This thread is so gay

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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Avistew » 23 Jan 2012, 17:36

Either that or incredibly GOOD phrasing.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby TorachiKatashi » 27 Jan 2012, 22:18

My apologies in advance if this has been mentioned here already - I skimmed through the last two pages and didn't see anything, but I'm also blind as a bat.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... -term.html

The tl;dr version is, first she said that she "chooses to be gay," and then after getting a big blast a shit from the gay community, backtracked and decided that she is bisexual, but "no one likes bisexuals," so she doesn't use that word. She then proceeds to go on a tirade about how awful and offensive it is that people might imply that whatever her orientation, she's been that from birth - because that's so awful and offensive right? Almost as offensive as all the nonsense she's spewing.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Duckay » 28 Jan 2012, 06:41

I don't know.

First up, I'm not Cynthia Nixon and I don't know her personally so I don't know if this I a case of her having been quoted out of context or misinterpreted or anything of the sort.

But on the whole, I have mixed feelings about the very idea of "choosing" one's sexuality, and the distinctions between "choosing" one's sexual orientation and choosing one's sexual identity and the interplay between those. I also think that ultimately I can't question the conclusion she's drawn because sexual identity is something for each person to decide for themselves.

But in general? I personally believe you can't choose who you're attracted to but you can completely choose how you identify and live based on that. It's a nebulous area and if it were brought up outside of Nixon, I'd love to get into a nitty-gritty discussion of it.

I don't know if any of that made sense, but I hope it did.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby theDreamer » 28 Jan 2012, 08:00

I don't think she's being offensive and awful at all.

She loved and was sexually attracted to all her male partners.

She loves and is sexually attracted to her current female partner.

For her, it wasn't "living in a fog" or "denying her true self" which some people do imply she was.

I think her use of the word "choice" was poor, because no one chooses who they love in the first place, but she chose to act on those feelings, despite previously only feeling another way.

Attacking her for anything more than a poor choice of words (though really, it's hard to use something else), makes you no less bigoted than "religious right maniacs."
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby TorachiKatashi » 28 Jan 2012, 13:01

Her choice to screw over and throw the whole community under the bus, is what I find offensive. I don't care if she calls herself straight, or gay, or bisexual, or if she makes up her own damn word, but when you're ready to do who knows how much damage by giving hate mongers even more fuel, just for the sake of not having to pick a word (or, y'know, just not answer the question,) you're less than garbage to me.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Metcarfre » 28 Jan 2012, 13:11

That's... strong.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Duckay » 28 Jan 2012, 13:47

I really disagree that she's "throwing the community under a bus" by saying that.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby AlexanderDitto » 29 Jan 2012, 20:36

That article makes me pretty mad.

Because she's not throwing the community under a bus. What she's doing is giving homophobes and bigots a cudgel, and asking them to beat us with it.

She says it's a choice, and then says

In terms of sexual orientation, I don't really feel I've changed...

I'm just a woman in love with another woman....

But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men.


She is an idiot, plain and simple. Could she "choose" to not be in love with that woman? Could she have chosen not to be in love with those men? I expect she would say no.

She doesn't "choose" whether to be gay or straight. What she's "choosing" is whether to be in a gay or straight relationship. Everyone has that choice. You can choose to be in a relationship with a piece of toast. But you can't choose who you love, or how you feel and if a 45 year old woman hasn't figured out that very basic distinction, then she is an idiot.

Many people are bisexual. What she's doing is bisexual erasure: perpetuating the idea that you can't love both men and women. And it's damaging and wrong.

She doesn't have to be an icon, or an outspoken supporter of the community. She doesn't have to "identify" with the label of bisexual. But she IS bisexual. The very least she could do is not actively say things that are both ignorant and give bigots more amunition to fire, and confuses people who might actually be on the verge of being supportive of LGBT rights.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Duckay » 29 Jan 2012, 23:53

Frankly, I tend to find statements like "she doesn't have to "identify" with X, but she IS X" more damaging. What you are saying is that you understand her sexuality better than she does, which is a dangerous thing to start throwing around.

Furthermore, frankly, at the beginning of all this, your second paragraph was how I understand her point; she didn't choose to be attracted to men or to women, but she chose to live in a lesbian relationship.

I've had a lot of problems over the years with the very idea of choosing and self-identification versus social identification, and it took a long time for me to personally get my head around labeling myself. I still don't exactly love a lot of the labels that get thrown around, or the very idea that the hypothetical person who does choose to be gay is any less "legitimate" than those who don't.

