Discussion Gay Mens Misogyny and Homophobia
Discussion Gay Mens Misogyny and Homophobia
The only time I've really seen this issue discussed much is in radfem leaning spaces and Ovarit. When it comes to Ovarit in particular, (though maybe some of you have witnessed it in other spaces too) sometimes it felt quite uncomfortable with the direction a lot of their criticizing went. Sometimes it felt like the discussions and comments start leaning away from discussing the actual misogyny at hand and instead starts going in the direction of just general homophobia towards gay men, which especially as a bisexual woman, I cannot condone. I'm so incredibly tired of homophobia and biphobia.
However I find myself having a hard time figuring out where the line is. Sometimes I'm not sure if I think something comes off homophobic because I'm sensitive to that kind of talk not being a straight woman, but its actually a fair criticism and judgement about a gay man or gay men in general, and im just stifling feminist discourse when it comes to more controversial, uncomfortable topics that mainstream 'feminism' doesn't want to touch on. On the other hand, im not really interested in accepting or furthering homophobic language to make a point or hurting any LGB people, regardless of their sex.
An example of this is the surragacy issue. I'm against surrogacy regardless of who is the recipient of the child because I don't support anything that exploits women and children or treats women and children like consumer goods. But so often, when the surrogacy topic comes up and its a gay male couple adopting, a number of women in a few of these spaces will inevitably wind up suggesting that gay men just want to adopt boys to molest them. And that really rubs me the wrong way and feels very homophobic and bothers the hell out of me. I think one can be against surrogacy on principle and not make gay men out to be some kind of pedos or perverts. They simply don't have any sort of a right to use a woman's body to create a child. No one does.
This is just one example, I seen this come up quite often and I'd like to see what you all think here since the women here have way more measured responses and no one sounds like a right wing nut job here to me, unlike certain other sites. Where is the line? Is it blurry or are right wing women blurring a line that was originally perfectly clear? What are your thoughts on this?
As I'm sure many of us have experienced, gay men are unfortunately not immune to being misogynistic towards women, though often times, liberal society and mainstream feminism doesn't care to acknowledge this and they are often given a green flag to do and say whatever they want to/about women with little to no repercussions. If anything, when I've called it out, I've typically been immediately pinned at the bad person in the situation without a second thought about the misogyny the man I was calling out was spewing at me.
The only time I've really seen this issue discussed much is in radfem leaning spaces and Ovarit. When it comes to Ovarit in particular, (though maybe some of you have witnessed it in other spaces too) sometimes it felt quite uncomfortable with the direction a lot of their criticizing went. Sometimes it felt like the discussions and comments start leaning away from discussing the actual misogyny at hand and instead starts going in the direction of just general homophobia towards gay men, which especially as a bisexual woman, I cannot condone. I'm so incredibly tired of homophobia and biphobia.
However I find myself having a hard time figuring out where the line is. Sometimes I'm not sure if I think something comes off homophobic because I'm sensitive to that kind of talk not being a straight woman, but its actually a fair criticism and judgement about a gay man or gay men in general, and im just stifling feminist discourse when it comes to more controversial, uncomfortable topics that mainstream 'feminism' doesn't want to touch on. On the other hand, im not really interested in accepting or furthering homophobic language to make a point or hurting any LGB people, regardless of their sex.
An example of this is the surragacy issue. I'm against surrogacy regardless of who is the recipient of the child because I don't support anything that exploits women and children or treats women and children like consumer goods. But so often, when the surrogacy topic comes up and its a gay male couple adopting, a number of women in a few of these spaces will inevitably wind up suggesting that gay men just want to adopt boys to molest them. And that really rubs me the wrong way and feels very homophobic and bothers the hell out of me. I think one can be against surrogacy on principle and not make gay men out to be some kind of pedos or perverts. They simply don't have any sort of a right to use a woman's body to create a child. No one does.
This is just one example, I seen this come up quite often and I'd like to see what you all think here since the women here have way more measured responses and no one sounds like a right wing nut job here to me, unlike certain other sites. Where is the line? Is it blurry or are right wing women blurring a line that was originally perfectly clear? What are your thoughts on this?
