I clearly didn’t get the memo at work today, that certain shirts are now making love to each other, holding hands and fighting for the basic human right of marriage – I thought it was only the LGBT community who were fighting that battle, but according to the young lads at work there are other minorities. Oh no just those questionable shirts (that a gay man wouldn’t be seen dead in might I add) but liking Bruno Mars actually means you want to put him in a sling and fist him violently. Yet, they didn’t seem to bat an eye lid especially when I walked out from behind a shelf. Was it me, or has the work place become more and more homophobic, perhaps in a more submissive and subtle way yet it felt that homophobia was rife – the previous week play fighting turned into name calling, ‘push that queer’ was shouted out. When I told the member of staff to apologize to one of my fellow homosexual co-worker who it was directed at, he refused and laughed at me. Is this normal? Lets put this into context, if I made even the smallest comments about someone’s ethnic background, I no doubt would be hurled into the office and handed a P45 quicker than I could sing Do-Re-Mi.
I will always confront homophobia, yet I feel that I let it lie too much. Knowing all too well I should indeed speak to certain line managers about the ‘colorful’ use of gay in a derogatory manner but I always find put off by not knowing how they are going to react. I indeed may take offense to it, but it doesn’t mean they would do something about it, I can see them now just laughing it off and telling me to stop being so dramatic! Does this make it right or am I just trying to pick a fight about something that should be swept under the carpet and forgotten? It would appear that this is the attitude taken by the LGBT community towards hate crime. Growing up, you are subjected to verbal and physical violence and somehow you come to terms that your life will always be like this, and perhaps this is why we just accept what is hurled at us – but does this make it right?
Once again, I have performed one of my infamous tangents that are becoming far too regular – I will try and get back on track with this. In essence, I think the contemporary society’s use of slang words such as gay, queer and faggot are used too much, it has become a low level form homophobia, that the LGBT community become so used too in growing up – this almost inhibits us, to a point where we don’t report hate crimes. Many people see ‘gay’ as another word when used in a derogatory manner, and the fact that it is used in a non-positive manner isn’t constructive in anyway shape or form. This was the response I got from the guys today when they were describing anything they didn’t like as gay.
‘Oh we don’t mean that type of gay, just the other type’
I didn’t even realise that there were two types of gay? Sometimes I wonder what year we are in, 2012 – more like 1963……
Deep breath, and rant over! I will leave you with two little clips from the fabulous Pink, Past & Present.
insearchofoscar 
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