In My Tribe: Gay Culture, Traditionalists and "The New Wave" [View all]

[WillParkinson]

In My Tribe: Gay Culture, Traditionalists and "The New Wave"

<Big Snip>

Wilson says that the urge to join is deeply ingrained in humans. It is in our nature and, as with being gay, we don’t have a choice in the matter. Joining tribes is an innate urge we all possess, going back, according to Wilson’s speculation, six million years, to a time before our ancestral line split into the chimpanzee and human lines.

Tribes can represent all levels of significance. LA Dodgers fans are a tribe, with the tribal connection providing identity, something to cheer (and fight) for, something to get excited about, a sense of solidarity against the “enemy”, and just that important sense of belonging to something beyond the individual. San Francisco Giants fans are a tribe. As are evangelical Christians, liberals, conservatives, heavy metal fans, fraternities, gangs of all types, obsessive Glee fans, and a vast array of other groupings. A family is a tribe in a very real sense. And the gay community is a tribe.

The gay community has joined together into this tribe because we share something basic and important that non-gays don’t share. We understand each other, our joys, our fears, and our very natures. In a world that has historically been unwelcoming, the gay tribe provides comfort, camaraderie, and the ability to relax and be ourselves. On a group level, it gives us the opportunity to band together to seek and demand respect and equal rights. For many of us, it has provided the key component of our very identity.

Gay kids have historically grown up feeling disconnected from their peers. Until recently, the realization of being gay was generally accompanied by an intense feeling of isolation. Those of us born before 1980 or even later had no internet, no singing gay couples on network TV, no cable channels on which to see anything beyond expressions of white bread middle class values, no gay novels in the high school library, etc. There was no one to talk to. Everyone was straight, and we didn’t dare share our feelings with any of them.

But eventually young gay kids moved out into the world, going to college or living on their own. The desperate need to meet others like themselves led to exploring and reaching out, and finally they were able to hook up with other strangers in that strange land. And they discovered that there was an entire community of men who liked men. They discovered the tribe.

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This is a few paragraphs from a much longer article. It's definitely worth the read.

http://www.afterelton.com/opinion/2012/06/my-tribe-gay-culture-traditionalists-and-new-wave