The Heterosexual Community

[poliphilo]

Some Diddy-biddy on the BBC News channel just asked an interviewee how something or other would affect the heterosexual community.  The what? 

I'm a heterosexual. How come I never heard of this community before? Why don't they send me the newsletter? Why don't I get invited to meetings? Where's my club badge? 

Who's our convenor? Peter Stringfellow?  Katie Price?

I want to get out and meet my fellow-heterosexuals. I want to take tea with them. I want to discuss all the pressing concerns we have in common.

What lazy, nonsenical stuff all this talk of "community" is.  The Muslim community, the Chinese community, the gay community, the black community: none of these really exists.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Heterosexuals form the majority, but not a community. Community implies intimacy, closeness. Communities are necessarily small. A community consisting of millions of people is a contradiction in terms.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I am from the US and I completely agree with you. I undertand the purpose of "community" as bringing people together. The separation of groups called "communities" based on religion, skin color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else is divisive in the extreme. One only has to look at the usage of the word "diversity" in the USA to understand what I am talking about.
I live in a true community, a neighborhood that is very diverse, multi-racial, varied religions (or non-religion), sexual orientations, income categories, ethnicity, etc. We, who live here "where everybody knows your name" are blessed with the lowest incidence of crime in the entire city.
I guess you would say I am "pro-diversity", and anti "divided communities".

[sculptruth.livejournal.com]

Well put, I should read the comments before I comment, heh. But I wonder if it's possible to have both?

I've lived in large cities all my life, and I've been rewarded the benefit of living in diversified areas flooded with immigrants, gay, bi, transgendered, city-born natives, and American Indians all mixed up together. The idea of communities to bring minorities together exists, but also communities are made of all these different people living together. Finding common ground is important, whether it's a shared history or shared future.

But what happens in the smaller, more rural areas of this country where that diversity and tolerance thins out and often disappears? This is, I believe, where the idea of community (for minorities) began, and where it might still be necessary.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been asking myself what my actual community consists of and have decided I belong to several. One is the local community- which is at least 50% Muslim, another is the online community which is multinational and multi-everything-else- and a third is the community of my real-life friends and family which is a real old hotch-potch of folks.