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On an aside; I think it's interesting that only a regular poster who's been here for years would have been allowed to say that though. A relative newbie or a lurker who had made the same observation would have, I think, been flamed.
But that's a fantasy - I mean, it's something you have made up, and yet your first sentence presents as a fact that somebody who had not been a regular poster for years would somehow not have been "allowed" to make this claim - which, incidentally, is a claim which comes up in various forms really fairly regularly on Barbelith.
The truth is, people are free to say pretty much what they like on Barbelith, outside som erather vague prohibitions on hate speech. Reaction to that will be affected by a number of factors, including how well someone is known and liked or trusted. So, Olulabelle can make potentially upset-causing statements about Australia being a racist nation, for example, and the response to that is managed in-thread. Likewise, MD can identify hetpanic, whether you believe him to be right or wrong in doing so, and the reaction to that is managed inthread also. I don't think that one is about race and the other about sexuality makes a functional difference.
More generally - I think it's an interesting question. First up, it's worth considering that people actually fairly rarely find themselves in environments where heterosexuality is challenged - which goes for people who are not heterosexual, as well. One of the things that I find fascinating here is how thin-skinned heterosexuals are when the assumption of heterosexuality as normative is undermined.
So, is Barbelith institutionally anti-hetero? No, I don't think so. It is a place where as a community efforts are made to cancel out some of the assumed rights conferred by heterosexuality - or more precisely heterosociality. so, if you assume, for example, that the girl who behaves in a way that suggest to you that she likes you but who has a boyfriend is a cock-tease, you're likely to be pulled up on it. Much as a warm room feels warmer if you've come in out of the cold, the removal of the unassailability of certain positions can feel like the dominance of other narratives, if you're working on the assumption that the subordination of those naratives is natural. In fact, I think Barbelith can be very _useful_ in this wise, by providing not only a way to provide alternative responses to questions like, say, The Seldom Killer's in "Genderfuck You" or Keggers in "a question for the Pride Parade people" - responses one might not be able to get from, say, one's coworkers - but also questioning the assumptions underlying the way they are asked.
Dead Megatron in the "hair on pillow" thread is quite useful on this - his suspicion that he might be the only heterosexual left (on Barbelith? On Earth?) speaks of a sense of victimhood possibly out of sync with his statistical majority - on Barbelith and on Earth. |
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Olulabelle.