Robert Biedroń - Gay is okay

[pieter]

[karl]

Pieter

It would so appear of The Gay population is as of the facets of a diamond, there are many facets upon to be viewed. It would be a reasonable guess most of us have at one time or another met or even knew at least one Gay person. Most of the time, my self did not even think the person was gay I was to meet. I think in a past post response of this manner,was to discribe whilst working in the Pacific North West and Seattle USA. Was to rent an auto from a local Ford/Mercury Dealership after some disagreements with a rental company. The Dealer ship was owned by two fellows that knew their business and as with our business association, we become good friends to the extent of being invited to their home to attend a large party they were hosting.

Upon arrival of my self, was very surprised in a pleasant manner, those two fellows were husband and wife as being Gay people. Up to that point, my self had not a clue, but after a while whilst mingling with the crowd it become a very pleasant evening. This event was a social event whilst at the dealership, was strictly business.

The above was of one side of this subject, whilst of course, people are people and at later times was to very well observe very plainly two Gay fellows parading their stuff in the business centre in Seattle. One was the operator of a side walk coffee stand, whilst the other I have little idea of his manner of generation of income. Other wise, if to meet a gay person on the street, I must admit to having no idea they are Gay unless other wise obvious.

Karl

[pieter]

Karl,

I couldn’t agree with you more. In my case my professional tv boss is Gay and one of my best friends. These 2 gentlemen are professionals in their TV and photography business. I have great respect for them, know them very well and to be frank the differences between them and straight (hetrosexual) colleagues and friends.

The only difference is that I sometimes like girls or women and can talk about these women with straight friends, while my Gay boss and friend have zero interest in these women. They simply don’t care because they are more interested in handsome men and beautiful boys of a legal age.

They are sometimes bored, annoyed and sarcastic about my interest in women. And in sense of humor (tongue in the cheek) I can make ironic remarks about their Gay behavior and interest.

For instance I have a ‘blind spot’ for their taste, sensitivities, other preferences, subtle gestures and favor for ‘male’ in staid of ‘female’ persons, objects or subjects. Sometimes I feel like a hetro male charicature from some old fashionate dated movie in their presence.

We learned to live with and adapted the differences. Have a very close work relation in the professional and personal social friendship field.

This Gay friend I know from the art academy in Arnhem since june 1992. We were in the same class/group/year on the Arnhem Art Academy’s Fine Ary Academy. My first year was in the Hague (1991-1992), and my Second (1992-1993), Third (1993-1994) and Forth (1994-1995) were in Arnhem. I saw him develop from an art student to a professional photographer. He is an Amsterdam friend now, and lives in Amsterdam since 2003.

Gays in my life had also been advisors, people with knowledge about women that I never had. Because they often are ‘The best Gay friends’ of women, and know more about womens private lives than men, because they sometimes are ‘one of the girls’ in a group of women with one Gay man (themselves). So I learned about what these women talk about. Relationships, sexuality, experience, psychology, life stories.

I learned a lot from Gay men about women I would have never found out myself, because Gay men can be very natural, relaxed, cosy, intimate (in social manner) with women, because there is no sexual tension, interest and rivalry with other men.

The other side of my life is the loads of time I spend with straight friends, straight colleagues and straight women doing the strange things straight people do, like trying to fency a girl, dancing with women in a romantic or energetic manner. I am labeled in the straight world as ‘redhead’ (women) freak. John and Jaga probably know my redhead friend and former lover Esther. But in Arnhem I have that label and every now and then friends or colleagues try to ‘connect’ me to yet another pretty redhead. That is funny, but also sometimes weird.

The Gay friends and colleagues can joke about it with me without the competition I have with straight men. They know I like brunettes, blondes, and occasionally black and Asian women too. In the sense of taste. I am not a womanizer (Casanova), but admid I like women and girls in their late twenties and early thirties.

Typical Gay is that for esthetic and number reasons my Amsterdam Gay friend tries to hook me up with a South American Chilian women (an Upstairs neighbour of his), because many of his straight Amsterdam friends have Latin American girlfriends from Colombia, Argentine, Mexico and Venezuela. That is quite funny.

Gays are social, esthetic, fashion, style oriented in their relationships with women. They use their knowledge and close relationships with their mothers, sisters, aunts, female cousins and girlfriends in their professional and social contact with women. Also typical, but harmless.

Often the best fashion designers of female clothes, shoes, lingerie and jewelry are Gay men. Also the best fashion photographers, hairdressers and make up artists/visagists of female models, actresses and performers are Gay. Look for instance at Madonna.

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

Pieter and Karl,

We have another important gay man, Pete Butigieg, who is probable winner of the first caucus in Iowa.