To change the subject slightly, this whole debacle with Nixon sparked a very emotional argument with some close friends. Somehow we ended up going from Cynthia Nixon to me confessing to everyone some of the experiences I'd had and not told anyone about when I was first dating (stuff I hadn't told anyone in the nine-odd years since it happened), about the bullshit things people said and did to me about being (openly) gay or bisexual.

I ended up kind of dominating the discussion, which wasn't my original intention, but it was really nice to finally feel free to say a lot of that shit and really get down to it. Really cathartic. I feel a little happier for having let some of that stuff go.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby tak197 » 29 Jan 2012, 23:58

AlexanderDitto wrote:She doesn't "choose" whether to be gay or straight. What she's "choosing" is whether to be in a gay or straight relationship. Everyone has that choice. You can choose to be in a relationship with a piece of toast. But you can't choose who you love, or how you feel and if a 45 year old woman hasn't figured out that very basic distinction, then she is an idiot.


This sums up my belief on how sexuality is best described. You are born with your innate attractions and sexuality (though there is also some evidence that environment and abuse can change that as well, but that's delving into more human psychology than sexuality.) But we make choices on how to express that sexuality, be it through complete supression (I'm gay but I am going to live a lie and marry this woman and have kids and never act on my urges) or simply letting it happen (I'm gay, I found a lovely partner through natural communication and common interests, and I am going to love them for the rest of my life.)

Seriously, guys, this is probably where I believe the LGBT rights movement is pushing us; one day gays are going to be recognized as having the same rights as straights because it can be shown that volition/will and action are different things.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Avistew » 30 Jan 2012, 16:19

I believe she meant she "chose to be a lesbian" by choosing to be in relationships with women. An option that she has if she's attracted to both.
I knew a woman in a more extreme but similar case. While she was attracted to both males and females, she was raped by males (to "fix" her from her attraction to women, even though she was also attracted to males anyways) and she decided to identify as a lesbian from that point on. Her reasoning was that she chose to be a lesbian because she chose to be in relationships with females only, and that who she was attracted to or not was nobody's business and nobody other than her needed to know. Who she was in a relationship with, however, affected people other than her.

I don't think it's necessarily damaging to the community to say "I chose this" if you're not saying "anyone can choose". I also think a lot of people to have a certain amount of choice, in that I've known people who identified as straight but ended up in a relationship with someone of the same sex/gender. They still identified as straight after the fact. Other people might say they are bisexual even though same sex attraction only happened once in a lifetime to them. But the bottom line is, they choose to be in a same sex relationship, and they identify as straight.

You can definitely choose who you are with and decide what you identify as. You can't choose who you are attracted to, in my opinion, neither a whole sex/gender or specific individuals, but that doesn't mean there is no choice involved at all.

In the end, if she prefers to identify with whichever relationship she is currently in, because she believes for all purposes it's the orientation that matters at that point, since she's not going to be with a guy and therefore she doesn't think it matters that she's attracted to them... then sure. It's not the way most people see these things, but it's still her life.

I was a bit surprised by some of the strong negative reactions about her damaging or attacking the community. Did she say everyone can choose to change who they're attracted to? It wasn't my impression.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Matt » 30 Jan 2012, 16:43

I hate the argument of "choice", because it's one of total irrelevancy.

Whether or not homosexuality is genetic, environmental, socialized or chosen is (or should be) of absolutely no consequence whatsoever as it pertains to affording the LGBT community equal rights under the law.

We grant legal protections to matters of religious belief, and it would be a hell of a lot easier to argue that religious beliefs are chosen than it would be to build a convincing case that sexual orientation is.

Even if it were a choice is should still be given protection, for the same reasons that religious beliefs are.

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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Psyclone » 30 Jan 2012, 17:05

Whether or not she meant her comments in a harmful way, her inability to clarify her statement has turned what might have been a really powerful thing into something that's just going to damage the LGBT community more. Whatever she meant by 'choose,' since she didn't explain it, bigots are going to take that exactly how they want to. At the very least, she could have been a bit more explicit.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby AlexanderDitto » 30 Jan 2012, 17:21

Matt wrote:I hate the argument of "choice", because it's one of total irrelevancy.

...

Even if it were a choice is should still be given protection, for the same reasons that religious beliefs are.

