The tail end of 2013, and the opening salvoes of 2014 seem to suggest that nothing much is going to change. I'm spending New Year at my brother's, and I'm grateful to have been invited, because I would otherwise have been on my own, but that gratitude doesn't mean that I take kindly to some of the things that were said last night. Some pretty blatantly homophobic stuff came out from people who I not only consider to be friends, but who I'm 'out' to, even from my brother himself at one point, in the course of a conversation that I was a part of. When I mentioned my annoyance, privately, to my brother a little later, his attitude was that because what had been said wasn't aimed at me personally, it didn't matter. That, as far as I'm concerned, is on a par with a racist saying that because I don't call my one black friend a nigger to his face, I'm therefore not a racist. Call me over-sensitive if you like, but it soured what would otherwise have been a congenial evening, leaving my sister-in-law's assertion that '2014 is going to be a good year (for me)' sounding more than a little hollow.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
I don't understand why people think that way. Insulting is insulting. It's even worse when you mention is quietly, aside, and are rebuffed. I'm sorry you had a pall cast over your holiday.
ReplyDeletePeace <3
Jay
Hello Jay
DeleteOn reflection, the fact that the attitudes espoused were so generic, stereotypical, actually makes it worse - a direct, personal attack could at least have been directly addressed, but this kind of 'casual', unthinking homophobia simply casts you as a second class citizen, whose very existence is of little or no value, and is thus all the more disheartening. There was, I have little doubt, a goodly element of in vino, veritas, too, and that, again, makes it even more depressing, in that, under the disinhibitory influence of alcohol, people are saying what they actually think, as opposed to tactfully saying the 'right' thing. Not, all in all, the best way to have seen in 2014.
Love & best wishes
Sammy B