Homophobia - Why?

I think the ambiguity of sex roles is what really bothers straight men. I think it raises a lot of questions that require a great deal of thought, and the average way to deal with anything that challenges your most basic assuptions about your place in the world is to attack it.

there are a million texts that can go far deeper into the issue than I would go on ILE. If you really want to know more about gender role and sexuality there is more than enough material to keep you busy for awhile.

That, and as with all truly conservative beliefs, there's the underlying dogma that anything that doesn't fit in with a certain predetermined view of how the world should be is just wrong on principle.

massive misplaced sex-utopia envy: assumption that gay men = cheerfully prosmiscuous = endless brilliant sex (inc.sex w. ppl that wouldn't get the hata off) w/o any of the emotional negotiation-complication consequence-stuff het sex is stuck with >>> contorts into sour grapes on stilts

i agree my reason is totally not front-central of anyone's head or self-justification, far from it

Changing rooms at school could have an awful lot to do with this...

Secondly, homosexuality hasn't just arrived from mars: it has always been there, right in the heart of the family, right in the heart of everyone's sexual culture. You ronan and you pete have had (fleeting?) homo impulses: so have yr dad and yr mom, ronan. In order to be "ignorance" of this, there has to have cultural (and often personal) repression: the wiping over of their/ your feelings with received cultural judgments. In fact there HAS been cultural repression. Homophobia is FAR STRONGER than a kneejerk "fear of the unknown": and "fear of beingt penetrated" = response to repressed knowledge, ie NOT ignorance.

I don't object to your ignorance explanation as a part of a whole (ditto everyone else's: part of a complex whole zzzz)), I just think it's incredibly feeble as the Generating Impulse: it fails to explain why (eg) Hatred of Avocadoes isn't as intense as Homophobia.

Something worth fearing.

animal kingdom entirely full of queer activity cf Biological Exuberance (interestingly it's apparently fairly species specific: evidence of "cultural" "diversity"??)

instinctive hate = meaningless; hence download to "instinctive fear" which seems to mean more, but is I think a dubious cliché once you take it beyond "fear of heights; falling; fire", and these aren't universal. Instinctive has to be universal?

hence my suggestion of deepset envy, which i'm sticking with, as it is more hilarious

Later, painfully, I realised what an obnoxious indefensible prejudice this was , in fact issue of homosexuality was instrumental in becoming an apostate (no easy decision believe me). Perhaps someone can enlighten me why judaic-christian culture has been so rampantly homophobic?

I think he may be an exception to the general tendency. The hackneyed- but-true answer to the question is surely that het anal sex is a power-trip and while homo anal sex can also be a power-trip there is also the constant implicit reminder of role-reversal.

If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they should surely be put to death. Leviticus 20:13

What is the root cause of this prescription? The need to breed? Fear? Why place heterosexual relations as sacred and homosexual relations as an 'abomination'? The Greeks didn't.

The Greeks DID regard it as a kind-of abomination. To let yourself be sodomised was a capital crime in many Greek city-states.

And couldn't the stringent Christian stance on sodomy and other such things be a refutation of the reported hedonistic excesses of the Romans? I'm reaching on this one, I know...

Being a relapsed Catholic, I'd have to say that most homosexual fear is a result of guilt. Plain and simple - have it drilled into one's head that it's "evil" enough times (subliminally and directly), and you start to believe it (on some level), and it affects your perceptions if you're not aware of your actions.

The one TV show that I've seen where such things are/were treated with some common sense and decency was MTV's Undressed. Yes, almost everyone on the show was a model, but they managed (during the 1st season, at least) to portray all sorts of relationships (same sex, interracial) with very little blatant stereotyping. Can't say the same re: soap opera cliches, but you take what you can get.

To part ways with Mr. Sinker, I don't think homophobia is always grounded on what gay people do (or supposedly do) in bed. After all, children generally have no meaningful understanding of sex and its consequences (apart from the sheer mechanics of sex, maybe), yet they use "gay," "fag" and "queer" as insults.

As for some straight adults, though, you do hear an implicit rage that gays and lesbians have a rights straightfolk do not, or don't have a burden that straightfolk do. I'm not sure this could simply be characterized as envy, though.

This rage is often the basis of the ridiculously circular argumentation some conservatives employ when talking about the rights of gays and lesbians. Homosexuals are fundamentally irresponsible because they don't submit to the civilizing influence of marriage and child-rearing; yet homosexuals shouldn't get married and have children because they are fundamentally irresponsible.

