How gay men jtify their racism on Grdr

Contents:

• STUDY FDS GAY, WHE MEN ARE OVERREPRENTED LGBTQ EMPLOYEE GROUPS
• HERE'S ONE BTAL TTH EVERY WHE GAY MAN NEEDS TO HEAR
• ALL THE OPENLY GAY MALE CELEBS WHO ARE OUT, PROUD & SMOK’ HOT
• HOW THE ALT-RIGHT IS USG SEX AND CAMP TO ATTRACT GAY MEN TO FASCISM

STUDY FDS GAY, WHE MEN ARE OVERREPRENTED LGBTQ EMPLOYEE GROUPS

Others flipped protters the bird and shouted, “Shame!”"Fuck you for g a nice para!" yelled a blond olr guy om the siwalk, who then ma an abortive attempt to start a unter-chant: “No rpect, no pri!”No Jtice, No Pri and Black Liv Matter–affiliated groups reprised the prott ci across the untry throughout the summer.The Capal Pri nontatn and others like have laid bare a growg chasm wh the LGBTQ+ muny between olr activists and younger; between gay whe cisgenr men who feel like they n celebrate post-marriage equaly and those who fear for their liv unr a Tmp admistratn; between those whose biggt stumblg block life is beg gay and those who feel their eedom is ntgent not only on LGBTQ+ rights but also on issu like police reform, reproductive rights, and enomic equaly. “Intersectnaly is askg what kds of privleg some LGBTQ muny members have and who gets nied them.”But as dtups ed by groups like No Jtice, No Pri show — as well as other velopments, like the addn of a brown stripe to Philalphia’s LGBTQ pri flag; and scuffl over the cln of Israeli flags at monstratns — that not everyone is happy wh the LGBTQ+ movement’s foc on tersectnaly, which has foreground discsns of privilege, police btaly, sexism, racism, and anti-trans vlence.Robyn BeckSome gay whe cisgenr men are startg to tune out.“You have gay whe men who are no longer volved activism or muny work bee they jt get shouted down by mory activists who want to racialize everythg,” said Jamie Kirchick, a right-leang journalist and visg fellow at the Brookgs Instutn.

In a piece Tablet magaze last year tled “How Intersectnaly Mak You Stupid,” Kirchick took aim at the Natnal LGBTQ+ Task Force, which nceled and then unnceled a Shabbat receptn at s annual Creatg Change nference rponse to crics of Israel.“Whe gay man has bee an ephet,” he add.While the amic fn of tersectnaly may be narrow, s meang has broaned as s age has spread across var social jtice movements. Not only is ed as shorthand to talk about work between alns, has also e to embody the ia that, as wh the experience of inty, the sourc of opprsn — sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism — are ternnected.

For the more radil, the ultimate opprsor is palism.“I thk what [the foc on tersectnaly] do is brg everyone to rally around our victimhood, and that, fundamentally, is negative,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, now a polil pennt who -found gay Republin group the Log Cab Republins. “A bigger, more unifyg msage will ronate wh more and more of Amerins as we grow tired of the -vers-them nontatn-style polics of the last uple of s.”Kirchick said tersectnaly has ma the work of some LGBTQ+ anizatns herent, cg groups like Gays Agast Guns, which spng up after the Pulse massacre Orlando last year.“You n support gun ntrol, but I don’t see what that has to do wh beg gay,” Kirchick said.

HERE'S ONE BTAL TTH EVERY WHE GAY MAN NEEDS TO HEAR

“And the notn that gay-rights groups should be weighg at all on [the] abortn issue is prepostero.”Erasg Gay Whe Cisgenr Men?But even some progrsive gay whe men say they feel alienated om a movement they see beg more radil, particularly onle, where the tenor of nversatn is often uncivil.

This clus downplayg the role of gay men the 1969 Stonewall rts that kicked off the morn-day LGBTQ-rights era.“People lerally say that gay whe men have done nothg for the movement for the last 50 years,” he said. “For a lot of people — even people who support [tersectnaly] but may have a stickg pot — they jt feel they had better stay out of the nversatn.”But Olson, who is gay and married, add that the ternal nflict the LGBTQ+ movement is currently experiencg — and the drop-off participatn om those at the top — was to be expected after marriage equaly.“Movements change after they w,” Olson said.

A gay whe married man, he said he “showed up for marriage and looked at issu that followed and stepped back out.” While he supports trans rights, he said he feels the battle is no longer his.Another “Movement of Movements”Olr activists also believe that criqu of the LGBTQ+ movement’s clivy overlook past progrs. Uned by the Vietnam War, was an “credible era of dialogue” between social-jtice groups of starkly different strip.The Gay Liberatn Front marched wh the Black Panthers and participated antiwar monstratns.

