“OH MY GOD!!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! I LOVE DICK! YOU LOVE DICK! WE ALL LOVE DICK!!!!” screams a Kardashian wannabe at a group of gay men lining up outside a new Los Angeles queer space I recently visited called Queen Kong.
Everyone on the sidewalk stares at the raving (shitfaced) lunatic – we’re conditioned to immediately pay attention to screaming white girls – and then stares back the group of men she’s yelling at as soon as what she’s broadcasting clicks: ALL THE MEN STANDING HERE LOVE DICK!!!!
I have not felt so exposed, vulnerable, and frightened since the day a group of my straight male high school friends “jokingly” held me down and tried to take off my pants so they could give me “what I liked.”
I’ve heard a lot about “annoying white girls” who have made a trend of interrupting queer (safe) spaces with their drunken, obnoxious antics; but, as someone with a female best friend for the past 25 years, I have always welcomed women into our (safe) spaces because they don’t really have any of their own. My best friend loves to dance, and it certainly puts my mind at ease knowing that she is less likely to be drugged and raped in the process at a club where hardly anyone is interested in her.
I’ve always brushed off silly banter – you know, the “If you weren’t gay…” microaggressions – as a good time, letting down of hair and walls and social standards. However, when your presence starts to make me feel scared for my life, it’s time for you to go.
You think I’m just being dramatic? Just under a year ago, we saw one of the largest massacres of LGBTQ people in history right here in the so-called “Land of the Free,” the west, flagship of democracy. In fact, that the Trump administration was voted into power should serve as a clear indication that progressive and liberal attitudes remain with a minority – geographically and politically, anyways.
So, whether SHE loves us or not (as a straight person) it doesn’t mean that everyone else on that busy Downtown L.A. street does.
Couple attitudes of intolerance with American’s (ironically) liberal gun laws, and I am justified to feel I am only one extremist away from Orlando Shooting 2.0 right there on the sidewalk – and for what? Because some sloppy drunk decides to publicize my sexual orientation without my consent?
No tearful “I’m super sorry” or special commemorative emoji is going to make up for the potential loss of my life, so use whatever brain capacity you have left and SHUT THE FUCK UP, O-M-G!
She might find it fun and funny sounding like the Oprah of dick loving on this seedy sidewalk, but we’re all nervously smiling while watching our backs, hoping her Uber driver will arrive soon and take her back to a straight club. Straight girls have become to gay men what straight men are to them: annoying, obscene, and dangerous.
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