(Some conservatives break out of this vicious cycle by stating that women that civilize men, not marriage - yet this leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that men are essentially barbarians who are dangerous when alone together, something that sounds suspiciously close to a conservative caricature of hairy-legs feminism.)

It works equally the other way - I think Anthony said on a thread a few days ago how unattractive he found c-nt. I guess the reason gay preference hasn't provided the groundwork for an equivalent anti-het moralistic stance is that gays can't easily assert the moral superiority of their preference by pointing to clear 'natural' function; also that gays haven't usually enjoyed the socially dominant position which would allow them to exploit such spurious morality; and perhaps most of all because gays in general seem less inclined to set out to oppress others.

Mark, I wasn't implying that anti-homo hate was instinctive, just that there are instinctive preferences among distinct groups and that the pre-existing sense that something is good or bad can be twisted into morally absolutist distinctions of right and wrong more readily than in the case of value-neutral activities or behaviour.

And In case I wasn't clear in my earlier post (I know I'm often not) - I don't support moralistic distinctions based on het preference being of the species perpetuating kind. I think experiences should be judged on their own terms - not by reference to the supposed natural function they're fulfilling but not either by pointing out that other animals do it therefore it must be part of the 'natural' order after all. I think it would be better to dispense with abstract notions of the natural altogether rather than bend them for ones benefit. Otherwise they can always be bent back again. That's the problem with abstraction.

This raises a second, trickier question: what, then, if someone has no problem with gay sex per se, but strongly dislikes what Avodah K. Offit called (I'm quoting from memory here, so I'll probably butcher it) "that compulsion which drives generation after generation of gay men to act out the same stereotype of a bitchy woman"? Are they still a homophobe, or something else? There must be gay men out there who despise "queens"/"flamers", hence the plethora of personals in which GWMs refer to themselves as "straight-acting"; where do they fit into the continuum?

Phil Mass-transfer's interesting question comes in at an angle to the whole argt: queeniness as a symbol of all queerness, classic or dud. Is is is it queenophobia, after all? Ans = no, I'd say, but yes gay male attitudes to women are not always v.attractive.

dave: yr answer to my fear question kinda makes q-style mincemeat of yr original "don't mention the fear" proposal, tho, doesn't it? Fear (and fear of showing fear) = a huge big issue, and who cares who feels "insulted" by its being raised?

("That's logic as I know and use it," cried the Golux.)

Lady D: yeah I know! But Emma was talking about why men pester women for it, yes? Actually it's kind of a mix of power-trip and niceness - men asking know perfectly well that a minority of women actually like it so it is a power thing but at the same time I think they do actually genuinely hope the woman they're with will be in that minority.

2) I have always - long before I started reading queer and feminist theory - assumed that homophobia stems from the classic platonic dualism of the gender division. It's essential to the maintenance of man's superiority that "masculinity" be seen as synonymous with "male" ie. that men innately possess those qualities which make them superior and fit to rule over both the world and their female partner. Likewise, women must not innately possess these qualities, instead being feminine as a result of biology.

Gay men effectively betray this system by taking on more "feminine" aspects, from the simple act of engaging in sexual activity with another male (*especially* if they "submit" to sexual penetration - submission is for females, donchaknow), to feeling emotionally dependent on another male, to exhibiting characteristics classically associated with women - vanity, cattiness, melodrama, sensitivity, "softness".

By possessing any of these qualities gay men expose the lie behind the conflation of sex with gender - they're walking/talking/fucking proof that having a dick has nothing to do with being an archetypal male - that what we consider to be "male" is both arbitrary and largely socially constructed. They're the weak link in the chain, the deserters from the front line, the kid in the sports game who always lets the team down. In this case the team is Masculinity (or even Patriarchy), and the presence of gay men on the reserve bench sticks out like a sore thumb.

Homophobia is the manifestation of social disapproval for this shocking shortfalling, and gay-bashing is routinised punishment with an eye towards deterrence. Homophobes often talk about "teaching fags a lesson" like a teacher strapping a student for not paying attention in class. In this case the lesson is on how to be a real man and fulfill your place in the social heirarchy. The enforced silence on the topic is akin to a department being tightlipped about corruption - man's entire reputation and social position is at stake here.

The treatment of lesbians meanwhile seems to be more tied in with the general (mis)treatment of women. Lesbians transgress the roles women are supposed to play in the most radical way - by refusing to sleep with men, but rather with eachother - and as such represent the absolute extreme of women overstepping their boundaries. Consequently, "dyke-bashing" is more about "putting them back in their place", while a woman who doesn't need a man or is independently successful is accused of being a dyke as a sort of warning (ie. "don't go too far or you'll be reviled by society"). That said, I don't buy the argument many lesbian women put forward - that lesbian women are automatically both more feminist and more "authentic" than their het. counterparts.

