Phyric victory?

Last week, on the same day that Obama won the election (if you disregard the time difference), we won the Phillie's pub quiz. However, all was not as peachy as one would like. In a room filled with Obama supporters, I experienced what was the worst homophobia I have yet to encounter in Korea.

First off, the quizzes are hosted by the previous week's winning team. I've won once before, though I missed having to host as I was in Japan. Two weeks ago the winners were two women and a gay man. They wrote a quiz, and just like all those straight white guys in their thirties who usually win and write the quizzes, they wrote about stuff they know.

I can't even tell you how much homophobic heckling there was. One team even named themselves "Popular Culture does not mean gay." What really got me about all this is that the quiz was no more gay than it could have been considered girly. Either way, lads, letting out your homophobic sides because you're sore losers is beyond the pale. The stupid thing about all the complaints was that the quiz wasn't actually that inaccessible - we only actually won by half a point (which, embarrassingly might have been my ability to identify Justin Timberlake's voice in a ten second clip, something I will never live down.) Plus, we've been playing their games for weeks and have never complained about the endless sports categories (figure skating has yet to be included) and music that none of our team members listen to. When we don't know, we lose. No need to get all arsey and insulting to the writers.

So, the louder the hecklers got, the louder and more lesbian our team got (and we aren't even all lesbians.) Solidarity - no way were we letting a gay man be heckled without some sort of response. At the end, we won the bottle of Jack and everyone celebrated - we even shared with the second place team, as some of use have gotten friendly in the past weeks. My coworkers showed up just as my teammates were going home, so I ended up staying. One girl and I were chatting about the Obama win and that Prop. 8 passed and discussing how sad that was on a day that was the culmination of civil right victories.

Shawn went home and the next thing I know, there are three arseholes in my face telling me that we were acting entitled to discuss Prop. 8 rather than celebrating Obama's win. It's interesting that three straight white men would feel that was an acceptable comment to make to two bisexual women, one of whom is black. I told them off and had the bartender chuck them out. On top of anything else, part of my anger was to have to deal with homophobia and assholery from people who supported Obama, people I would normally consider allies.

It sort of spoiled both our win and Obama's for me.

So, tonight's quiz has a section on equality and civil rights. I wonder if they'll heckle that?