I was ranting to my longsuffering roommate about bouncing an idea off my roommate that one of the effects of homophobia is that opponents of civil rights for LGBT people think of us primarily in terms of sex (similarly to misogynists who think of women solely in terms of sex and motherhood, and so can't respect a colleague if she isn't male because all they think of when they look at her is sex). I've been struck by that whenever I see people say, while attacking the very grouping of people as LGBT, "you define yourselves by sex, and that's immoral and disgusting" -- they're projecting their definition. So on one side we have people insisting that we are, well, fully people, and on the other we have people saying "all you do is have icky kinds of sex", which, as Mr. Johnson cogently points out, are all also performed by heterosexuals.
I'm not sure I'm right. I'm still turning the idea over in my head. But your post today reminded me of these thoughts.
(no subject)
ranting to my longsuffering roommate aboutbouncing an idea off my roommate that one of the effects of homophobia is that opponents of civil rights for LGBT people think of us primarily in terms of sex (similarly to misogynists who think of women solely in terms of sex and motherhood, and so can't respect a colleague if she isn't male because all they think of when they look at her is sex). I've been struck by that whenever I see people say, while attacking the very grouping of people as LGBT, "you define yourselves by sex, and that's immoral and disgusting" -- they're projecting their definition. So on one side we have people insisting that we are, well, fully people, and on the other we have people saying "all you do is have icky kinds of sex", which, as Mr. Johnson cogently points out, are all also performed by heterosexuals.I'm not sure I'm right. I'm still turning the idea over in my head. But your post today reminded me of these thoughts.