Questionnaire on Sexuality
* Where do you think your heterosexuality comes from?
* When and under what circumstances did you decide to be heterosexual?
* Could it be that your heterosexuality is only a difficult and troubling phase that you’re passing through?
* Could it be that you are heterosexual because you are afraid of people of the same sex?
* If you’ve never slept with a partner of the same sex, how do you know you wouldn’t prefer one? Could it be that you’re just missing out on a good homosexual experience?
* Have you come out as heterosexual? How did they react?
* Heterosexuality doesn’t cause problems as long as you don’t advertise these feelings. Why do you always talk about heterosexuality? Why center everything around it? Why do the heterosexuals always make a spectacle of their sexuality? Why can’t they live without exhibiting themselves in public?
* The vast majority of sexual violence against children is due to heterosexuals. Do you believe that your child is safe in the presence of a heterosexual? In a class with a heterosexual teacher in particular?
* More than half of heterosexual couples who are getting married this year will get divorced within three years. Why are heterosexual relationships so often bound for failure?
* In the face of the unhappy lives that heterosexuals lead, can you wish for your child to be heterosexual? Have you considered sending your child to a psychologist if he or she has turned out to have heterosexual tendencies? Would you be ready to have a doctor intervene? Would you send your child to in-patient therapy to get him or her to change?

—

Heterosexuality, the opiate of the people

A flier being passed out by a feminist student organization at a French university, as collected by Eli Thorkelson during fieldwork. He notes that:

Their list of political demands hence included not only equality and an end to homophobia but also (and this struck me as being a little more unusual) an end to the traditional system of dichotomous sexual classification. Indeed, they claimed “the free disposition of one’s body and the free choice of one’s sexual identity, sex and gender.” This placed them in the paradoxical position, it seems to me, of being a feminist group trying to undermine the category of ‘women’ that served as their tacit basis of political unity: while open to all, as of yesterday no males had joined. I’d guess that they’d interpret this apparent paradox by saying that in fact they’re brought together by shared domination on the basis of their gender, and that of course the whole point of the project is to overcome this domination.

It lets me know that the individual(s) that have done this have too much free time. They aren’t involved in the community and it lets me know one of two things: 1. that just some kids have come through and did it or 2. that they are individuals that actually support this group that want to scare tactic me and so on to try and get us from the viewpoints that we hold that or and (sic) they just don’t like anybody that’s against it. I really don’t know,

—

Pastor Joe Gutierrez of the Church on Fire, quoted in Bash Back! Strikes queer-hating church — Fort Wayne, IN

Seriously, “someone must have a lot of free time” as a way of minimizing someone else’s opinion/action is so obnoxious. And so what? Why is the idea of having free time such an insult anyway? I wish I made better use of my free time, and had more of it.

if gay marriage is not the #1 concern of most queers, particularly those of us who are not white, affluent, and gender-normative, why have the mainstream gay orgs made this their priority and poured all of their resources into this single issue? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the right to marry is the last hurdle of the white affluent gay man to achieve parity with his privileged straight brethren, leaving the rest of us queers behind, still struggling?

— queerhapa commenting on Toward A More Colorful Queer Future [via]

Members of Cleveland’s transgender community will be protected against discrimination under legislation passed unanimously by the city council. The ordinance approved Monday night expands the city’s existing anti-bias laws to bar businesses from denying jobs or housing to people because of their gender identity or gender expression.

— Cleveland council OKs transgender protections [via]

Capitalism depends on labor to create value, and the source of this labor is the individual. By privileging marriage and the family, capital is essentially purchasing the production of its most valuable raw material: workers… One innate aspect of capitalism is that it reduces organic social relationships to relationships based on economics, based on the creation and exchange of goods and resources.

— Pink and Black Attack #2 - FUCK THEIR MARRIAGE or, some thoughts on the counter-revolutionary nature of assimilationist politics and practice.

I think it is a mistake to presume that the social/economic ‘usefulness’ of marriage is something which is only (or even predominately) true under capitalism. while the idea of relationships built entirely on love/comradery/sexual attraction is attractive, i think it ignores the fact that human associations generally always have some sort of economic or social function. Can you even have an ‘organic social relationship’ unaffected by the larger society around you? I don’t think so, and kinship/relationships never exist in a vacuum.

Not to, you know, sound like a functionalist. also not to make it appear that I don’t think this critique is legitimate, because I do.

I’ve read the Supreme Court of California’s decision legalizing gay marriage—all 140 pages of it, twice, QAGM—and I can assure you: There’s not one word in it about your boyfriend’s spunk.

— My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple’s Baby?!?

America needs more marriages, not fewer, and the best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what society does by bringing gay couples inside the tent. A good way to discourage marriage, on the other hand, is to tarnish it as discriminatory in the minds of millions of young Americans. Conservatives who object to redefining marriage risk redefining it themselves, as a civil-rights violation.

— Gay Marriage Is Good For America [via]

I saw and heard boys imitate presumed faggots and hurl the fag epithet so frequently at one another that I came to call it a “fag discourse.” I use the term fag and not gay, advisedly. Boys at River High repeatedly differentiated fags from gay men. For these boys gay men could still be masculine, whereas a fag could never be masculine. Thus the term “gay” functioned as a generic insult meaning “stupid” or “lame” whereas “fag” invoked a very specific gendered slur, directed at other boys. For these boys a fag was a failed, feminine man who, in all likelihood, was also gay.

— ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’