Dugdale’s article nothing but self-hatred

Colin Dugdale’s article that appeared in INside magazine should in fact have been published in the Opinion section of the IDS, as it was a thinly-veiled diatribe bashing a minority of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community. While his reporting on one of the more relevant issues surrounding Pride parades – the promotion of unrealistic body images for gay men – was spot-on, the rest of his article was a one-sided study in self-hatred.\nDugdale seems to forget – or is possibly just uneducated to the fact – that drag queens, leather daddies and butch lesbians are the people who started the Stonewall Riots, the flash point for the beginning of the fight for GLBT rights in America. Without them, the current possibility of assimilation would not exist. There would be no “Will & Grace” if there were not John Waters and Divine; no Ellen if it weren’t for Leslie Feinberg. We’d all be either completely repressed, in a sanitarium or dead. \nFurthermore, Dugdale doesn’t realize that those conservatives to whom he is pleading don’t hate gays any less just because they’re not wearing leather chaps. They hate every last one of us blindly and their acceptance of gays won’t come about any sooner if we were all to trade our feather boas and thongs for suits and ties. We should not be asking the gay community to become something it’s not; we should be demanding that the bigots mind their own damn business and stay away from Greenwich Village during Pride if the very sight of us revolts them that much.\nA more relevant article to write might question the popularity of Pride parades over political action when people don’t even feel safe from being beaten in the streets for simply being perceived as GLBT. A more responsible writer would have acknowledged the fact that their opinions were incredibly gender normative and would have apologized to the transgender community for such. Hopefully soon, a more mature Dugdale will write a balanced story on the GLBT community, instead of denigrating the very people and traditions that have allowed flamboyant “bois” like Dugdale himself to be out and proud.\nStacy Konkiel\nGraduate student