Homophobia, Again

2004-03-08 - 9:32 a.m.

There's a website that I use quite a bit to get fitness/weight lifting information. It describes itself as "hard core", and so, as a consequence, it has a lot of the typed equivalent of people crushing beer cans on their foreheads, some steroid discussion, and a (usually) mild amount of heterosexism and homophobia.

Because the advice is generally sound (from what little I know), and because I don't really mind that sort of bravado (homophobia aside), I was able to overlook and avoid most of the knuckle-dragging and "Poor men! The women are taking everything away!" type of discussions in the site forums.

My long-term plan, which is pretty darn close to my long-term plan anywhere where there might be homophobia, was to make a few forum posts, be respectful, not allude to my sexuality at all unless it was necessary, and then, after I felt comfortable, I would come out in a subdued fashion, preferably somewhere where the context made sense (ie, if there's a thread talking about dating, maybe then I'd tell a sparkling anecdote about my own experiences). The key to this plan relies on my feeling comfortable with the forum and my place in it.

This last week, someone started a thread, mildly freaked out because he just discovered that a lot of gay men are interested in bodybuilding and strength sports. Well, d'uh. I mean, this is a forum where a bunch of really fit guys oil themselves up and post pictures of their almost-naked bodies for critique from other men (and a few women). I only look at the site for the articles, in case you're wondering. If there appeared a women's fitness site where the women posted pictures of their oiled, lithe forms posing provacatively, I;m pretty sure there would be more than a few heterosexual men there to oggle them.

Anyway, this thread quickly grew, and I was, at first, tempted to make it the home of my coming out post, until I realised that, wow, there's a hell of a lot of that there homophobia around. Of course, there are a few posts about how it's not "homophobia" because no one's scared of gays...they just find it icky. One fella compared man-on-man affection to having someone vomit in his lap. Another said that he wished they could put all the fags on an island and nuke 'em - a saying that I hadn't heard since high school.

I'm finding myself hurt, again. I've been reading those forums, and the articles (to the site's credit, the articles have always stopped just short of outright homophobia, settling for jokes of the "wouldn't it be funny if a straight guy accidently touched another straight guy? Ew! Ha ha ha!"/sitcom-y variety) for six months now, and this was definitely in the top 5 sites that I frequent. I'd gotten to recognise some of the posters by their writing styles, and in the off-topic forum, I've read about their own problems: when a wife left one guy, there was a thread about 60 posts long filled with support and advice. The same for when a guy lost his job, or when one of the female poster's deadbeat husband was jerking their daughter around again with fake promises. It was feeling like a community to me, one where people might disagree (take any of the off-topic political threads), but where if something bad happened, they'd rally for each other.

Now, some of the most caring guys on the forum are saying that they'd gleefully bash someone's head in with a baseball bat if they thought he was hitting on them.

This isn't a new experience, and I guess I'd been somewhat aware of this possibility...a bunch of "macho" straight guys with something to prove about their masculinity is about two inches away from a lynch mob at the best of times. But I guess most of my experience, the largest part of it, has been that people will say one thing until they know that someone is listening who might be hurt. I've had friends, not knowing that I was gay, say some pretty hurtful things, but then be really supportive once I came out. I never once heard a homophobic comment when I worked at the grocery store in Halifax, even though it was practically redneck central. The homophobic comments happened, but just not around me.

The thing is, it's a pretty weird thing to hear someone say they want to kill you, and to know they mean it, and to have other people either agree with them, or at least not fault them for their feelings. I have no idea how common an experience this is...I live a pretty sheltered life, overall, so maybe everyone has had an experience like this. If so, that's a pretty darn depressing thought.

I've found my enthusiasm for the site, and even the internet in general, has been suffering because of this. I can't really make myself visit the site. Something's gone too far, and I either have to leave or do something about it. I sort of click along listlessly, looking for something uplifting. In the thread, I'm looking for anyone to actually -say- something positive, something concrete. I don't want to be the first gay.

There's value in this whole experience, of course. A hell of a lot of the world works that way: I could be stoned to death in some countries, or just imprisoned for years. The states are always boiling over with these sort of human rights battles, and, if I ever become enough of a celebrity, there's a chance that I'll have people picketing at my funeral. I can be refused jobs, apartments, service. I can be randomly assaulted, and then listen to people claim they only attacked me because of "gay fear" or whatever that term is. Even here, even now in my relatively safe life, I still have to sit through movies and television shows where gay jokes are allowed and, sometime, requisite. How much comedy mileage have Joey and Chandler on Friends gotten by playing off the slightly homoerotic undertones in their relationship? And that show is sometimes one of the more progressive.

I need to remember that this is the world I live in, and even though I believe that we all have the potential for a lot of good, I can't forget that we also have great potential for harming each other.

I'm still not sure if I'll be leaving the site for good. There's a lot of good advice that I still want to take advantage of, and it might be better for me to write a well-crafted letter to the editor, or making a post in the forum. Chances are, it'll be a minor blip in my life story whatever I do, but it's still been a good reminder.

Cheers,

The Magus

PS - I've had friends say they don't like the term "homophobe", because they don't think it has anything to do with fear. I think they're wrong and that it has everything to do with fear, but if they can suggest a better word to describe the irrational and unwarranted hatred and/or disgust of a behaviour/type of person that does not harm them in any way, I'm all ears. I've already suggested "bigot", but that doesn't always go over too well.

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