reading reactions 1/12

I would like to respond to this ever-present idea of homophobia. It is my and the authors opinion that if you even associate yourself with someone who is a homosexual your own status in society is lowered because it is common to be perceived as a homosexual as well. Our society is set up so that we try and sheild ourselves from people that are different and try and "fool" ourselves into thinking that everyone is like us (heterosexual) unless they tell us otherwise, in which case they will be ostracized from the present heterosexual community. This helps to further distance the status of the heterosexuals from the homosexuals. The fear of even being considered a homosexual causes people to further themselves from homosexuals. In my experiences people of the same sex (I can only speak for men) often distance themselves from other men physically and emotionally so that there is not even an option for them to be considered homosexual by anyone else or to even start raising the questions about themselves for fear of what will naturally follow from society.
In the past few days I have experienced this exact situation. In spending my time with my friends I noticed that the word "gay" was used to enforce a negative attribute of that person (i.e. That jacket he has on is gay; or an action he did was gay). The action itself was bad and thus the person associated with the action is also bad. This perpetuates the stereotype. With the aspects of men distancing themselves we were all friends but when one person hugged another unexpectedly it was then found offensive eventhough there was not sexual intention what so ever.
To shift gears a little there was a passage when the question was posed, though I have structured it for myself, Are you white first or a man first? My response is that I would like to be classified as neither but if either one of those attributes were considered lower than any other I would believe that it is the man attribute. Because eventhough you are a man you could be homosexual,transgendered, or transexual which would lower your man status to a white gay man for example. It is not as easy to change the fact that I am white and it is near impossible to be labeled as anything else inspite of surgery or whatever else. I belive that is societies eyes I am white first because that is higher up on the food chain so to speak then a man.
There was a lot to talk about in these readings but these are some of the main points I saw that I felt I needed to speak about.