Posted on 06/29/2023 5:29:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Twenty years ago, I was a rare gay teen at Pride. Now, I’m not even sure I count as queer.
My first Pride parade was around the year 2000, when I was 15. My parents and I marched with PFLAG—Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays—a now quaint-sounding organization my folks joined after I came out, to help my mother accept the idea that her son would die of AIDS.
I was hoping, of course, that I would meet some boy at the parade. Sadly, no such person materialized, and the only member of the family to turn any heads at this thing was my bearded, hirsute father, who, if that’s your type, is an absolute knockout.
Things have changed a great deal since those Clinton–Bush years.
Earlier this month I strolled around the L.A. Pride parade in Hollywood. There I met a gay eleven-year-old boy who had to contend not with being routinely bullied, but with the fact that the two other gay boys in his class were dating each other and not him (and who’s to say which is worse, really?). I met a whole slew of gay-looking girls who identified as everything from queer to lesbian to trans, and who very politely tolerated my interrogations on everything from their pronouns to their chest-bindings. I met a ten-year-old who told me she was nonbinary and pansexual. Or rather, they were nonbinary and pansexual.
I felt approximately 90. It’s not like the various identities comprising “LGBTQ+” are totally new to me, but at the end of the day I’m just a boring old G who came of age at a time when most of these labels had yet to be invented. Walking around Pride, I wondered if these new letters are a reflection of immutable characteristics—remember born this way?—or rather, a new way of categorizing oneself based on aesthetics—a kind of performance.
Whereas I don’t think of homosexuality as a performance. Sure, it’s a showstopper when I practice it, but it has nothing to do with my hair color or my clothes.
I had this thought, while talking to a 25-year-old lesbian who was still “figuring out” her gender identity: there’s a tribe out there that plays a game, an optional way of thinking about oneself, called “gender,” and the opt-in nature of this game is reflected in the tribe’s own language. For instance, GLSEN—once the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, now just a thing called GLSEN—proclaims that “Everyone gets to decide their gender identity for themselves and this designation can also change over time.” Can anyone imagine such a thing being said about sexual orientation? It must also come as a surprise to people with gender dysphoria that their internal sense of gender is a choice.
I wonder what our fellow citizens think of all of this. Most Americans supported gay rights when it meant equal rights. In 2015, the year gay marriage was legalized across the country, 57 percent said they were in favor of it, and last year, 71 percent of Americans said they believed same-sex relationships were morally acceptable. But now there’s a backlash to gay rights, and I wonder if it’s rooted in Americans’ sense that something more than “love is love” is going on here. A recent Gallup poll shows a seven-point overall drop in Americans’ belief that same-sex relationships are morally acceptable—it’s down to 64 percent. The drop is larger among Republicans (56 percent to 41 percent), but holds for Democrats too: we were at 85 percent support last year; now we’re at 79 percent.
Is this so surprising? If the gay activism I grew up with was about securing equal rights, LGBTQ+ activism looks more like a cultural project aimed at reforming our ideas about gender and sexuality. It also doesn’t seem to be able to help itself from looking absurd: according to Google, we’re now a community that can be described as LGBTQQIP2SAA. Hell, that makes me want to cancel gay marriage.
All of which is to say, I have become a crabby gay picking apart the reality that people ten or twenty years younger than me take for granted. And I wonder, if I were growing up now, if any of these letters would speak to me. When I was 15, I dyed my hair and wore lip gloss and flared jeans. When I was younger than that, I’d stroll around in my mother’s nightgown. I still enjoy the womanly feeling I get when I put on a dress; I am as able as the next homo to tap into my femininity. Does that make me “genderqueer”? According to the rules of this game, it does if I want it to. But do I? Of course not: I’m nearly 40.
But once I was a teenager who ached and pined and wrote awful poetry and sometimes wore makeup and wanted very badly to be a different, better version of himself. I wonder what place that kid would find for himself if he lived in this new world. I’d like to think he could happily conceive of himself as a gay boy. . . but who can say? At the very least, I’d hope he’d have a better shot at finding a boyfriend at Pride.
Nausea ensues, but, more importantly, fear for the souls in bondage to the Evil One.
I forget who said it but someone noted that plain old homos are the Republicans of the LGBTQRST! Community.
Congratulations are in order? Wow. These kids are being absolutely ruined.
A sad post. Is it any wonder they commit suicide many times above the norm?
“....According to the rules of the game....”
There are no rules, bro. Happy playing.
“Whereas I don’t think of homosexuality as a performance”
Explain the affectations then. Explain the lisp. Explain the mimicking of female body postures, walking, hand gestures. Explain camp. Of course it’s a performance.
This guy is realizing that all the other letters of the alphabet are just attention-seeking, damaged people, and completely failing to realize that his gang of attention-seeking, damaged people kicked off the whole shebang.
The regular old lisping, prancing queens and butchy dykes have been tossed to the curb.
Feeling are feelings.
Facts are facts.
Its perversion of one kind or another. Society should never encourage it. Stuff is going to occur regardless, but it shouldn’t ever be endorsed by govt or society.
Its like alcoholism.
People will tke tnings too far and become addicted. Its a moral failing. We don’t have govt encouraging people to become alcoholics and having Alcoholic Pride month.
Mom begs for advice on how to tell her 30-year-old daughter that her brother is actually her FATHER
Run of the mill sockcuckers have dropped in the pecking order.
Pedos will soon take over from the T’s.
MAPS
What is a 38 year old homosexual doing cruising ten and eleven year old boys…
Gs can hang but Ts hang the most though
And pray for them.
The mother is having a hard time thinking about it; why stress out the daughter? I'm getting a headache just reading about it.
Scorecard! Scorecard!
You can't tell who the players are without a scorecard.
Kids 11 or 10 espousing sexuality are being abused, without question!
I’ve got 4 kids youngest is now 10. No way a child has those ideas themselves.
Evil perverts!
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