-m


This is the truest truth. Unfortunately, in many parts of America, you'd probably be physically assaulted for making that argument. We've lost sight of what freedom and liberty mean.

And while it shouldn't matter for adults and rights and freedoms, it does matter to, say, children who are still at the mercy of their extremist religious parents, who, were their sexuality a choice, could find themselves being sent to psychologically damaging programs that try to "pray the gay away." Because if it's a choice, a parent has every right to "convince" their child to change their mind.

My mother has already admitted to me that if she knew I was gay when I was a kid, she would have done something about it.

Duckay wrote:Frankly, I tend to find statements like "she doesn't have to "identify" with X, but she IS X" more damaging. What you are saying is that you understand her sexuality better than she does, which is a dangerous thing to start throwing around.

Furthermore, frankly, at the beginning of all this, your second paragraph was how I understand her point; she didn't choose to be attracted to men or to women, but she chose to live in a lesbian relationship.


I both agree and disagree with you: I agree in that it's unfair of me to say "she doesn't have to identify with X but she IS X," because it blurs the distinction between the labels we use to describe concepts (which often get overloaded semantically) and the concepts themselves. When I said that, what I meant is, "She doesn't have to identify as bisexual, but she IS [a person who has feelings for both men and women, which is, at its core, the meaning of the word bisexual.] Believe me, I know the difference: bisexual might be a loaded label, but so is "gay," I'd argue more so (though that doesn't really matter), and it's something that frustrates me quite frequently.

As to your second paragraph: what I described and what she said were two very different things. There's a clear ambiguity to what she said. To say, "I've been straight and I've been gay, and gay is better" is not saying "I've been in straight relationships." There's a big difference. We've been talking about labels... well, there you go. She's going and applying two labels to herself that, at their core, mean things that she didn't intend, and come along with so much linguistic baggage that to throw them around shows even more insensitivity.

In all honesty? This doesn't really matter all that much. All it reveals is an actor's lack of tact. It's just... sort of unfortunate that someone who could come right out and say "I have feelings for men AND women and that's FINE and it should BE FINE," and do a good thing for bisexuals, has instead said something insensitive and foolish.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Avistew » 30 Jan 2012, 17:26

For the record, I absolutely agree with Matt. I don't see why it should matter if it's a choice or not, just like I don't see why it should matter if it's natural. I think it IS natural, but if it wasn't,m so what? What's natural about cars, or modern medicine, or ipads? What's natural about the Internet. or glasses, or clothing? We're surrounded with unnatural things that are perfectly fine, we eat them, we wear them, we ride them, we use them. Why would it suddenly matter for that one thing?
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Duckay » 30 Jan 2012, 17:31

In principle I agree with Matt. The only reason I don't wholeheartedly agree is because I know not everyone would take that the same way and actually protect the right, so in practice it's a bit more complicated.

AlexanderDitto, I still disagree in the sense that I think the point she seemed to be trying to make (while not precisely what she said, yes) is sound. And I've heard a lot of people in casual conversation misuse "straight" and "gay" to mean "straight / gay relationships", so perhaps I'm just more willing to read that into her point. Either way, it was a point ineptly made by Nixon.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby theDreamer » 30 Jan 2012, 17:31

Bigots don't need fuel guys.

They're bigots.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Matt » 30 Jan 2012, 17:51

AlexanderDitto wrote:This is the truest truth. Unfortunately, in many parts of America, you'd probably be physically assaulted for making that argument. We've lost sight of what freedom and liberty mean.

And while it shouldn't matter for adults and rights and freedoms, it does matter to, say, children who are still at the mercy of their extremist religious parents, who, were their sexuality a choice, could find themselves being sent to psychologically damaging programs that try to "pray the gay away." Because if it's a choice, a parent has every right to "convince" their child to change their mind.

My mother has already admitted to me that if she knew I was gay when I was a kid, she would have done something about it.


Yeah, I realize that. My post was meaning to say that I hate how "it's a choice" is used as ammunition against gay rights, when it shouldn't even be a consideration. It's a stupid argument to make, and it shouldn't be taken as a point against gay rights. I'm endlessly disappointed in how short-sighted the opposition is on this issue.

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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby AlexanderDitto » 30 Jan 2012, 18:03

theDreamer wrote:Bigots don't need fuel guys.

They're bigots.


You'd be surprised how quickly some people (though unfortunately not all) change their tune when they find out their child, or their uncle, or their nice neighbors who keep their yard looking so nice, or their favorite talk show host, are gay.

