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Some Observations, Part One.
Sep. 19th, 2013 04:31 pmI recently asked on Facebook what people's reactions would be to a hypothetical touching and heartfelt plea from better treatment for straights. I got a range of responses, some of which I honestly wasn't expecting.
Let me start by explaining what my reaction would be, and why.
It would begin with "what? People are mistreating straight people? How does that even work?"
After all, straight people are roughly 96% of all people (note that figures are taken from wikipedia articles about the US and may not be true world-wide or may not be perfectly accurate.) With a majority like that, straight people basically own society.There might be the odd gay or lesbian who is prejudiced against straights, but someone who rejects 96% of potential friends is going to be living a lonely life, and won't have a lot of influence. Purely based on the demography, it seems likely that not only do gay people have straight friends and acquaintances, but gay people have *mostly* straight friends and acquaintances, because they don't have any real alternative*. Furthermore, the US is a democracy, which means that straights basically own the government. Everyone elected is someone straights prefer to the straight running against them.
So given that the size of their majority means straights own both society and government, it's hard to see how gays could get enough traction to produce any kind of systematic mistreatment of straights. So, no, I don't think there is a pattern of bad treatment of straights that we need to address.
My next reaction would be to think that perhaps some unusual gay person really had mistreated this straight person because she was straight, and that she had mistaken a real but isolated incident for a pattern of bad treatment.
The other possibility that would come to my mind would be that this straight person had been unkind to one or more gay people and was now trying to get out from under the social backlash generated by gay people, and by those straights who will no longer silently tolerate unkindness to gays. Whether noticing that second possibility would mean I am prejudiced against straights I will leave the reader to consider.
Now as far as I am concerned, a pattern of mistreatment is much more serious than an isolated incident. A pattern of mistreatment calls for concerted societal pushback in a way that the unfortunate fact that we all bump and jostle each other occasionally, and thus straight people are not perfectly immune to random and rare unpleasantness, does not.
Some people would have responded to this heartfelt plea for better treatment of straights by saying "of course straights should be treated better; everyone should be treated well." But while it is true that everyone should be treated well, just as it is true that the earth orbits the sun, both are irrelevant in this case. The original request was neither for knowledge of astronomy, nor for good treatment for everyone. Thus neither response bears on the discussion.
In any case, I would not add my own voice to this appeal. There is no pattern of mistreatment of straights--indeed a strong and systematic pattern of mistreatment has run the other way for centuries, and persists, though slightly diminished (for which I am glad) to this day. To demand that an oppressed minority treat the oppressing majority better than the already-better treatment the majority gets now, is to contribute to the oppression.
I'll repeat that. To demand that straights in particular get good treatment, when they already get better treatment than gays, is morally wrong. It is part and parcel of the oppression of gays, and to do it is to contribute to the oppression, whether one meant to or not.
The science fiction community is indeed a friendlier place for gays than the US in general. While some straights resent their relative reduction in privilege here, this friendliness is one of the things I like about this community. But while gays are probably present in somewhat higher numbers here as a result, and gays are better tolerated and thus freer to come out of the closet, even here gays do not have sufficient power to be able to oppress straights. Let us bear this in mind.
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*I have struck this out because a friend who spent some time in the gay community assures me that some do in fact choose the majority of their friends from within the community. It does not change the main argument.
Let me start by explaining what my reaction would be, and why.
It would begin with "what? People are mistreating straight people? How does that even work?"
After all, straight people are roughly 96% of all people (note that figures are taken from wikipedia articles about the US and may not be true world-wide or may not be perfectly accurate.) With a majority like that, straight people basically own society.
So given that the size of their majority means straights own both society and government, it's hard to see how gays could get enough traction to produce any kind of systematic mistreatment of straights. So, no, I don't think there is a pattern of bad treatment of straights that we need to address.
My next reaction would be to think that perhaps some unusual gay person really had mistreated this straight person because she was straight, and that she had mistaken a real but isolated incident for a pattern of bad treatment.
The other possibility that would come to my mind would be that this straight person had been unkind to one or more gay people and was now trying to get out from under the social backlash generated by gay people, and by those straights who will no longer silently tolerate unkindness to gays. Whether noticing that second possibility would mean I am prejudiced against straights I will leave the reader to consider.
Now as far as I am concerned, a pattern of mistreatment is much more serious than an isolated incident. A pattern of mistreatment calls for concerted societal pushback in a way that the unfortunate fact that we all bump and jostle each other occasionally, and thus straight people are not perfectly immune to random and rare unpleasantness, does not.
Some people would have responded to this heartfelt plea for better treatment of straights by saying "of course straights should be treated better; everyone should be treated well." But while it is true that everyone should be treated well, just as it is true that the earth orbits the sun, both are irrelevant in this case. The original request was neither for knowledge of astronomy, nor for good treatment for everyone. Thus neither response bears on the discussion.
In any case, I would not add my own voice to this appeal. There is no pattern of mistreatment of straights--indeed a strong and systematic pattern of mistreatment has run the other way for centuries, and persists, though slightly diminished (for which I am glad) to this day. To demand that an oppressed minority treat the oppressing majority better than the already-better treatment the majority gets now, is to contribute to the oppression.
I'll repeat that. To demand that straights in particular get good treatment, when they already get better treatment than gays, is morally wrong. It is part and parcel of the oppression of gays, and to do it is to contribute to the oppression, whether one meant to or not.
The science fiction community is indeed a friendlier place for gays than the US in general. While some straights resent their relative reduction in privilege here, this friendliness is one of the things I like about this community. But while gays are probably present in somewhat higher numbers here as a result, and gays are better tolerated and thus freer to come out of the closet, even here gays do not have sufficient power to be able to oppress straights. Let us bear this in mind.
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*I have struck this out because a friend who spent some time in the gay community assures me that some do in fact choose the majority of their friends from within the community. It does not change the main argument.
