Queer Campus Climate by Benjamin Arnberg

Author:Benjamin Arnberg [Arnberg, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781000044997
Google: 9jjSDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-02-21T01:00:18+00:00

Shaun Edmonds

What have we lost in our desire not to be hurt? Where did all this sacrifice of self, begging at the altar of normalcy, get us?22

Benjamin’s Memory

The next week, I spoke with Jason. Jason was in a muddled state after a breakup with a man who cheated on him. Frequently. Often with mutual friends. Infidelities were less a problem than the sexual health risks that accompanied frequent encounters. Because of risk and betrayal, Jason disengaged from the gay community.

Jason

They’re very sexually fluid. I am not. That just kind of turned me off that crowd.

Gray

Gay men are a population perpetually “at risk.”23

Benjamin

I remember learning about gay culture as a child during the height of the AIDS crisis. I also remember a friend who coached me through the coming out process…

21 “Domino Dancing.”

22 See Shaun E. Edmonds, “Connected to Orlando: An Autoethnography in Three(ish) Acts,” Qualitative Inquiry 23, no. 7 (2017): 519–526. Quote from p. 523.

23 See Dean (2009).

Buster

You’re about to sacrifice your social standing and forever be viewed as sexually exotic, at best, and sexually pathological, by most.24

Gray

It’s like gay men think, “If society expects me to be a ho, I may as well just be a ho.” But I don’t want to be a ho. And I can’t trust a ho.

Benjamin

Shush, girl. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller, and talk with your hips.

Gray

What?

Benjamin

From that 3OH!3 song where they say not to trust a ho.25

Dr. James Dobson

One is trustworthy if one is sexually moral. Masturbation and sodomy are sinful. Homosexuality is a choice. It is a psychiatric disorder that must be eradicated if a man is to walk with God.26

Hamilton

Did I have it coming?

Gray

Will I have it coming?

Dr. James Dobson

Yes.

Benjamin

No.

24 Buster is a pseudonym for a friend of mine from Washington, DC, who coached me through going to a gay bar for the first time.

25 I’m not sure why I thought of this song, because it is terrible. To see how terrible, find 3OH!3, “Don’t Trust Me,” recorded 2008, track three on Want, Atlantic, record.

26 I do not refer to any specific quote or publication from Dr. James Dobson. However, my mother and father had a copy of James C. Dobson, Bringing Up Boys (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2001). One chapter focused on “homosexuality” and how to eradicate it from your sons. Dr. Dobson’s methods didn’t work on me.

Pet Shop Boys

No.

No.

No.

I command you, unclean spirit, and Dr. James Dobson, along with all your minions now attacking these servants of Goddess, that you tell me the day and time of your departure. They shall lay their hands upon the sick and all will be well with them.

Let us pray.

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