LGBT Community Is Hostile

Post Reply New Topic

It rarely got to the point where I had an opportunity to share any ideas at all. The hostility started almost as soon as I walked in the door -- usually right after the introductions. It seemed that just by showing up, I became the embodiment of everything that everyone had ever done to them, and without any of them knowing anything about me except my name and why I was invited.

Never again.

Never, ever again.

In a subsequent message, you wrote:


If the introductions were what sparked it, I can only guess that perhaps you were getting caught in the middle of longstanding arguments between the people who introduced you and other people there?

Did you ever discuss, with the friends who introduced you, the behavior of the other people at the meetings? If so, what did your friends have to say about it?

Although the biphobia of all too many L&G's may not be the number one problem faced by mentally ill bisexuals, it is (or, at least, can be) a significant hindrance to the political (and other) organizing necessary to address other, worse problems. So I don't think bi-activists are misguided in trying to counteract bi-phobia among L&Gs. I'm just very sorry to hear that this is still an issue after lo these many years since the L&G community explicitly became the LGBT community in the late 1980's or so.

I would be very interested to see your theory on this, if/whenever you do have time to get into it.

My own hunch is that people in general naturally tend to be cliquish except in situations where they happen to see a good reason to make a sustained, systematic effort to avoid cliquishness. Cliquishness is most people's natural state, it simply takes much more effort to be friendly to newcomers -- especially to those newcomers who might seem a little strange.

One of the things that can motivate people to be non-cliquish is a perceived need to build a community. Due to the many important victories that have been won by the LGBT rights movement, e.g. legal recognition of same-sex marriage, I think many LGBT people have come to take the LGBT community for granted, hence don't feel an overwhelming need to help build said community, hence don't feel an overwhelming need to friendly to newcomers.

IMO, what the LGBT community needs is to grow some new branches. Like, maybe, groups of neurodivergent LGBT people?

Did you ever think you were over-analyzing the situation? Did you ever think that your attempts to blame the victim of open hatred and contempt would be offensive to that victim? Do you ever get tired of being an apologist for a culture that is contemptuous of well-intentioned people from outside that culture? Did I ever ask you to root out the cause of their contempt?

I'm not attempting to blame you here, just trying to understand the situation.

Based on what you've said so far, it sounds to me as if the most likely possibility would be that, if anyone is at fault here, it might be the friends who introduced you, perhaps intending to drag you into the middle of arguments they were having with other people in the groups. My most recent question to you was intended to determine whether that might be the case. I'm sorry if my wording was not clear on that point.

I agree that the LGBT community tends to be cliquish. However, what you say you experienced goes beyond cliquishness and beyond even prejudice against outsiders; hence my attempt to figure out what might be causing such extreme hostile reactions.

The situations you described struck me as extremely odd. For one thing, in my experience, people in general are usually more polite to people they've been introduced to than they are to strangers off the street. This leads me to suspect that there may have been something else going on behind the scenes that you may have been unaware of (and that was probably NOT your fault, but probably ALSO not representative of the groups' behavior toward everyone else, either).


No, but the sheer oddness of the situation aroused my curiosity.

If you prefer not to discuss it further, that's certainly your right. However, in that case, please do not judge the LGBT community as a whole based on your highly strange encounters with it.

I would prefer to at least be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to reporting on what special-interest groups are really all about -- they are not the all-inclusive, all welcoming, "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" happy-clappy fellowships that their apologist (like you) want outsiders to believe them to be.

Christian churches? Political parties? The Gay Rights movement? All are exclusionary to the point of supporting and passively promoting a "Them Versus Us" mind-set among the membership.

Never forget it.

To Fnord:

I never claimed that everyone in the LGBT community is "all-inclusive, all welcoming." In other posts in this thread, I have talked about cliquishness in the LGBT community and biphobia on the part of gays.

However, the particular situation you described is just weird. I'm not saying it didn't happen; I was just speculating that perhaps you might have been unknowingly used as a pawn (by your friends), resulting in you getting caught inadvertantly in the middle of a nasty ongoing argument. Even very prejudiced people don't usually express it in the extreme way you described, especially when being introduced to friends of friends.

Anyhow, despite its flaws, the LGBT rights movement has served very valuable purposes. Do you deny that?

Sorry, I haven't been able to log on as much lately. Yes, it was in Pittsburgh. The Delta Foundation of Pittsburgh is now the organizer for Pride. Like I said, it was my first pride festival. I was still new to being gay at that time.

That was basically my experience at Pittsburgh Pride. They want pride to be a loud party.

I know this thread's rather old, but I do feel I don't really belong in the LGBT community. Unlike the average LGBT person, I don't hate capitalism, I don't wish for Trump to die (even if I don't like the guy), and I don't really consider myself full-on liberal but more of a centrist politically. I worry about sharing political opinions for fear of being yelled at or silenced, which I have seen happen.

Of course, there's many different groups and communities out there that are more open-minded politically, but the majority of LGBT people I come across are radical left and aren't too friendly to those who have differing opinions. If you try to disagree with them respectfully, you could get shouted at and called all sorts of names under the sun, which is pretty toxic to me.

I don't think I relate to the LGBT community because they called me uptight for not wanting to f**k guys who ask me for sex within seconds of meeting me for the first time.

My older sister, who is gay, doesn't like the LGBT community or pride. Like me, she thinks the whole movement is far too radical and that the LGBT community forces you to have a label of some sort. Supposedly, they (at least) act like they hate straight, cisgender people. It wouldn't help being asexual, either.

I think a lot of the radicalness comes with both the coming out process, and a younger age. When a lot of people "come out", they come out with a vengeance. I know I did. I used to think I couldn't just be gay...I had to be GAY! (if that makes sense?)

I also think people like to label and box up others. I mean if you think about it L's G's B's and T's and all the other gender, orientation, and identity labels we tend to use really are different. Sure there are commonalities, but there are differences too. I think that's where a lot of the hostility comes from, we don't all think the same things or feel the same ways, or love the same people. We need to support each other, yes and share in our sameness, but also respect the things that make us different too.

Yes, they should support each other. But, there are many in the community with issues that they take out on people that they should be friends with. Aspies with social issues are easy targets.

No arguments there. I agree. It's hard to catch hate from all sides, I know