Head to Head: Today’s columns debate the importance of Coming Out Week to the UCLA student body.

ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin

Coming Out Week seeks to combat heterosexist
norms
PRO: LGBT community only benefits from celebration
of lifestyle, support, guidance

  Mitra Ebadolahi Ebadolahi is a
fourth-year international development studies and history student
who believes that the forces of good will kiss evil on the lips.
She encourages comments at [email protected].

Click Here for more articles by Mitra Ebadolahi

When was the last time you asked a friend you hadn’t
talked to in a while if he had a new girlfriend? Or how about
questioning a friend about what kind of birth control she
used?

Congratulations. You, too, are heterosexist.

Hetero-what?!

Heterosexism is the false assumption that straight people are
the “norm.”

Since heterosexism limits society’s definition of human
sexuality, it can lead people to assume a universal standard of
sexual behavior that doesn’t really exist. As a result, a man
can ask a friend about a girlfriend who is actually a boyfriend.
Similarly, a lesbian woman having no need for conventional birth
control might be asked if she uses condoms or the Pill.

Unlike other “-isms,” such as racism and sexism,
heterosexism is often overlooked and can be committed by members,
allies and opponents of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
community. Because heterosexism is a manifestation of the same
ignorance that leads to homophobia and hate crimes, it is an engine
for the oppression of the LGBT community everywhere.

Contrary to popular belief, human sexuality is not a lifestyle
choice. How many of us recall a precise moment in our lives when we
sat down and decided, “Hey, I’d like to be
straight” or “I think I’ll go queer?”

The fact is, we don’t choose our sexuality ““ our
sexuality chooses us.

The assumption that sexuality is a choice is dangerously
misleading. Homophobes often vilify LGBT people and dismiss blatant
discrimination as deserved since, after all, the victim
“chose” to commit the intolerable sin of stepping
outside the sexuality square.

In our suffocatingly heterosexist society, it is often
impossible for many people to honestly embrace their sexuality or
express themselves in healthy ways. Men and women are conditioned
to limit their sexual lives to a straight (and narrow) path, and
are taught to deny their true selves to avoid breaking a
socially-constructed, homogenous mold.

This is precisely why National Coming Out Day ““ and the
week of events surrounding it ““ is so incredibly
important.

Here at UCLA, Coming Out Week is a service to out members of the
LGBT community, closeted Bruins, allies and homophobes alike. By
providing a forum for students to reflect, discuss and celebrate,
Coming Out Week challenges heterosexism and social
“norms” so that we can all attain a more complete and
inclusive understanding of human sexuality.

Coming Out Week provides invaluable resources to the LGBT
community by creating a safe space for openly lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgendered students to support one another and
publicly celebrate their sexuality.

This public forum is critical for a number of reasons. Even
after coming out of the closet, many students feel alienated and
find it difficult to achieve self-acceptance or demonstrate
affection for their partners.

During Coming Out Week, however, heterosexist assumptions about
relationships and gender can be openly questioned and discussed so
that LGBT students who have come out can comfortably claim and
explore their sexual identities.

Coming Out Week also provides LGBT students with invaluable
resources relating to every aspect of daily life, including advice
about safe sex practices and when and where to find rap groups or
mentors that offer support and guidance. This further combats
heterosexism by supplying individuals with information that
isn’t limited to the heterosexual experience.

Because many of us grew up in a heterosexist or even homophobic
environment, coming out can be one of the most difficult steps in a
young person’s life.

By publicly celebrating the queer community and publicizing
resources available to gay students, the organizers of Coming Out
Week extend a hand to closeted Bruins and deliver a message of
self-acceptance and love, which can soothe the alienation and
confusion many students experience.

Finally, Coming Out Week unites LGBT allies and critics for a
period of reflection and activism that clarifies misconceptions
that people of all sexual orientations may encounter. For one week,
reductionist views of human sexuality are juxtaposed with the
incredible variety of the human experience, which exposes and
undermines artificial labels and classifications.

During Coming Out Week, we are afforded a precious opportunity
to educate ourselves about the issues and debates shaping the LGBT
community. Why do some LGBT people refer to themselves as queer?
What does transgendered mean? Is bisexuality just a case of chronic
indecisiveness, or a legitimate expression of sexual
preference?

By conversing together, all students, straight and queer, can
begin to eliminate the ignorance and bigotry that routinely lead to
hate crimes and other tragic acts of violence and brutality.

According to the United States Student Association, sexual
orientation is the third most common bias that motivates a violent
crime. As long as there are acts of manifest ignorance aimed at
delegitimizing and terrorizing queer communities, there is a
pressing need for events like Coming Out Week, which provide people
of all sexual orientations the opportunity to share experiences and
gain mutual understanding.