The proposition that homophobia is directed at sexual activity as a part of gender as opposed to the sexual activity in and of itself is substantiated by a number of common situations and practices: the fact that boys are accused of being "faggots" for being feminine or weak, long before they or their accusors have even contemplated sex; also, the fact that gay men often describe themselves as "straight-acting" to denote a lack of feminity, suggesting that straight-ness has little to do with sex, for if it was based primarily in sex than a "straight-acting gay male" would be an absolute contradiction.

Another connection: reading Aristotle's "Politics" and noting how many times Aristotle justified slavery and the subordination of women by referring to examples in the natural world - all of it is clearly a result of confirmation bias.

"Cheney is my ideal man. Because he’s solid. He’s funny. He’s very handsome. He was a football player. People don’t think about him as the glamour type because he’s a serious person, he wears glasses, he’s lost his hair. But he’s a very handsome man. And you cannot imagine him losing his temper, which I find extremely sexy. Men who get upset and lose their tempers and claim to be sensitive males: talk about girly boys. No, there’s a reason hurricanes are named after women and homosexual men, it’s one of our little methods of social control. We’re supposed to fly off the handle.

Man, that's the worst attempt at comedy I've ever put forth. I should stick to foreign-people/broken english jokes.

Can't remember. I read VN and found it basically agreeable way way WAY before Sullivan went bonkers and got monster glutes. It could also be Bruce Bawer.

Those who in power had to continuously refine and standardize social norms and definitions, rapidly writing out any minor "deviation" out of the equation. After all, the mere image of the lesbian and the homosexual man is *radically* differnet, as, indeed, those who ended up being in power restricted *themselves* to the utmost.

This is most clearly manifested, of course, in fearing what is seen as detrimental to progress, unity anmd "wholeness". It is most scary, however, when it coems to severe *self* criticism of males *by* other males, or by themselves. It's just one big mess. Thanks a lot, Freud et al.

Even further, a minority of homosexuals born into a majority ohheterosexuals learns the smae standardization, and, having come out criticize heterosexual and sub-minority (i.e. bisexual, for example) society, culture, and values, because of the inherent flaws of male self-regulation.

Note how (even though continuously needing to reassert it), females don't have as much of a problem as males with *coming to terms* with their sexuality (for argument's sake discounting *surface* social influence - I am talking about exclusively family, interpersonal and intrapersonal values that influence gender role, gender pwoer and gender hierarchy politics). (This can be easily confused with the extrernal values, that are either implemented to keep the minorities at bay, by putting on a semblance of compliance, or the convincing of the public of a policy that is, in fact, not being upheld).

Feel free to point out any inconsistencies, incongruities and incontinuities (keeping in mind that I am at the very earliest stage of writng up the syllogism for my paper (which is due on the 20th BTW) heh.

Peace,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Alopecia_why.jpg

Ironically enough this album is some faggotry.

homophobia - what happened? i am confused.

even DG had an earnest phase

massive misplaced sex-utopia envy: assumption that gay men = cheerfully prosmiscuous = endless brilliant sex (inc.sex w. ppl that wouldn't get the hata off) w/o any of the emotional negotiation-complication consequence-stuff het sex is stuck with >>> contorts into sour grapes on stilts

― mark s, Wednesday, September 5, 2001 2:00 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not sure homophobes really do have this assumption... does anyone?

massive misplaced sex-utopia envy: assumption that gay men = cheerfully prosmiscuous = endless brilliant sex (inc.sex w. ppl that wouldn't get the hata off) w/o any of the emotional negotiation-complication consequence-stuff het sex is stuck with >>> contorts into sour grapes on stilts

― mark s, Wednesday, September 5, 2001 2:00 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Dude clearly never hung around a ringtone thread

Ironically enough this album is some faggotry.

Ironically enough it has precisely one good bit which is a line about watching two men fucking on a basketball court

not sure homophobes really do have this assumption... does anyone?

a) all
b) any?
c) some

Curious about the trans-national homophobia, esp. in non-Western countries (East Asian countries in particular).

um - what about it?

Is it something that happened because of exposure to the West (e.g. homophobia came to China/Taiwan via Christianity, say), or are there historical precedents to it?

I'd start here and then replace the url with the countries that you are interested in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China

So if you hadn't heard, a gay man was shot and killed by a taunting, drunk ex-con on Friday night in NYC's West Village, one of America's longest-standing gayborhoods. Michelangelo Signorile:

After decades of struggle, we're finally beating back [homophobes] in the courts, in legislatures and even at the ballot box. And perhaps the frustration and anger by those who oppose us is now further empowering the thugs who take their hate and rage to the streets.

