Got a few PMs, gist was, well that's nice, you're big and mean-looking and they leave you alone, how about an average, not-threatening looking guy with no combat training, got any advice there, Sarge?
Guess that might of sounded smug, it wasnt meant to, just my intense contempt for cowards that only pick lopsided fights that they think they can't lose, or yell stuff from cars, surrounded by their buddies. But it got me thinking, what about guys who for whatever reason get tagged as gay? What are they supposed to do?
When I was doing my research on gaybashing, I asked this cop friend of mind if they kept stats on victims and perpetrators, and what percentage of incidents got called in, resolved, where did they happen etc. She said yeah, they actually did.
Figuring for a statistical under-reporting in general, the perpetrators tended to be young, male, traveling in a pack, liquored up. They came from the whole class spectrum, college boys as well as rednecks with pickup trucks, and not at all were they religious or even politicaly conservative. To my chagrin, though not surprise, all 5 branches of the Armed Forces were well represented.
The victims were not necessarily all gay, they ranged in age from schoolkids to old men, and they were not necessarily by themselves in an isolated situation. Most of the incidents were not violent, usually name-calling, but what struck me was overwhelmingly, there were 2 kinds, harrassment of men perceived as gay in areas known to be the "gay neighborhood", and the other type was schoolkids, in school, on school grounds or coming/going to school.
I live in a rural area a couple hours drive from a mid-size city with a distinct though not huge gay scene, near the college in town, and like most "gay areas" its mostly liberal straights but gay people are open and therefore more visible. There's a few bars and nightclubs though it ain't Mardi Gras or anything. An average big city.
The vast majority involve guys going specifically TO the gay neighborhood, even if they live 100 miles away, get drunk, and drive by the bars (they always seem to know where they are) and jeer at the queers.
Or you have the high school kid, getting his ass taped or his bookbag thrown down the stairs, etc.
One statistic blew me right away: though there's a fair number of ethnic minorities here, and they are recent enough that their presence causes tensions (including a lot of head-scarf wearing Muslims), the overwhelming majority of bias crimes, proportionately, are directed at gay men, and it has gotten worse in the past few years, what with the antigay marriage bills and general raised profile of this image.
So that means if you are a gay man, you have a much better chance of being a victim of a hate crime than a black man, Latino, anyone, even though most gay men ARE NOT READILY IDENTIFIABLE.
We have gotten into this issue over on the Gay and Masculine thread, back and forth, often enough I've come to wonder if there arent 2 distinct groups if homosexual men, often pretty hostile to each other. Not getting into it here, but it seems to me that "sterotypical" gay men, or whatever term you want to use, are often so alienated from the traditional tenets of "manliness" that they reject all of it, don't watch sports, don't hunt, fish, etc. Often they have been presecuted by such men that conform to the societal decree of what is masculine, and have something like post-traumatic stress syndrome from growing up as a boy who dont fit with the other boys, and part of that is often they won't have anything to do with physical aggression of any kind, jus shut down in the face of it.
Now I'll likely get in trouble here again, so I'll say right out I am not equating these guys with women, NOT THAT THERES ANYTHING WRONG WITH BEING A WOMAN, etc.
But in the past, women were always taught if they were attacked, just dont fight back, it'lll make them angrier, basically untaught the most basic instinct we have, the one of self-preservation. The thinking on that has changed, and a lot of woman have learned to tap into their own reserves of aggression, found that even if you're 5'3'' and 90 pounds, you can still hold off someone way bigger, the main thing is believeing yourself you're capable, and you do this by..doing it. Training, just like soldiier, to get totally in touch with your physical side.
I guess that is exactly what people expect an ex-soldier to say, recommend combat training for all, but I would respond to that that if you been trained fom a young age to give up on that ability in yourself, and you face a better-than-average chance of facing violence, it is only realistic to try and face what you might have to face, and un-train yourself. Because actually, most of it is mental, like 95%.
No, I am not putting the responsibility for the violence on the victim, of course not. But expecting law enforcement to do it all is also unrealistic, usually they dont come on the scene till after the fact, and they cant be everywhere at once.
Bottom line, if some drunk bunch of frat boys thought about jumping some little guy by the alley door of Club Monkey or whatever, but heard of a few incidents of that kind that led to the ER, and not for the little guy either, more of them might just keep on driving, keep their thoughts where they belong, to themselves, to say nothing of the reassuring aspect of this for the mental security of guys who are still closeted from that kind of fear
