tells the driver he (or she) wants to go to the red light district, the driver has to ask which particular flavor. There are the taxi boys who now have to ply their trade along Avenida Santa Fe instead of Marcelo T (they changed the bus routes and direction of traffic), the "swinger" neighborhood in a less tony part of Palermo Viejo, the regular heterosexual-type hookers down by the Congresso Train Station, the surgically complete transexuals working the rebuilt Puerto Madero's upscale cocktail lounges, or the parks along the river north of Airport Newberry where the most stunning transvestites with best plastic surgery and the biggest cocks hang out. And the taxi driver asks this without any sense of surprise or batting an eyelash.
The Squeeze and I have no problem walking arm in arm any time of day or night in Buenos Aires or Barcelona. Although when in his home town he still tends to behave like a typical chongo (pseudo straight mail who prefers sex with men or men who look like women), especially if we're in the neighborhood he grew up. But he's had or given a blow job to just about every street cop in his neighborhood over the years. And most of those police are married with kids.
In BsAs we're welcomed into popular family restaurants as a "couple" just as all the heterosexual couples are often fought over by waiters (primarily because couples over tip). But they are all flattered when we call a familiar waiter/waitress regardless of sexual proclivity (usually straight) as "tio" Cecilio or "tia" Pilar if we know their first name.
And the two ancient heterosexual divas native to Buenos Aires, Susana Jimenez (in her late 60s, lots of plastic surgery, looking good, and wearing out studly 30-something polo players) and Mirtha Legrand (blonde bombshell in her mid 80s who knows her left side is her best face shot) are being replaced by up and coming self-effacing transexuals and transvestites who have become famous celebrities in every Buenos Aires household as actresses on locally produced soap operas, game shows, and "Entertainment Tonight" gossip TV. The City is lousy with these amazing femalesque confections who have major marketing campaigns, their own talk shows, cosmetic brands, and provocative nude posters that boys, men, grandfathers, (and some women) of all ages find perfectly acceptable fodder to pin on the bedroom wall and enhance their libidos while masturbating. Rue Paul should be so lucky.
I'm not exactly a demure and feminine type. I come across as a serious, introspective male who vaguely resembles a younger version of Anthony Hopkins. But my urologist asked as for practical health matters if I was hetero or homo sexual as he took down my medical history. When I answered "homo" he responded with "¡Qué bueno!" And when it came time to insert a catheter he was kind and used the narrowest one possible. The physician who originally detected tumors in my prostate during a somewhat annoyingly painful session of biopsies gave me a strong, almost too personal, hug the next time he saw me after the results came back from pathology. The main thing is no one in Argentina or Spain has ever treated me as if I had the cooties once it was established I was gay. They have been more concerned than I'm content and happy.
Same with the terminally cheery guy with the Italian last name I can't pronounce who yanked out my gall bladder at Hospital Austral just outside of the city of BsAs (good-looking male nurses be there). Without any previous discussion, my perky, half Italian surgeon told me I had made a good choice for a life partner, noting that The Squeeze was a keeper because he had been so thorough grilling the him regarding what I could and could not do for two weeks or so after the surgery. Rather than be concerned about a "homosexual agenda" that surgeon is straight with six kids and his biggest problem is keeping his swimming pool the right temperature. We should all have such heavy burdens to complain about. And the moncas (catholic sisters) caring for those of us under the weather and having to stay in a Catholic hospital or clinic go overboard to have your same-sex partner not feel self-conscious when they fetch him or her to be in the recovery room as you come out from under general anesthesia. In fact, they sometimes appear envious.
If there comes a day when being gay isn't a stigma and we're accorded same accepted status as normal, in the sense that being black, asian, or Canadian is normal I'll bet good money it will start in Spain or an industrialized Latin country such as Argentina or Chile . . . possibly Brazil?
One thing for sure, if a gay male or lesbian politician ever becomes President of the United States of America, he or she had damn well better have multiple copies of his or her original birth certificate ready to pass around to anyone frothing at the mouth wanting to question the legitimacy of their citizenship and patriotism. Might be a good idea to have an NRA membership card ready and waiting in the wings, too.
B_Hickboy
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On a side note, i do think the stigma that all gay men are promiscuous and disease ridden, and that all gay women are butch and can be fixed with "a good (heterosexual) fuck" is almost gone.
It does show that society is learning and that stigma's and generalizations are being broken down to some degree.
It does show that society is learning and that stigma's and generalizations are being broken down to some degree.
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