Well I suppose I haven’t written a real entry for a while, sorry bout that, chock it up to being back at school, or busy adjusting back to modern life, or whatever you want, but I haven’t been all that good at keeping communication up to date.  I have gotten a lot of good writing done, and am getting into the intensive revision stage with some friends and trusted professors, which is quite exciting.  I’ve also been reading some interesting work by Ernesto Guevara, which I have found absolutely captivating.  A lot of people know about his later life, but the early work is much lighter on theory and much heavier on…. living.  Guevara had a passion for experiencing the world and taking in everything about it that he could, something I can certainly relate to, and the ways in which he struggled to integrate his feelings and observations into his life, as well as into the modern world, is a near perfect reflection of some of my own internal quarrels, despite the fact that he and I have some of the most different politics imaginable.

I am starting to find, a bit disconcertingly, that I’m getting to the position where I am willing to fight for what I see to be “just.”  This sounds a lot deeper than it is, but I’ve just been overwhelmed with the inequities that plague American society, and Western society in general, to this day.  American liberal arts students love to criticize the treatment of women and minorities in other countries, especially Africa and the Middle East, but there are still a number of divides within this country, and, more importantly, they seem to be getting much, much worse.  Twenty years ago it would have been quite unacceptable to have a song about ejaculating in a woman’s face and slapping her around on the radio, or well liked throughout dormitories, but now it’s sort of expected.

The same thing can be said for gay rights.  Unfortunately, I think that, in many ways, the gay rights movement is starting to go the same way that modern feminism has.  Legal oppression is slowly giving way, but as the so called gay “community” (which, most would admit, is most commonly represented by drunk twenty-year-olds in pink thongs dancing around on floats in pride festivals) celebrates these victories, a popular hostility to the gay population appears to be bordering on an increase.  Where I went to high-school, it never really mattered that I was gay.  It made some people uncomfortable, but there was never a significant divide between me and everyone else.  At Arcadia, however, where the tiny but vocal “gay community” is more than sufficiently represented, it seems there is a concrete chasm.  There isn’t any discomfort, there is just disconnect.  People simply say “he’s gay,” or “he’s straight,” and don’t get close to people who aren’t a part of their bubble.

Is this really what people are trying to work towards?

I don’t mean to insult anyone, or say they don’t get to do what they want to.  But I will say this: to behave like a sex crazed, exhibitionist maniac, and then attach the label of “homosexual” to it is hijacking.  It is just as offensive as the writer of the previously mentioned song about sexually dominating women saying he represented Black or Hispanic society.  Never mind that„ at least implicitly, many songwriters do, they don’t outright say “yes we are the black people, and this is what we represent.”  Numerous gay pride groups do.

I am tired of being labeled by these groups, and that’s why I have distanced myself from them.  A lot of people have called me insecure because of this, but I would argue the opposite… that giving up ones identity to some sort of “mass movement” is the very definition of insecurity.

Or do male homosexuals really want to be represented by promiscuity, suntans, anorexia, and hair bleach?

To be sure, these movements have achieved a great deal, most notably in publicizing the issue of same-sex marriage.  But in over half of this country, it is illegal for homosexuals to be certified as educators, including in Pennsylvania.  I have only met one so called “gay activist” on campus who was even remotely aware of this, and that is because she was an educator.

If the so called gay community wants to define itself based upon some image, why can’t it be rationality, reason, and a just struggle, instead of excess, promiscuity, and an image which mainstream society finds distinctly difficult to stomach?

I apologize if this rant offends anyone, but these are questions which have seemed incredibly obvious to me for years, and I feel inclined to broadcast it in some sort of public forum, being that in class it would certainly offend someone beyond the point of academic acceptability.

Andrew