It shouldn't come as a surprise then that in New York City, in a state that passed marriage equality in 2011, hate crimes against LGBT people so far in 2013 are almost double what were at this point in 2012. And 2012 itself was a notable year nationally, with outbreak of anti-LGBT violence in some of the country's most gay-friendly cities, like New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta. 2011 saw the highest number of anti-LGBT murders ever reported, with transgender people the hardest-hit victims. At least 13 transgender Americans were reported to have been murdered in 2012 alone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/equalitys-brutal-backlash_b_3303860.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Rich Juzwiak on the withdrrawn TNR slam of Buttigieg by Dale Peck:

It’s rude writing that knows it’s rude, a sort of performative, exaggerated takedown that is designed to make you feel guilty for laughing at it. It’s an example of what the gays call reading. Just because it isn’t coming out of lined lips and broadcast on television via RuPaul’s Drag Race doesn’t make it any less of a reading. It’s part the culture. Now, you don’t have to like this part of the culture. I’m wary of it myself, and I try to avoid doing it. When I have critiqued another gay man publicly, I have tried to avoid certain elements of cruelty (like mocking his appearance) and felt like I was backed by a good cause, but I guess that’s what they all say. Self-righteousness is a cornerstone of the medium.

...Peck called bullshit on Buttigieg, crassly and not always elegantly, but in the Peckian way that he was hired to do. His piece was going to receive a backlash, of course—you can’t say anything interesting without risking hearing from a bunch of people on the internet who are mad that you didn’t say what you said how they would have said it—which makes The New Republic’s decision to remove the piece stupid and infuriating. With the structural integrity of a sandcastle built on the ocean’s edge, the publication caved to the criticism it invited.

If you want to accept gay people, and not just because it makes you feel better about yourself, you have to accept that they may do things that you find grotesque but that make them no less acceptable and no less human. With Peck, TNR exposed the wider culture to a facet of gay culture with particularly rough edges and when people found it unsightly, they did their best to make it unseen. That the removal of writing that was not found to be plagiarized or factually inaccurate didn’t cause a tenth of the controversy as Peck’s opinion was telling in itself. We only like well-behaved gay men in these refined online quarters, apparently. The rest can go to hell.

https://jezebel.com/define-homophobic-1836367531

i'd be surprised if the pressure on TNR to remove it came primarily from straights

'respectable' squeamish gays can't be discounted

The funniest thing is when some gays (like Booty supporters in this case) call such a piece "self-hating." Like all homos are part of one body. It was pretty clear Peck hates Pete, not himself.

you have to accept that they may do things that you find grotesque but that make them no less acceptable and no less human

humans also do and say many things that are not just grotesque, but unacceptable. it seems disingenuous to me to say 'if we truly accept gays as humans, we must accept whatever they say or do, no matter how ugly, cruel or nasty it is'.

but maybe that isn't the point being offered here. an alternative reading would be that 'gay culture has some really ugly, cruel and nasty elements in it, but since its their culture and not your culture you must refrain from calling that out.' of course, a similar argument is made about female circumcision.

fuck me for being on this fucking jizzboard

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, July 15, 2019 11:39 AM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

bitch

piece was just shittily written, dgaf about the sentiments expressed therein

Dr Morbius - Why?

mayor pete is simultaneously not gay enough to be a gay and too gay to be president.

it's a good koan i guess

Payor Mete

he's the gay Goldilocks chose

the piece struck me as something that wouldn't have raised as many eyebrows if it were in a publication for a primarily gay audience

being run by TNR seemed like a mismatch between context and content and it's easy to postulate about what they were going for. maybe the editors thought it was a good piece and decided to run it, but just as easily you could assume that they sought out the right person to make the points they already wanted to make but lacked the in-group credibility

I didn't think anything in the piece was particularly ugly, cruel, or nasty given the framing of the article alone. stick the TNR header on it, maybe that changes

I really need to use 'jizzboard' a lot more in conversations with my parents.

