Fashion design and mens figure skating are disproportionately gay avocations

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

I can probably say this because most of the most active gay-issue DU posters know who I am...

Men's figure skating is a disproportionately gay sport. Whatever the proportion of gay men is in society the proportion in figure skating is a lot higher.

There is no slur in that statement... not against gay men, against skating, against anything. It is just what it is.

A gay man does not want everyone to assume he's a figure skater, of course. That would be crudely stereotypical. But no hackles should be raised by the observation about figure skating. The raising of hackles is itself a negative message to gay men.

“Orientation-blindness” is not a personal progressive value. It is not desirable. It is not a favor to GLBT. We want the LAW to be orientation-neutral but that doesn't mean that individuals are supposed to be miniature versions of the US Code.

Is softball a lesbian sport? No… and yes. Most female softball players are heterosexual. But lesbians are numerically over-represented in women’s sports. Everyone knows this.

That does not mean that all lesbians play sports. It does not mean that it is sensible to assume a lesbian you meet is on a softball team any more than you would assume that a gay man you meet is probably a fashion designer.

It means only what it means.

To exaggerate it is wrong. “She plays soft-ball and you know what that means…”

To deny it is also wrong. It is well-intended, but carries the implication that there is some reason to deny the obvious. As if it would be a slur on soft-ball, on straight women who play soft-ball, on lesbians… on someone.

But it is not a slur.

(And it doesn't mean lesbians are biologically born to play sports, mo more than white people are biologically born to eat mayonnaise. Groups have cultures.)

Differences are only as malign as we make them. In picturing Kagan playing softball the WSJ had unmistakable malign intent. They view soft-ball as a slur because they think being gay is BAD.

The problem with that isn’t the soft-ball part, it’s the “bad” part.

As Wanda Sykes said, “Now that Obama is president I can eat watermelon in public.” There was never anything wrong about eating watermelon. I was used as a marker of blackness and blackness was presumptively wrong, bad, inferior. But there is not a blessed thing wrong with eating watermelon.

The stereotype is associated with a lot of crude racism predicated on the assumption that all black culture, history or even regional cuisine was presumptively BAD.

But since watermelon isn’t the problem the problem cannot be un-done by deleting all references to watermelon.

The point of Wanda Sykes’ joke is that she was calibrating her behavior to deny the thinking of the crudest racist traditions. That is not a sustainable way to be.

To allow the crudest assumptions of bigots to shape our thinking about race, gender, orientation, cannot be right. As I often said of George Bush, if your philosophy is to do the opposite of Osama Bin Laden then you lack free will… Osama Bin Laden is actually controlling you.

A tabloid once said that Tom Selleck is gay. He held a press conference to say he is straight. He was asked whether he was going to sue the tabloid and replied, “No. They did not defame me. There is nothing defamatory about being gay. I am holding this press conference only so that women I have known through the years will not think I was lying about myself to them.”

The tabloid and many tabloid readers THOUGHT it was a slur. It functioned as a slur.

But if WE consider it a slur then what are we saying? Do we internalize the bigotry, even to counter it?

The antidote to thinking in crude stereotypes is not the blanket denial of difference, but rather to accept difference without malice and simple-mindedness.

I am old enough to remember when the enlightened position on race was that black people were just white people who had for some reason darkened. The enlightened stance was to deny differences, no matter how glaring, as a courtesy… as if being black was a misfortune and thus not a polite topic for comment.

This had the effect of treating established white culture as the human norm and denying black culture as vaguely embarassing.

That was a useful tactical position that many of my parents generation and mine mistook for enlightenment.

When a symphony has “blind” auditions the player is behind a screen and nobody knows if the applicant is a man or a woman. Blind auditions have greatly increased the number of women in symphony orchestras. So blind auditions are a good tactic.

But blind auditions are also a message that there is something defective in being a woman. It is a standing message that all things considered, the orchestra director doesn’t want you. It was assumed that we would work past the screen... that being a female musician would become normal and eventually the screen could come down.

At some point in any civil rights struggle a shift will occur from tactical equivalency to actual acceptance. The screen has to come down.

GLBT are pretty much at that place now, and a lot of us straight folks are caught on the wrong foot. It leads to friction and misunderstanding.

But it is an inevitable and essential step.

[izquierdista]

1. Appearances are deceptive

And that is what stereotypes are, appearances reduced to caricature. Simple minds have difficulty dealing with a complex world, so when ALL blacks are lazy watermelon eaters, and ALL Jews are stingy merchants, and ALL gays are figure skating interior decorators, it is much easier for them to understand. They can't fathom that there is great diversity within those groups of people and they can't be judged by superficial appearance. There is one group of people that has earned its caricature though -- teabaggers as old, white racists who can't spell.

[Schema Thing]

2. Well sure, if you're talking about the Judges Panel ;)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. Okay, that's funny

[petronius]

4. Excellent post! (I'm pre-coffee so I have nothing intelligent to say,

but I wanted to at least express my approbation...)