{"id":48,"date":"2005-03-12T11:48:46","date_gmt":"2005-03-12T15:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/03\/12\/food-for-thought\/"},"modified":"2005-03-12T11:48:46","modified_gmt":"2005-03-12T15:48:46","slug":"food-for-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/03\/12\/food-for-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Food for Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So, yesterday on my commute home I came up with a hypothesis regarding the gay community in Boston. Thoughout the United States, gay men from Boston have, perhaps, the absolute worst reputation for being snobby, aloof, distant and unfriendly. I can’t tell you how many times, after chatting on-line with somebody from another part of the country, I’ve been told that I don’t seem like a typical Bostonian because I’m friendly.<\/P>
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I’ve never really given it much thought before because I was raised in Massachusetts and have spent almost all of my adult life in Boston (excluding 6 months in San Francisco*). This is pretty much the only gay community I’ve really known and it’s always seemed rather normal to me. Plus, when I’ve visited other cities like Washington, DC, New York City or Philadelphia, i’ve noticed no difference.<\/P>
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But yesterday’s commute made me realize something. I got on the red-line at Harvard Square. It was an hour before rush hour, but the train was filling up. I sat down and noticed the guy sitting next to me had a rainbow flag on his messenger bag. As the train was was be-bopping through the tunnel, the man across from me took the latest issue of the Advocate out of a Coop shopping bag (for my breeder-readers, the Advocate is a gay magazine) and started reading it.<\/P>
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As I continued playing voyeur, I noticed two guys a few seats to my left (one seated, one standing). The fellow standing was affectionately close to the to the seated man and kept leaning in close to his ear to talk and listen. Although there were no pink trianges or rainbow flags on either of them, their intimacy (and my oft-times defective gaydar) made the assumption that they were a couple.<\/P>
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And that’s when it hit me. Maybe the reason that Boston’s gay community comes off so aloof and disinterested is because, well, gays are everywhere here? I mean, I suppose if you’re gay and live in Omaha, Nebraska, you may feel some sort of kinship if you see another gay person around. If gay people are so few and far between, I can see how a person would be willing to do almost anything to connect with people with something in common. But here, a single day doesn’t go by where I don’t see local gays on the street, at work, on the train or on local TV (from news anchors like Randy Price and weatherman like David Brown and David Epstein to local congressman and senators like Jarrett Barrios and Barney Frank)<\/P>
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But in Boston, where gay marriage is legal, gay adoption has happened for decades, public schools have gay\/straight alliances, and you have protections in housing and employment, gays feel like (almost) equal citizens. I mean, we had gay neighborhoods like the South End, Jamaica Plain and, most recently, parts of Dorchester. But overal, like almost every other neighborhood, the gay community isn’t really isolated in gay ghettos. Gay people live in large numbers in every single neighborhood in the city (including working-class neighborhoods like East and South Boston). Gay people hang out with straight friends at straight clubs here (and straight friends occasionally join gay friends at gay bars). <\/P>
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Don’t get me wrong. Things aren’t perfect here. And this isn’t a defense of rudeness or cruelty (which also exists here…and elsewhere). But the Bostonian in me (gay or straight) doesn’t find it rude to not say hello to a stranger (that’s just the New England thing to do). I just wonder if the large number of gay people (and our assmiliation into the city at large), makes us less likely bond with somebody just for being another gay person?<\/P>
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Thoughts?<\/P>
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 <\/P>
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*In San Francisco, the gay community is so large that I didn’t notice people being overly friendly (similar to Boston). The big difference there was that all contact that did take place seemed to be for sex only. And the minute you weren’t interested in sex, any interest in you (for conversation or friendship) was over.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, yesterday on my commute home I came up with a hypothesis regarding the gay community in Boston. Thoughout the United States, gay men from Boston have, perhaps, the absolute worst reputation for being snobby, aloof, distant and unfriendly. I can’t tell you how many times, after chatting on-line with somebody from another part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}