Gays defining other gays and themselves by measuring how much more or less gay they are than "those gays over there" is part of our DNA. This wasn't the most elegant expression of that fact, but neither was it the worst.

str8 so apols for the ignorance but... what, exactly, do you guys do with the jizzboards

beat each other

Sign up for our turns being lucky Pierre.

one of the nearest candidate parallels would be the argument that obama didn't really experience black american life due to his upbringing and parentage, despite having lived most of his life as a black man in the united states

it's an argument that might fly when being discussed by a black audience, but the moment people from outside the group start referring to it or using it as a salient point about whether obama gets to be "the black candidate" or buttigieg gets to be "the gay candidate" it becomes a really ugly bludgeon

there's plenty of right-wing trolling out there that disingenuously does just that, and comes from parties that have no interest in the well-being of either group. they're pulling that shit on kamala harris right now

they're saying she's not really a cop

re Eric's point: especially when Those Gays are 'perfect' little calculating power queens like Buttigieg

(as Alfred pointed out, Sunday's NYT piece on PB really paints him as a Stepford Gay)

lol there's a term I haven't heard before

def familiar with folks who fit that stereotype though

No, Morbs, especially when it's all those other gays that aren't me specifically.

there are plenty of reasons to dislike buttigieg, and many of them are mentioned in the current affairs piece peck links to. he mentions a few, like working at mckinsey and joining the military in '08

the rest of it is like i hate him; he's not a *real* gay because he wasn't there in the village, man, and someone published his book without assuming he had psychological problems, and he's younger and cuter than me, and btw he's totally gonna start fucking anything that moves at any moment now

it's fine that peck hates him but, you know, put it on yr blog. and calling someone a 'gay uncle tom' for being a married technocrat is . . . really quite something

otm

I have a visceral aversion to Lifestyle Gays but hey they can live like magazine spreads if they want

btw dnr entire Peck piece tl

lol

I mean I didn't read it all either - because it was bad and I stopped reading

btw dnr entire Peck piece tl

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, July 15, 2019 2:35 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

wow i'm so surprised

TNR was cowardly and cynical about taking it down, but I don't get how the vilification of this piece reflects an implicit rebuke of the tradition of the longform dismissal. For one, the endless first paragraph discussing a long-vanished early '90s NYC scene wouldn't have survived one editing pass at the NYROB.

I mean, how many long form excoriations of Biden, Harris, Hilary, etc have we been exposed to in the last few years? Gimme a break.

It’s almost as though some people don’t expect Mary Pete is capable of defending his own honor.

he's a Mary

it wasn't a great piece of writing but taking it down was really insane... for one because i'm not sure what they expected the reaction to that piece to be, or what reaction they were trying to elicit if they weren't prepared to deal with the one they got. but i also found it completely ridiculous that TNR itself called it "invasive", as if an essayist speculating on the interior and sex life of a political candidate is somehow a violation of privacy. but that's where i agree with rich that there is clearly an element of straight people imposing the frame of homophobia onto this piece when as a gay man's critique of another gay man let alone a gay male aspiring president i found it to be totally within the bounds of reasonable. and that's to say nothing of places like nbc or whatever actually invoking the word.

it's sort of hard to imagine people speculating about the sex life of the other candidates in a piece of writing published in prestige media

"bernie is a daddy dom"

lol, otm

it's sort of hard to imagine people speculating about the sex life of the other candidates in a piece of writing published in prestige media

I refer you to the current occupant of the white house

who bragged about the size of his dick during an official debate

well they're mainly speculating about his sex life due to multiple accusations of sexual abuse, his own self-incriminating remarks, his friendship with epstein, and the - likely apocryphal - pee tape.

buttigeig hasn't done anything to attract such scrutiny.

you know, during the last debate i was wondering what would happen if rachel maddow had asked pete "top or bottom?" like when bill clinton got asked "boxers or briefs?"... i feel like both questions are the same level of superficially titillating but otherwise harmless at this point

is there a taboo regarding underwear choices like there is around men engaging in receptive anal sex?

Nah, the equivalent question would've been either "Provincetown or Indianapolis?" or "Appletini or India Pale Ale?"

"Pug or chihuaha?"

lol

Beto would have butted in to say corgi in Spanish.

still trying to understand how Eric has wedded consumerist values to Chris Marker fandom

wow i'm so surprised
― american bradass (BradNelson), Monday, July 15, 2019 5:39 PM

bitch

I contain multitudes. Having no hate in my heart leaves room for so much more.

Also Chris Marker is on Criterion so.

He went out with Mrs. Fiske.

I mean, how many long form excoriations of Biden, Harris, Hilary, etc have we been exposed to in the last few years? Gimme a break.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, July 15, 2019 5:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

not really the same thing imo

I'm arguing that we are not such snowflakes in 2019 as Perrin and Rich would like to believe.

