Report points to "gay generation gap"

[swimmernsecretsea]

Christopher Curtis, PlanetOut Network
Tuesday, December 27, 2005 / 04:19 PM

A growing generation gap exists in the LGBT community, posing a challenge for social workers and activists, according to a new publication by the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies in Amherst, Mass.

"A generation turns around in five years now," said Janis Bohan, a co-author of the study. The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people growing up have changed in such a radical way that it is difficult for people five years older to fully understand what has happened to the previous generation, Bohan found.

Full story here: http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2005/12/27/2

[closeupready]

1. This is interesting.

"Bohan noted that young LGBT people sometimes complain that no one is doing anything about discrimination, unaware of the decades of prior activism."

And another reason it doesn't appear that older gays are doing anything about discrimination is that frankly, a lot of them who were activist died of AIDS. :(

----------------------

"'The good news is that both sides can learn from each other,' Bohan said. 'LGBT adults should be willing to follow the lead of young people, and young LGBT people should be willing to use adults as mentors.'"

My personal experience with young LGBT people is that sadly, they know everything already and don't need to listen to those of us who have been there. We are not as pretty as they are, and therefore, they have no time or use for us.

Hopefully, that can change as it becomes more acceptable to be an out-of-the-closet LGBT individual. :)

[Ayesha]

2. Generation gap

This topic came up the other day and here is what I posted, with a few additions.

At 28, I'm somewhat in the middle generation wise, but what I've noticed is that older generation lesbians have a lot more of a belief that the world is against them. One woman I know who is in her early 40's is always going on about how invisible, persecuted, etc. she feels as a lesbian in her everyday life, and it doesn't ring true to my experiences at all. Maybe if we were in Alabama, but this is L.A. fergodsake. Practically everyone my partner and I have met here has been accepting of our orientation. There are a lot of shallow, nasty people here, but most of them don't care if you're gay or straight, they care if you have the fashionable car and the designer clothes. Considering that the aforementioned friend has a hairstyle that should have gone out with the 1980's, perhaps *that's* why she gets negative reactions from people.

That brings up another difference I have noticed. Older generations of gay people seem to hold on to and fit stereotypes more; I'm not sure what purpose it serves for them exactly, as to me it seems like a hindrance to being accepted. Young people treat their sexual orientation as just one aspect of their identity, and are less bound by roles like butch and femme, styles of dress, that sort of thing. When looking at a group of gay and straight teens, you can't always tell which is which. I don't mean that gay people are becoming more like straight people, but rather that there's more diversity in gender expression and style across orientations. I personally think that's a good thing.

In that same vein, older gay people seem to be more insular, less trusting of straight people, and more segregated. They seem to prefer things that way, whereas for me, while I want to have some gay friends and live in a gay-friendly area, I would not want to live and associate with ONLY LGBT people. My best friend is a hetero guy, and I don't feel that he is any less accepting of me, or ignorant to the challenges I face, just because he is straight.

I try to connect to new people with the expectation that they will be at least tolerant, and probably accepting, rather than approaching them with fear. And I think that contributes to their being OK with me and my partner. We behave as if we are equal, and therefore are treated as such.

[Lex]

3. It's wonderful that you feel free from any real discrimination

and find acceptance and the ability to live openly.

You stand on the shoulders of all the people who came before you who encountered a very different set of circumstances and fought like hell so the next generation of people, like yourself, can lead the life you lead with sexual orientation not being a big deal in your overall life.

Older people may still have a lot of 'baggage,' for lack of a better word, stemming from what it used to be like back in the day.

I feel so humbled when I think about the gays and lesbians who came before me and blazed a path.

However, I think we still must continue to fight and continue to make strides.

[Ayesha]

6. I absolutely agree!

I realize how fortunate we are and I am thankful for those who fought for us to have the rights we have now. And I am part of today's fight for full equality, especially for non-discrimination laws and marriage rights which are extremely important to today's LGBT families. It bothers me how many people of various ages in the LGBT community don't have much interest in politics and social activism.

I am also disabled and when I was growing up in Indiana, my mother had to fight to get my school and various local businesses to be wheelchair accessible. There were laws, but they weren't being enforced and people didn't care, until she stood against the injustice. She was a real trailblazer, and my inspiration and role model. I know there are people like that in the older ranks of the LGBT community and I wish there was a way of connecting them with the younger generation.

