Lol, what? This is a pretty simple point.
Are you saying you have been kicked out of a gay bookstore for being straight?
LBGT BOOK STORE Closure is a what?
- Thread starter Retired_Can_Soldier
- Start date
Lol, what? This is a pretty simple point.
Are you saying you have been kicked out of a gay bookstore for being straight?
Like I said, not a clue. But, like I said, you wanna believe that gays are so much more tolerant and non bigoted than anyone else. You go right ahead. You've obviously bought it hook line and sinker.
So you think they are more or less tolerant than other people?
They are humans, so obviously there are going to be nice people and not so nice people in any group.
I have quite a few friends who are gay though, so I have been to gay bars, events like pride, etc, and I have never felt like people didn't want me to be there.
What kind of experiences have you had where you felt like gay people as a group were not being tolerant of you or acting bigoted?
We have tons of gay bars in Vancouver. I don't recall straights being thrown out, or anyone even complaining that gays have their "own" bars. In actual fact, the hot girls go to the gay clubs. Who knows why? There's some affinity there--better music? better dressed guys? get hit on less?
Anyways, then the straight guys show up, because the hot girls are tehre. Everybody co-exists peacefully. Then the gays open up another bar, for them. Then the hot girls start going there....
I don't see that as particularly exclusionary.
Now, I did get tossed out of the lesbian bar once, but I was about to leave anyways. What a miserable bunch. They complained the whole time that the gays had all these cool bars and the lesbians got a dump. Yeah, well try drinking more. Place was dead on a Friday.
Anyways, then the straight guys show up, because the hot girls are tehre. Everybody co-exists peacefully. Then the gays open up another bar, for them. Then the hot girls start going there....
I don't see that as particularly exclusionary.
Now, I did get tossed out of the lesbian bar once, but I was about to leave anyways. What a miserable bunch. They complained the whole time that the gays had all these cool bars and the lesbians got a dump. Yeah, well try drinking more. Place was dead on a Friday.
I used to be trisexual. I'd try anything sexual. But, you know, ya get older, start feeling some arthritis, and eventually you just cross trampolines and trapezes off your list of sex aids.
I'm sure this is the main cause.
The rent alone would be enormous and all it takes is a few customers taking to amazon each and every day to put a nail in the coffin.
The world is changing to online everything.
Books especially. Even Chapters seems to be trying to kill their physical stores. It seems like everything they sell is half the price if you buy it on their website instead of in store.
And that's the cruel truth at the end of it all. Convenience and price will win over good intentions just about every time.
Some argue that the need for “gay” retailers is disappearing thanks to assimilation — that I am an American first and foremost, who just happens to act a bit fey, so I should just go to a normal bookstore and find the latest Christopher Rice or Sarah Waters. Ahh, the assimilation argument. I would love to walk into a generic bookseller and see LGBT authors prominently shelved. And the major authors, who are published by major presses, already are. David Sedaris. Val McDermid, one of the most read mystery authors in the world. These individuals are assimilated into whatever genre they write in and unless you knew they were gay, you could pass over their books without a second thought. Thank you, America, for hiding the authors’ and the characters’ sexuality. (I promise that none of these covers will be lurid — don’t tell me David Levithan’s “Two Boys Kissing”is lurid. Young adult literature is growing more accepting of LGBT themes, but how many stores have Levithan’s latest spine out?)
In Barnes & Noble, the “gay” shelf is often a single shelf of mixed erotica and university presses with maybe a memoir or a book about Matthew Shepherd. If you wanted to read a gay book — assuming you are not so assimilated that you only want to read about everyday Americans, the vast majority of whom are somewhat favorable to your “lifestyle” and enjoy laughing at fey or butch minstrel characters on television — you have to special-order the book. Which means you are essentially coming out to the busy clerk at the help desk. Can you? Will you? Or will you retreat back home and search again and again for something on Amazon that sounds like a book you want.
Why do "gay supporters" have to make a persons sexuality the be all and end all of that person? Why can't an authors(gay or straight) work, whether it has gay characters or not, be recognized for it's literary content? What does it matter of the sexuality of the author? When I buy a book, I sure as hell don't buy it based on whether or not I want to fu ck the author.
In Barnes & Noble, the “gay” shelf is often a single shelf of mixed erotica and university presses with maybe a memoir or a book about Matthew Shepherd. If you wanted to read a gay book — assuming you are not so assimilated that you only want to read about everyday Americans, the vast majority of whom are somewhat favorable to your “lifestyle” and enjoy laughing at fey or butch minstrel characters on television — you have to special-order the book. Which means you are essentially coming out to the busy clerk at the help desk. Can you? Will you? Or will you retreat back home and search again and again for something on Amazon that sounds like a book you want.
Why do "gay supporters" have to make a persons sexuality the be all and end all of that person? Why can't an authors(gay or straight) work, whether it has gay characters or not, be recognized for it's literary content? What does it matter of the sexuality of the author? When I buy a book, I sure as hell don't buy it based on whether or not I want to fu ck the author.
That isn't really the same thing. With books, you are getting the exact same book if you buy it from a friendly guy at the neighborhood specialty store, the teenager at Chapters, or a website online.
If you could buy the exact same Lambroghini online for half of the price you could buy it from a dealership, you better believe that those dealerships would struggle too.
Why do you take the work of one writer and then try to assign it to a whole group of people? Why can't you disagree with this person, not use it as "proof" of why it is ok for you to dislike a whole group of other people?
Regardless, in no place did the guy say that sexuality was the be all end all, but it is common for people of many different groups to seek art done by other members of their group. People like things that they can relate to, and shared experiences are a big way to do that.
Maybe because for centuries straights made a person's sexuality for discriminating against them, imprisoning them, and murdering them.
You have a thousand different unquestioned assumptions that you live with every day. The rightness of heterosexuality, the wrongness of homosexuality, and the litmus test of sexuality was a standard of Western society for centuries. It doesn't go away overnight.
You know this, of course. You're not stupid. I'm not sure why you pretend not to, but I hope it amuses you.