valerie@sdcc3.UUCP (Valerie Polichar) (08/22/85)
Keywords:disenfranchisement word usage differences First of all, about what Steve Dyer said on disenfranchisement: If being surrounded by gay couples makes certain hetero folks uncomfortable, it's only reasonable that the reverse should be true. I wonder if it's mostly the feeling of not-belonging, of being different, that makes a person feel this way. I remember when I was small, going to a Catholic church for a friend's funeral (I'm Jewish). I felt very uncomfortable, out-of-place, wanted to get out of there - felt that I would be disapproved of, maybe. I don't know. Second: someone brought up the question of the usage of "gay" and "homosexual" as adjectives and nouns, and stated they disliked the use of either one as a noun - what good sense! A person's sexual orientation, while a very important part of their character (if only because man's sexuality is such a major part of his being), is not the sum definition of a person! God, how I fume when I see all these articles - "Gay people today feel thus-and-such .. Homosexuals today say they favour thus-and-such sort of relationship" - lump everyone together, why don't they! Grr. I get the same kind of mad with any kind of "lumping" -- with blacks, Jews, women, - and yes, whites, Protestants and men, too. No one deserves generalization. I wish our news media could work in a different manner -- is there another way to deal with issues than by generalizing? Third: I just posted my first article to net.women -- for the first time, I was able to figure out what was bothering me about the way certain people claimed to look at / treat women. "I love women .. worship them .. they're so nice to look at". One problem I had with that was the inherent insult, unintended though it was. But the main problem was that WE'RE NOT DIFFERENT SPECIES, DARN IT! And I'm seeing this coming up on net.motss -- people treating the different sexual orientations as completely different beings. SURE, there are important differences - I think in large part brought on by the different societal frameworks the different orientations are obliged to exist in. And the differences are worth exploring, and sharing, and discussing. But unless everyone realizes that we are all, in the end, HUMAN BEINGS - even Ken Arndt, choke cough - we are not going to be communicating - we'll be "translating" because we'll think we're talking to some alien race... that doesn't breed honesty. Val Polichar -- Valerie Polichar sdcsvax!sdcc3!valerie This is a fake signature. If it were a real signature, you would have fled, terror-striken, from your terminal.