Is there a reason why you're not out? Being upset or offended over comments made from those without knowledge of your personal feelings is misplaced. Leaving hints is not actual communication. If you want others to respect your feelings then you have to actually share those feelings. I wish you the best.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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I'm saying this in earnest and very much not trying to be rude or edgy, but the fact is a lot of people don't think about me/you/us at all, they're reciting things they think are normal to people they aren't close with like talking about the weather. Realizing some of my relatives I care about don't actually want to get invested in my life to the point of knowing I'm gay was a very freeing moment. Like understanding my grandma is 95 and doesn't want to try sushi now. And she was fine learning I married a man, but she wouldn't have brought it up. Decentralizing yourself from other people and realizing you have much more of a free slate than you think can be very helpful.
The percentage of the population that is LGBTQ+ is a little under 5%. I think that in all honesty that group is already over represented comparatively
Why bring this up here? What is the point of your reply?
It’s also absolutely incorrect and pretty well documented - 9% of adults on average globally, trending much higher for youth according to some of the most recent data from Ipsos.
But you’re absolutely right - bringing up population rates is unnecessary and kind of odd - and how many of us there are doesn’t negate how poorly we’re treated in many parts of the world, and the deficits we still face in western society.
i would assume they brought it up since being heterosexual is the norm because the majority of the population is heterosexual
Specifically in the context of media representation, I'd say it's relevant. There is an actual objective target that we can talk about there.
Heternormativity in general, and especially in the context of interpersonal interactions, is only tangentially related to that though, and there's obviously no reason in the modern day to be oblivious to the possibility that people aren't straight.
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The discussion is on underrepresentation. Why would bringing up the percentage of population that’s queer be off-topic? The numbers (and sense that we’re overrepresented) may be wrong, but bringing it up absolutely makes sense. How does one seriously talk about being underrepresented or not without bringing what percentage of the population we might make up? How would one even gauge representation levels without such a framework?
I'm trying to gauge the intent of this person's reply. It could be bad faith so I'm asking them to clarify. The fact that they only mention the percentage and it's clearly wrong have me wondering why they left this comment.
I'm not being disingenuous, it's a statistic I looked up not too long ago when I was digging into something else. I couldn't care less what someone's sexual orientation or gender identity is. I am just making an observation based on my knowledge that the marginalized group being referred to is appropriately, and probably overrepresented in public.
Maybe I'm in a bubble living in one of the most liberal places in the country, but I see representation on TV, while shopping, in print media, on lemmy (formerly reddit), etc.
The OP is making a claim that there needs to be more representation based on the opinion of a old timer that is clearly conservative. No amount of representation is going to change that person's mind.
And this is a queer space, it's not exactly nice to barge in and offer your opinion, especially when it runs counter to what experts have to say about it. You also didn't provide any analysis of whether overrepresentation is a bad thing. Furthermore, your comment was reported by multiple people - which is why I stopped by to ask you a question about your intent. I would suggest quietly participating if you're unsure how to act in minority spaces.
So is the instance just meant to be an echo chamber? I didn't say anything derogatory or insensitive. I just offered a dissenting opinion on something that came up in my feed on All. I didn't seek this thread out and barge in, I just made a comment on something I saw. Here's the most recent poll I found stating 7%, which isn't really that far off from 5%.
It's not that this instance is meant to be an echo chamber, it's that it's meant to be welcoming, inclusive, and queer friendly. Saying that we're over-represented, ackshually, isn't really contributing to the discussion other than to tell us that our lived experiences of being under-represented are wrong. It implies that a statistical/percentage-based over-representation of a minority group is a somehow a bad thing. Less charitably, it sounds awfully similar to being told to sit down, shut up, and be happy with what we've got.
Nope, but there's a right way to do things and a wrong way. I'm offering you suggestions on how to interact the right way in the future. You didn't see an issue with your comment and I'm trying to help you understand why others did. If you're not willing to put in the time and effort to show that you're knowledgeable on the subject (in this case population statistics, which you proved you were not), then you need to at least put in the effort to use your emotional intelligence to understand how you're not being particularly helpful and in fact pushing away minorities by offering a "dissenting opinion", one which most marginalized individuals around here have likely heard ad nauseam in their lives from all sorts of folks, bigoted and not.
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To be honest I suspect any estimates of queer demographics are going to be dramatically lower than the actuality in part because things like gender and sexuality are fluid and heavily influenced by culture and upbringing. There may be several orders of magnitude more people who might otherwise identify as bi or some kind of genderqueer but not enough to justify investing in the self reflection, identity crisis, and social capital it would cost.
I usually wouldn't get involved in this topic, but I'm half past drunk right now so here it goes: I've got nothing against lgbtqia+, you do you, freedom for everyone. But taking into account that the norm and majority is hetero.... I really don't understand what you expect.... It would be like me, a metal head, would ask why aren't there more extreme metal bands than pop bands?
The issue isn’t that the majority of people are straight (though I’d point to what we saw in the rates of left handedness once we stopped punishing it), it’s how we talk about it and the assumptions we make - and it’s about the disparities LGBTQIA+ people can face because of the specifically heteronormative way society is set up.
Marriage equality is a great easy example - the reason marriage equality was (and is, in so many places) such a big deal wasn’t just so we could marry just like heterosexuals - it’s because there are so many rights afforded to married couples that aren’t afforded to others. Healthcare access is the big one - in so many places, only married spouses are considered ‘family’ and able to make decisions for their partner, or even visit them in hospital.
