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Old Posted Jan 30, 2014, 7:12 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Vancouver
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
One other thing to point out...

I've noticed (here as well) that people like to point to the existence of gay villages in certain communities as evidence that they were exceedingly homophobic. That's not often the case.

Cities in North America that gave gay villages are generally the ones whose LGBT communities were the first to push for visibility, acceptance, and equal rights. Gay villages came about as part of their efforts to bring homosexuality out of the closet. This made gay villages, like those in Toronto and Montreal, destinations for LGBT people from elsewhere in the city, province, and country - not only people who wanted to fight for their rights, but also those who simply wanted to take it easy and be themselves.

The existence of a gay village in a city doesn't really say anything about how accepting or homophobic it is. It just indicates that LGBT people have been living openly there, intentionally, since the days when this was universally shocking everywhere in North America.

Likewise, cities without gay villages are often just ones that didn't really have large populations and sizeable LGBT communities until relative acceptance had been achieved.

It's like... women earning the right to vote. You can look at country A and say surely it must have been more sexist because it had a suffragette movement, whereas country B didn't. But country B simply allowed women the vote when it was the norm the world over.

There are exceptions of course - cities where homosexuality was simply a non-issue, as was the case in many parts of Canada, especially (prior to the introduction of organized western religion) among First Nations.
There's an important distinction to make between gay-focused commercial areas (which will also likely have a higher-than-average gay population) to serve as a focal point for a city's community; and residential gay ghettos that provide the only safe place for homosexuals to live and where no heterosexual would otherwise want to be. The former can exist within a homophobic society, but so too will they in more accepting ones as they serve a universal need - and will continue exist so long as the population to support them exists. The latter however is requires a certain level of discrimination, as they're a result of social pressure moreso than solely the the fulfillment of a cultural or economic role (though they can overlap, and as in most cities, one usually leads to the other). Not too much discrimination though - even a ghetto wouldn't be able to exist in highly homophobic societies like say, Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by death. Just as Canadian gay villages didn't start appearing until the 1960s when the very being of their inhabitants was no longer a criminal offence.

Of course, all of this is moot if there isn't a critical mass to create any of these in the first place, as is the case in smaller centres. It's more of a societal thing than an individual urban one anyway.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Deepstar View Post
I was going to say the same thing. I'm not gay myself, and don't pretend to know about gay living, but if I were gay I wouldn't care if if there is a 'gay village'. I'd rather just be part of the urban fabric with everyone else.
If you were gay you'd want to meet other gay men, which being a part of an invisible minority of 5-10% of the general population would be somewhat difficult living a fully integrated lifestyle in a fully integrated community. It's understandable that you'd have interests and a worldview that extends beyond the gay community - as is the case for most gay men I know, but such communities do still serve an important purpose.
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