worn out the Republican Gay Sex Sting news thing October 9, 2007 9:37 PM Subscribe
"...I think we've pretty much worn out the Republican Gay Sex Sting news thing." - cortex
I disagree, but oh well. It did seem to have some interesting conversation going on. I just kinda think that if we allow newsfilter posts at all then we're always going to have this sort of thing.
It was just a state senate seat, which is pretty small potatoes. It seems like people are reaching pretty far if state senate "scandals" are equated with the GOP brass that run the country.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:48 PM on October 9, 2007 [2 favorites]
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:48 PM on October 9, 2007 [2 favorites]
It was just a state senate seat, which is pretty small potatoes.
You know who likes to stick hotdogs in potatoes?
posted by Poolio at 9:51 PM on October 9, 2007
You know who likes to stick hotdogs in potatoes?
posted by Poolio at 9:51 PM on October 9, 2007
Republicans should be outed at all levels, without exception. If they vote to take rights away from American citizens, they should suffer the consequences.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:52 PM on October 9, 2007 [4 favorites]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:52 PM on October 9, 2007 [4 favorites]
But why is cortex trying to suppress votes for Shelley? Has he been paid off by Kimberley Klein? Does he hate parrots?
posted by homunculus at 10:04 PM on October 9, 2007
posted by homunculus at 10:04 PM on October 9, 2007
I said it there and I'll say it here too: the homophobia in those threads always creeps me out, both in MeFi and elsewhere.
"Hypocrisy" doesn't make middle-school jokes okay.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:18 PM on October 9, 2007
"Hypocrisy" doesn't make middle-school jokes okay.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:18 PM on October 9, 2007
OMFG POLITICIANS ARE HYPOCRITICAL????? I DID NOT KNOW THAT BEFORE THIS FRONT PAGE POST!!!!
posted by dw at 10:36 PM on October 9, 2007
posted by dw at 10:36 PM on October 9, 2007
Blazecock Pileon writes "Republicans should be outed at all levels, without exception. If they vote to take rights away from American citizens, they should suffer the consequences."
Whether or not that's true, it doesn't really relate to whether it should be on MetaFilter. If we all posted everything we should be concerned about every time it happened, the front page would see several gigabytes of posts a day, and we'd have no time for things like music or art or insects or the like.
posted by Bugbread at 10:44 PM on October 9, 2007
Whether or not that's true, it doesn't really relate to whether it should be on MetaFilter. If we all posted everything we should be concerned about every time it happened, the front page would see several gigabytes of posts a day, and we'd have no time for things like music or art or insects or the like.
posted by Bugbread at 10:44 PM on October 9, 2007
You know what the worst part about all of this is?
Having to think about Republicans having sex.
The merest inkling of an imagining of those dour old shitbags having any sort of orgasm at all is enough to give me the heebies for months on end.
*imagines the grunting and angry scuffling*
*showers, scrubbing furiously, mumbling 'can't... get.... clean... enough...'*
posted by loquacious at 11:07 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]
Having to think about Republicans having sex.
The merest inkling of an imagining of those dour old shitbags having any sort of orgasm at all is enough to give me the heebies for months on end.
*imagines the grunting and angry scuffling*
*showers, scrubbing furiously, mumbling 'can't... get.... clean... enough...'*
posted by loquacious at 11:07 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]
r.t.r: The far majority of us who make jokes when we hear about this are in no way homophobic. Further, a good chunk of the people who post in these threads are (not self-hating) gay. Hell...if Republicans want to gave gay sex, gay lifestyles, gay romances or whatever...more power to them. It can only help to open up their minds.
Assumption of homophobia is what I see on your part here. If real, rampant homophobia popped into these threads, I have little doubt that people would smack that poster down hard. It's been done before.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:15 PM on October 9, 2007
Assumption of homophobia is what I see on your part here. If real, rampant homophobia popped into these threads, I have little doubt that people would smack that poster down hard. It's been done before.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:15 PM on October 9, 2007
I just wish the css for the box that holds the deletion reason didn't wrap so weirdly (at least in plain theme).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:23 PM on October 9, 2007
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:23 PM on October 9, 2007
I said it there and I'll say it here too: the homophobia in those threads always creeps me out, both in MeFi and elsewhere.
