Homophobia, beyond being pervasive and superficial, is an effort in small-mindedness. It is concerning to note that 75% of young LGBTI people will face homophobia, while 25% of LGBT people believe they’re isolated at work.
I’m over this problem, because it shouldn’t exist, at any stage of life. The causes are deep though, I remember saying the word gay as an insult as an eight-year-old not even knowing what it meant. Now I’m more conscious of my prejudices.
Last week, for the first time in a very long time, I was called “faggot”. Twice. I didn’t expect it, and both times I was shocked. It led me to think about the LGBT community’s role in dealing with fringe views like this.
When facing homophobia, it is easy to fall into an aggressive response. This isn’t a viable option: any government relations leader will tell you that having a heavy hand in the first instance will leave you boxed in. If we’re going to overcome these biases, we need to have a rational conversation, sometimes in contrast to irrational views.
But, what about our own insecurities? The LGBT community promotes itself as being open and accessible, we should be aware of our own biases. We all hear too fat, too skinny, too Asian, too hairy, too closeted and (my personal favourite) too gay so often.
While I respect that everyone is attracted to different traits, can an entire community really marginalise on weight, race or age? Given that we’re supposed to be accepting and open, it is pretty confusing that we can define what is “acceptable” or “normal”.
We’re a group of people who have long accepted that sexuality isn’t binary, but we’re caught in boxes of systematic discrimination. For those of you who are thinking “this is just a Perth issue”, I found when I was recently in the USA that these were experiences that were held by many – this is the new stereotype.
Calling out discrimination against ourselves and communities tends to be easy, but challenging views infested in our networks, clubs and amongst friends is more difficult. We should be careful in making demands and highlighting discrimination when we don’t shine the light on our own inequities.
Our community is showing a supreme amount of immaturity, that is being channeled into bigotry and discrimination. If we’re going to feel empowered to deal with homophobia, we also need to think about our role in perpetuating archaic views.
If we’re going to be an open and proud community, we should start having these difficult discussions.
Conrad Liveris
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