Lets take a close look at this add from Calvin Klein. What do you see? A half naked woman and a half naked man in a very suggestive pose. I see stuff like this everyday on the way to work on billboards. I see it all day long on television and in magazine adds. It's everywhere and no one cares.
Now, take a look at the video below. What do you see. Two men, half naked, dressed in leather doing very suggestive things in a video by Lady Ga Ga. Is it offensive? To a lot of you , probably. Why?
A few months ago I came to work and asked a couple of female coworkers if they had seen the new Ga Ga video and they indicated that they hadn't so I pulled it up on you tube. You would have thought that I put hard core porn on the computer! "Turn that off! It's offensive!"
I just don't understand the double standard. Why are gays and lesbians ok with a deluge of heterosexual images EVERY day but straight people, who are my friends mind you, cant deal with two men in a video? Why is it that I have to hear the word "faggot" on television and on the radio? If the "n" word were ever uttered or any other racial slur it would make headline news and the offenders would probably be banished from the airwaves! Why is this ok?
I got into a HUGE debate about that very issue with a very close, straight, female friend of mine. She used the term fag in font of me. It really upset me. I thought how could you, as my friend, use a word that is so ugly and demoralizing toward LGBT people? She said that it was a word she grew up with and didn''t realize that it had any negative meaning! I was floored. I asked her if she would use a black racial slur in front of a black friend and she replied "of course not." Well WHY is it ok to use faggot in front of me?!?!?
Do you know that you cant say words like shit, or fuck, on television.....but faggot is ok? I just don't get it! Am I , as a gay man, of less value than other people?
Try to see it from our side!
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