A TRUE STORY: A LIGHTBULB MOMENT

No time today for serious in-depth commentary on much of anything.  So I thought I would share a true story that I think illustrates how people, even well-intentioned people, can be blind to issues that don't affect them.

Many, many years ago -- almost 20 years ago now -- when I was a teenager, I was going on one of my tirades about how I just don't understand why people have a problem with homosexuality. 

This is what my dad says in response:  "Well, Happy, you have to look at it from another point of view.  A lot of young boys have had the experience of being groped by homosexuals.  So you can't really blame them if they grow up and have a problem with gay people.  That's the kind of behavior by gay people that turns a lot of people off." 

Wham -- my mom chimes right in: "But young girls are groped all the time too -- by straight men."

A look of pure astonishment crosses my father's face.  Long silence while he gapes.  "I never thought of that.  I literally never thought of that."  Another long silence.  "Wow. I, I, just -- wow."

Since then, I have to say, my father has changed a lot in his attitude towards The Gays and is as uncompromising as I am in his support of social and legal equality.  He is not one to admit he is wrong very often and he is not one who is generally caught off guard by points he has never thought of. But in this case he was. It's not that he is stupid (far from it) but the constant sexualization of young girls and women is just a norm, whereas a young boy being groped is seen as a bizarre deviancy -- and it had never occurred to him until my mother's comment to even consider any similarity or equivalency between the two.   

Comments

[Sidebar-for the other half]

"The Gays." Is that phrase typically capitalized in that fashion? For some reason it threw me for a loop.

[roula]

eep. did my comment disappear? testing..

[roula]

ok, i guess it did. i was just going to answer to sidebar -- i think it is capitalized in the same way that someone else might put it in scare-quotes. as in, HF doesn't use this phrase but maybe you'll recognize it as something that homophobes often say (especially when they are talking about gay people as though they are a cohesive social or political actor). specifically, the way many of them say stuff like "THE gays", with a definite article, not just "gay people" or even "gays". it's almost like The Reds, or something.

[The Happy Feminist]

That is correct!

[L.]

Oh, that`s a great story.

[David Thompson]

How young is "young"? Are we talking 5-year-olds here or what?

I think anal sex is a nasty, disgusting habit, but so is putting mayonnaise on your french fries. Some people like that shit, though, and there's no good reason to outlaw either one.

[mythago]

I think anal sex is a nasty, disgusting habit

Whoa, when did we switch from a discussion of ass-grabbing to one about ass-fucking?

[evil_fizz]

mythago, I think when the word homosexual got used.

[Metal Mozart]

I do not see any flaw of the arguement of your father. I have dated many girls who were molested by men and they're still straight. His suggestion that men's attraction to boys is what causes fear in our masculine dominated society. The fact that women are oppressed on a number of scales is so obvious its unseen and overlooked easily; even by your father. That doesn't disqualify his arguement on the generality of masculine thought or balance more light into the view of feminine thought. Though you probably know all this, I felt confused reading it and felt I should share this with you.

[Ismone]

Sorry to law geek for a while, but I had Joshua Dressler (a criminal law scholar) visit my law school. He was speaking to us about an article of his opposing a young man who had argued that non-violent homosexual passes should never be considered provocation. (Provocation means that a crime that would otherwise be murder is reduced to manslaughter--classic examples include seeing someone raping your significant other, finding your significant other cheating on you, and the like.) He analogized a gay man non-violently groping a straight man to a straight man groping a woman, which he said we would all find provoking.

I asked him why the straight man got to be the woman, and pointed out that he was importing all these assumptions about men and women by doing that, i.e., that the woman is smaller, weaker, that a man who gropes a woman may rape or otherwise physically harm her later, etc. I asked him why he didn't reverse the sexes, and have the woman be the groper and the man the victim. He then played the line for laughs, and said most men would like that. (Actually, not true as to my guy friends.)

As I told some friends after the lecture, if straight men groping straight women caused us to snap into murderous rages, I swear, the bodies would be stacked high as cordwood if we killed one out of every ten.