I get the joke, but I’m getting tired of people behaving as though all these people just so happen to also be queer because “haha they don’t want to be called gay and insecure.” Like, gay men are the most likely group within the queer community to turn traitor because of their socioeconomic privilege, but it perpetuates this idea that queer people are only ever threatened by each other and not a system that functions to eradicate them.
This is important, though I also want to emphasize that my comment is meant to draw attention to the fact that even if they are secretly gay, their ability to benefit from betraying the rest of the community is only possible because of their position in the racialized and heteronormative hierarchies of imperialism and settler-colonialism. To focus on the moral failure of individuals like that is to ignore the systemic conditions that both enable that failure as well as our shared persecution. Queer liberation requires the dismantlement of these institutions, which means we must be critical of how position effects the choices that individuals make.
This article is good to point out that many homophobic and misogynistic social norms are reproduced through this self-hating narrative, and that is also something that every queer person should be noticing in liberals at the moment. Since more overt fascists have shown up, it has become more acceptable among liberals to rely on notions of white masculinity, ability, and strength to demean those that they view as morally impure (especially so since their bigotry is not the primary cause for liberals’ disdain of these groups of people). Liberals use jokes like this not just because of their ignorance of the latent queerphobia within them, but because they view them as opportunities to express that bigotry with impunity when a more “deserving” target of that ridicule has been presented to them.
I get the joke, but I’m getting tired of people behaving as though all these people just so happen to also be queer because “haha they don’t want to be called gay and insecure.” Like, gay men are the most likely group within the queer community to turn traitor because of their socioeconomic privilege, but it perpetuates this idea that queer people are only ever threatened by each other and not a system that functions to eradicate them.
100% agree with you. Straight people can hate gay people because they are assholes, not because they are secretly gay.
Here is an article you might want to read. I keep it on my Mastodon account to grab real quick.
https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/the-dangerous-stereotype-of-the-self-hating-homophobe/
This is important, though I also want to emphasize that my comment is meant to draw attention to the fact that even if they are secretly gay, their ability to benefit from betraying the rest of the community is only possible because of their position in the racialized and heteronormative hierarchies of imperialism and settler-colonialism. To focus on the moral failure of individuals like that is to ignore the systemic conditions that both enable that failure as well as our shared persecution. Queer liberation requires the dismantlement of these institutions, which means we must be critical of how position effects the choices that individuals make.
This article is good to point out that many homophobic and misogynistic social norms are reproduced through this self-hating narrative, and that is also something that every queer person should be noticing in liberals at the moment. Since more overt fascists have shown up, it has become more acceptable among liberals to rely on notions of white masculinity, ability, and strength to demean those that they view as morally impure (especially so since their bigotry is not the primary cause for liberals’ disdain of these groups of people). Liberals use jokes like this not just because of their ignorance of the latent queerphobia within them, but because they view them as opportunities to express that bigotry with impunity when a more “deserving” target of that ridicule has been presented to them.