I'm not really following the primaries at all here so I can't speak to what was or wasn't said about Buttigieg. What occurs to me, though, is that there is a tradition, going back to the dawn of time, of specific hostility towards effeminacy, and if that's what's going on here - if this fits into the political tradition of Richard Nixon getting elected to the Senate by speculating about Helen Gagahan Douglas's panties - I could see how people could find that objectionable.

But I don't really have any idea, I clicked on this thread not knowing that this was another one of those arguments about the primaries.

Buttigieg is a loathsome human being, gay or not. If you're Harvard-educated and then decide to volunteer for this country's military, then you're fucked in the head. The consultant shit post-military is the icing on the cake of loathsomeness, not to mention his obvious racism.

Also, while we can talk all we want about how different subjects lead different lives and that it isn't anyone's responsibility to come out of the closet on another person's time, Buttigieg's unwillingness to come out was about uncertainty of his political future if he did. Anyone that is self-hating enough to make that sort of decision while simultaneously being self-regarding enough to think of themselves as a natural lead is a sociopath, and can stay far the fuck away from me and mine.

Again, I don't know shit about Buttigieg, but having lived in Indiana, and having been closeted while doing so, I can understand why someone might be hesitant to come out in Indiana.

Leaders lead. The NYT piece left little doubt it was a political calculation.

I understand that too— I didn't come out until I was 22, and I was an Oberlin student who had gone to a Quaker high school, ffs. It should have been a lot easier than it was.

But what I'm getting at is that Buttigieg is two years older than me, and while times were certainly different then, he has openly stated that he didn't come out sooner because he was worried about his future political career prospects in a culture that had already changed— he didn't come out until 2015. That's putting career ambition above self-realization and -affirmation, and that is fucking weird and loathsome to me.

Beyond that, he's also a terrible human being based on everything I've read. He's essentially a Log Cabin Republican.

What occurs to me, though, is that there is a tradition, going back to the dawn of time, of specific hostility towards effeminacy

This case is closer to the opposite.

Blue Dog Cabin Republican? Blue Log Republican? Blue Dog Log Republican? The options here are fun to contemplate.

if you seriously think Pete is essentially a Republican, that just tells me you haven't really paid much attention to the Republican Party for the last quarter-century or so.

Pete is a Republican in the classical sense of the term.

Republicans now = neoconservative, white supremacist fascists

Being a centrist is about the same as being a Republican because the goalposts have moved so far to the right in this godforsaken genocidal stripmall shitheap that most Democrats would have been considered Republicans in the 60s and 70s.

Also, if you're pro-military, demonstrably anti-Black, economically neoliberal/globalist, and have little to no platform to speak of, then you're a fucking conservative, period. gtfoh.

don't forget his brilliant plan for a "nonpartisan" Supreme Court

I guess it's a good thing then that he has virtually no chance of winning the nomination so no one's faced with the possibility of making a "principled" decision not to vote for him vs. Trump.

economically neoliberal/globalist

“Globalist” is a dog whistle meaning “Jewish” so please don’t throw it around like this

bigots don't get to define words

There’s literally no other use for that word! It has no other application.

We all know you can’t help yourself from carrying water for the fash but that doesn’t mean everyone has to

Pretty sure the first reference I ever saw to globalism was from Ralph Nader circa the WTO protests.

it's usage has changed over time

wow @ some of this stuff.

"globalism" does have a semi-obscure academic definition that political scientists use, but if someone refers to a politician as a "globalist" in 2019 it has an entirely different meaning and connotation. if you're going to allege that certain democrats are "essentially republicans" you might want to avoid borrowing yr vocabulary from ann coulter and steve bannon.

you can't "borrow" from ppl you pay absolutely no fucking attention to

i'd suggest you stop wasting your fucking time

"the fash"? fuckov

might be worth your time occasionally paying attention to the harmful words and actions of ppl with actual power and influence in the world instead of oh i don't know the latest unfunny tweet from a failed comedy writer

you can't "borrow" from ppl you pay absolutely no fucking attention to

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, July 16, 2019 9:44 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

... you absolutely can

Coulter and Bannon are so powerless right now I expect NAVY Seals to assassinate them, you lunatic

xp

oh look, all the idiots are here

words, how do they work?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IasCZL072fQ

the latest unfunny tweet from a failed comedy writer

It's been 13 years since Morbs first started trying to make Dennis Perrin happen:

A New Thread fot the Current Israel/Palestine/Lebanon mess

you'd think Morbz would've written a wiki entry for him by now

you guys are obsessed, huh

beats masturbation (for u) i guess

if anybody calls me a Nazi "IRL" they get punched btw

More straight men should have anal sex. I don't understand what the big deal is. If I had a prostate I would have my mail forwarded there.

