47 Comments
Jun 6, 2022Liked by Jeff Maurer

I’ve had complicated feelings about this as a member of the alphabet community. I used to have no particular opinion about the word “queer,” but as you state in your piece, queer has lost whatever meaning it once had and now basically means whatever people want it to be, and as a result I’ve come to despise it. Regarding straights identifying into the queer community, I do have friends who are predominately straight who have come out as bisexual despite never having any sort of relationship or experience with the same sex, and while part of me is a little eye-rolly about it, I also don’t necessarily want to discourage people from exploring their sexuality should the opportunity ever arise (while acknowledging that many of these people will never actually do that). So it’s complicated.

While your focus is on the straights ruining Pride, I’ll chime in and say the LGBTQ community is doing a pretty good job of that lately itself too. Pride committees in different cities have fallen apart due to in-fighting over accusations of racism and/or transphobia, and it’s frankly just embarrassing to watch. The Pride flag being made “more inclusive” despite already being pretty inclusive before (it’s a rainbow for Christ’s sake) is something I take great irritation in due to the conflation of separate issues as well as the fact that it’s ugly as hell.

So while I appreciate your efforts in trying to share the blame amongst the straight community, we gays will be able to crash this plane into the side of a mountain ourselves just fine, thank you very much.

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Jun 6, 2022Liked by Jeff Maurer

So I think I'm the same age as you (40), but went to what was probably a unique high school where a good portion of the teachers were openly gay and it was sort of cool to be gay. Being gay was so cool that there were several people who came out as gay in high school who then went on to marry someone of the opposite sex (definitely items 2 and 3 on your list).

Just as there's a point at which being gay is so ostracized that people stay in the closet to avoid stigma (most of human history), so too is there a point at which being gay is so cool (and people are so lonely) that straight people come out to make friends (now). Gen Z has clearly crossed that point. And now the costs of "coming out" have gone way down with categories like "queer" and whatever the fuck "+" or "LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP" mean. You don't even have to make out with another dude to "come out" anymore. Kids these days! No sacrifice. No commitment. All cost-free virtue signaling.

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Pride sucks now. All the gay people I know just want it to be over. For me, a lesbian, June means:

- Obnoxious corporate pandering

- Even more infighting than usual among the community--on related topics, like gender, and unrelated topics like Israel and the cops (should Israli flags and cops be allowed at pride? Let’s melt down arguing about it.)

- Demands to validate the queerness and oppressed status of the people described in this article.

The people most excited for pride are those who aren’t part of the community in any recognizable way, because pride gives them a chance to be “visible” – to post on Facebook, for example, that they are “queer” (zero details of what that means) and put a flag in their profile picture.

I don’t need to be visible in June, because I’m gay-married all year long. And I don’t really care about being visible anyway. I just need rights and acceptance for my same-sex marriage, which I have, so I’m good.

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Jun 6, 2022·edited Jun 6, 2022

One of the most inescapable ironies for me, as an official member of team gay, is:

- The people signaling their way into the LGBTQ+ acronym these days are 100% the kind of people who despise cultural appropriation, and...

- This is straight-up cultural appropriation. It may be more Rachel Dolezal than Mr. Yunioshi, I'll give you that, but if anything is cultural appropriation...THIS IS IT.

How harmful will it be in the long run? Not sure. I definitely know it will harm the reputations of the people participating in it, though. I legit think they will be mocked when this fad passes, and I know it will. Lately I've been focusing on not letting my anger at them affect my behavior toward them, because like, my first boyfriend's whole High School turned on him when he came out, and my husband's parents disowned him for a long while when we announced our wedding and triggered his descent into alcoholism. So when I see straight people 'opting in' for social capital...I definitely need to count to ten.

UPDATE: That was pretty doomy and gloomy so just to add, they ended up patching it up several years later and he stopped drinking. Didn't want to bring the room down THAT far if I could help it, LOL...

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Strong echoes of this section of a Scott Alexander essay at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/in-partial-grudging-defense-of-the

(everything below here a quote)

Since we’re on the topic of Special Snowflakes, a point only tangentially related to mental health.

Right now, our society demands you be a Special Snowflake. Women who aren’t quirky enough are “basic bitches”, men who aren’t quirky enough are “yet another straight white dude”. Just today, I read some dating advice saying that single men need to develop unusual hobbies or interests, because (it asked, in all seriousness) why would a woman want to date someone who doesn’t “stand out”?

Someone on Twitter complained that boring people go to medical school because if you’re a doctor you don’t need to have a personality. Edward Teach complains that people get into sexual fetishes as a replacement for a personality. I’ve even heard someone complain that boring people take up rock-climbing as a personality substitute: it is (they say) the minimum viable quirky pastime. Nobody wants to be caught admitting that their only hobbies are reading and video games, and maybe rock climbing is enough to avoid being relegated to the great mass of boring people. The complainer was arguing that we shouldn’t let these people get away that easily. They need to be quirkier!

A friend read an article once about someone who moved to China for several years to learn to cook rare varieties of tofu. She became insanely jealous; she doesn’t especially like China or tofu, but she felt that if she’d done something like that, she could bank enough quirkiness points that she’d never have to cultivate another hobby again.

In this kind of environment, of course mentally ill people will exploit their illness for quirkiness points! We place such unreasonable quirkiness demands on everybody that you have to take any advantage you can get!

