Barbelith Underground > Policy & Help > Barbelith: 'pro-queer', 'anti-hetero' and community

Crikey.

I've tried to deal with the 'Australia is notoriously racist' issue by posting a new topic in Switchboard. I hope that's acceptable.

Regarding this thread, I probably should have written "'could be construed to be'" anti-hetero'. My bad. With regard to why I think this, it's really hard to find examples of why Barbelith could be construed as being anti-hetero without re-reading every thread I've ever read. That's not an excuse, it's more an explantion of a general feeling. Over the three years I have been a member here I have come to feel that in general when a poster writes about specifically hetero feelings or more concisely male hetero feelings towards women, they are quite commonly mocked in a way that any post about male or female feelings towards the same sex would not be. Sometimes those comments are questioned, but generally not by the people who would question anti-gay posts, as in this case. More often than not anti-hetero posts just pass into the Barbelith archives.

I waited quite a while before I posted anything about this, and I was waiting to see if the 'champions of obliterating sexual intolerance' would pick up on Mr Disco's clear example of an intolerant post. A few people remarked upon it, but not one of those were the key posters on sexuality that Barbelith undoubtly has. Go and read any post on sexuality in the headshop if you want an example of those key posters.

I am not one of those champions and nore are the people who also questioned Mr Disco's post. I don't understand why that is, unless the board, and in particular key posters on sexuality, are more tolerant of anti-hetero posts than they would be of anti-gay.

Mr Disco's post makes blatant assumptions about gender that would in no way be accepted were they referring to being gay, yet no key poster on sexuality and tolerance questioned it.

There are certainly a few people on this board who can be relied upon to consistently point out sexist, racist or (specifically in this case) offensive posts about sexuality but it appears they only question a post if it's offensive to, or derogatory about being gay.

So I think that those posters should also be relied upon to question comments which are derogatory about being heterosexual, since they have, in some ways, set themselves up as monitors of intolerance of all aspects of sexuality.

I'd like to think that this board allows anyone the freedom to speak about their own sexuality without being mocked and the fact that none of the 'usual suspects' questioned Mr Disco's post points, to me, to a general laziness in flagging intolerance of heterosexual posts.

I feel sure that had Mr Disco made a remark about 'homopanic' (obviously unlikely I know) there would have been a much bigger reaction to it from the people who would normally point out these intolerances. As such that implies to me that anti-hetero behaviour on this board is much more likely to be accepted than anti-gay, and as such the board could be construed to be anti-hetero.

If the main posters on sexuality here on this board appear much more likely to tolerate anti-hetero posts or posts which contain offensive comments about heterosexuality than they would a post that could be construed to be anti-gay, then the only conclusion that seems sensible to me is that anti-hetero behaviour on this board is generally considered to be OK by the people who normally lead the way in threads about sexual tolerance or preference.

However, having said that, I don't think it's in any way deliberate. I don't think those key posters have made specific decisions to ignore anti-hetero posts. Maybe it's beyond their conscious circle - it in no way relates to them so perhaps they can't see the intolerance in it?

I don't think this board is deliberately anti-hetero. I think it is lazily so. I come to this conclusion because why else on a board where tolerance and acceptance is much vaunted (and rightly so) could such anti-hetero comments be made and ignored by the people who would normally be instantly questioning it if if it related to any other sexuality?