Talking Points 3

Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community By: Dennis Carlson

Quote 1: While public schools have long been viewed by progressive educators as embryonic communities that should engage young people in building a democratic community of mutual support and respect, gay people have for the most part been made absent, invisible, and silent within this community and at the same time represented as the deviant and pathological "Other."

This quote really bothered me. I hate the last sentence where it says gay people for the most part have been made absent, invisibly, and silent within their community. This is the sad truth that gay people have been segregated even though they are the same as everybody else in this world. In a way my heart breaks the way it says made absent, silent and invisibly. In school there was a handful of gay people and they were all so scared to come out to everybody about it because of what people to think. I think that everybody deserves to live their own life however they want to. 

Quote 2: "Gay man are confirmed in their role as the Other- a bit silly, prone to emotional and hysterical outbursts, narcissistic, obsessed with sex and fancy clothes, and inhabiting an exotic and "decadent" life on the margins."

I don't like this quote because it labels gay people as something negative and I just feel that it is wrong to label them like this. 

Quote 3: "Within this worldview, 'real men' are separated from all women and from gay men. This is the reason why it is so important for many straight men to 'see' gay men as the Other, and this has been accomplished by understanding gay men as less than men, as feminized men, and as sissies."

I think that gay men and striaght men should not be segrated against each other because that will create a whole new problem in America. It will be like the race problem with blacks and whites. I dont think that gay men are less than men at all and they are not sissies. 


This article really bothered me. I do not agree with a lot of the things that Carlson had to say. One of my cousins is gay and he is very successful and I don't think that its right for gay men to be classified as 'sissies' or less than real men.