I messed up last week and wrote a post about people with disabilities instead of writing about GLBT discrimination, so this post will be about GLBT discrimination.
First, I would like to comment on that video of the City Council member in Fort Worth. It takes a lot of guts to talk about your personal life in front of a room of people like that, and compounded with the fact that he was talking about his experience of growing up gay in Texas and being bullied, I am sure it disarmed many people in that room with him and surely made an impact. Yet, his stories of proposing to his partner and trying to seek approval of his father and mother are pretty universal. Hopefully he got his colleagues thinking about how human we all are rather than focusing on the differences that separate us.
Carol also brought up the idea that sexuality is fluid, and I thought that was interesting. I had thought about that concept before via the Stern Show where stories from George Takei's experiences as a gay man, lesbians, transvestites, transgendereds, and bisexual porn stars (I think I covered all the bases there) are never shied away from . So when she talked about it, I couldn't help but laugh a little to myself because clearly Social Justice class is the last place where I thought I would be making substantive connections to the Stern Show. But in all seriousness, I want to say thanks to Carol for sharing a lot about her life the other day. It made class very compelling.
Also, I stumbled across this article the other day via the twitter of Boston Bruins beat reporter Joe Haggerty. It is interesting not only to see how sports is dealing with gay athletes in general but it also makes the argument that the NHL is one of the more accepting and progressive leagues in the country, which I thought was surprising. Also it was interesting reading some of the other articles about the struggle gay people (especially gay men) have with even being passionate about supporting a sports team. You never really think about how oppression permeates itself within one's daily life when you're coming from the hegemonic position.
Hahah! I remember reading your blog last week and being confused because I thought I wrote about the wrong topic! Funny.
ReplyDeleteI read the article about Patrick Burke and thought it was really fascinating. It definitely showed how little I knew about hockey culture, because to me all it's associated with are fights, beer, and screaming obscenities (...but I've only been to a total of two hockey games...haha). So I was definitely surprised about how tolerant and gay-friendly the NHL is.I thought his response to "locker room homophobia" was interesting, and thought his calmness about the issue was pretty inspiring. While he doesn't excuse homophobia in any way, he understands where society is right now on gay issues. People say stupid things because they don't know any better. Personally, this makes me angry, but it's a reminder to us that the most important thing we can do is try to help people see how their words can hurt others.
Also, thanks for weaving in your passion of sports (...I don't know if that is your passion but I'm guessing it is!) into SJ issues. That's not something I normally get to read about!
I too appreciated Carol's honesty this week in class about how sexuality is fluid and the many changes she's been through, as far as finding herself sexually (sexual orientation that is).
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that golf would have been the more accepting sport towards gays, but I guess not.