I have offended "the gays"

I have gone through a huge number of permutations of this since seeing some of the reactions to my video last Friday. For those wondering what they’ve missed with those could have been responses, they were essentially variations of “go fuck yourself”. That’s still my central message, it’s really only the tone of delivery that’s changed.

For those who don’t know, my TFU Friday video was 7.30 minutes long and featured me being angry about, among other things, political and moral hypocrisy resulting in the oppression of gay rights – by closeted gays. But the real fireworks came from the fact I used the phrase “Being gay is a choice.” To some people, this is apparently as bad as setting babies on fire.

And then I compounded my sin by not immediately capitulating to some people’s outrage and begging forgiveness. They appeared surprised when I did not react favourable to being told what I can and can’t say. Guess what? When nazis tell me what I can and can’t say I tell them to go fuck themselves. I say the same thing to christians, muslims, atheists, teabaggers, gun nuts, conspiracy theorists and general haters. Go fuck yourself. And some people think the fact they are gay gives them special dispensation to dictate terms to me? See if you can guess what my reaction to that attitude is. I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “go fuck yourself”. I’m an equal opportunity abuser.

If you still can’t tell why these responses pissed me off let me explain. This outrage was generated over three seconds out of a 7&1/2 minute video and that 3 seconds wasn’t even the main point of the video which is why I didn’t put a lot of thought into what interpretation people could put on it if they took it out of context. It isn’t even that they took three seconds out of context in such a long video – a very small number of people have chosen to pass judgement on me based on three seconds despite everything I’ve done here over the years.

If you want me to have any respect for you when you pass judgement on me you had fucking well better put that judgement in the context of every video I’ve made, not three seconds out of one video. Actually, that would take days to watch all of them so that might not be the most practical proposal. Maybe just limit it to watching the video where I talked about bigotry generally and gay rights specifically. I haven’t added those up but that should only take you a couple of hours.

That’s right – that’s how much effort I’ve put into addressing bigotry. What have you done you fucking whiners?

But seeing as so many people do apparently want to know if I think being gay is a choice I will address that directly. To make it clear: my sum total of knowing what it means to be gay is I’m not gay. I wouldn’t waste time trying to make an all encompassing statement about being gay – I doubt anyone can do that but I certainly can’t and that wasn’t remotely what saying “being gay is a choice” was meant to mean.

Having said that, a lot of the outraged comments had a distinct “I am the only gay in the village” tone. It was hard to escape the feeling that a lot of people think they can unequivocally speak for the experience of all gay people everywhere. Kind of a big call. Hell, in the straight world I see a lot of conflict all the time about what constitutes sexuality and sexual identity – I had no idea things were so clearly defined in the gay world.

One person even went so far as to say sexuality overall was not a choice. All I could think was that their sexuality was very boring if it didn’t involve choices. Or maybe very weird. I make choices all the time: this person/that person, yes/no, this position/that position, do I need batteries, should I go with leather restraints or nylon rope? All sorts of choices.

Also, while I am not one of “the gays” I am one of “the olds”. I know this is the intarwebz and I’m dealing with people who have such a short attention span they don’t remember anything that happened more than 5 seconds ago but I do actually remember when the queer politics orthodoxy was very different, in the olden days. You know, the 80s.

I went to college that had a campus with a very strong Marxist/Leninist/feminist dialectic going on. And back in the day the party line was that being gay was most definitely a choice. The say gays had no choice in the matter was to suggest weakness and even said to be equating homosexuality with base animal urges that needed to be controlled. If you said being gay was genetic you left yourself open to what was essentially eugenics arguments: this “gay gene” was defective and should be treated like any other genetic disorder.

There were seriously even people saying this gay gene should be identified so pregnant women could be tested and defective gay foetuses could be identified in utero and aborted. So careful what you wish for.

Personally, I don’t think homosexuality needs a defence. If you’re gay it’s who you are, regardless of how you arrived there. But if you think you do need a defence to use against social conservatives who declare homosexuality to be somehow “wrong” and you think you have a bulletproof defence with the genetic response, sorry to disappoint you but it ain’t gonna work. Objections to homosexual sex aren’t really about whether or not it’s “natural” (whatever that means), they’re more about “ewww that’s icky.” And no matter what you come up with, the conservatives are still going to think same sex hanky panky is icky.

So yeah, if I had any inkling of how fucking stupidly some people were going to react I might have said “Being gay isn’t an issue, if that’s who you are that’s who you are. But being a lying, hypocritical coward who actively ruins the lives of people who aren’t as privileged makes you a worthless piece of shit.”

And if that isn’t good enough for you, I really don’t give a fuck about you.