sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (08/18/85)
> DISENFRANCHISEMENT > > I feel disenfranchised as a result of heterosexism. (By > 'heterosexism' I mean an unwitting or unconscious assumption on > someone's part that everyone is heterosexual and perhaps leads a > certain type of life, e.g. marriage, family.) I think this is a very common feeling among gay people, though how one reacts to it depends on where it happens, how much you have learned to artificially separate your personal life from your public persona, and how sensitive you are to the kind of dissonance this produces. It hasn't been a real problem for me where I work, except in one particular instance which won't happen again: every year BBN holds a "winter party" at a local museum with food, music and dancing, and last winter, the entire company was invited. Plans for my lover and I to meet up with other gay and non-gay friends quickly vanished as I tried to find them among the 2000-odd people meandering around the six sprawling floors of the Science Museum. Lots of strangers, lots of people you wouldn't even want to talk with even IF your lover weren't standing next to you, straight couples EVERYWHERE, and my local support system nowhere to be found. Aauuugggh. After a few hours we left, suffocating from the thick cloud of heterosexuality. (I am sure I have just "disenfranchised" the straight contingent here, but I'm telling it to you "straight", as it were.) -- /Steve Dyer {harvard,seismo}!bbncc5!sdyer sdyer@bbncc5.ARPA