I’ve never walked around an elephant and pretended it’s not there, so let’s get into the big one in the LGBTQIA+ living room. Last week as part of my month-long Pride series I wrote a piece on Corporate Pride. Although I covered the decrease in big-corporate spending, I wasn’t necessarily complaining about it, saying that smaller business and grassroots support were more aligned with the community founding of Pride anyway. I ended up being attacked here on Splice Today by “another writer” who “loves to overuse quotation marks” in the comments section, on Twitter, and in a “sloppy response piece” where he inappropriately referred to me as “Maryland lesbian Mary McCarthy.”
While I’m a fan of the genre, as a married mother of four adults, I don’t identify as a lesbian. The writer came out as a gay man in the comments on my post, amusingly quoting another “gay conservative” who did a survey on X which a majority of liberals/gays left ages ago to try to argue some crap about “non-leftist gays being happier.” Sure, Jan 6. I don’t get stats from someone “in the community” who polices the word “queer” (I’m bisexual, but queer is how I generally identify), trashes drag queens, uses transphobic slurs, defended Trump for eliminating the youth LGBT suicide line, and for the love of Christ actually uses the n-word? Insane shit.
So what are we dealing with when a gay white man gatekeeps gay for only himself, declaring absolutely everything else under the LGBTQIA+ community outlawed, talking about “gender dysphoric,” “weird fetishes” and other punching-down ironic homophobia? It’s privilege, an easy cross-over to bullying behavior.
Unfortunately there are examples of gatekeeping behavior such as transphobia and biphobia within the lesbian community as well, and I’m disheartened by it but would never cross into lesbophobia as a result. I do feel “TERFs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) aren’t feminists—you either support women or you don’t, you don’t get to decide who identifies as women. Of the 50+ Pride flags, under the Queer spectrum I do like Abrosexual best: the concept that how we identify changes over time.
Friendly fire within the community isn’t okay. So when and why does it happen? The overzealous gatekeeping, gay-on-gay hate, the internalized homophobia? Gays who hate when people are “too gay” and “in your face?” Gays who can’t come out because of shame, try to “pray the gay away” or have considered suicide?
According to Revel and Riot, “internalized homophobia happens when LGBQ individuals are subjected to society’s negative perceptions, intolerance and stigmas towards LGBQ people, and as a result, turn those ideas inward believing they are true. It has been defined as ‘the gay person’s direction of negative social attitudes toward the self, leading to a devaluation of the self and resultant internal conflicts and poor self-regard.’ (Meyer and Dean, 1998) or as “the self-hatred that occurs as a result of being a socially stigmatized person.” (Locke, 1998).
Internalized homophobia can lead to horizontal oppression, which happens when an LGBTQIA+ person, subjected to homophobia/biphobia/heteronormativity, begins to discriminate against other community members, perpetuating oppression. This behavior destabilizes movements for justice and equality, and keeps LGBTQIA+ community members fighting amongst themselves rather than focusing on the big-picture issue of institutionalized oppression. According to one study, targets of ingroup microaggression experience general mental, emotional and psychological distress—with specific mentions of stress, depression, anxiety, trauma, and feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness, displacement, invisibility, anger, sadness, and fear.
Horizontal oppression can manifest as anything from:
• Closeted politicians, religious leaders and “powerful” people who advocate and lobby against the LGBTQ community.
• Feeling disgust towards other LGBTQ people who don’t express themselves in a heteronormative way.
• Excessive judgment of other LGBTQ people.
• Anger and resentment toward other LGBQ people for being out, or proud of their identity.
• Transphobia, gender policing, shaming or harming LGBTQ individuals who don’t fit into the gender binary.
• Anger or embarrassment that other LGBTQ people “represent” you.
As a bisexual woman with Borderline Personality Disorder and health issues, I don’t play victim, but life isn’t always easy. Wednesday night I went to the Baltimore Orioles Pride night and had a great time—there wasn’t anything negative that happened other than the Orioles suck and lost. I woke up Thursday morning and went to the Orioles social media page to thank the team for hosting the event, and had to be exposed to the horrific, disgusting, hateful comments from neanderthals who can’t manage to keep their mouths closed or their minds out of other’s bedrooms. I was in tears. No wonder the suicide rate among bisexual women is three times higher than straight women; we’re subject to the most evil-filled online hate every time one of our favorite sports teams dares to be supportive.
So fuck off, gays hating on gays. If you were brave enough to come out, you don't get to close the gate behind yourself. This is a community. In a community, people are supposed to look out for one another. If someone’s wearing a thong and rainbow makeup or doing drag or doesn’t look like you and makes you uncomfortable, take a look in the mirror because that’s about you, not them. They have just as much of a right to express themselves as you do to be boring and vanilla. Your hate is a projection.
—Follow Mary McCarthy on Bluesky and Instagram.
—Pride series articles this month: Rainbow of Peace, Corporations Chicken Out on Pride, No Kings, Yas Queens, Queer Doll History, It’s Not Veterans Month, Make America Gay Again
