But why should we?

Joe. My. God has posted on the subject of gay culture fading away to a more heteronormative view of the world. As noted by the author of the quote, some LGBT people sees this as a fair trade-off. I say "oh fuck no!"

I understand where people would say that the assimilation of LGBT culture into the mainstream culture is a good thing. We have been fighting for our rights to be viewed as normal people and normal citizens. We want to show people that we are harmless and productive members of society. Most of us are!

But that doesn't mean we should lose our culture. The very thought makes me think of all the forced assimilation that Native Americans went through. Or the Aborigines. Or Asian Americans. Native Americans were force into a European imposed hegemony. They lost traditional culture. Where one culture was more egalitarian in their treatment of sexes and gender, the hegemony made sure they reflected their ideals about sex and gender. This is what worries me about the assimilation of LGBT culture into the mainstream; The will lose something that could be valuable later on. Furthermore, it implies a superiority of one culture and one group over another. Asian Americans were seen as "model minorities" because they assimilated faster and fitted into the the Western ideals of how proper people should act. If LGBT culture were to do the same, it would be like admitting that the fundies are culture is better. As I've put in my Southeast Asian culture class, we are internalizing the colonialism, making the struggle for autonomy all for naught.

Mind you that I'm not cultural relativist. Practice that are detrimental to society as a whole should be done away with ("honor" killings, burning witches, headhunting, institutionalized sexism, and things like that.) Still, I don't see how being a diva or dressing in fabulous colours make you a determent to society. In the end I think we should not seek to erase LGBT culture for a normative view. Instead it should be a piece of the picture like a part of a grand mosaic. So be productive, be normal, but be a flaming diva if you want to be too.

Haegeum

Ethnography

Here is a modern Apache person. The reason I chose this photo is because I want to question our perception of indigenous people. In our society, we tend to look at indigenous people as archaic and outside of time. This is false. Indigenous people are, in fact, contemporay people.

Here is another indigenous group, the Ainu:

Random Model: Joel

Random Model: Hugh Plummer

Gisaeng and Geisha: Then and now

Notice that modern portayals of Geisha and Gisaeng tends to emmulate western notions of orientalism and the hyper-feminization of Asian women.