I'm Mad As Hell! I'm Not Taking It Anymore!

I've been hearing a word tossed around a lot lately.

"Gaystream."

According to the often insulting but vaguely interesting website Urban Dictionary, this is the definition of the word Gaystream: "...popular culture marketed to queers. Vaguely liberal and often conciliatory to white hetero standards."

There are two words in this sentence which should bother you, gay and straight: "Vaguely" and "Conciliatory." Why?

Because on it's own, conciliatory means, of course, to make concessions. However, when it comes to publishing literature, or making movies or developing TV shows that are created with this dogma in place, what will be done is the work will be 'vaguely' liberal and muddled and perhaps a bit open minded, but in the end, 'conciliatory' to heterosexual standards (read: conservative heterosexual standards of those living in states like Texas and South Dakota) because publishers and executives and those in power want to have their queer cake and eat it to, they want money, gads and gads of money, and in the end, we all know this will result in very sour cake indeed.

We have taken a giant step back in the progression of a society as a whole. Gone is the celebration of individuality, gay or straight, and in it's place is a homogenized sensibility lacking any viewpoint and passive aggressively intent on squashing anything which causes us to feel any sense of unease or challenges us.

We are tired, we are broke, we want to do nothing but sit in our chair and watch TV and be left alone. We want to make our salaries and make our car payments and mortgage payments, and go out to dinner on Friday night and be left alone.

Now is the time where the rally cry of Howard Beale of Network needs to be heard. "I'm not going to leave you alone," he feverishly said into America's television sets in 1976. "I want you to get mad!" he bellowed. "I want you to say, I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

We need to get mad. We need to feel something more than this complacent ambivalence everyone is so fucking proud of. As a gay man, I feel a certain fury knowing movies, TV and popular 'gay' fiction will not challenge mass culture with showing new ideas and open sexuality, but will, instead, give me the same old package but in a new ribbon.

But the part which is the most offensive is they will tell us this is a NEW way of thinking and this is PROGRESSIVE and we are now seeing other people for who they really are...when we are not seeing them at all.

Queer culture, alternative culture, any culture truly outside of a white heterosexual nuclear conservative family unit will never be fully revealed in mass media and this is 2010. It feels like it's 1955 and it's 2010 and the most disturbing part of this is people think this is what they want and it is the exact opposite of what they need.


Of course, Bush is to blame for having set this agenda in place and hammering it home. Of course, the Conservative agenda is strong and in place. It is taking over parts of the black community and the Spanish communities. God plays a huge role in certain parts of society and God does not like man to bed with man or woman or bed with women and He CERTAINLY does not like transgender to bed with anyone.

I am worried and disturbed more people are not worried and disturbed that we have regressed to a time of invisibility for the true individual. I blame gays for sitting back and not taking any action and they should be ashamed.

I loathe gay men who tell me they are looking for 'straight acting' men to have sex with. Why on EARTH would they want to have sex with a 'straight acting' man? That is a man who is perpetuating the worst parts of being straight! And what IS a 'straight acting' man? Why don't you want to be with a gay man? Leave the straight men to their wives or girlfriends. Why do you chase after what you can't have?

I know countless straight men who would find that term absurd, yet gay men use it constantly to denote their desire to be with the dark man, the real man, the all powerful 'masculine' man who will deliver them from their own disgust with their own homosexuality.

The reason gays are still unaccepted in this society and the reason we will never be accepted in this society and the reason people of all shapes and colors and sizes will say God does not love us or God had decided we are not due the same legal rights as heterosexuals is because gay men (and, to a lesser degree, gay women) don't feel they deserve these basic human rights and feel they have the right to fight for them.

Gay men hate the fact they are gay.

They hate their sexuality and queer spirit.

Being gay is not all I am or all anyone who is gay is, but it's a very large part, just as being straight it.

Until this ends, the hate for us will never, ever end. And as a result, racism will continue to silently grow as it does and no one will ever realize we are all one giant 'thing' and not these separate pockets of futile lives. It will never change.

Of course, most of this thinking is by people over the age of 40. This sort of talk about internal homophobia and sexuality and racism confuses the hell out of younger people. They don't get what it's all about. They may not agree everyone has the same rights as everyone (it's the old God thing, they were raised to think God love selectively) but they wouldn't consider taking action to stop others from living the lives they want to live...not so the case with the Old Guard.

Now go eat a donut with someone who doesn't have the same color skin as you or doesn't sleep with the same gender as you.

It's time we all evolved.