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Disrupting Dinner Parties

~ Feminism is for everyone!

Disrupting Dinner Parties

Tag Archives: homophobia

Do not feed the trolls — but do not dismiss them, either.

08 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Robin Marie in Harassment

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

bullies, Bullying, homophobia, racism, Sexism, trolls

As I’ve discussed before, the atheist and skeptical communities have a problem with sexism. How big of a problem, however, depends on who you ask. If you ask me, or Rebecca Watson, or Greta Christina, or PZ Myers, the answer is going to be something along the lines of “pretty substantial.” If you ask others, however – perhaps your run of the mill fan of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or even an occasional attendee of skeptical conferences – you might very well get another answer. Of course, some claim that the sexism problem is entirely a myth manufactured by femi-nazi bullies intent on punishing and ostracizing everyone who does not toe a particular ideological line. But we talked about those folks last time. Today, we’re going to talk about one other common response to this question: “it’s mostly just trolls.”

This is a common response not merely from people within the skeptical and atheist movements, but from people in all sorts of communities in response to all sorts of problems – sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and even classism. Bullies are bullies, so the logic goes – and kids these days (and they often are imagined as adolescents, teenagers, or young adults, it seems to me) get on the internet and just start picking fights for the fun of it. Indeed, trolls are often perceived as not even believing what they are saying – they are causing discord and hurt feelings for the sheer thrill of it. Thus even for adults, there is something about arguing online that strips people of all sincerity and makes them less receptive to other ideas and less capable of realizing they are attacking actual human people. Empathy be hard on the internets, you know.

Now, I do not want to suggest that there is nothing to these points. Psychologists and social scientists have been looking into this and there does indeed seem to be something about the internet which brings out our most ugly selves. But when such research is cited as a way to try to minimize a culture of hatred towards women or minorities, I have a real problem with this. For several reasons.

Remember: trolls are people, too.

Remember: trolls are people, too.

First, trolls are people. They come from somewhere. Indeed, as our own Jan DeVry has illustrated, sometimes we even know these people in real life. Continue reading →

Why people (some men) freak out extra hard about gay male athletes

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by rosiefranklin in Masculinity, Media, Queer-LGBTQIA

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

homophobia, rape is a power thing, sports

In case you hadn’t heard, NBA center Jason Collins is gay.

Most of the internet has reacted very positively and supportively. Few people are freaking out in public. But I’m guessing you have heard, as I have, more intense freakouts in private. They’re boring repeats of a billion boring private freakouts I’ve heard from straight men about gay athletes a billion boring times before.

But you know what? There’s more to the way some people freak out about gay male athletes in a way that they don’t about gay female athletes than the fact that stereotyped lesbians (masculine) confirm the stereotypes about female athletes (masculine, all lesbians), while stereotyped gay men (feminine) challenge the stereotypes about male athletes (masculine to the max, exemplars of traditional masculinity).

Above and beyond that, the reaction to the spectre of a gay male athlete has its roots in the fears of loss of privilege. (Spoiler alert! A privilege women never have!)

Have you seen the picture meme that goes around that says “homophobia: you’re not afraid, you’re just an asshole”? While the latter is true, I don’t think the former is true.  I think this gets closer:

homophobia is the fear that gay men are going to treat you the way you treat women.

That’s real.*

Continue reading →

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