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.

Hotness and Question

Actually I want to ask my readership (under the megalomaniac assumption that you exist): Do you think I'm relying on eye-candy to attract readers? I know that many gay male bloggers tend to do this.

Romance of the Scienceblog

If you guys haven't been keeping up, or if you're not scienceblog follower then let me summarize the fallowing to you: It's the fucking Three Kingdoms over there except with out the three kingdoms. Okay more like the disintegration of the Easter Han in general. When Zimmer and Yong left to Discoverblog, it's like the individual territories that ceded themselves to outside forces. We can consider the intrusion of Pepsi to be like the Yellow Turban rebellion, weakening the power of SB. The railing of this intrusion is like the campaign against the Yellow Turbans. Finally after SB quails the Pepsi incident, like the Han, the individual bloggers begin to make their own way and break away from SB. Superbug, Zuska, Speakeasy Science, PalMD, Grrlscientist, Laelaps, and Bora are some of such bloggers that chose to break away from the seemingly inept SEED media. PZ and Laden are in strike. A number of other scientist like Orac are considering their resignation as well. Yet like the Han, there are a few bloggers, like Brayton, Tetrapod, and Klemetti, are still there and functional. But like the last Han Emperor, SB has been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to fix the situation.

Well, at least the fallout isn't because they were caught sockpuppeting. That event was just aggravating. At the same time though it was unexpected. SB's fallout was a storm we could see coming. Complaints about the ads, the paycheck, and the commenting system had been there for awhile. Pepsi just broke the back of the all the bloggers there.

The consequence of this is quite clear: A great lost of readership. People like to read stable blogs and not have to change so abruptly. For PZ, I know already that his announced strike has caused a great deal of his readership to move on.

So what's left today? In the end of the day a blogger does whatever he or she wants regardless of the readership. I blog but still have virtually no one reading it. PZ could equally do the same and yet some how he'll have followers. Blogging isn't as simple as finding a domain in which to host it. If the conditions is wrong, no matter how much a blogger wants to write, they will refrain from doing so.