In the past gay men or transgenter who decided to become public figures had very aggressive in their behavior or looks (drag queen), which was repelling to me. With the opening of the culture into different sexual orientation, I learned to recognize guys as having certain very positive characteristics without being overly aggressive. Pieter is right, some of these gays are becoming the best women friends. They have certain characteristics of being gentle, artsy etc... which makes them in a way important part of the society.

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

The Celluloid Closet



The Celluloid Closet is a 1995 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on Vito Russo's 1981 book of the same name and on lecture and film clip presentations he gave in 1972–1982. Russo had researched the history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters.

The film was given a limited release in select theatres, including the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, in April 1996, and then shown on cable channel HBO as part of its series America Undercover.

The documentary interviews various men and women connected to the Hollywood industry to comment on various film clips and their own personal experiences with the treatment of LGBT characters in film. From the sissy characters, to the censorship of the Hollywood Production Code, the coded gay characters and cruel stereotypes to the changes made in the early 1990s.
Vito Russo wanted his book to be transformed into a documentary film and helped out on the project until he died in 1990. Some critics of the documentary noted that it was less political than the book and ended on a more positive note. However, Russo had wanted the documentary to be entertaining and to reflect the positive changes that had occurred up to 1990.

[karl]

Pieter and Jaga

Personally my self hold nothing against gay people that are what they are how ever nature has decided for them. It is those that toss their condition in to our faces such as dragg queens that flout them selves about or dress up in to silly female attire for presenting them selves as a spectical upon the street. But those that try to fit in to regular living in spite of their situation do have my personal respect.

The above of course is a personal opinion born of experience in life. Gay people do live a very hazard life being most always a target of both verbal and physical abuse. With this, their choice of occupation may be limited, for often upon their hire date, they must have a health screening and this will bring out their sexual orientation with most always the risk of dismissal.

With Jaga's mention of the American politicion, Mr. Butigieg stating out right his sexual orientation as being Gay, was both a very courage pronouncement to his public. For then, saves later surprises that most likely would have had some disagreeable after effects with negative results to his career.

There are no gays allowed in our department, not for the fact of their situation, but for the manner these people would be a high risk in the manner of various situations such as human frailty and black mail.

Karl

[pieter]

Karl,

I think because I have been to 2 art acedemies (The Hague and Arnhem), lived in the Gay capital of the Netherlands and Europe Amsterdam ( amsterdam.org/en/gay-capital.php ) and found out myself that most Gays and Lesbians do not fit the description you find in literature, news articles or in the characters of sitcoms and movies. You have many Gays and Lesbians who look like straight people and act like straight people, because they are normal or average people. A minority of them are the extravert loud androgyn drama queens (Feminine guys), drag queens, and the masculine Tomboys ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomboy ), Stone butches ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_butch ), Drag Kings, Butch and femme ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_and_femme ) and Dyke Lesbians.

In the Netherlands Gays are workers, farmers, professional sport people, police officers, civil servants, teachers, professors, journalists, butchers, bakers, car salesmen, mechanics, local, provincial, national and European politicians, ministers, state secretaries, top civil servants, professional soldiers, officers, fashion designers, architects, graphical designers, artist, musicians, poets, dancers, pub owners, restaurant owners, cooks, doctors, nurses, bankers and business people. You find them in all professions and they are quite integrated, because most often respected and tolerated parts of large straight (hetrosexual) families. Gays and Lesbians of course have parents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. Often they are the only Gay in the family, in their neighbourhood and sometimes communities like hamlets, villages or parts of towns.

Large cities often are more liberal, progressive and tolerant than the country side with it's farmland, hamlets, villages, and farmer and fishermen towns and provincial towns. But also in the larger cities you find conservative, traditional and sometimes fundamentalist Muslim or christian migrant communities who are homofobic and reject Gays, Lesbians, Bi-sexuals and Transgenders. Gays like other Dutch people vote for various parties from left to centrist to right.

If it is true that 10% of the population is Gay it is a reasonable guess that most of us will have at one time or another met or even knew at least one Gay person. Of course many people we meet don't look Gay, are not public Gay or don't want to proclaim their Gau identity. I know many Gays who never talk outside about their Gay identity and hide their Gay identity outside for safety reasons. These local Ford/Mercury Dealers from the Pacific North West and Seattle USA could have been Dutch, Belgian or German Gays.

Despite having Gay friends and former Lesbian colleagues I have to admid that I am not connected to the present Arnhem Gay scene. That is quite obvious, because I am not Gay and therefor have no business in visiting Gay bars or clubs. Only 2 times in the past few years I went to the local Gay bar 'Colours' with a straight journalist colleague from the city council. We went to the Gay bar out of practical reasons, because other straight bars were closing or closed. Therefor we had no option than to visit the Gay Night bar. It is a typical old fasionate Gay bar with Gay icon photographs on the walls and the cosy lights and warm atmosphere Gay bars most often have.


