The problem with the gay community

When you grow up as a member of the LGBT community, your peers often tell you “Just be yourself” or “Individuality is a beautiful thing.”

Though these beautiful, philosophical nuggets of wisdom would look great crocheted on a pillow, they don’t prepare members of the LGBT community for the harsh realities of the gay community.  

When you first enter it, which is in college for some, you’re in for a culture shock. The happy-go-lucky “It gets better” image projected in public is worlds away from the behind-the-scenes version of the gay community.

In reality, some people are rejected from the culture just because they don’t conform to the standards that exist. If you don’t dress a certain way, if you don’t enjoy certain music or TV shows or if you simply don’t look a certain way, it’s common that the gay community will just brush you aside.

Now, it’s important to note that being gay is different from being a part of gay culture. Being gay means you’re attracted to someone of the same sex, while being part of gay culture means you follow a monolithic, culturally-formed “ideal” for what being gay means.

Gay culture as a whole is a racist, male-dominated social structure that inherently is discriminatory against people of color, women and those who are religious.
Besides being a disgusting way to discriminate against those who come to the community to feel accepted, these social barriers hold us back as a community as well.

While the LGBT community is often the first to reject the heteronormative culture that most of the country follows, we’ve created our own little culture of exclusion and conformity.

It’s not uncommon that gay men and women will come out of the closet just to discover that they then have to battle against their own community to maintain their identity.

And when people are unwilling or unable to battle their own community, they
conform.

This conforming leads to caricatures of the gay community, which grow into hurtful stereotypes.

Now, I’m not judging people who just happen to dress a certain way or who happen to like Madonna.

However, people who purposely put out this aura of conformity, of racism or of exclusion are no better than the conservative Republicans who vote to strip the LGBT community of their rights.

You cannot create a community based on the idea that all people are equal, that everyone is beautiful in their own way, and then pollute and sour that community with conformity and hatred.

Creating tangents from mainstream society, such as gay fraternities or restaurants, already creates an image that we are separate from the rest of the world.

You may not like the way a person dresses, the fact that they go to church or that they don’t do drugs or drink, but we all belong to the same community. We all have struggles — some more so than others.

The reason that the LGBT community has the potential to have such beauty in unity is that it can bring together people from all walks of life.
Stop tearing the community apart with how you “think” people should act. Start bringing the community together with who we are.

ajguenth@indiana.edu
@GuentherAndrew