A Gay Comedian Said This Funny and Insightful Thing
I wish more people understood this
A gay comedian made this joke:
“In Canada, we now have a law that forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation.” Then he widened his eyes. “Oh no, they’re going to hate me for my personality!”
The reason why this is funny to us queer folks, is because discrimination is hatred towards someone’s identity (being gay).
But once you strip away the identity, then you’re left looking at the person themselves and their personality.
In other words, rarely do homophobes detest us for the person we are. Rather, they despise us for what we represent (gay people).
Related to this identity vs personality issue, you may be familiar with this complaint:
A cis straight male friend said that in the past, he would look down on a gay man, thinking that he was so focused on his sexual orientation rather than his personality.
Maybe he had a boring personality and used his gayness to make himself look more interesting.
Thankfully, my friend no longer believes this. But he’s far from the only straight guy who has thought this.
This gets into a deeper issue about labels.
The Controversy of Identity Labels
Lots of people claim that labels such as gay, bi, trans, etc., reduce a person to their identity, and alienate you from others.
That is ridiculous.
Does calling myself Chinese alienate me from my non-Chinese friends?
If not, why should it be any different for gender and sexual orientation labels?
It’s valid if a person doesn’t want a label. But for many of us, our labels are affirming and a source of pride and belonging.
The sense of belonging might be a reason why so many cisgender straight men, including my friend, had this knee-jerk bad reaction.
By calling ourselves gay, bi, pan, etc., we imply that we belong to and are accepted by a group. A group that we might be very happy to be a part of.
Many cis straight men, especially if they’re also white, feel that they don’t belong to any of these groups. Like they’re shut out of all these fancy secret clubs.
Of course it hurts to feel like you’re not welcome at any club. Even if you’re very welcome in the biggest club. But you take the biggest club for granted, that you don’t even notice how welcome and accepted you are.
Once, I told an insensitive joke to my therapist, who was a fellow gay trans guy. I said, “They are so privileged that they have no support groups to go to!”
He laughed as well. But in hindsight, that wasn’t the nicest thing for me to say. Support groups are obviously not the only place where you can bond and find good friends, either.
Regardless, this sense of inclusion vs exclusion, might be the root of most of our problems.
Being Welcome or Rejected From The Secret Club
Have you heard of this psych study?
Participants are hooked into this virtual reality game, where they pass balls with other players in the VR room.
What the participants didn’t know was that these “other players” were actually the researchers.
When the researchers began to pass the ball between them, and ignored the participant, the participant felt quite hurt and rejected.
And this was just a random video game, rigged by the researchers, for goodness’ sake.
This reminds me of the countless times during recess and gym classes where the same happened to me. Always passed over and left out. Not a great feeling.
As strange as it sounds, people get very upset if they think they’re being left out of something. Some people get angry and aggressive, and lash out at those inside this club.
Unfortunately, this means that some (not all) cis straight white men blame the gays, the racial minorities, and the women for shutting them out.
It’s sad to think that a guy could attack you, just because he thinks you’re excluding him, because you’re a minority and he’s not.
And so he calls you a “special snowflake looking for attention.”
Again, thankfully, not all cis straight white men do this. And for those who do, some of them learn that it was never meant to be a rejection in the first place. Just because you don’t belong to this group, doesn’t mean you don’t belong somewhere else.
You may not be in the jocks’ club (I’m not either), but you could be in the bookworm club. You may not be in the science club, but you could be in the English club, etc.
Of course, you can be both a jock and a bookworm. And you can be great at both English and science.
It’s like how someone can be both queer and white. Someone else may be both transgender and wealthy.
We’re all a part of many different groups. There’s no need to rage at someone for belonging to a group that you’re not in.
There are plenty of groups that will welcome you, even if you aren’t aware of them yet.
How about you? Do you also feel sad that many people slam minorities because they believe they’re excluded from some cool club?