Gay Café Colours in Arnhem

Most often I visit the artist/musicians pub 'Stella by Starlight' (majority straight people, art students, musicians, local neighbourhood people) or the café of the local Art House cinema Focus Arnhem. After the city council meeting we local journalists often drink a beer there with the councillors of the Arnhem Muncipalities and some aldermen. My best Gay friend has a strange habbit of having a lot of straight friends and most often hangs out with these straight friends. For some reason he is used to my straight interests in women, things straight males like and my interests like politics, fine art, history, foreign politics, Poland, interesting women, music which is not quite Gay (not camp at all, and often quite rough, because there is quite some hard rock and heavy German techno in my collection).

Fact of life that my and our world is straight. I deal in the local news issues with sometimes raw or grim facts of mainly straight people. Poverty, homeless people, trouble kids, city administration, radicalization of Muslim youth, traffick accidents, fires, migration, refugees, political problems, strikes, far right and far left sometimes, rebellious farmers, education, housing, social security. Boring for much of my straight and Gay friends, but the reality of my work.

It was good of you having these positive experience with these Gay Ford dealers in Seattle.

Karl, I think that exrtravert, exhibitionist and loud people are people with some issues or need for attention in their lives. You have Gay drag queens and hetrosexual transvetites. I have not such problems with Drag queens, and see their theatre and extraversy as some sort of theatre, comedy and free expression. They are not part of my life, but I have of course encountered them in the past in Gay clubs in Amsterdam. I think most Gay men, Lesbian women and bi-sexual men and women try to fit in to regular living in spite of their situation. I know bi-sexual people to and heard of them that most discrimination they faced from Gay people.

Gay people today whether they live in the Benelux, Germany, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, the USA, Poland or South-Africa do live a very hazard life being most always a target of both verbal and physical abuse. In Iran and some Arab and other Muslim nations they were and are killed. They were thrown off buildings, beheaded or hanged.

Brunei's Sharia Penal Code, implemented in stages since 2014, prescribes death by stoning as punishment for same-sex relations. In Iran several people were hanged for homosexual behaviour in 2005-2006 and in 2016. Islamic state murdered Gay people in Iraq and Syria. On 26 January 2011, Uganda's most prominent gay activist, David Kato, was bludgeoned to death by Sidney Nsubuga Enoch, who was later convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison with hard labor.

I must say that I have the prejudice that most Americans won't vote for Pete Buttigieg because he is Gay, because wether Democratic or Republican most Americans are conservative in nature.

Gays of course are over represented in certain cultural and entertainment professions. You find a lot of Gays in the Fashion world. A lot of hairdressers are Gay. Many Gays are working in the theatre, dance, music, showbusiness, Musical, Horeca, fine art, graphical design, music, Museum and Art gallery world. They are over represented in these area's.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Although he was the most pro-LGBT politician in the United States at the time, politics and activism were not his early interests; he was neither open about his sexuality nor civically active until he was 40, after his experiences in the counterculture movement of the 1960s.

In 1972, Milk moved from New York City to the Castro District of San Francisco amid a migration of gay and bisexual men. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests and unsuccessfully ran three times for political office. Milk's theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and in 1977 he won a seat as a city supervisor. His election was made possible by a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics.

Milk served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11-1 and was signed into law by Mayor Moscone. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, who was another city supervisor. White had recently resigned to pursue a private business enterprise, but that endeavor eventually failed and he sought to get his old job back. White was sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter, which was later reduced to five years. He was released in 1983 and committed suicide by carbon monoxide inhalation two years later.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us." Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

[pieter]

Karl/Jaga,

I have to admid that i have the opposite of a Gay bar taste. I am more comfortable in a mixed bar and have a weak spot for old Dutch and Irish pubs. One of the fun things for a poor old bachelor like me is to go out and see some nice women and girls. And enjoy a couple of beers, cappuchino, coffee or occasionaly a wine or whiskey and enjoy good company of good people. I missed the women in the Gay bars to ne frank. And therefor I prefer straight bars, pubs and clubs.

In normal tolerant places Straight, Gay and Bisexual people mix today. My Gay subculture of my best friend experience is mostly of the nineties. Since he left for Amsterdam I stopped visiting Arnhem Gay bars. I am not Gay so have no business going there. But occasionaly it is fun to visit a Gay bar with some friends or colleagues, especially when they are Gay. You see them in a different environment and you see a different side of them, because they will be looking around if there are nice guys for them.

Cheers,
Pieter