[closeupready]

4. I used to think like that, too.

Or at least, I think I did. :D

It's funny how, from one perspective, you are describing a way of life which discriminates on the basis of socio-economic status rather than sexual orientation. In one sense, that's progress, I suppose. At the same time, LGBT people are just as poor as straight people.

eh, who knows.

[Ayesha]

7. Yeah

I absolutely hate it here because of how shallow people are. It's honestly not that much better than living around homophobes, except that people don't generally beat up other people because they drive a dented-up Dodge instead of a Lexus. :P

[davidinalameda]

5. I think that the older generation lesbians had to face

sexism in the gay community as well as homophobia from the general society

not to drone on about how some gay men still hold sexist and racist views about other members of the gay community, but I've seen that as a big issue as well

[Ms. Toad]

8. Just a gentle nudge about age based observations

I turn 50 this year, and my wife of 24 years turns 55. I don't believe your observations about us older GLBT folks fit us very well.

We don't role play - never have. We are out everywhere - have been for virtually all of our married life. We are well integrated into our predominantly heterosexual neighborhood, school, church, employers, and four post-graduate programs between us during our marriage. None of these, except our church, would likely have been described as gay-friendly (after all, this is Ohio) - but our experience is that our openness about our sexuality the straight folks we encounter routinely accept it as just one aspect of who we are.

I won't say we have never experienced discrimination - our marriage is not legally recognized in our home state, my spouse lost one (perhaps two) jobs because of our visibility, and we were denied the right to create a legally recognized relationship between our daughter and my wife.

On the other hand, our marriage was celebrated by our church with about 135 friends and family present, including all of my (very catholic) father-in-law's siblings, our daughter's school has never questioned our daughter's relationship with my wife, and our fairly conservative neighbors regularly invite us over just to hang out with them.

Our lives are pretty similar to those of most of the older GLBT folks we know - and it was a 30 year old friend of mine a few years ago who kept warning me against being out at law school (which I was from before the first class) because my grades would suffer.

[xchrom]

10. perhaps you haven't noticed the resurgence in popularity of trannies

and drag?

and if you've been in l.a. -- i can't understand how you've missed it -- there are the straight worlds version of stereotypes still more than visible.

but i was certainly hoping not to hear another gay person talk about them the way you just have.

we cover all the spectrums -- butch women, effeminate men -- just the same as the straight world does.

do you think that straight people aren't pegged for being gay according to the straight worlds perverted sense of how people should act?
and suffer for it?

gay activism has fought VERY hard to make those kinds distinctions go away -- for precisely the kind of attitudes you{subliminally?} posted here.

it doesn't MATTER how you are in the world -- it matters what you do -- what kind of person you are.

[kweerwolf]

9. Of course there's a generation gap ...

It's only been in the last few years that discussion of gay issues entered public discourse. (Well, an argument can be made that it's been in the public spotlight for several decades ... but I tend to view that as "blips" in public awareness that got discussed simply because it carried a tittilation factor for heterosexuals.)

Before the current generation, previous generations were left to define and invent themselves to a large extent. Each generation was pretty much ignorant of the ones that came before because we seldom made the history books. So unless you really dug to discover your history, it was like the LGBT community was born anew with each generation.

For instance, most people view "outing" as a recent invention when, in fact, it was a few German newspapers who published the names of closeted gay men who were close to the Kaiser who first used outing as a political weapon. Likewise, we think of the Stonewall riots as the "birth" of the gay movement because not that many of us heard of the Mattacine Society in the '50s, or the first U.S. gay rights group that formed in the '20s in Chicago, or the homosexual emancipation movement that started in Germany under Magnus Hirschfeld and others.

Because our collective history is only now being studied and told, so many of the generations before this one have no regard for the generations before because they are unaware that the struggle for gay rights runs much deeper than they suspect.

Add to that the fact that LGBTs are not born in clusters, but are pretty much randomly distributed throughout the population, and you don't have the early ties to the "community." Lacking history and role models, we often invent ourselves as much as we invent our community in each generation.

So that fact that there's a generation gap in the LGBT community doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that the gap isn't even wider.

[closeupready]

12. Another example of the problems of studying LGBT history

is that many of the historical sources which reference homosexual love have been edited and censored by English translators. For example, where a reference is made to "he", the prounouns would be changed to "she". See, for example, the Rubaiyyat of the Omar-Khayyam. So anyway, carry on... :hi:

[election_2004]

11. There may be a generation gap....

But it doesn't change our collective desire for the same types of social change to occur.