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Chapter 58
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As a foreigner I had not been molded by the specific American
black-white distress patterns and was therefore free to travel among both blacks
and whites almost as if traveling among free people in a free society. |
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Yet I understood very well the difficulties white Americans have
in responding in a human way toward the ghetto when I realized how shaped I
myself had been by other oppressions, not least homophobia. |
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My attitude toward gays and lesbians had been
basically liberal, since I had never heard overtly hateful attitudes in my
Danish childhood and it took me many "dirty old man" encounters as a vagabond
to "come out" of that closet - if ever I did.
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I soon learned from more "liberated" gays that
liberals are true liberation's most insidious enemy. Their deep
sense of heterosexual superiority remains untouched by their
concern for the "plight" of gay people.
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They appear to concede so much with their
condescending "We should accept homosexuals" while the liberal
"we" invariably excludes the very minority whose integration is
being urged - leaving the oppressed to struggle not only against
genuinely expressed bigotry and hatred, but also "sympathy" and
"understanding" - "tolerance" extended to something regrettable
rather than normal.
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After such indoctrination "we" feel as insecure,
uneasy, and threatened by "them" as white Americans feel
threatened by the blacks, and it becomes more convenient for us to
keep them in ghettos. Some Americans see gay ghettos like San
Francisco and New Orleans as expressions of a tolerant and free
society. As with the old Jewish ghettos in Europe, it is just the
opposite.
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When we for centuries prevent gays from
responding freely, kissing and holding hands in an open atmosphere without
fear, make laws against them in most states, make them loathe homosexuality
before reaching adulthood so that they adopt and internalize our straight
definition of good and bad, when we force gays throughout their
lives into painful, futile attempts to straighten their lives with
the same crippling effect on their self-image as when blacks
straightened their hair to "pass" or merely survive, - then we will eventually force them into similar segregated
ghettos, complete with riots and subcultures. |
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At times I could hardly distinguish one ghetto from the other. Hitchhiking
in Baltimore's black ghetto late one night to find a place to stay
I was picked up by a beautiful black woman, which surprised me as
black women never picked me up.
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She invited me to her luxurious home outside the
city. Willie - seen here at her dishwasher - was one of the few
Americans well-read in Danish literature, and with this common
interest we got involved in a deep intellectual conversation after
which she invited me to share her silk bed upstairs.
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Not until she started kissing me did her beard
stubble tell me she was a drag queen. |
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When I later told the story to American men they
would usually burst out with nausea: "What did you do? Did you
jump out the window?" |
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Indeed, soon afterward two men, believing they had
picked up a female prostitute, killed such a drag queen. |
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For me Willie instead became a dear friend,
introducing me to that special subculture of the gay ghetto which
has conquered self-hatred and inferiority by living entirely by
the closed system's own rules, flaunting its contempt for the
world outside. |
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To meet these proud drag queens and transsexuals
was for me a happy surprise since they did not live the half-life
of cringing servility I had met previously on the road. Theirs was
a genuine counterculture and is therefore oppressed like the black
subcultures. |
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Time and again I saw how police assaulted my drag
friend Tania when I lived with her in San Francisco. Her she is
seen being harassed by police in the red dress one night when we
took a walk. Two drag queens were killed by police while I lived
there. |
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Oppression also drives many drag queens into drugs and
prostitution, thus mirroring the most obvious end result of black
oppression. When a social system treats a minority with contempt
and hostility, in the end those within this ghetto become so
conscious of its closed system that they go one further and
exaggerate their perceived "difference."
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And so the vicious circle of oppression is
completed as the subculture now visibly seems to "justify"
society's contempt for it. |
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In this way the "ghetto of the ghetto" is created
as the "Uncle Tom" conformist homosexuals often feel that the
drag, transsexual, and other special gay sub-cultures spoil it for
them in their relationship to the straight world. |
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