In the last post, I was talking about a comment in the weekend Ask A Manager forum asking if a single woman and a married man could be friends. I digressed (as is my wont) before gettinrg to my main point about the comment. I was very sarcastic in recapping the comment (it was deleted by Alison) but in essence, it was saying that since Alison was grcious enough to allow LBGTQ+ questions, then we should STFU when straight questions are asked. It was upset by the comments from LBGTQ+ people (including me!), and it finished by asking how we would feel if they (presumably stragight people) dismissed our questions as LBGTQ+ nonsense.
Tell me you don’t consider LGBTQ+ people equal without saying you don’t consider LGBTQ+ people equal. The fact that she dared to drag Alison into the mess is even worse (argument by authority, by proxy). It’s very much ‘This is MY house, and you are lucky that I allow you in it!” energy. The very fact that the commenter thought it was fit to mention that Alison was so graceful to allow us filthy queers to even ask questions in her pristine forum (again, not how she herself feels. At all) told me all I needed to know.
A question for the hets? All the fucking questions are for the hets! This is so fucking irritating about being the minority. There is a quote that is oft-said on this topic, but cannot be attributed (which means it’s probably a minority woman):
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
The finst time I read that quote, it hit me hard. I am a minority in so many ways, and I just dealt with the frustration of trying to explain my position to the majority by mentally shrugging my shoulders and moving on. But it still hurt. It still was frustrating. And this quote perfectly encapsulated why people in the majority push back so relentlessly on equality. They ARE losing something because they had a bigger piece of the pie for so long. It’s natural to feel upset when you get leess. That’s human nature.
In this case, though, as with many cases, it’s laughable. Heterosexual relationships/marriages are still the norm. Yes, being queer is more acceptable these days. We have same-sex marriage (still to my surprise), but that doesn’t mean discrimination still doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that het monogamous marriage isn’t still considered the norm.
The fact that this commenter STARTED by trying to put queer people in their place was very telling. It showed that we were there on the sufferance of Alison (in the commenter’s mind) and that we were outsiders and interlopers. The funny thing is that most of the queer people had thoughtful, nuanced comments. The lesbian who wrote that it was straight people nonsense, well, she wasn’t wrong.
Jealousy isn’t a straight thing, obviously. Neither is navigating friendships with people you’re attracted to/are attracted to you, but the way it was stated was very het. Single woman and married man. Marriage equality has been the law of the land in the States for less than a decade at this point. That means a lot of queer people didn’t have the legal protection that straight people had for much of our country’s existence.