(06-24-2015, 01:54 AM)Tseren Wrote: There's no point in "looking equal" when we still have so many legislative, medical, social, mental health, education, employment, family, and public safety needs ect. in which we are being treated unequally.
This is the kicker, and why the "but you don't need to segregate yourselves!" posts are so damaging over the long run. We're still not equal yet - not in the eyes of the law, or the general populace, or the insurance companies, or the medical professionals, or in so many other areas of life that are essential for healthy living. Because we are not yet equal, we need safe spaces where we can feel like we ARE equal, or at the very least among people who can understand our unique situations.
Removing these safe spaces does not magically somehow make us more equal in the eyes of so many people who see us as freaks and monsters. It only makes us invisible, which itself is a problem of its own and is not at all a solution to any of the above listed problems. Thus, these safe spaces are here to stay, at least for awhile yet, until the day no LGBTQA individual is considered special or remarkable in any way because it is simply an accepted fact of life that people are different.
Let me repeat that - until no one on the whole planet considers an individual in the alphabet soup to be unusual or worthy of note, we are still not yet equal. The end goal of equality is for your sexual orientation or gender identity to simply be a universally accepted facet of your person, one about as noteworthy as your hair or eye color (though much more difficult to change). It should be abundantly obvious to anyone who lives in this modern world that we are nowhere near that goal. So let it be. We still have a lot of work to do, and creating these safe spaces isn't hurting anyone.