Awareness

[matrixmann]

Do information campaigns really fulfill their purpose?
Isn't it more important what people do from day to day - what their mindset is that determines their acting everyday?
And do these campaigns have any influence at all on how people think about a certain matter, about a certain group of people?
Did any campaign, for example, ever change any peoples' thinking towards gays? Or make it clear to them "you know, that's like somebody glued tits on your chest, made you be able to get babies, put you in a woman's dress and told you 'from this day on, you live as Maria for all days'"?
Did anything ever convince anyone "this is a story that can happen next door to me, so I better be no asshole 'cause I still need to live in one and the same apartment building with my neighbors"?

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how gay people got more respect. I think it was from mainstream people knowing more and more gays and watching television comedies like Will and Grace and laughing at gay comedians.

Maybe it was because women wanted to be more friendly with some men and gay men can be very funny and very friendly and love shopping and clothing like women do. So, women started liking gay men more and more.

Some of it had to do with work and how work changed. In the 1970s and before, to make a living it helped a lot to be very masculine and a lot of men worked with say cars and in factories, but since then a lot of high paying jobs are in customer service and in offices with computers. Gay men could compete much better and therefore were less like outsiders that lurk around and seem weird and strange.

Gay men could also no longer be beaten up because men that do that are guilty now of hate crimes and are given ten years or more in jail. That happened because of civil rights movements and how people suddenly couldn't do that to blacks. Before the civil rights movements, men could just go lynch and hang black men, or any outsiders, that didn't fit in.

It mostly has t do with fitting in to white culture. It is mostly a good thing, though I agree that there are sort of side effects to all this: you can't just turn society upside down and expect everyone to just go on peacefully as before.

[matrixmann]

Maybe - in the first instance, because people got to realize there are so many of it. In all kinds of facets. Wanting to kill them would mean you easily also wanted to kill your neighbor - or your child. Killing my neighbor? But he's so nice and friendlich and okay as a human. Well, that idea's nonsense.

In the second instance - being gay, gay culture (respectively), got turned into a brand. And people started to purchase from that brand because it was something new, may be because they were frustrated with their own lives and that gave them some ideas how living and living together with someone can also be structured. (See the fact that even gay couples these days want to form conventional families - which wasn't there as much in the 80s as the gays had their brawl with the police and marched towards Christopher Street.)

I assert it to be correct what comes in claims from the Russian side over "homosexual propaganda" - the rainbow flag and what gets asserted as "gay culture", what gets asserted that gays "think this way", "live this way", "dress this way", "find beautiful this way", these things are all a form of agitation because not all gays behave and think this way. Not even all gays orient themselves by this scene. They live regular lives and you don't hear or see them.
Best example to form is: How many heterosexual people are obsessed with their sexuality as much as it is common in (male) gay culture? Not that many, it's a small group. So why should nearly every gay man be obsessed with that? Does he have so much time in his life if he has a regular job? I don't think so.
But that seems to be a little core point that "gay culture" (this agitation) wants to represent to you. So what's the matter with it? It's nothing more than an agenda. Something that wants to make you believe. And things wanting to make you believe are never realistic.