Sometimes I think straight people speak for us when they say there's no homophobia or transphobia in the SF Bay Area, when in fact, queer folks know there's no such thing as no homophobia or transphobia, including in the SF Bay Area
Also, so many stories from friends in the area about just horrific things they've experienced. Maybe the frequency and ambient -phobias are reduced, but the intensity can be there, in some spaces.
Recently, a lesbian friend had issues getting her child’s passport renewed at a location in PALO ALTO, because the guy at the counter refused to do anything ‘without the father’, who isn’t even listed in any documents. I was also called a faggot several times for my rainbow shoes, which kind of made me laugh because I mostly feel safe, but then someone who calls someone else that word for rainbow shows is possibly not a good person to be near.
Every other day there’s a preacher on a street corner yelling that we are all going to hell. I mean, the narrative of this place being Sodom & Gomorrah is a very attractive one for certain peoples
The original news article I linked says that the person who made the ‘hair raising’ death threats to the hotline, is a SF tech worker who has made two widely used apps. The Chron says it will not name them as charges have not been filed. That’s emblematic of the kind of phobias we see here: it’s largely socially not respectable to express them, but bigots exist among us and find other outlets anyway. You don’t magically lose that stuff just by coming here.
@skinnylatte thinking back to the SF trip, maybe around 2005, where more people made nasty comments about me wearing a skirt in a long weekend than I'd heard in a year of living in Texas.
@skinnylatte My guess is that things were quieter before the Trump era. The homophobia/transphobia was still there but Trump encouraged their intolerance and enabled them to be more vocal. How do we put the demons back into Pandora’s Box?
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