Homophobia

COMMENTARY: If you’ve seen even one episode of the Real World: Back to New Orleans, you probably know that Ryan Leslie and I have been entrenched in a battle that can only be described as guerilla warfare: He rubbed my cigarettes on his hairy posterior; I retaliated by urinating on his $120 toothbrush — not my finest moment, but when you’re thrown into a house full of strangers, well, anything goes, I guess.

To some extent, I initially sympathized with Ryan; honestly, what straight man wants to constantly be called gay? Yes, he styles hair and claims to be a clothing designer. When taken at face value, this makes him gay — at least in the realm of mainstream consciousness and what a large part of society thinks due to long-standing generalizations. Of course, the equal rights movement has made huge strides in the past few decades, but when it comes down to stereotyping and gender roles, those are still alive and well in many places.

But my sympathy was squashed because, despite efforts to connect with and understand the kid, Ryan’s behavior was and remains not only disgusting, but pretty damn hurtful.

My former roommate’s latest bout of homophobia came in the form of a tweet. And this time it wasn’t directed at me, but at a Twitter user, Aurosan, the blogger behind Oh No They Didn’t. It read: “Aurosan, I would love to see you in person and smash you gay f&#* face in.”

What’s depressingly infuriating is that Ryan believes this to be acceptable behavior, and justified it with yet another Tweet that read: “I’m not homophobic!! And even if I were I would be aloud to be! So chill out.” Though it’s hard to look past his atrocious spelling and grammatical handicap, the point remains that this kid is hateful and disrespectful.