ALL THE OPENLY GAY MALE CELEBS WHO ARE OUT, PROUD & SMOK’ HOT

The movement was not only far more centralized than today, when several large LGBTQ+ advocy anizatns wh lots of money generally set the agenda; was stacked wh crics of palism, cludg munists like Harry Hay, who -found early homophile anizatn the Mattache Society. In 1989, the first gay-pri march through Washgton, D.C., featured a nference that tried to enurage alns between different racial groups; was endorsed by the Natnal Organizatn for Women and the Natnal Coaln of Black Lbians and Gays.To ll the “movement of movements” tersectnal would be an anachronism, but the bandg together of different produced siarly ntent bat about who had power, whose issu should take precence, and which alns ma sense.

Now, wh Print Donald Tmp the Whe Hoe, tersectnalists are posg siar qutns.“This Is Not a Pole Thg”To those experiencg opprsn on several onts — those at the tersectns — the sensibili of gay whe cisgenr men seem bi the pot.“I e om a place of anger — particularly on social media, where people who are opprsed talk about their embodied knowledge — but my anger is rooted the fact that my human lims have been met,” said activist Pelaez, addg that the arrival of marriage equaly did ltle to help his legal stat. “I’m not gog to be liberated bee I am both black and an immigrant.”The lls for polens strike Darnell Moore, a wrer and anizer wh Black Liv Matter who intifi as queer and black, as “disgenuo.” He noted that AIDS activism the 1980s and 1990s — which gay men and their alli chaed themselv to ernment buildgs and performed die-s on the streets of major ci — was hardly pole.“So the only people who are allowed to be disptive are whe cisgenr men?” said Moore, who lled on LGBTQ anizatns to endorse Black Liv Matter on HuffPost.Our Alli, Our SelvNot all gay whe cisgenr men see the LGBTQ+ movement’s tersectnal turn a negative light. Brian Sims said his experience as a gay whe cisgenr man — and the discrimatn he has faced on acunt of his sexual orientatn — has ma him more sympathetic to the plight of members of the muny who are more disenanchised than he is.“I don’t thk I’ve ever seen as victimhood,” said Sims, who supported the addn of a brown stripe to Philalphia’s pri flag.

It didn’t change the circumstanc of trans women of lor.”Sims said seemed obv to him that sexism, racism, transphobia, ableism, and homophobia e om the same place, and said that the far-right polics of the Tmp admistratn have ma tersectnaly all the more important.“If sharg a mon enemy brgs together, the bt thg that om this Dumpster fire of a princy is that we are all learng that we n and should work together,” he said. To do this, gay whe cisgenr men have to not only let their guard down and listen but also acknowledge the relative power they wield and e to elevate those lower down who have been historilly margalized.“The key to jtice is acknowledgment,” said Jon, who is currently at work on an tersectnal news show for Free Speech TV. “Whe cisgenr gay men have to acknowledge that they have a disproportnate amount of power the movement that has acced to them for historil reasons that are wrong.”Pelaez nces that “tersectnal work is all about havg really difficult nversatns.” It is, after all, psychologilly taxg for a gay whe cisgenr man who got bullied high school for his sexual orientatn and n still be fired for 28 stat to hear about the privilege he has as a whe man.

HOW THE ALT-RIGHT IS USG SEX AND CAMP TO ATTRACT GAY MEN TO FASCISM

In large part, the answer pends on whether those wh more power will step asi and let those wh ls speak and be heard, and whether they feel they are sharg power rather than losg .Gabriel Arana is a gay wrer and edor who liv New York Cy. Three four lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr or queer employe experienced at least one negative teractn at work related to their sexual orientatn or genr inty the last year, acrdg to a study released Tuday by the Boston Consultg Group and New York Cy’s Lbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgenr Communy Center.

When to the morn fight for equal rights, 's imperative that we remd our straight unterparts that we were born this whe men were born gay, but they were also raised and socialized as whe men — the social group vted wh the most privilege Ameri.

But here's the btal tth: The social privilege of whens still affords them a disproportnate amount of power the gay privilege elevat whe, gay men above men of lor. If we hope to eradite racism wh the gay muny, whe gay men mt acknowledge their privilege — and the way 's ed, ways subtle and not, to nigrate a Lato gay man, I know firsthand that my sk lor affects how I teract wh the larger muny.