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HIGH GEAR

A Need for A Cleveland Community Concept

No one would deny that there is a thriving, significant gay population and sub-culture in the Greater Cleveland area. One can perceive it physically. Numerous bars exist that cater to all individual tastes. The region boasts of a gay theatre and soon-to-come bookstore. Organizations like CGF, Dignity, and MCC, and publications like High Gear continue to carry gay issues to the doorstep of the community-at-large. Yet, for the most part, the Cleveland scene appears to be a chaotic hodgepodge of splintered interests and views that have little constructive direction. Everyone is literally into their own thing. The bars are out for profits; the organizations are often so in-group minded that they lack viable communication with their peers, and closed, private clioues abound on the social scene making it difficult for newcomers to make friends.

Cleveland desparately needs a community concept. We need to stop playing tug-of-war with each other and accomplish a mutually beneficial meeting of the minds. First, more attempts need to be made to bridge the gaps among minorities within the gay population. Many "straight" gays and "butch" people have little empathy for drag persons or effeminate gays (and vice-versa). Such self-imposed polarization will never result in solidarity. Let's stop the criticism and unfounded accusations and at least attempt to talk to each other at the bars, in the organizations and through the newspaper. We have as much to learn about one another as straights do of us.

Next, for reasons of self-sufficiency and community consciousness, we need to support each other's enterprises. Let's stop attacking the bars per se, and confront the social problems that we ourselves create in that environment. Likewise, it does no good to criticize a particular organizational leader who is not performing his job in a manner suitable to another's expectations. The bars, baths, and theatre can do their share also by 1) permitting distribution of gay newspapers and other community announcements of gay public interest and 2) providing financial backing to community endeavors advertising in gay publications, donating food to gay picnics, etc. In short, for a community concept to work, gays need to support other gays.

Instead of badmouthing Cleveland's gay scene and waiting for someone else to improve it, let's make constructive suggestions to the bar owners, the theatre people, or to the newspaper. Now that summer is here, picnics, parties, and potluck dinners can be planned by either the organizations or independent individuals who can use gay publications to advertise their events. Improvement of our cities' social activities can only come through the initiative of its' gay citizens. If we don't like the social scene, we should change it.

In the sphere of our individual political rights, these times of economic recession make jobs scarce and employed gays sesceptible to discriminatory firing practices. Anyone who loses a job unfairly should contact High Gear or the community center so that efforts may be made to have that person re-instated. Also, those knowing of employers who are blatantly prejudiced in their hiring policies toward gays can contact relevant agencies who can act in the future interest of all gays.

Fred Schenk suggests you DRINK

Stroh's and Miller High Life

June, 1975

Recently, the MCC people were harrassed by police for not possessing a party permit for a public dance a violation that is not equally enforced in the straight community. Such behavior should first be well-publicized and then followed up through meetings with the chief of police and other pertinent personnel. In the area of civil rights, what happens to one of us, affects us all. But we cannot deal with injustices unless we, as a community, are aware of them.

Finally, we can all help each other most by getting in touch with ourselves. A community's self-image is only as positive as its individuals' self-conceptions are. Let's show gays who are just coming out that there are people prepared to provide sound, perceptive ears to their problems, and viable vehicles for their attempts to come to grips with their own sexuality.

Cleveland's gays have many rallying points. certainly can act as a forum for all of the cities gays. High Gear Literary input of any kind will help synthesize a community's picture of itself. The Cleveland Gay Federation acts as a liason between both straight and gay communities. And the upcoming GEAR Center will provide medical, psychological, and legal services to the gay population-at-large. Cleveland can be as together as any city in this country, but not through apathy or a lack of concern. If we really wish

to make the gay life here fulfilling and exciting, we all have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to do something to make that happen. Everyone can contribute in some small way. Communication is of the utmost importance. Cleveland, your time has come!

Cruise Blues

Virtually all Americans today are unwittingly oppressed by sexism and are generally doing nothing about it. To be sure, all societies, now and in the past, have established ideals of human beauty, however only in our technocracy are people reminded daily of their failure to conform to the western ideal of physical perfection. Through the media we are threatened with inadequacy "hour after hour" if we do not comply with Wall Street's standards of loveliness. Although many of us who consider ourselves enlightened are quick to attack sexism, we are as eager as everyone else to enslave ourselves to it. We are all overt sexists although we pretend not to be.

Nowhere is our hypocrisy more evident than in the ritual of cruising. Most of us claim that we are primarily attracted to people with splendid personalities and that since "beauty is only skin-deep," we are willing to let it play second fiddle in our social interactions. The truth is, we would often rather be intimate with the shallowest "golden warrior" than cruise a "featherweight" with the combined charisma of Johny Carson and John F. Kennedy. "Fats," "fems, " "fish," "oldies" and other so-called "uglies" rarely make it in our Hollywood scenario. Everyone knows that talent alone does not score a statuesque athlete. Just as most of us are guilty of acceding to sexist competition, most of us are doubly guilty of not playing by sexist rules. The prime assumption of us big-time cruisers is that we are average to above average in looks and fairly personable. feel wronged and insulted when we are rejected by someone whome we have deemed worthy of being cruised by us. "all is fair in love," good sportsmanship is consistently lacking in sexist contests. Some of us are poor losers and traumatize ourselves weekly, if not at the bars, then at parties, picnics, conferences or anywhere else we cruise for complete and honorable affection.

Since

We

Fine figures evolve with hours and years of push-, pulland sit-ups, plus other classic rigors. Bar stars, perhaps wrongly but understandably, protect their investment against freeloading "plain folks. Equal returns is the name of the game. Sexist criteria have banned many broken-hearted candidates from Olympus. The tragedy of tunas with good taste is too familiar. Some of us scramble to villify the bar scene or each other for love lost. Personal injury is predictably camouflaged in progressive polemics or plenty of martyrdom. A good deal of our antibarism really stems from sour grapes.

To be sure, sexism is wicked, but before we ban beef sales at the bars, we ought to standardize our own philosophical weights and measures. In short, if you have not happily cruised the plainest kind person you know, don't cast the first stone at your "sexist" brothers and sisters.