I wouldn't say it's a big deal it just doesn't have any appeal. sort of like vaginas for teh gays.

if a guy had a vagina, I'd fuck it.

If a guy had a vagina, I'd fuck it too.

Although, I get that some gay male couples don't have penetrative sex and that's fine too. I just don't believe in reincarnation so it's weird to muddle about with body parts.

ok let’s all be a little nicer to each other

STRAIGHT MEN BE NICER TO YOUR BUTTS.

i think we can move forward assuming nobody posting here is an anti semite or fascist :)

Prostate mail delivery sounds like a nightmare of papercuts

If I'm living somewhere I need to be able to get mail.

Prostate mail delivery sounds like a nightmare of papercuts

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), T

wow, an amazing sentence

Not convinced that sexuality boils down to what you can or can't do with your body. Tbf there are no doubt plenty of straight dudes who fantasize about being anally penetrated but who will never act on it because it would be an affront to their virility. I assume that's who Yerac is referring to.

hell, for many straight dudes kissing guys affronts their virility

carrying a tote bag affronts their virility.

I can't speak for anyone else, for my part I just find guys kind of gross, feel zero compunction to get physically close

eh shakey you do realize you don't need to be with a man to get fucked in the ass?

I think I saw a Broad City episode about that

"you don't know shit 'cause you never been fucked in the ass!"

idk what ppl find sexually appealing seems pretty unconscious/hard-wired these aren't exactly things people can (or should be) talked into

I am really hoping we can collectively peer pressure some straight dude here into having anal sex. It's my favorite type of Taco Tuesday.

I should probably note that I am drinking in an airport lounge for another 2 hours.

lol

yeah, i was using the more archaic, non-anti-semitic meaning of the term "globalist," i kind of assumed that people would understand my meaning given my radical left bonafides, but point taken— won't use it anymore here or elsewhere. good lesson to learn, tbh, and appreciate y'all not jumping down my throat.

that said, my point about Buttigieg stands. fuck him.

tbf this isn't the first time I've heard this "pitch", feel like it is a very popular argument gay men like to make to straight guys

xp

the first guy I knew who went through a very dramatic and sort of classic coming out phase (letting absolutely *everybody* know, getting publicly naked at every opportunity, flirting with everyone etc.) loved to do this. this was in college. later he burned bridges with everybody in our social circle and developed a meth habit, not sure what happened after that.

I wasn't into it until my wife decided I was gonna be into it. Only really do it once in a while on special date nights nowadays. But when it's good, it's pretty much the best.

(not meth)

getting publicly naked at every opportunity

is this part of the classic coming out phase? i've missed some good parties i think.

Santa Cruz was a "clothing optional" campus

Terrizzi et al, 2010. Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. Personality ind diff, 49(6), pp.587-592.

Cunningham et al, 2013. Induced disgust affects implicit and explicit responses toward gay men and lesbians. Euro J Soc Psychol, 43(5), pp.362-369.

de Zavala et al, 2014. Prejudice towards gay men and a need for physical cleansing. J Exp Soc Psychol, 54, pp.1-10.

Nega et al, 2016. The role of disgust in homosexuality judgments. Open Psychol J, 9(1).

Gadarian and van der Vort, 2018. The gag reflex: Disgust rhetoric and gay rights in American politics. Polit Behav, 40(2), pp.521-543.

Kiss etal, 2018. A meta-analytic review of the association between disgust and prejudice toward gay men. J homosexual, pp.1-23.

Morrison et al, 2019. We’re disgusted with queers, not fearful of them: The interrelationships among disgust, gay men’s sexual behavior, and homonegativity. J homosexual, 66(7), pp.1014-1033.

Some people (political conservatives) have more active behavioral immune systems, with all the overactive amygdalas that entails, and when they think of (at least) male homosexuals, they visualize shit on a dick, or the skin lesions of Kaposi sarcoma.

It's why desensitization via personal social contact or benign out characters (eg, Will in Will and Grace) is effective, the more raucous pride parades or "We're here and we're queer, deal with it!" chants perhaps aren't.

Good job reading only the thread title

I have not gotten naked at every opportunity, I must not be gay

look, let's just say this particular dude re-enacted this skit in real life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdbs3lKEeBE

except that at the end he was naked instead of in a leotard

i'm disappointed no one remarked on my Buddy Cole "porridge" reference

I missed that, was that in some other thread

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/14/sexual-preference-coney-barrett-hirono/

OK I gotta admit I don't understand this — "sexual preference" is considered offensive? you don't necessarily choose to prefer something do you?