I’m guilty of this myself. I think I’m an interesting person in certain ways. But those ways tend to be things like “I wrote a blog that was condemned by the New York Times”, and “I’m in a group which many people consider a cult” - not the right type of quirky for job interviews. So when I got the inevitable “tell me about yourself and how you’re different from all our other applicants” question, I talked about how I’d struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Which is true. It wasn’t a very interesting struggle, and it didn’t particularly shape my subsequent personality. But I’d never admit that to an admissions officer.

And on one level it’s definitely true that mankind will not be free until the last admissions officer is strangled with the entrails of the last New York Times journalist. But in another sense, we do this to ourselves. We demand quirkiness from our friends, our romantic partners, even our family members. I can’t tell you how many times my mother tried to convince me it was bad that I just sat inside and read all day, and that maybe if I took up rock-climbing or whatever I would be more “well-rounded”. We can stop at any time. We can admit that you don’t need a “personality” beyond being responsible and compassionate. That if you’re good at your job and support your friends, you don’t also need to move to China and study rare varieties of tofu.

But if you do insist on unusual experiences as the measure of a valid person, then there will always be a pressure to exaggerate how unusual your experience is. Everyone will either rock-climb or cultivate a personality disorder, those are the two options. And lots of people are afraid of heights.

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I am starting to get the impression that many in Gen Z would consider it bigoted to *not* identify as "pansexual"? That it's patriarchal to exclusively cling to antique pronouns like "she/her"? That anyone who is grossed out by getting dick pics on Tinder must actually be "demisexual"?

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The problem with people who like to use the term “ally” as a form of self identification, imo, is the fact that they don’t like to admit that the essence of gayness is sexual behavior/fetish! It’s not about whips or brunch or rainbows, it’s about the fact that you are a man who does the nasty with dudes or a female who prefers her bedroom to be a Y chromosome free zone! Pete Buttgeig is a geeky midwestern dude who happens to like cock! He doesn’t have anything in common with Lil Nas X-except for the fact they both like cock!

If a straight dude made the fact that he liked to bang chicks the core tenet of his identity, we’d call him Hugh Hefner or Ron Jeremy or Bill Clinton or Antonio Cromartie-and secretly think he should tone it down.

Everyone should be allowed to live in peace and equal rights as consenting adults with their sex fetishes/preferences-but acknowledge the gauche-ness of making said preferences the core of their identity.

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"Maybe the phenomenon of slightly-quirky straight people identifying as LGBTQ+ was inevitable in a culture that attaches so much weight to identity. For some on the left, marginalized identities have become so celebrated that they’re actually preferred."

This is exactly it. The left has constructed a Victimhood Totem Pole, and arguing that you are in the LGBTQ crowd is your way of vaulting to the top.

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Average straight white guy here offering up a platonic hug

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The Marine Corp's rainbow bullets tweet is peak 2020s. Wokeism is tacky lipstick on the fat pig that is the American Empire.

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I'm 42 (going on 43) and at my high school of a moderately Catholic strain in The Netherlands, it was officially "okay", but realistically a very bad plan to come out as gay; being gender-non-conforming wasn't much of a thing yet and if there was an alphabet club, the T still stood for 'transsexual'.

When it comes to the numbers, I truthfully don't know what to make of them. I once heard someone claim that, like many women, many men are secretly and/or silently bisexual, too. On the other hand, I've also heard someone state that the number of men taking any actual interest in their fellow sex mates couldn't be higher than 5%. While I tend to believe the first claim, I have no idea what we're counting exactly - the number of fellas who've actually had sex with another man, from a snog to hitting fourth base, or also those who might resort to guy-on-guy action when they become enough desperate for sex, like when imprisoned. 21% actually sounds like it might be right, but I, like Jeff, cannot help but feel as though there are just too many straight folks trying hard to be part of a desired minority group, simply to be interesting and not boring. It takes a little more than that, though.

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I came back and have been rereading your stuff and since reading the most recent post and the stats on how many actual same sex couples there were in that census measure, this chart in this post makes it seem even more obvious that a bunch of lame straight people think they’re being edgy and cool by claiming theyre “gay”. Btw I am also a lame straight white woman. But I don’t claim Anything interesting about myself.

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When I went to college in Virginia back in the 70s, all the white guys wanted to be some cool Black dude with the swagger, the amazing verbal dexterity and the great attitude. That is, all the fun stuff and none of the grow up poorer/face conscious or unconscious racism/have to endure idiotic white bro wannabe behavior.

No one wanted to be just a boring guy, even if that meant we would live that incredibly comfortable life that I'm sure all the cool Black dudes would have given anything to be granted.

Seems like a similar vibe today, with different beau ideal.

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I think you hit on something clarifying -- "I will have to find some other way to be interesting."

Exactly. There's no reason that your sexual preferences *should* make you interesting, except to what I assume is the relatively small subset of people who'll share your bed.

If the most interesting thing about you is that you like [fill in your favorite sex act], maybe you're just not that interesting :-)

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I feel like something this misses is that sometimes obfuscation is kind of the point, right? Like "if everyone is queer, nobody is queer, and you can't pass a law banning queers from football teams" or whatever. Like, this is what I see as the main point of the proliferation of straight people calling their boyfriend or girlfriend their "partner." If only gay people ever did that, you'd instantly be clocked. But, if straight people do it too, then you have more flexibility to not instantly tell every waiter or barista or whatever that you're gay when you're talking about your partner. Same thing for cis people who put pronouns in their bio etc.

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Thank you for giving me my weekly dose of sanity.

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