Maybe it's like take back the night
maybe it's like when bleeding hearts grow up and turn to the right
maybe it's like when a faggot calls himself a faggot
posted by fleetmouse at 11:39 PM on October 9, 2007
Maybe it's like take back the night
maybe it's like when bleeding hearts grow up and turn to the right
maybe it's like when a faggot calls himself a faggot
posted by fleetmouse at 11:39 PM on October 9, 2007
the homophobia in those threads always creeps me out
You know, this accusation would have more weight if you'd actually point to a specific example of homophobia in "those threads." Because scorn for lying bigotry =/= homophobia, and saying it does is total insulting bullshit.
posted by mediareport at 11:39 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]
You know, this accusation would have more weight if you'd actually point to a specific example of homophobia in "those threads." Because scorn for lying bigotry =/= homophobia, and saying it does is total insulting bullshit.
posted by mediareport at 11:39 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]
Whether or not that's true, it doesn't really relate to whether it should be on MetaFilter.
That's a fair comment, bugbread, but I wasn't really addressing that anyway. Rather, I was addressing Matt's comment up here.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:46 PM on October 9, 2007
That's a fair comment, bugbread, but I wasn't really addressing that anyway. Rather, I was addressing Matt's comment up here.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:46 PM on October 9, 2007
I love a good Republican Hypocrisy Story as much as the next person, but that doesn't mean that every Republican Hypocrisy Story warrants a Metafilter post.
posted by amyms at 11:53 PM on October 9, 2007
posted by amyms at 11:53 PM on October 9, 2007
“You know, this accusation would have more weight if you'd actually point to a specific example of homophobia in ‘those threads.’”
At a guess, I think he's reacting to the way a number of people find these threads an opportunity to throw around gay stereotypes in a derogatory manner. It's a lot like the Coulter threads where suddenly sexist jokes that have all the characteristics of misogyny suddenly are A-Okay.
As someone who has defended and committed some of the very worst rhetoric against Coulter, but who is assuredly not a sexist or misogynist, I can report that the psychology in these situations is complex. Speaking for myself, I'm not really saying something that I'm suppressing saying otherwise about some/any/all women; rather, I'm using the most potent tools at hand which society has provided me to attack her because I think that there's pretty much no attack so vicious that it's out-of-bounds against her.
I am not, and have never been, very confident of my reasoning in this matter. It seems very emotion-driven and looks a hell of a lot like a rationalization. My emotions compel me to not back down from a no-holds-barred attack on Coulter, but my reason tells me that where I have so many doubts about the rightness of my conduct I should play it safe and not do it. Those two things are slightly at an impasse, but the rational side is winning.
So I suspect this is true for some people in the GOP outing threads.
It's curious that I don't feel the same in those cases as I do the Coulter case—but, to me, they aren't really comparable. As a class, sure, these closeted, hypocritical GOP mucky-mucks are very dangerous and do a lot of harm; but, as individuals, what I see are mostly very confused self-hating people who possibly had little chance to turn out differently than they did. Most people stick with the politics of their family/community environment (though some conservatives will flirt with liberalism at college age, I think most gravitate back to conservatism) and I'm not sure why these gay conservatives should be held to a standard I can't reasonably expect everyone to hold to. (Well, I do sort of expect people to go beyond their upbringing, but because so few do, I don't feel that it's appropriate to vilify most people for such a common failing).
And, obviously, in the Coulter case, most of the vitriol is aimed precisely at her. In the closeted conservative case, the vitriol is aimed at a class of people. Sure, they're a class deserving condemnation, just like all conservatives deserve condemnation. But once you've abstracted enough away from the individual and are stereotyping people, then using hateful gay stereotypes against a subset of gays doesn't seem to me to be all that far away from using them against all gays.
Finally, I do happen to believe that there's still a lot of sexism and homophobia on the left, which necessarily includes MetaFilter. I think that people on the left learn to be discrete about their sexism and homophobia, but when the occasion permits, will let it fly. So, the point is that I'm not convinced that some or most of what we see here in these threads isn't actually the real thing.
But, as I said, it's complex.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:18 AM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]
At a guess, I think he's reacting to the way a number of people find these threads an opportunity to throw around gay stereotypes in a derogatory manner. It's a lot like the Coulter threads where suddenly sexist jokes that have all the characteristics of misogyny suddenly are A-Okay.
As someone who has defended and committed some of the very worst rhetoric against Coulter, but who is assuredly not a sexist or misogynist, I can report that the psychology in these situations is complex. Speaking for myself, I'm not really saying something that I'm suppressing saying otherwise about some/any/all women; rather, I'm using the most potent tools at hand which society has provided me to attack her because I think that there's pretty much no attack so vicious that it's out-of-bounds against her.