I thought “preference” always implied a degree of conscious choice.

"orientation" makes more sense to me but calling "preference" outright offensive seems like a bit of an overreach to me

I prefer someone using the term "sexual preference" to "sexual perversion," I'll admit.

I guess there are two layers to this. The first is that the homophobic right routinely describes same-sex attraction as a 'choice', the implication being that it's the wrong one. So one way to fight back is to push a deterministic narrative according to which it's wired into you and beyond your control. The second layer (which is what you're getting at) is: why should it matter in the first place? The correct answer is 'it shouldn't', but perhaps this argument is likelier to backfire in a polemical context? In other words, I get the sense that Hirono's angle of attack is merely a rhetorical strategy, which may have indeed paid off since Barrett felt the need to apologize.

(Do correct me if I'm wrong.)

I recall there being a line in the musical song cycle Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens where one character gets angry about being asked for his sexual preference because it was not something he chose. It was written in the 80s but I'm guessing that sentiment hasn't completely become mainstream yet. I get the objection, though I don't think many are aware of this concern (I had forgotten about it until now).

"Sexual preference" is one of those in-group / out-group terms, where the meaning of the term, and what it implies, completely changes based on *who* is using it, and in what context.

(See also: Queer, AFAB/AMAB, etc.)

That yeah, it's a dog-whistle among the Right, code for 'teh gays choose to be gay because they are SINFUL'.

And the push-back against that, in terms of out-group conversation, of homosexual people saying "it's an inherent identity, not a choice or a lifestyle" is both necessary push-back against only one part of the problem?

(It's like when the Right says "Obama is a Muslim!" the full response is not "Actually Obama is a Christian", it's "Why should it matter if he is or isn't, there is nothing wrong with being Muslim?")

Because when the pushback is this ~Born This Way~ narrative, effective as that is against the Right, and as much as it makes sense for people with a binary homosexual orientation, it turns around and excludes bisexuals, queer orientations, hetero/homoflexibles, all the non-binary, fluid, situational, person-centred sexualities - which are also just as valid as binary homosexuality! This is exclusion directed towards a big part of our own community. But that is very much an in-group conversation. Because the Right hate ALL of us - they aren't stopping to check who is homo, bi, flexi, queer or whatever. They think we're all sinful and deserve to die.

Both of those conversations can be valid and true and necessary. But one should really not usurp the other, which is what often ends up happening? Like, it's not the *term* that needs to be cancelled. It's the context within which the term is used in a hateful way which needs to be addressed.

Terre Thaemlitz's thoughts on "beat this way" have always interested me

Personally, I found myself distanced from direct action groups because the terms of identification they cultivated out of strategic necessity so often folded back into essentialisms that excluded me on a personal level. So I was always advocating for the recognition and acceptance of something other than myself (like the way "born this way" ideologies take over discussions of LGBT rights... I consider myself more "beat this way," my queer identity being primarily informed by material ostracism and harassment than by some mythological self-actualization and pride). That, combined with the mid-'90s move away from direct action toward CBO's (Community Based Organizations) -- largely because the tactics of direct action had been so thoroughly coopted by mainstream media - was pretty much the end of my serious direct action involvements. Over the years, enunciating this process has become the core political act of my projects and activities. I do not do this to discourage people from forms of direct action, but as a simultaneous form of critical analysis that hopefully contributes in other ways to our various attempts to react to dominations.

but i think they're acknowledging there that there are numerous paradigms for thinking about sexuality and that it's very hard to escape the co-opting of rhetorical strategies by people who don't wish you well

The Discourse seems destined to get mired in whether it's a Bad Term or Good Term and just make everyone very tired

So much of the Bad Term / Good Term discourse makes so much more sense when you read it more of Boundary Work of in-groups / out-groups.

Like in so many other things, people need to stop asking "what is my opinion on this thing?" and start asking "what is my *relation* to this thing?"

Like in so many other things, people need to stop asking "what is my opinion on this thing?" and start asking "what is my *relation* to this thing?"

a million times OTM

Always loved that Thaemlitz bit, thanks for reminding me of it.

Some of this discussion reminds me of Denise Riley's book 'The Words of Selves,' which calls the entire idea of subjective identity into place.

Not into place, into question. I just spent four hours grading papers and doing well office hours, apologies

Thesis: “Sexual preference” is an outmoded and offensive way of talking about LGBT people.

Antithesis: Lots of video of Joe Biden saying “sexual preference.”

Synthesis: Biden is popular in part because he’s accurately seen as not on the cutting edge of progressive thought.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 14, 2020