What The Fuckity Fuck?!

[eumelia]

Ballplayers Sue Softball League.

Why you ask?

Because they were deemed "not gay enough" and were kicked off the team!

[LaRon] Charles and co-plaintiffs Steven Apilado and Jon Russ said that NAGAAA officials read definitions of “heterosexual” and “gay” and asked which word applied to them. When Charles answered both, an official allegedly told him, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.” When asked the same set of questions, Russ declined to answer.

The three plaintiffs in the case were voted to be “nongay” and were subsequently disqualified.

Two white players from D2 were also questioned about their sexual orientation but were not disqualified. NCLR alleges that race may have been a motivating factor in the decision to disqualify its clients (two are African-American, and one is of African-American and Filipino descent).

Emphasis mine.
When racism and biphobia collide it sure does look spectacular!

The language in the official documents is disturbingly binary. To not even bother to acknowledge the existence of bisexual players is discriminatory in the extreme and it's only exacerbated by the racism evident in the "disqualification" of those three players.

Because they're bi and PoC they're not representational enough, is that it?

For fuck sake I could throw something!

Comments

via network

[softestbullet]

Gahh! >:(

Re: via network

[eumelia]

Indeed.

[ajnabieh]

I'm fascinated by the counter-claims made in the article--in one, they're bisexuals of color who have been denied full membership in the queer community, in the other, they're "three poor beleaguered straight men." Which is such a fucked up sentence. And a terrible thing to say to the NCLR, too.

I'm a huge believer in the "if you say you are, you are" school of queerness--what am I gonna do, check your gay card? I'd also be interested to hear what the teammates' reactions were--did they try to defend their friends? Or was there an ongoing problem?

I have no idea if this is going to get anywhere legally, because the problem seems to be the limits of the rules and the fucked up interpretation of them, which I'm not sure is regulatable. I'd hope that there would be a huge absurd outcry from the queer community about this, though, that would do some work to undo biphobia in the queer community.

[eumelia]

Biphobia has made want to rid myself of the label. Seriously, I hate the word and I don't know how to reclaim it without feeling silly.

I'd rather be Omni :)

[ironed_orchid]

I want to kick someone.

[eumelia]

And then throw them!

[majoline]

This makes me ANGRY. Why does life want to make me ANGRY?!

[eumelia]

Because life is STUPID!!!!!

[silveradept]

Wow. A fantastic CF of epic proportions. One would think that, with that attitude, homosexuals were accepted as normal everywhere and could thus afford to be snobbish or rude.

[eumelia]

Very often a minority that is looking for a "safe" space will exclude another minority for irrational reasons.

And a nitpick, I'd really rather you not use the word "homosexuals" or "homosexual" when talking about gay and lesbian (and bisexual and trans) identities - those are antiquated words and are usually used by our enemies who want to use "clean" language and thus misname us - LGBT is probably the best to go with, those are our words and as is queer (though that can be problematic in certain contexts).

[silveradept]

Noted. We will attempt to be more accurate and complete in our terminology. Please forgive the inevitable occasion when my memory fails and I slip.

Would it still be bad if in the context where everyone involved is actually lesbian or gay (instead of misnaming bisexuals as homosexuals as I did above) to use "homosexual" or is there a certain poisonous aura about the word that I am unaware of? (This is where you can willingly beat me about the head and shoulders about privilege and other such things since I'm not LGBT in any way and phenomenally ignorant of anything that someone who was would already know. I won't mind.)

[eumelia]

Personally speaking I feel the word itself is very poisonous, the medicalised and mental illness history of the word "homosexual" is pretty damning for me - there's a reason that in the 60's the movement was called "gay liberation" and not "homosexual liberation". Gay is the word those activists chose back then, Lesbian is the word applied to women and was reclaimed by them at around the same time.
One of the reasons I dislike the word "bisexual" is because it's pretty medical sounding as well.
LGBTQ(AI) is an alphabet soup, but it's also the most inclusive other than "Queer" which can be used as specific identity and an umbrella term, but I know that many don't like "queer" because of its derogatory history and the fact that it's associated with more radical issues.

Trans (is an adjective) people can be of any/all orientations.

I've never heard a person who identifies somewhere under the queer umbrella use "homosexual" as an identifier for a gay or lesbian person. I have heard it used to sometimes describe those closeted gays who are overtly homophobic.

[silveradept]

Thank you for explaining. I guess I'm sort of flailing about, trying to find a word that I can use that isn't secretly derogatory or requires the equivalent of N-word privileges to use. If LGBTQ fits the bill, fantastic.