A lot of bigotry is fueled by a perception of "other-ness," the idea that a particular group is somehow different and weird and inhuman. So, yes, bigots do need fuel. They're fueled by ignorance and stereotypes and cultural preconceptions, and removing that fuel DOES help in many cases.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby theDreamer » 30 Jan 2012, 18:07

Yes, but "choice" isn't really going to change anything.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Avistew » 30 Jan 2012, 18:46

AlexanderDitto wrote:Because if it's a choice, a parent has every right to "convince" their child to change their mind.


Do you mean they feel they have every right to, or that they actually have every right to? Because if it's the latter, I strongly disagree.
I'm at odds with my parents (saw my father a couple of times last year, my mother was around but I didn't interact with her, before then I stay away from them for years, and in the near future it's likely to be the same thing).
I won't go deep into my family history but basically I'm at odds with them because they felt they had the right to try and convince me to change my mind about personal choices.
From what I wanted to study to who I wanted to marry, they would butt in and try to talk it through with me.

I believe that personal decisions are called personal decisions for a reason. Even if homosexuality was a choice, parents wouldn't have a say about that. It's their kid's life. If they want someone whose life they can control they should get a pet, not a child.

/rant

This being said, yes, a lot of people feel they have that right. But I'm not sure it would change that much if nobody said it was a child. They would just, instead, say that the kid is confused, or too young to know for sure, or should try someone of the opposite sex first. They could still pray for it to change. Just because they know it<s not a choice doesn't mean they'll stop be prejudiced against it. I don't think many people would argue that ethnicity is a choice, and yet racism exists.
Bigotry doesn't go away because they realise it isn't a choice, although the form of bigotry might change. We need to work to get rid of it altogether, and I think the choice issue is one of these that the sexualists are trying to throw so that we work on this rather than things that would make a bigger difference in acceptance.

It's a stupid argument meant to muddy the waters. Like when people tell me Hitler was a vegetarian. I'm not going to waste time trying to refute it, because it's stupid to begin with.

This being said, I realise how much it can hurt to be personally attacked. On another forum, one member who realised I was polyamorous (not that I was trying to hide it) started making comments (for instance she commented, about my having two partners "that's handy, if one dies or leaves you, you have another left") which was just... weird (I replied to her "I also have three brothers, same thing, I can lose up to two and not care!") and after a couple of days she just left the forums altogether making a lengthy post about how she couldn't bear the wickedness of some other members (it was very clear she meant me).

I didn't even know her, and yet it hurt a lot because it was completelly uncalled for and I had done nothing to her. So I realise that all the comments can be hurtful (and gay people face a lot more of them than me) but I think sometimes you need to learn to let it go and focus on things you do have an influence on.

Speaking of which, I just got a commission for a knitted plushie, and it got me thinking, do you think there is anything I could knit that would be LGBT related? I could get an etsy store and donate the proceeds to an organisation, and let the plushes spread the world. But I'm out of ideas.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Psyclone » 30 Jan 2012, 20:30

I suppose you could call ethnicity a choice. Race is definitely not a choice. And I think that the lines have been blurred a bit in modern society, but at its core racism is just about race.

Also, with regards to what Ditto said, I think he was just trying to show the foolishness of the "gay is a choice" argument. Like, "being a sociopath isn't a choice, so we shouldn't get mad at them for killing people" or something like that.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Avistew » 31 Jan 2012, 07:33

Sorry, I'm used to using ethnicity in the way a lot of people use "race" because I always think of human as our race. What's the difference with ethnicity, then?
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Master Gunner » 31 Jan 2012, 07:58

Race is defined largely based on biological criteria such as inheritable phenotypes, though is taxonomically irrelevant. Ethnicity is based more on shared cultural background, such as the Basques and the Normans.
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Re: This thread is so gay

Postby Avistew » 31 Jan 2012, 09:04

Ah. I had no clue, I had always thought ethnicity was biological traits only. I figured that was why people talked about ethnic diversity within a country, but I guess they meant people with various cultural backgrounds rather than people with different physical characteristics. Anyway, my point remains the same, I guess the proper word for what I meant was race, though.

EDIT: I also found this tidbit on Wikipedia:
The term 'ethnic' popularly connotes '[race]' in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, '[race]' most commonly means color, and 'ethnics' are the descendents of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. '[Ethnic]' is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no 'ethnics'; there are only 'ethnic relations'


which might have contributed to my confusion.
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