I am not, and have never been, very confident of my reasoning in this matter. It seems very emotion-driven and looks a hell of a lot like a rationalization. My emotions compel me to not back down from a no-holds-barred attack on Coulter, but my reason tells me that where I have so many doubts about the rightness of my conduct I should play it safe and not do it. Those two things are slightly at an impasse, but the rational side is winning.
So I suspect this is true for some people in the GOP outing threads.
It's curious that I don't feel the same in those cases as I do the Coulter case—but, to me, they aren't really comparable. As a class, sure, these closeted, hypocritical GOP mucky-mucks are very dangerous and do a lot of harm; but, as individuals, what I see are mostly very confused self-hating people who possibly had little chance to turn out differently than they did. Most people stick with the politics of their family/community environment (though some conservatives will flirt with liberalism at college age, I think most gravitate back to conservatism) and I'm not sure why these gay conservatives should be held to a standard I can't reasonably expect everyone to hold to. (Well, I do sort of expect people to go beyond their upbringing, but because so few do, I don't feel that it's appropriate to vilify most people for such a common failing).
And, obviously, in the Coulter case, most of the vitriol is aimed precisely at her. In the closeted conservative case, the vitriol is aimed at a class of people. Sure, they're a class deserving condemnation, just like all conservatives deserve condemnation. But once you've abstracted enough away from the individual and are stereotyping people, then using hateful gay stereotypes against a subset of gays doesn't seem to me to be all that far away from using them against all gays.
Finally, I do happen to believe that there's still a lot of sexism and homophobia on the left, which necessarily includes MetaFilter. I think that people on the left learn to be discrete about their sexism and homophobia, but when the occasion permits, will let it fly. So, the point is that I'm not convinced that some or most of what we see here in these threads isn't actually the real thing.
But, as I said, it's complex.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:18 AM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]
Blazecock Pileon writes "That's a fair comment, bugbread, but I wasn't really addressing that anyway. Rather, I was addressing Matt's comment up here."
Ah, ok, I see. I'm sorry.
posted by Bugbread at 2:07 AM on October 10, 2007
Ah, ok, I see. I'm sorry.
posted by Bugbread at 2:07 AM on October 10, 2007
The full quote from cortex, to be fair was "When you're backlinking a whole string of recent posts and presenting it as Yet Another, I think we've pretty much worn out the Republican Gay Sex Sting news thing." and I have to agree with him and mathowie in this case.
I just kinda think that if we allow newsfilter posts at all then we're always going to have this sort of thing.
And then usually we wind up getting a bit of newsfilter fatigue.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:10 AM on October 10, 2007
I just kinda think that if we allow newsfilter posts at all then we're always going to have this sort of thing.
And then usually we wind up getting a bit of newsfilter fatigue.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:10 AM on October 10, 2007
It wasn't a great post, but neither was it a great deletion. Cortex's deletion finger is way too heavy. Matt's judicious use of deletion is part of what made MeFi successful. Cortex operates more like an editor who feels free to excise anything which does not strike his fancy. Not good. Most of us are perfectly capable of skipping over a post which is not to our liking, but I would rather make that decision myself rather than have Cortex make it for me. I am still hoping that this is just part of getting a feel for the mod job rather than a permanent fixture in his moderation style.
posted by caddis at 4:31 AM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]
posted by caddis at 4:31 AM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]
caddis: In other words, it was better in the old days...
Grow up. The facts are.
1) The user base is different from then.
2) The user base is larger than then.
3) The internet has changed since then.
4) Metafilter is different in many ways because of these and other things.
5) Editorial policy reflects all these changes.
6) Editors are People Too.
7) Newsflash. You don't think about the site in the same way as the owners and moderators. You probably have no idea what they are trying to do.
Truth be told, metafilter is going to continue changing. Prepare your moaning muscles. And finally, if you think cortex or jessamyn are heavy handed, you're in for a suprise when Matt hires a moderator who actually is that way.
Now, Get Off My Lawn.
posted by seanyboy at 5:19 AM on October 10, 2007
Grow up. The facts are.
1) The user base is different from then.
2) The user base is larger than then.
3) The internet has changed since then.
4) Metafilter is different in many ways because of these and other things.
5) Editorial policy reflects all these changes.
6) Editors are People Too.
7) Newsflash. You don't think about the site in the same way as the owners and moderators. You probably have no idea what they are trying to do.
