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Originally Posted by jonn3
This is a major change and improvement for young people. When I was a kid getting caught or outed would have been a life changing event. You hear about guys whose families disowned them or sent them into therapy when they found out.
Although getting forced out would still be embarrassing it would no longer be the "end all" it was to many younger guys in the past.
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Very few people in Europe are considering forcing anyone out. The exception may be a guy with a militant anti-gay attitude, or someone who represents an anti-gay institution. Other than that, you virtually cannot force anyone out. The scandal, the stigma, all the negativity associated with it are gone. Breaking the news that Jose down the road is gay would be paramount to telling us that he also has brown eyes. We probably know this, and frankly couldn't care less.
The key to understanding this change is the fact that the anti-discrimination laws have been doing a very good job. No one is poised to either win or lose anything by 'outing' anyone. Besides so many folks are either openly gay or are gladly associating with openly gay guys that any form of social ostracism is out of the window, too.
The normalization may still have to go a very long way in some of the 3rd world countries but here, in a number of the old European democracies, it has completely succeeded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonn3
That is much the same for me. Sex, gay sex is something I do - it is not who I am. I don't feel a "gay identity" - I am me. Take it or leave it.
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I doubt that the normalization could have ever been achieved unless so many people subscribed to the notion of the gay identity.
Strange as it may be, millions of men around the world agreed to belonging to an identity that was based on a single most basic, lowest common denominator - their sexual orientation. No doubt, the economic impact of this newly created identity must have been very significant on local and regional levels. Huge political gains were made in a number of countries. The normalization as we know it today would have never been achieved unless quite a few people around the world decided to drink a specific brand of beer, wear a specific brand of underwear or even drive a specific kind of car. The incessant demonstration of the purchasing power of the newly established group identity moved the majority of the most conservative business leaders to bow to the almighty power of the pink dollar, euro or pound. This is where and when the battle for normalization was really won. Few people ever have any difficulty in choosing between their annual bonuses or their beliefs and personal convictions. Money seems to always win!
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None of the aforementioned was in the cards in my time and day. Whereas I did not see myself as a gay man in our contemporary sense, I knew from my early youth that I felt too strong sexual attraction to men to be one of the guys who was playing around with other men simply because no girls were readily available. The other dudes may have hoped to 'outgrow' this phase. I was not one of them. My interest in getting married and raising a family was virtually non-existent.
The only way to protect myself from discrimination, possible stigmatization, etc., in those days, was to achieve professional and material success far above the average.
Needless to say, there I got my fight cut out for me
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When the going got really tough, and the macroeconomic changes started badly affecting the life of the vast layers of the middle class, I was far ahead of the game to be adversely affected.
No doubt, the paranoid survive.
When all's said and done, of all the things I thought I had to learn as a gay man in order to be successful, the ability to turn the tables on practically anyone or anything was the most significant ability I have ever acquired.
KD