Get out of my bar, straight girl ?!!?
Hey Chloe! It's me, a token straight girl! You know me! I love mini cupcakes and Pinkberry and I caption all of my photos with the phrase "the GiRlSs <3" I have a gay friend (sometimes he's an interior designer but usually he works in fashion) whom I refer to as my hubby because I don't have a boyfriend. I also can't get over the fact that I'm single. My GBFF speaks exclusively in exclamation points and says fabulous every other word. Back to me, though. When I finish my one cupcake I head to Soul Cycle and then my gIrLs and I will put on our bandage dresses and head out to find some guyssss!! Anyway, Chloe, I read your article! I'm about to go to Barney's because Matt is being, like, so. mean. ugh. but I thought I'd type up a quick response before I head out.
If you didn't get it from the title (subtle as it is), Ms. Curran doesn't want straight women attending gay bars because "sometimes gay people need to be amongst their peers and therefore apart from you." She says this right after she denounces discrimination. Make of that what you will.
I actually get what she means. I frequent trendy bars and clubs in Manhattan and have been the victim of a nameless and silent crime: spending all night hitting on a gay guy. Or even worse, having the gays waltz in with their perfectly tailored clothes and artfully maintained day three stubble and flirt only with each other, as we straight girls are forced to wander around avoiding the guy in the baseball cap and sunglasses, Date Rape Dan. Am I going to write an article about how I want the gays out of my bar because I want to be around my "own kind?"No. For one thing, I don't really feel that way. For another, I don't want to be expelled from school and accused of a hate crime. Seriously. Imagine if a heterosexual wrote an article that there were too many gays mixing with us. That is not kosher. Oh, Chloe? Did you hear that? Kosher? Yeah, I'm Jewish. It's not cool to not let us into places anymore either. And Ditto the reverse. Because it's 2013 and you just can't really get away with saying you don't want an entire group of people at an establishment because they ruin the vibe. You can think it, you can bitch to your friends about it between bouts of rugby (that's what you guys do, right?) but you shouldn't write it.
Aside from the fact that I didn't find her jokes particularly funny, the thing that pisses me off the most is that she asserts that there is somehow a fundamental different between straight and gay people, while also implying that gay people are better dancers, furthering a few stereotypes of her own "kind" along the way. There isn't a fundamental difference. And asserting one and calling for your own space is giving ammunition to the people that don't want you to get married because you know, you and your kind are always up in the club and can't raise children. We aren't different, Chloe. Hey, lady, we're all just trying to get laid. I know you are a minority in society. I don't think that's okay. I also happen to think minority status doesn't allow you to discriminate, call me crazy.
She writes about the three kinds of women that attend gay bars: the "twirly twit" who wants to escape being hit on my men while she dances, the "dreary dilettante" who goes to gay bars for novelty, and the "accepted infidel," the friend of the gay who is reluctantly accepted I know people who to to gay bars to gawk at the culture like animals in a zoo and that, I actually agree is space invading. But aside from truly ignorant people, most people I know go to gay bars because they have gay friends or they just like the fucking bar.
Chloe, you say you don't want to officially ban straight people from gay bars. And I understand why they exist: every bar that is not a gay bar is by virtue of being a bar, a "straight" bar, because the majority of people are straight. I get that. I get the desire for your own space. But Chloe, woman to woman, this separate but equal shit is weird. And lady, if you can come to "my" bar, I can come to yours.
Let's just get along. We all want the same thing anyway: pussy.
"Imagine if a heterosexual wrote an article that there were too many gays mixing with us."
ReplyDeleteplease don't compare queer people wanting their own space (for once?!?) with straight people excluding queer people. your comparison assumes that straight people and queer people are on an equal playing field when that is simply not the case in our heteronormative society.
i identify as a queer woman, and don't think straight people should be banned from gay clubs and other queer spaces. HOWEVER i think it is important for queer people to have their own safe spaces in a world that largely caters to straight people. please check your privilege as a straight person and like the author of the article says, "rethink the entitlement [straight people] feel to occupy every space."
Wow. While I understand that you were offended (and to be fair, Chloe's post had a hostile tone), I think you missed her point. Gay bars are an extremely important gathering places for queers. Straight women have long accompanied gay men to gay bars, and this has long been tolerated, if not accepted.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this has devolved into large groups of straight women coming in uninvited, getting shit-faced in a "safe space", and generally being disrespectful. Worse yet, some straight men now regard gay bars as great places to pick up straight women whose "defenses are down" because they aren't expecting to get hit on in that environment.
This means that many gay bars are slowly gentrifying into straight bars. What's the problem? The problem is that these places are sanctuaries for queers. A place where it's safe to be ourselves, have a good time, and be amongst people like us (a minority).
Yes we have HIV testing centers and LGBT community centers in many places. But if you're not looking to learn ballroom dancing, play bingo, or get friendly with someone in a anxiety-ridden clinical environment, the gay bars are all we have. Please, please let us have them, and don't react with indignation when someone asks for that.