To use your analogy, it would be like there not being any metal concerts, ever, because everyone just likes pop, right? Why would anyone want to go to a metal gig?
Its different, it's that feeling when your music, which you know is absolutely fine, gets shat upon by christian conservatives who believe it's evil. But then throw in the cops and the government which historically and systemically shut down your opportunity to even play or listen to it and give more opportunities and legal benefits to those people who play pop.
And you're just trying to listen to the music you like, while every step of the way it gets way more difficult than it needs to be because it's systemically rigged for you not to be able to listen to it. It's exhausting.
edit: grammar
That doesn't mean it's not tiring.
But also, why does the norm need to be hetero vs "people are varied". Sure, most people are straight, but that doesn't mean it automatically has to be the default assumption, that's just a choice made by a... heteronormative society. Most of the time, we aren't in situations where we actually need to assume someone's sexual orientation, so we don't need to play the odds, as it were.
Nah. It'd be like if everyone just assumes that you like pop, because most people do. It might be understandable, but people constantly assuming you like pop and only pop is... tiring and annoying.
Also, on a personal note, it definitely stopped me from figuring it out wayyy earlier than I could have. "Normal/average people are straight, I am normal, therefore I am straight" was effectively my reasoning.
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The comments in here aren't... what I was expecting from this community. Feels like I'm back on old internet. Ironically, the comments themselves seem to be perpetuating the heteronormativity brought up by the post.
I notice it's mostly people coming in from other communities saying things like "The population is small, so we should only have to see it as much as we see it now (basically never)," which reads as "You barely exist, so continue that way." This ignores the real world current statistics that people are increasingly feeling safe identifying as LGBT+, so we don't actually have a number of where that percentage will plateau. It could be significantly higher than the outdated 5% I'm seeing bandied about in here. It's already moved towards 8% of total USA population, with nearly 20% of Gen Z identifying LGBT. If that holds, then that's quite a lot more than the 5% everyone keeps saying.
Regardless of how little we supposedly matter based on a number, it's insulting to see people outside the community telling us how we should feel about our own experiences. That's not something they get to decide for us.
Unfortunately this is one of the issues with federation. In the future we would like to have all the identity based communities either beehaw users only or locked down from comments/posting. We have no control over other instances, but to remove their content or remind them how to act here. I've personally been avoiding a scorched earth policy for non-beehaw accounts, but I'm slowly finding myself leaning towards it because of behavior like this. I've cleaned up some of the worst of it, and I'm keeping a close eye on a few folks in this post.
Well said on all points. I expected better of this community.
It's tiring to see so many non marginalized individuals entering a marginalized space to claim that things are fine. Learn to read the room. All further discussion about whether this is "okay given statistics" shows a failure of empathy, a place of privilege, and an ignorance of the harm you are causing. I've decided to leave some of these comments up because some people benefit from seeing the discussion about how they are wrong, but to anyone who is entering this thread and is not queer and the only take you have to offer is "maybe you ARE over-represented" I will start banning you now.
common gaywallet W
i dont know how you have so much emotional energy to share here as much as you do, especially in the face of so much intolerance. much love.
You give me energy with comments like this. I love you 🥰💜
to add some nuance to this, if anyone would like to listen. a cry from a cishet to the cishets.
beehaw platforms safe spaces. within that, this is a community for queer people. coming into this discussion as someone that isn't queer, a person needs to be aware of the nature of safe spaces. this isn't the same as seeing a post from r/cars on the front page of reddit and adding to the discussion that trains are more convenient for you. to queer people, many of these discussions are existential in nature. this will not carry the same weight to you, because it does not impact you in the same way- if at all.
take a moment to reflect on how irritating it is to see average people turn into experts on twitter whenever a new topic is trending. understand that in queer discussion, you are that person, but your words aren't simply annoying, they're harmful.
a common response to this is "well you can't have discussion with only people that agree with you, that's an echo chamber!". sure, you can put 100 men into a discussion about feminism and hear a hundred different opinions, but none of them will be a womans. there's enough cishets discussing this, respect that this space is designed to amplify the voices of the minority.
stay quiet, recognise that you have privilege blindspots, and say "thanks for sharing".
Not really. In fact, I enjoy how often queer relationships are featured in media. What I am tired of is straight writers trying, and failing, to write queer characters.
Ye i get you it's tiring. Just reading the replies to this post has been tiring because it already has a bunch of cishet people wanting us to stay in our little corner. When i read the description of beehaw i assumed this place was safe from that. I get that people JAQing off and quoting questionable statistics to say our actually felt problem is negligible aren't easy to deter but seeing them be the most liked replies was really disheartening.
Yeah, these replies are not at all what I expected to see coming into this thread. When did we decide that this is enough representation, and why did no one ask me?
We didn't decide it, fragile cishet broflakes decided it for us.
Everyone here are probably tired of that shit. Being asked about when will you get married is not fun. Assuming your partner must be of different gender is not fun. Gatekeeped out of some locations built for couple (but for some reason doesn't really think about same sex couple) is not fun.
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I watched Nimona the other night, and I really enjoyed it.
When posting on Mastodon about it, I specifically didn’t mention that the central relationship is a gay one, because would I have done so if it was straight? No, of course not.
It’s a little thing, I know…
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yeah, its funny that heterosexuality is considered the default when it has to be constantly (often violently!) enforced.
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