An excellent post, today by Charlie Glickman on what it means when we use the term “Family Values”. It started over the story of Leisha Hailey getting kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane when she kissed her girlfriend. Now I do not know the style or intensity of the kiss, but I am sure that far more intense and erotic behavior has been displayed between heterosexual couples on Southwest and probably every other airline in the country. We do not have the term “Mile High Club” for nothing.
As it seems to be described, “Leisha Hailey and her girlfriend Nina Garduno shared a few light kisses on a Southwest flight when a stewardess told them this was a “family” airline and that kissing was not okay…” Now possibly that is a slanted view, but what it points to is that we ALLOW the louder, narrower point of view to control us. Someone complained to the steward. I do not know how it was approached or what she said, but someone felt that they had a right to say that two women should not kiss in public.
The other event that Mr. Glickman mentions is when Trails End Farmers Market in London, Ontario, Canada demanded that the owner of a booth remove their transgendered employees or close the booth. The reasoning behind the demand was “this was a family-friendly business and they didn’t want that sort of ‘population’ in their establishment and that they made people uncomfortable”, though the complaints of discomfort were not specified by the manager. Again, someone felt they had the right to demand that transgendered people could not be allowed in a public setting, and it was accepted.
Why is it we accept the complaint and challenge the behavior rather than accept the behavior and challenge the complaint? Why do we feel it right to ask, demand or even condone that people are forced to stop legal activity because a narrower mind complains? What does it mean to be “Family Friendly”, to have “Family Values”? Increasingly it seems to mean being bigoted, narrow minded and cowardly, and those are definately not my family values.
The Eroticist
Horrible, simply horrible, on both counts.
“Family values” and “family-friendly” seem to be weird categories, even in the kink and gay communities. People seem to use them to mean whatever the heck they want them to mean, and they twist at will. These are but two examples. How friendly were these situations to the families of the people so penalized ostracized, for one thing?
Every year following the Pride Parade in San Francisco, they hold a Leather Alley fair, which is supposed to be an outreach opportunity for the kink community. In the past, there has apparently been a good bit of playing, as well as outreach booths, as far as I know. The Society of Janus has always played a prominent role.
This year, however, Janus decided to skip its usual outreach booth in favor of only holding flogging demos. This wouldn’t be so strange except that they claimed they did it because the Pride organizers told them they wanted the Janus presence to be more “family-friendly” than in the past because kids attend. They wanted things toned down from the way they’d been in the past.
Hello?? How the h-e-double-toothpicks are flogging demos more “family friendly” than an outreach booth?
I have no idea whose decision this was, and who got the incredibly bright idea that flogging was a better thing to put in front of children’s eyeballs than an outreach booth, but clearly it came from the geniuses [sic] on the current Janus board.
I certainly do not mean to say that the use of the term is limited to more radically conservative proponents. Flogging more “Family Friendly”? Difficult to understand. I would think that an intelligent and caring outreach to the public, whose experience and opinions of the kink community are all too often defined by mainstream media and sensationalistic news stories would be a far more friendly way to approach the situation. Plus it may give them tools to eventually answer the question, “Mommy, why was that man hitting that woman?”
I absolutely agree – which is why I’m mystified why they thought that a flogging demo was so “family friendly”.