Culture Shock

If I may share a personal experience, I always feel a bit of a conflict when I go home for the holidays. Being from central Pennsylvania, I often experience a small amount of culture shock when I return home from New York or my previous residence in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I wouldn’t exactly say that the people in central PA are cultural troglodytes compared to my peers in New York or Michigan, but I definitely set my expectations high for my friends and family in terms of political correctness and sensitivity around issues of social identity.

So the first incident happened while I was driving to a gay club with my friends, who are all hetero-identified. One of my closest friends, K, commented that she was glad another friend, A, was going with us to the club because, “That way [K] won’t be the only dyke-y looking one there.” I was more than a little jarred by K’s language, but not as much as A who was also in the car at the time and was far from happy with the comparison. After seeing A’s reaction, K apologized for offending her, and I didn’t say anything about K’s choice of language because the atmosphere was already uncomfortable enough. At least, that was how I rationalized my decision at the time.

The other, much less incendiary comment that I heard while at home was made by my older step-brother. Truthfully, I don’t remember what warranted the remark (football?), but he called someone or something on the television “queer”. I didn’t say anything, and no one else seemed to react, though I think my mother was a little uncomfortable if only because I was in the room. My lack of response, I think, came from my natural aversion to confrontation as well as the fact that I don’t know my step-brother very well since I only see him one or two days a year.

So these are both clearly examples of individual-level, vocal acts of homophobia, though I would hesitate to call either my friend or my step-brother actively “homophobic” since I know them fairly well. As I continue to think about these comments, I’m increasingly unnerved by the lack of reactions from the people who were around me at the time. But, of course, I did not show much of a reaction either, so is it really my place to admonish my friends and family? I guess, I don’t think I should always have to defend myself, and I consider my peers to be at a level where they should be able to confront or intervene in the overt instances as well. For example, my mother has told me about how she will not put up with homophobic language at her office, and she will even throw my name out as a reason why she is personally upset by certain words. Nonetheless, I realize this is an area for me to work on. I think that if I was to vocally express how such language affects me, like my mother does at work, it would provide more of an incentive for my friends and family to confront instances both when I am present and when I’m not. In fact, it makes me wonder how often my friends or my extended family say things when I’m not around, and if they are reining it in while I’m in the room or the car or whatever.

Taking my weekend at home as a whole, I guess I feel a little uncomfortable when I’m out of my usual, safe, very gay and gay-friendly milieu. The context of homophobia is certainly worth considering when looking at one’s decision to confront or not to confront certain overt acts.