Rock hard in a hard place
There used to be a club in Portland, Oregon, called The City. When you walked in, one of the first things you saw was a big board with the club's rules of conduct. One of the rules, (G), I think, was, "No requesting Guns 'n' Roses". Somewhere down around (M) or (N) was, "No heterosexual conduct!"
It used to piss people off, to be certain. "At least," I told one friend, once upon a time, "they have the decency to post a rule." Fifty miles south, in Salem, one could be kicked out of a bar for being presumed gay.
In this sense, it's easy enough to fix the problem. Simply post a rule that says, "No ogling, flirting, or other sexual harassment." Even a guy like me would steer clear of that; when a situation gets to that point, I don't want to be anywhere near it.
Anyway, a digression. Imagine a trendy heterosexual guy who notices the local fad of wearing red bandanas. Trying to fit in, he dresses up in ratty jeans and a white t-shirt, pulls on his Docs, and stuffs a newly-purchased red bandana in his back left pocket.
So he walks down to the local bar and ....
(Anyone? Anyone?)
I always adore the expressions I see when an unsuspecting heterosexual walks into a gay bar. But I'm even more puzzled at the people who don't seem to realize where they are. No, no, I'm not mistaking it for heterosexuals simply being comfortable in a queer environment. I'm talking about those people who are appalled and angry when someone tries to chat them up.
So our unfortunate trendy boy walks down to the local bar and ends up with a broken jaw after he attacked some guy for propositioning him.
Maybe next time he won't wear a flag that says he likes a fist up his ass.
My point is that sometimes certain forms of discrimination are helpful. Generally speaking, though, these are observational. In practice, such discrimination becomes segregation, and while this is a bad idea, the flip-side isn't that great, either.
There was one gay bar in Salem, and I have long forgotten its name. It was a fun place where they played "Time Warp" at least as much as "The Macarena", which was some comfort to my soul and ears. I hate "The Macarena".
Anyway, it was the kind of place where heterosexual women liked to go because they could drink and dance and talk to people and have fun without anyone trying to pick them up. And the bartenders were accustomed to this, playing a little game with the patrons. If the bartender presumed you gay, you got two pink straws in your drink. Heterosexuals got two green straws, and bisexuals, obviously, got one of each.
Nothing close to paradise remains there very long. As the place became more and more popular with heterosexual women, they started dragging their boyfriends along. And at first it was amusing when some random het realized what the two pink straws in his glass meant; it was always the men who reacted poorly.
But by the time I left Salem, it was no longer a gay bar. It wasn't a management shift. Rather, heterosexuals kept bringing more and more of their friends, and this was Oregon in the middle of a civil rights fight. Over time, the heterosexuals complained so much about the gays and made the place so damnably unpleasant that the gays started looking around for another bar. Eventually, the place closed down and reopened as a restaurant of some sort.
And that may be the way of business, but I think it's a damn shame that people can't find a place to escape certain pressures. When it comes to men and women, the general trend is that men are much more aggressive in pursuing potential sex partners. And that's problematic in the sense that there are plenty of men who feel "victimized" by the idea that women—or anyone—should be able to go about their business without being hit on.
It's one of the reasons I so enjoy watching heterosexual men get upset when they wander into a gay event and get hit on. Generally speaking, the ones who react badly—who get angry instead of politely declining, for instance—are the ones who just can't stand being treated the way they treat women.
In the end, it's a tough situation. Segregation isn't a good idea, but neither is the idea that one's masculinity entitles him to separate rules of conduct. I'd like to think that not every place and situation in this world is a place for chasing tail, but, hey, fine with me: Let the men use the facility, and who cares if they ever act decently, right?
The anti discrimination legislation is both mandiated as nessary by international bodies like the Human rights commission but further more WE demand it as a furtherance to the ideal that all people shall be treated equally. For instance Australia was the first place in the world to give women the right to stand for public office and amongst the first (second i think, the brits just beat us from memory) to give women the vote. 