So, back story time! I was visiting with my lovely long-distance girlfriend this weekend, and we were walking along the sidewalk outside a strip mall, my hands got cold, and so she was rubbing mine between hers to warm it up, when some asshats in a SUV drove by, and yelled, "F*** you!" out the window. It startled me, for a few reasons. 1. I'm not used to outspoken homophobia in general. I live in a small, liberal town where homophobia is more frowned on than homosexuality. (Yeah, it's heavenly.) And all present homophobia is a grudging disapproval rather than a threat. 2. I'm not used to being recognized as gay by people I've never met before. I only very recently got a fauxhawk, and before that I always looked pretty feminine and normal, even with short hair. I guess I thought most people just assumed my girlfriend was a guy and we were straight unless they looked closer or heard her talk (she's decently androgynous), and now that I don't look straight, it feels like they automatically know we're gay. I'm out to the whole world, but it feels like being naked in public when somebody that could potentially cause physical harm to you knows without you telling him. I never really had that threat before, having either lived in a zero-homophobia, zero-violence town or seemed completely straight my whole life. It was a real shock. Now, question/discussion time! How is homophobia where you live? Is it quiet disapproval, or more loud and threatening? How widespread is it, and does it scare you?
Well, thank God I live where I do in regards to homophobia. Here in LA, homophobia is relatively uncommon (especially among people over 20.) A gay couple walking down the streets won't get many more stares (unless they're holding hands, and even then nothing's usually said.) Of course, being such a big city, the situation is very different in different neighborhoods i.e the poorer the neighborhood, usually the more homophobic it is. If you walk around in South Central (an infamously poor neighborhood) and display signs of being a gay or lesbian couple, there is a very good chance something (criminal) will happen to you. On the whole, though, homophobia here really isn't an issue. I've often had to remind my mother that we don't live in the 1960s and that gays encounter very few problems here. But LA is just a little piece of the state, and generally outside of the big cities there's a very homophobic environment (especially in Riverside and the rest of the Inland Empire, and most of the rest of the eastern half of the state).
My city (predominantly rural, conservative and Christian) obviously has homophobia, but it's scared to come out of the closet, so to say. The police have taken training sessions to deal with homophobia, and they have said that it will not be tolerated under any circumstance. We have one of the largest gay pride events for a city our size, and the turnout grows every year. Letters to the newspaper dealing with gay-related issues are almost always positive. Although, it's still extremely rare to see a gay couple walking down the street holding hands, or showing signs of being gay in public on any given day. It's barely visible in that regard. The worst that could happen though is someone being called a f-----.
Here it depends what part you are in. Downtown Portland is very open to see gays and drag queens. But in some areas of Brush Prairie or maybe Gresham, your not so friendly skin heads maybe not so happy to make your acquaintance. So stay your part of town and be happily ever after, go outta bounds and maybe take a small risk.
I live in a fairly conservative, catholic country and I come from a tiny little rural village. There isn't so much open threatening homophobia as there is a complete blanket ban on bringing up the topic at all, which makes it hard to judge attitudes. That I know of there has never been anyone openly gay in the town, although I think people have suspicions of two guys, who seem to be mocked behind their backs. There has never been anyone out in the local secondary school. Even though it's a state school, religion is cumpolsory, and all three of the religion teachers have said some very very homophobic things in class. One of my best friends, who is very out and proud, and lives in a similar village beside mine, said that he wouldn't hold his boyfriend's hand at home. I think that the thing that worries me is that my town seems unpredictable. Even with no one out there is a lot of private disaproval, but if there were someone openly gay, then attitudes could get a lot more agressive. I'm glad this thread was started because I was thinking of something similar recently.I was thinking about how much our ideas of what it actually means for a place to be accepting are influenced by where we come from up;ie. to someone from one of the more conservative middle eastern countries, my town might sound fairly tolerant, wheras someone who someone from a big, liberal city in the US or western europe would probably disagree.
I live in the Florida panhandle (AKA the bible belt). The town I live in is pretty small and very conservative. There are a lot of Southern Baptists and most of the people that aren't Baptist go to other Christian churches that are very conservative. You could label a good portion of my town as "Rednecks". People joke that the high school in my town is a "public-christian" school because the ACLU took the school to court on issues involving prayer in school multiple times. So you could say the town I live in is a pretty homophobic place. There aren't a lot of openly gay people in my town, but there hasn't been any violence against any of them that I've heard of. A lot of the younger generation here is more accepting of homosexuals, but that doesn't change the fact that most of them are conservative, christian extremists that believe it's a sin and wrong and all that crap. There is a small portion of people around my age that is completely accepting of gays and lesbians and most of my friends in my town are among them. I also go to school in a small city just east of the town I live in. Again, it's in the bible belt, but there are more people that are accepting of homosexuality. I seem to go to school with a lot of the more liberal teenagers in my area. I've found a lot of them are atheist or agnostic and therefore more accepting of me (not saying there's anything wrong with being christian).
Just like racism, homophobia can run right below the surface. My kids are black, I'm white. I can't tell you how many times someone has made a racist comment to me not knowing about my kids. The same with sexuality. I hear homophobic comments all the time. People automatically assume that I am straight and "with them" on the subject of homosexuality. It's probably better to hear it out loud and then see how people react, just so you know what side they are on.
That's true, it'd be worse if everyone was like the gestapo. :rolle: I think standards of what's tolerant and what's not do stem from the places we started out in. I'm positive my town's accepting by all standards, but the city I went to is also known on the internet to be very accepting, too. If you live in a town full of Mormons, everywhere else is tolerant as can be, but if you live in a town of hippie liberals, everywhere else is frighteningly homophobic.
From my experience where I live it isn't that prevalent. Whenever I've been out holding hands with another guy or otherwise obviously *with* another guy I've never been yelled at, harassased or otherwise noticed any homophobia. The odd glance maybe but nothing more. There was this one time though, when I was walking home from the grocery store with my hands full of grocery bags and somebody drove by and called me a faggot. I suspect it was just immaturity though. I doubt they gleaned my sexual orientation from a moving vehicle. I never noticed before that I walked the walk.