In the end, Coming Out Week should be considered an exercise in
“Coming In,” as it pushes a marginalized community into
the public sphere and provides individuals who might otherwise be
ostracized with a space to celebrate their identities.

Gaudy display of pride does nothing to raise
awareness
CON: Celebration of lifestyle should remain in
community; plea for approval hypocritical

  Ben Shapiro Shapiro is a second-year
philosophy student bringing reason to the masses. E-mail him at
[email protected].

Click Here for more articles by Ben Shapiro

No one cares. No one wants to know if you’re gay or
straight. No one cares whether you like men or women. No one needs
a gigantic banner over Westwood Boulevard in honor of Coming Out
Week.

But people start caring when sexual status is forced down their
throat, so to speak. People start becoming angry when a gay youth
decides that every single person has to know that his proclivities
run on the statistically-unusual side.

If someone wants to play for the other team, does a total
stranger find this information vital? Is Coming Out Week supposed
to be some gigantic important ritual vital to everyone’s
life? If someone wants to come out, does everyone really need to
know about it?

The idea that Coming Out Week is supposed to provide a forum for
people to reveal their sudden propensity for the Village People is
laughable. There are already numerous lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender student groups. Places have been set up to fulfill the
needs of the closet-exiting student. Do those who seek their place
in rainbowdom truly need banners, flags and bumper stickers to feel
good about themselves?

Coming Out Week is not a place for education. It does not
“raise awareness.” Awareness of the LGBT community is
already extremely prevalent on college campuses.

If college students are not aware of the gay community, they
must be catatonic. Gay propaganda saturates universities. Not a day
goes by at UCLA that students miss a flyer, a chalk scrawl or an
article in the Bruin discussing homosexuality. There are posters on
Bruin Walk, Ten Percent magazines in distribution posts and rainbow
flags flying from buildings.

But what about those who believe in the immorality of the LGBT
community? Or those who would commit hate crimes? Doesn’t
Coming Out Week cater to them as well?

Hmm … no. Those who would commit hate crimes are hardly the
types who would sit in on a forum about “queer issues”
and take notes. And Coming Out Week would hardly appeal to
those who believe and have every right to believe in the immorality
of homosexuality.

And the rest of us just don’t give a damn. Coming Out Week
is about as relevant as “Vegetarian Week.”Â If
someone worships vegetables, fine. But don’t try to take
away big, juicy hamburgers from everyone else.

If LGBT individuals want to have a Coming Out Week, they should
do it in the privacy of their community. Do they really expect
everyone to cheer and give a standing ovation when they announce
their sexual orientation? When some guy who sits next to you in
class suddenly has a rainbow sticker on his backpack, does he
expect you to say “you da man?”

Coming Out Week is purely egoistic. Anyone who participates in
Coming Out Week obviously wants to set themselves apart from the
general college community. It’s an obvious statement, like
wearing a button reading “I’m Joe, and I’m
gay.” Well, whoop-de-do! That made such a difference in my
life!

Coming Out Week is about as tasteless as running around
screaming “I love masturbating with pictures of naked
women!” Well, buddy, go home and enjoy yourself. The same
holds true with the gay community. If a guy wears a shirt reading
“Rear Entrance Only,” people say “let him do
whatever he wants, but make him keep it to himself.” There is
a reason there’s no “Masturbation Week.” And
Coming Out Week is just as irrelevant.

The truth is that the gay community is not asking for tolerance
from the general populace. They are not asking for acceptance. They
are asking for approval. They want everyone straight to
congratulate them and tell them that homosexuality is just as good
as heterosexuality.

This plea for approval is hypocritical, especially because of
the widespread disdain for the heterosexual community among some
LGBT individuals. Many of those in the gay community picture
themselves as “freedom fighters,” looking to end the
reign of “discriminatory preconceived notions and
ideas,” as the Transgender Issues Panel of 1995 put it
(“University
Needs to Address Harassment, Discrimination,” Daily
Bruin, News, April 23).

If the gay community is not looked upon with delight, it surely
can’t be that they are doing anything wrong. It must be
that millions of people all around the world are the victims of
“preconceived notions.”

The gay community is free to believe that. But in its search for
approval, the gay community could easily cause a far less passive
view among the public by pushing too hard.

With events like “Coming Out Week,” the real
question becomes: if the gay community needs the approval of the
general populace, doesn’t it have far deeper problems than
can be solved with a flashy show of queer pride?