Word: mathering
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...real scandal here lies not with the events at the Mather party but with their exploitation by members of the gay community and a number of Mather students--which quickly became divisive and hurtful. The problem is not so much the more general issue of homophobia but the persistent refusal to acknowledge that a mistake was made in linking Mather's exploding anti-homophobia campaign and the party incident...
...about the whole affair is that by jumping rashly into the fray, Defeat Homophobia dealt its cause a worse blow than any vicious homophobe could have dared hope. Worse, what followed the incident seems to many to be a concerted effort by Defeat Homophobia and a prominent group of Mather students to obscure the issue, and to prevent discussion of the actual incident around which they had built their publicity machine...
Greatly assisted by three grossly misleading Crimson articles, which treated the incident as a straightforward occurrence of homophobic violence and implied that Mather House was thus divided only between enlightened citizens and petty bigots, Defeat Homophobia was able to turn a bizarre and unresolved charge of gay-on-straight harassment into a moral crusade, its alleged perpetrator into a martyr and the Mather debate into a purge of alleged homophobes: anyone who felt the incident to be an inappropriate cause celebre for even the most worthy cause...
...community's simultaneous exploitation of the Sunday incident and efforts to distract Mather discourse from any discussion of it raised serious questions about Defeat Homophobia's judgement, if not its true dedication to tolerance and education. In trying to raise our consciousness, it wounded and alienated a large group of Mather students, the friends of the visiting 17-year-old harassee. The tone of the debate at the ensuing Mather House meeting revealed a callous, mean-spirited side of what should be a caring, empathetic desire for tolerance and understanding in campus life. Their thoughtless handling of the situation...
...present anti-homophobe crusade at Mather would not have happened without the catalyst of 19 February: Defeat Homophobia explicitly cited it at the Kiss-in and manipulated it to turn the subsequent Mather House meeting into a soapbox for speeches against the harassment of homosexuals. Defeat Homophobia talks out of both sides of its mouth: at Mather, the incident on that Sunday and more general concerns about homophobia are "completely unrelated" (as they should be), but for outside consumption the incident of "homophobic violence" that night is the rallying-point for community outrage. In as many days, three Crimson pieces...