Some time ago I was at the receiving end of the unsolicited and unreciprocated attentions of someone I barely knew. At 30, I’ve learnt to deal with such situations, practically on auto-pilot. What made this situation different was that this time, there was a woman at the other end.
The details of the situation are not important. Indeed the matter has been wrapped up and laid to rest. But what struck me was the thoughts and concerns it raised. I agonized and brooded over it far longer than I usually would have. I was apprehensive about my reaction and also more strongly impacted by the other person’s behaviour, than usual.
And at the very base of it, I unearthed something I wasn’t expecting to find and certainly wasn’t pleased to see. I treated that situation differently only because it was a gay person propositioning me and not a straight person. The realisation surprised me because I always thought of myself as liberal and completely open-minded about this.
It’s taken me a good while to hit upon something else though. My response is indicative, not of discrimination or stereotyping. It was an acknowledgment of a situation that was different from what I was used to. I do not understand the norms and the beliefs and the signals of the gay community as instinctively as I understand those of straight people. My extra consideration was coming from the assumption that things could be interpreted differently. If I discovered that at the end of it, they weren’t that different, that’s just, well, learning from experience.
An interesting thought that came my way from a friend was,
A stupid person is a stupid person. It has nothing to do with being gay or straight.
I realized that I had been extraordinarily fortunate in having encountered only insightful, mature gay people prior to this. My attitude so much stems from my experience and it has all been only good thus far.
On the other hand, what if things had been different for me? What if my first ever encounter with a gay person had been someone who was desperate, clingy or immature? Given how little education we get about homosexuality, would it not have been a natural response for me to decide that all gay people were like that?
I’ve taken to asking my straight friends who display homophobia (and they’re mostly men) about why they feel the way they do. A number of them don’t have a clear answer to that and it turns out that they are just going along with what they’ve been conditioned to think, by early influences or popular media. Such people will generally listen to reason and have been even willing to acknowledge that they could be wrong. A sample of the things I’ve heard,
I don’t have a problem with gay people per se. I guess I’m just afraid one of them might hit on me and I wouldn’t know what to do.
There is also another set of responses I’ve received. These are from people who’ve been assaulted, felt up, hit upon (in one case during a job interview) by the first gay person they met. Also considering that this is the average Indian man to whom being the recipient of attention as opposed to the giver is an earth-shatteringly alien experience, you can imagine why this has a diabolical effect on their thinking.
There are no conclusions to draw from this line of thought. Except that my own experience and what I learnt from it, made me understand homophobia a little better. And then again, to tackle something, it’s necessary to understand its origins, isn’t it?
I don’t know what to think of the response of people who say they’re homophobic because they were hit on by gay men at one point of time. Indian women are hit on by men on a constant daily basis. We get felt up, pinched, groped and molested every day – and the women reading this know that’s not an exaggeration.
We women don’t become heterophobic!
Having said that, I realise it’s not as black and white as I wish it were & I see the reasoning.
Great Post!
Women deal with groping, pinching, catcall etc in our own way- be it by slapping or by quietly moving away. Men for the better part dont experience this. Atleast not as commonly or as often as women do.
Maybe that’s why they dont know what to do/say?
@Broom: well said! Having been accosted is not a fair reason to be phobic. It can justify scepticism at best, for a brief period may be. In a recent conversation with a desi straight woman, she told me she guesses Indian men are phobic because of things that happen to them during ragging. Well if that is the case, the it is outright molestation. But as individuals they need to start thinking.
@Ideasmith: I like what you said about stupid people. That’s so true!
However, wehn you shared about men who say ” they are phobic because they might be hit upon” is a completely unjust reason. As mature individuals, they need to think that they can politely deny the request and move ahead. How on earth is someone gonna know what a person;s oirientation is? Are we going to wear nazi era symbols?
Groping is outright wrong; it is disrespect and an invasion to your privacy – doesn’t matter if it is homo groping or hetero groping.
@Rashmi: Discrimination is never going to be logical under any circumstance. It stems from fear which is irrational, after all. The point I was trying to make is that it would be useful to understand the basis of that fear to tackle it better. I know women have been facing unwelcome attention for many years. Those experiences teach us how to handle future interactions while most men, never having faced such things are flabbergasted and react poorly. This isn’t justification for their behaviour, only an explanation.
Also, your point about refusing politely and moving on sounds ideal and indeed, that’s what I would have said a few months ago. However, in the experience I referred to, that person refused to take no for an answer, twisted my words around, left abusive comments on my posts and spoke badly of me to our common friends. Among some of the more offensive things, she called me a homophobe who was only pretending to be gay-friendly. You can imagine just how horrible it is to hear that especially when one grapples almost everyday with the easy way of apathy and the tougher choice of standing up for what’s right, even when there’s no direct benefit to one. If all of this wasn’t enough, even after the episode died down and should have been laid to rest, she continued to contact me and say things like “I can make you change your mind. I’ve done it to many people before.” If you ask me, that’s reverse discrimination and disrespect to straight people’s choices.
Once again, I’m not justifying discrimination. I just think that if the average straight person’s first encounter with a gay person is like the above, then it’s almost understandable why they would wash their hands off the issue and decide to write off everyone in the community. I was lucky to have had an environment that encouraged independent thinking and also several very mature gay friends who opened my mind to the problems the community faces.