Papers around the country are picking up an AP article by Ling Liu in which heterosexuals complain about mistreatment in Provincetown, Mass., a gay resort town on Cape Cod. The list of abuses consists of:
1. One gay man accused a straight woman in a grocery store of being a “bigot” because she signed a petition to take marriage rights away from gay people.
2. A straight woman who had signed the anti-gay petition found dog manure by her car and claimed that a gay person put it there (this appears to be an unsupported assumption).
3. A printed list of petition signers (available online) was found on a windshield, presumably by a signer.
4. Some tourists complained of being called “breeders”.
The residents of Provincetown consider this to be a serious matter and held a meeting to discuss ways to live together civilly. The community, including the only person identifiably gay in the article, all condemned the rude behavior.
I believe that persons should not be harassed or maligned because of their sexual orientation. I believe that terms such as “breeder” are offensive because they go the very core of a one’s identity and condemn them for something that is an intrinsic immutable aspect of their person. This is hurtful and wrong.
It is the appropriate response of a community to identify those members who are being hurt by the callous name-calling of others and discuss ways to live in harmony. And the police chief and town manager did exactly that.
Similar to Provincetown’s experience, schoolyards across the nation are places where derogatory comments fly about sexual orientation. “That’s so gay” and “you’re a fag” are part of the daily vernacular on most campuses. And these glibly shouted insults are hurtful and destructive in the same way that “breeders” is.
Some communities are starting to recognize the pain – and sometimes death – that results from their inaction and callous disregard and are starting to take steps to create an environment in which all students can learn in peace. This is the right and appropriate response and it is hard to imagine that anyone would oppose these efforts.
But some do. Some groups and individuals do not wish to discourage abuse against gay children. They argue that any effort to stop the harassment and abuse of gay kids is an “endorsement of homosexuality”.
The leader in the efforts to keep anti-gay abuse in the schools is PFOX, a group claiming to represent the parents of ex-gays (although there do not appear to be any parents of ex-gays that are actually members). They lobby school boards and oppose all efforts to identify bullying against gays or to address this specific problem.
I commend the citizens of Provincetown, both gay and straight, that seek ways to live in civility and harmony. I commend the school administrations that seek the same for their schools.
But I condemn those who use hateful words to attack others because of their sexual orientation, be it “breeders” in Provincetown or “faggot” on a schoolyard. And I especially condemn those such as PFOX who seek to excuse or justify cruelty and who fight against those who seek peace and harmony.
What a shame, that the only thing about this whole story I saw in the RR press was that gay people were harassing straight people. No time spent explaining that the residents of P-Town actually met to discuss this problem and deal with it.
When was the last time you heard about a predominately straight community calling together a meeting to deal with gay bashing in their community?
Would that schools and churches around the nation follow the lead of Provincetown’s leaders!
Part of me wants to scream in the RRs’ faces: “See how that feels now?!”
Timothy, maybe it’s different where you are; but “breeder” is not inherently offensive. If it were… we wouldn’t call my sister by it 🙂
It would depend on the tone and the relationship. The article does note it is also used in a jocular way.
Anyway…
Not sure what the article itself is trying to achieve either. To show that gay people, as a whole, respond appropriately when straight people have been abused? That nasty gay people exist too? That anti-gay people are all too ready to fail to see the irony in complaining about being of the receiving end of abuse?
Grantdale,
My take is that anything used to insult others is insulting. By definition. So, if the tourists complained about being called “breeders” it most likely was said in an insulting way.
I use the term “breeder” with a select few straight friends, but only those who have a relationship that allows them to joke about my sexuality as well. It’s mutual and based on an understanding that there is no animosity. Just as it’s insulting for some random stranger to call me “fag”, I wouldn’t call them “breeder”.
To me, this is relevant to our site because it is an insult directly related to sexual orientation and it provides a stark contrast to the way PFOX behaves.
I’m with Timothy. It’s very hard to imagine a situation where “breeder” would not be a derogatory term. I certainly have never heard it used for any other purpose, with the possible exception of a very few situations like Timothy described. It’s certainly unlikely that a tourist on the street being called a “breeder” by someone they don’t know would take it as anything less than a slur.
Although I sincerely discourage its use, I hardly consider “breeder” to be a slur of the gravity of “faggot.” Show me the last time a heterosexual was tied to a fence, burned, and beaten to death while the murderers were calling him or her a “breeder.”
Also, I completely support the individual who called the signer of the marriage amendment petition a “bigot.” If more of us confronted the cowards who smile in our faces and then secretly work to keep us oppressed, perhaps more bigoted minds could be changed.
I’m not adovocating intimidation or threats, mind you (neither was mentioned in the above entry). But simply by humanizing what, to many, is an abstract idea, strides could be made. Futhermore, if one is ashamed to have his or her name associated with a petition, perhaps one shouldn’t sign it.
Oh we’d agree with that Timothy — if it’s used to insult, it is an insult. And I can’t imagine a time we’d be using it with a stranger.
I’m just thinking of times when we’ve heard people use words, urgh pick one, like “Jews” in very different ways. Or “gay”…
Come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve ever used “breeders” to refer to heterosexuality as such anyway. It’d be joking around in reference to providing the kids we adore, and not about the parent’s sexuality. We’d just say “straight” otherwise. Perhaps that’s the difference.
Yeah, divided by a common language…
You’re kidding, right? The bigot signing the petition was called a bigot – not a fucking hateful ignorant bigot, but simply a bigot? Another bigot found manure but “knows” it was put there by a gay person?
When you know most of your neighbors are gay, isn’t signing that petition kind of like wearing a white supremicist t-shirt in Compton? Well, Compton in the 80s anyway, before it started transitioning Latino…
And gays are still calling straights breeders? With all the breeding gays around these days? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…
Call me breeder, call me cracker, call me gringo, call me trailer park trash, call me anything but late for dinner…
Members of the majority using epithets to reinforce their positions in the majority simply can’t compare those epithets with those used by the minorities. Here in the US, go through the list of epithets that non-whites will throw at whites, and then the epithets that whites throw at non-whites and who’s rightfully going to be more pissed off when those terms are used? Calling George Bush, what, a cracker, trailer park trash, whatever, is a joke. Calling Al Sharpton a nigger is not.
The same applies to calling me a breeder. If you’re irriated and trying to slur me, I’ll know it and probably be irritated right back. It would be more irritating to be called an asshole, but then you can call anyone an asshole. So would it have been better for the gay to call the bigot an asshole? Breeder directed at a straight person is laughable compared to fag being used to denigrate someone who is already discriminated against because they are different than the majority.
Timothy, you and the rest of the hand wringers here are way too nice.
Gotta quit posting when I’m this tired…
Posted by: MHB at July 28, 2006 07:31 AM
Tired or not, if you want to post here please clean up your language and try to follow the guidelines. And if you can’t at least be civil toward other posters, reserve your comments for your own blog.
David Roberts
exgaywatch.com
My apologies for violating your guidelines…