#and lets not forget that this hatred and dehumanization is mainly targeted towards a certain demographic

[wiitzend]

trying not to get worked up over something i saw on youtube so i'll just say this: the complete and utter lack of empathy in people is truly frightening, especially when its aimed at young children. how can you even fuction as a person with that much hate in your heart.

[stardyng]

Sexism in the LGBT Community

Sexism has an extremely negative effect on the LGBT community, and the effects are typically hard to discern since many manifestations of misogyny target queer men. Horizontal homophobia, cultural homophobia, internalized homophobia, the biphobia and transphobia in and out of the queer community, the straight-acting culture, the fatphobia present in the community, the femme and bottom shaming both in and out of the community and many other straight-on-gay and gay-on-gay discrimination can be partly or mainly created in reason of sexism, for reasons explained in other sections..

However, the biggest manifestation of sexism in the LGBT community is the way that some queer men, gay men to be specific treat women, which is extremely problematic to say the least. More so specifically, the sexism that comes from gay men can be almost as problematic as the sexism coming from straight men and it’s clearly only halting and slowing our movement down. To be honest, it’s no surprise that gay men can be as misogynistic as straight men as we were all born in a biased world trenched with a certain amount of hatred for women which is completely unavoidable and happens nowhere and everywhere at the same time and that causes for people to adopt the attitude that the world has on women and continue perpetuating it, and women and gay men are no exceptions to this rule.

One of the most concurrent ways it manifests itself is through disgust, especially of the female genitalia. It’s generally just about how some men exaggerate their lack of sexual attraction towards women, which is forcely accentuated to the point that it becomes disgust. For example, many gay men childishly rant about how disgusting, horrible, reeking, smelly and ugly they find the female genitalia to be with many gestures involving vomiting added to the rant and some go as far as to call women ‘’fishes’’  which is a reference to the smell of a woman’s genitalia, use a multitude of misogynistic words, expressions and slurs, put actions or words related to women and femininity in a bad light and sometimes even call each other  ‘’she’’ and her’’ in a negative and discriminatory way. These moments of denigration however just form an excerpt to a much bigger problem.

There’s also the other side of the table where some gay men harass women in a sexual manner. Generally, that sexual harassment comes in the form of them touching women in a intimate way without the consent of the women in question. Body parts that are often touched without the woman's consent often tend to be the women’s breasts, butts, hair, etc. This is especially harmful to women’s security, especially when, much like with some heterosexual men, these gay men validate these actions. Some call it a joke and say that the women harassed shouldn’t take it so sensitively which inherently puts the blame on the woman and dismisses the claim, but mostly, these men will validate their actions by saying that it’s not harassment in reason of the fact that they aren't attracted to women or their bodies, and that they are instead gay.

The last main display of misogyny in the gay community would be the judgement that a lot of gay men give to women and their appearances which is often not seen as a problem because gay men are portrayed to be by everyone as people who can advise women or what to wear, how to style their hair or how to walk fiercely. Of course, these are stereotypes but regardless, these stereotypes are false seeing as most of these ‘’advising’’ gay men don’t even act as if these women as actual human beings let alone take the time to converse with them. Regardless, these men can talk about women’s bodies in the most controlling, condemnatory and objectifying way in extreme details while getting away with it. Fat-shaming, slut-shaming and degrading and condescending comments are common in these remarks and some advice are simply just gay men asserting their authorities over women by telling them how to become more feminine and conventionally attractive by putting them down to an extreme level.

These gay men whom are generally feminine are extremely critical about women since they harbor expectations of women, and like their expectations of men, they are widespread. They have a bar set for women to look absolutely enchanting and iconic which would match with their idealization of womanhood without flaw. If they don’t fit into that ideal, they are ‘’trash’’, ‘’rats’’, ‘’hoes’’, ‘’sluts’’ and ‘’bitches’’ It’s often reflective of feminine gay men’s idolization of pop divas, where these women stop being humans to them, and are either trash or goddesses, which is where this type of misogynistic language started becoming concurrent, but this became especially problematic when that judgement and language soon founds it way to apply to all women.

There are many reasons that gay men can be misogynistic, and it’s not only because gay men are exhausted of gay stereotypes and tropes being perpetuated by straight women, or them being constantly fetishized by straight women as it’s mainly in reason of illicit jealousy and envy. They are envious and jealous of straight women in reason of the fact that they have an extremely bigger pool of men to choose from. The fact is, most of the men they are attracted are straight so they will often enter situations when that leads their hopes being crushed. Yet they still repeat this mistake again and again because there’s a bigger amount of straight men than there are gay men, so some gay men become very hateful towards women, or even become bitterly disgusted. So things like women’s looks being scrutinized by gay men, or women and their genitalia being put down are caused by this jealousy. However, it’s also because some gay men, especially young adults ones tend to learn from each other, and spend a very little amount of time with women so they forget how interaction with them goes, and forget what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, and as their surrounding perpetuated a desexulization and degradation of women, they started to participate to it too.

One of the most surprising things about all this is that these gay men actually escape the deserved criticism to their actions and then in the rare times where women speak up about the misogyny that’s coming from some gay men, these men will either get extremely defensive and brush these comments off completely, silence these women, or these women’s arguments were buried underneath an exaggerated amount of homophobia and constant dehumanizing slurs, so much that they were no longer valid criticism. Regardless of the reason, ignoring how women feel and their opinion without even just reflecting on ourselves is nothing but foolish.

Speaking about ignoring women, our community has done just that for many decades. Just look at the number of gay rights organisations led by and created for men compared to ones led by, or inclusive of women for starters. As a community, we have to realize that while we are oppressed because of homophobia, we have privilege as men, regardless of our sexual orientations or our gender states that women simply do not have. Instead of using our privilege to put down, harass or attack women, we should use it to help progress the feminist movement and fight against misogyny and bigotry based on gender especially in our community so that we can at the very least create another safe space for women. To get informed about(typically by women) and to talk and create conversations about women’s issues and rights like wage inequalities, abortion rights and domestic violence is also incredibly helpful.

Before that, we have to individually stop encouraging and perpetuating these sexist actions, and instead act as allies to to the feminist movement especially when feminism not only exist for women, but for gender minorities, racial minorities, sexual minorities and other oppressed groups since it’s breaking down our patriarchal system. That however doesn’t mean that gay men are entitled of having feminism protect and help them, but that gay men are the ones who have a duty to help progress this movement that encourage equality on all fronts. So we as a community should be fighting alongside women instead of asking for equality and not giving it to others. Being gay and feminist should truly not be a surprising or rare concept.