Homo This & Homo That

It would seem that homosexuality and homophobia are quite the hot-button topics; we barely got through half of the material which we set out to cover in this afternoon's class. Monty Python's miraculous child-birth will just have to wait until Wednesday.

We talked a lot today about why it is that men are more homophobic than women, and the main point that I take away is that men are just more insecure about their gender. Somewhere along the line it has been programmed into us that it is quite compromising to our manliness to acquaint ourselves with homosexuality in any way.

An idea came up today that suggested that there is correlation between a man's circumstances in life and his securities (or insecurities of course) with homosexuality. That's obvious enough, so let's break it down a little further. I'll just use myself as an example.

A couple of years ago my wife and I went to a party in Edmonton; however, this was no ordinary party. It was a Madonna party! The idea was that all attendants would dress up as Madonna in one form or another (there is no shortage of opportunities here; I went with the cone-bra motif myself).

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Amanda, my wife, brought with her a social circle wherein the majority of its members are homosexual. These are the people who throw Madonna parties. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they worship Madonna. Anyway, these are great people who we both went to high school with, and Amanda went to school with them from elementary through university. Moving on...

As I'm sure many Madonna themed parties do, this party ended up at a gay bar. Tres fun! What a pleasant, non-threatening environment to down some cocktails and dance on some speakers (and in cages at this particular venue)! The highlights of my evening were twofold: when that guy pinched my ass, and when we were politely asked by that nice man in the shiny red dress to vacate the photo booth (so that he could use it for photos). I was very proud to have been an object of interest to the member of the gay community, and I'm pretty sure Amanda was proud of me too.

What this all funnels down to is that a lot of men might not feel comfortable:
a) attending a Madonna party with a gay crowd
b) taking the party to a gay oriented nightclub
c) being the passing object of interest to some other guy
d) exchanging dialogue in any capacity with a transvestite

...and yet I come out of this with the simple conclusion that some men like men, and some men like women, and some women like women, and some men dress like women (and so on and so forth), and we can all be friends!

So back to the idea that our comfort with ourselves has anything to do with our homophobia levels - Yeah, they have everything to do with one another! By feeling comfortable with myself, who I am, who I'm with, what my relationship is and so on, I do not feel threatened by people who have a different sexual orientation than myself. The bottom line is that I can be around gay people and still maintain my sense of self, and it seems that the problem of homophobia is rooted in some far-off belief that by allowing homosexuals to exist, let alone be in close proximity to a heterosexual, that heterosexuality is in some way threatened.

It would prove very interesting to hear the reasons of different people who are outwardly homophobic as to why they are that way. It is my opinion that there are some brick walls within their logic that they are not able to move past, and that they cannot fully justify what their issue with other people being homosexual is.

Ultimately, I find it very peculiar that so many of us believe that acceptance and equality of other people would solve a lot of the world's problems, but at the same time we have differing parameters regarding who should be accepted and treated equally.