I read about this article about an obnoxious physician's assistant who gave a patient who'd gone in for a bronchitis check a packet literature with Bible verses denouncing homosexuality on Household Opera. (It's also linked at Gendergeek's Eighth Carnival of Feminists.)
I just want to smack someone when I read about behavior like that.
Have things gotten better or worse?
Are more people, especially in this case, medical people, aware and not overtly homophobic? Or are the homophobic ones more aware and also feeling more empowered to express their homophobia?
I wonder because all most of us have is anecdotal evidence, and that's just sparse and unreliable.
So what do you folks think? Have your experiences changed?
Have we gotten better or worse in the academy about how we treat glbt people and issues? (My sense is that the academy is better overall since, say the 70s, but that some students are coming in with more hatefilled ideas rather than just lacking awareness. And I don't think we've really moved forward much in the past 10-15 years at all.)
I just realized I never posted a reply when you asked the same question on my blog -- sorry! So I'm answering here instead. I think things are definitely a lot better than they were a few decades ago, in very obvious ways. But it seems like there's been a backlash in the last few years. I may just be noticing it more after all the media attention the "moral values" crowd got during the election of '04; I may be noticing it more because I'm living in a red state for the first time. But I feel several degrees more paranoid than I did five or six years ago.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to venture a hypothesis, I'd say that greater visibility also brings greater likelihood of drawing the bigots out of the woodwork.
I think you're probably right about the backlash.
ReplyDeleteThanks for responding