hreru wrote:Gays are seen as men who are not only being attracted by another men but who also sleep with them. Don't ask me for references, I haven't got any.
And most gays do. But again, this is a red herring. If someone had attempted to gay-bash me during my years of gay celibacy (i.e. from the time I came out to myself to the first time I had sex) and I'd told them, "Hey wait, I'm gay but I don't have sex with men" do you honestly think they would have said, "Oh, sorry, we had no idea. On your way then." Persecution of gays is driven by our
perceived characteristics; what we
actually do is of little or not concern.
This is why I drew a comparison to Jews. Next time you meet an anti-Semite, ask them why they hate Jews. They will not tell you, "Because they're Jews!" They may even claim that some of their friends are Jews. What they will do give you an explanation of all the evil things that Jews are supposedly doing in the world. In both cases, they hate us for what we represent to them and then come up with reasons to justify that hate. It's irrational, and there's no excusing it.
hreru wrote:And yes, it is hard for me to imagine someone goes and introduces himself as a celibate gay to a stranger. Blame my poor imagination, I'd never do anything potentially dangerous in an unsafe environment if there was no reason, and I see no reason for stating this. And if they say this to people who've known them for long and respect them I don't suppose these people start to hate them just for that, though it's of course also possible.
Yeah, you do have a poor imagination. Do you know how often LGBTQ youth are thrown out of their homes for coming out to their families? Who's known you longer than your own parents? Yet that doesn't matter when homophobia and transphobia is involved.
hreru wrote:Where was this? I've reread the entire discussion and I can't find anywhere where I appear to be doing what you seem to think I was.
Oh, TeneReef, not IpseDixit. I took the stolen bike quote as you agreeing.
I take back what I said. You
do have a developed imagination if you can read that much into a throwaway quote from a stand-up comic.
hreru wrote:We come from different environments. I can't say for sure but I think when I attended ground school you'd be in worse troubles being a Catholic than being a gay. I also can't say for sure but I think nowadays if someone was bullied for being a gay the school would take it seriously.
It still depends very much on the school. Some schools in North American make all students
sign a pledge saying they either they or their families do not engage in homosexual behaviour. If they violate it, they are expelled.
hreru wrote:Sorry, but I can't get the big picture Varislintu and you mentioned. It's difficult for me to think about people in terms of groups they belong to. I mean, of course I do know what you talk about and of course I know there are differences among groups but I can't judge if you're right in the point of a dominant position. I know what you say about it is "what they say" and I know "others" say it's quite the contrary. I can't tell, I never could in similar issues and I'm not going to try. As I see it, people belong to many groups, socially, psychologically, some dominant, some not; and I'm not able to choose one of the groups and make any conclusions about its qualities. I'm going to go on on my small personal level because here I'm on a firm land.
Let me introduce you to the concept of
intersectionality. Everyone is a member of multiple groups, some dominant and some not. Not only is the interaction between them complex, but it also varies a lot by environment and context. There are situations where being White or male isn't an automatic advantage. But these are far outnumbered by the number and frequency of situations where it is.
I gave one example of intersectionality in my reply to Yserenhart, that of ageism, sexism, and heterosexism. Whether someone assumes two people are a couple (and what they feel about that) depends not only on what age each person is but what sex as well. Race plays a role, too: If I were of a different race than my husband, people would be much less likely to assume he's my father (even though he still could be).
hreru wrote:I did read what you wrote about HIPPA the first time you wrote it but I still didn’t know how it works in practice. I imagined there might be a box somewhere in the records for the authority to make medical decisions for the patient to be filled in and it was simply filled in by "linguoboy" once you let them know you're married, the end of the story
Except that people
actually have to look at that box. A surprising amount of communication in medical settings is still oral. That's how the problem with my husband's HIV status persisted. The doctor conducting the pre-op interview got it right, but someone else transcribed it wrong. His doctor saw the mistake on his chart and had it corrected, but that took some time. Meanwhile, the nurse who read the chart had already given an oral report to the next nurse. (Nurses generally work 8-12 hour shifts and you may not have the same nurse from one day to the next.) She reported this on to the next nurse, who reported it to the next one, and so on. In fact, the way I found out about the mistake was that I overheard one nurse giving his report to another and asked about it. Nobody checked his chart, they just trusted what they were told.
Moreover, some people read what was in his chart and then ignored it because it didn't matter to them. That's the case with the doctor who asked, "How's Dad today?" At that point, the records had been corrected. More to the point, I'd told him directly who I was. That's important information. That's the kind of thing a health care provider needs to remember. But he didn't and didn't seem to think it was a big deal that he didn't. That is heterosexism in its rawest form. There are all sorts of ways of showing contempt for someone which fall short of actually flinging a slur at them.
hreru wrote:Really, is this how low you're willing to set the bar?
Sure, how else.
Once again, reread your first description of the hospital stay. I exaggerated on purpose to contrast what I considered understandable behaviour (and I also thought proper treatment) by the staff.
Why do I need to reread it? I lived it. I don't understand why the story about having to fight to correct the information on file changes anything. The photographer didn't know what it said in my husband's file. (It would've been a Federal offence to tell him without our permission.) He just didn't make the same heterosexist assumptions when he met us. Every single person in that hospital was capable of doing the same thing. Some did. Some didn't. And a few persisted in their wrong assumptions long after they'd been corrected. That was all clear in my earlier account, yet you still dismissed it.
hreru wrote:I'm going to ignore your last two sentences.
Why? I think it's true. I think you and I have very different ideas of what it means to "respect" someone who is different from you. As I told you before, I'm not willing to settle for tolerance. You are, and that represents a significant difference in our approaches.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons