Wednesday, September 21, 2005

consider this

I have this course called post-colonial literature. The woman who teaches us is soooooooo��� I don���t know what to say, so judging. She talks to the class as if we were in the 5th grade. And makes these statements like, ���our emotional and intellectual selves are separate and often they are in conflict with each other��� as if we did not know that. But what I did not like is that she seemed to assume that we, like her instinctively listen to our emotional self first. And that it was ok. But as a thinking person, and a person with a Ph.D from Cambridge, she ought to realize that, since our emotional selves rely on things like personal dislikes, familial baggage, caste feeling, etc, one should be encouraged to react primarily (as much primarily as possible) through their intellectual person.
Perhaps, our college is now harvesting the future thinkers of the country, and we still have cases in which, a straight guy, makes certain comments about his reticent, which are distinctly homophobic. He makes these remarks in front of some people, who he thought would more identify with him, or that it was funny to say funny things about people (the listeners did not find it too funny). The incident that brought this guy (A) and his ���weird��� and ���funny���(B) roommate in some notice was the fact that this guy A apart from making homophobic remarks (perhaps) about B actually while making out with his girlfriend (in front of B), pounced on B. this physical act is perhaps the prevalent type of homophobia.
A perhaps trying to ���test��� B. blah blah���
There was lot more but all is ok now.
Except that there was this argument that started amongst us yesterday. Very few knew about this, as B just wanted to change rooms and nothing more. But those of us, who did, sat at the mess and debated over something that happened in college, to something very personal.
Which gets me to what homophobia perhaps is. Well I am not a thinker. I can only feel. So in order to do that I have to keep an unbiased, intellect-based heart (hahhha), but homophobia is also this.

1. ���I have nothing against a gay guy, he can have his own life and I can have my own, as long as he is not gay with me���.

2. ���I don���t like them but as long as they mind their own business, I don���t have a problem with them���

3. ���How desperate can they get to **** a guy just because they cant have a girl���?

4. ���I think they are just trying to be hep���.

���I have nothing against a gay guy, he can have his own life and I can have my own, as long as he is not gay with me���, is not good enough, because here you are not addressing the issue of what you would do if the ���gay��� did come into your life. How would you behave then? This is the question.

All straight men and women must consider this question.

1 comment:

teso said...

"I have nothing against a gay guy, he can have his own life and I can have my own, as long as he is not gay with me "

Is i say much better than any other homophobic statement, the point one probably was trying to make here is that he is ok with the gay guy, but just trying to have a defence mechanism , so that he himself is safe , but well the statement could be extended to the fact that despite his sexuality / sexual orientation he would still respect the person for what he is