Truth be told, metafilter is going to continue changing. Prepare your moaning muscles. And finally, if you think cortex or jessamyn are heavy handed, you're in for a suprise when Matt hires a moderator who actually is that way.
Now, Get Off My Lawn.
posted by seanyboy at 5:19 AM on October 10, 2007
Cortex's deletion finger is way too heavy.
posted by caddis
Calling cortex trigger happy doesn't make it true. I have seen it done several times during the past weeks without any ground (maybe once, and it was debatable, and it has been debated). Sounds like even some old timers prefer to shoot the messenger to vent their adrenaline excess. Sure, it's easier, it's in the shooting range and it is allowed. So why bother thinking twice before aiming?
posted by bru at 5:20 AM on October 10, 2007
posted by caddis
Calling cortex trigger happy doesn't make it true. I have seen it done several times during the past weeks without any ground (maybe once, and it was debatable, and it has been debated). Sounds like even some old timers prefer to shoot the messenger to vent their adrenaline excess. Sure, it's easier, it's in the shooting range and it is allowed. So why bother thinking twice before aiming?
posted by bru at 5:20 AM on October 10, 2007
These posts are so distasteful. The same people who cry out in glee about a Republican outing also invariably hold the position that no one should be outed against their will.
posted by smackfu at 5:36 AM on October 10, 2007
posted by smackfu at 5:36 AM on October 10, 2007
the way a number of people find these threads an opportunity to throw around gay stereotypes in a derogatory manner
Yeah, I get what he might *think* is happening in that thread, EB, thanks. I would still like him to supply specific examples of homophobia from the left in that thread, because I'm very much not seeing it. At all. So, roll truck roll, do you have any specific examples of homophobia you'd like to show us from that thread? Hell, I'd settle for an example of what you consider "homophobia" from the left in *any* thread related to asshole lying hypocrite bigoted closeted Republican fucks?
posted by mediareport at 5:59 AM on October 10, 2007
Yeah, I get what he might *think* is happening in that thread, EB, thanks. I would still like him to supply specific examples of homophobia from the left in that thread, because I'm very much not seeing it. At all. So, roll truck roll, do you have any specific examples of homophobia you'd like to show us from that thread? Hell, I'd settle for an example of what you consider "homophobia" from the left in *any* thread related to asshole lying hypocrite bigoted closeted Republican fucks?
posted by mediareport at 5:59 AM on October 10, 2007
The same people who cry out in glee about a Republican outing also invariably hold the position that no one should be outed against their will.
More bullshit without examples. God, what is it about us uppity fags laughing at the jerks who work to keep us second-class citizens that brings this kind of smear job out?
posted by mediareport at 6:01 AM on October 10, 2007
More bullshit without examples. God, what is it about us uppity fags laughing at the jerks who work to keep us second-class citizens that brings this kind of smear job out?
posted by mediareport at 6:01 AM on October 10, 2007
if we allow newsfilter posts at all then we're always going to have this sort of thing
If by "this sort of thing", you mean "worthy deletions", then I agree wholeheartedly. Posters should appreciate that if they're linking to four previous FPPs with essentially the same content and comments, odds are it won't pass muster.
Oh, and know who else solicited for some sweet, sweet manlove in the men's lav?
That's right, Herbert Pocket.
Sorta gives "Come here my little friend. Don't be afraid." a whole new meaning.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:02 AM on October 10, 2007
If by "this sort of thing", you mean "worthy deletions", then I agree wholeheartedly. Posters should appreciate that if they're linking to four previous FPPs with essentially the same content and comments, odds are it won't pass muster.
Oh, and know who else solicited for some sweet, sweet manlove in the men's lav?
That's right, Herbert Pocket.
Sorta gives "Come here my little friend. Don't be afraid." a whole new meaning.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:02 AM on October 10, 2007
mediareport: Just off the top of my head, I recall arguing with several people who claimed that Mark Foley was a pedophile, despite the fact that all the pages paged were above the age of consent. There's no doubt his actions were incredibly hypocritical and grossly inappropriate, but the rush to brand the guy as a pederast by people who seemed to feel politically entitled to indulge their worst instincts felt like the height of "Won't somebody please think of the children?" mixed with a healthy dose of disgust and contempt for those creepy, grasping homos.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:17 AM on October 10, 2007
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:17 AM on October 10, 2007
...specific examples of homophobia from the left in that thread...
1) it's faaaaabulous for anyone to make fun of hypocritical idiots
And it's faaaaabulous to use this hoary old stereotype in any conversation about being gay. Way to reinforce. God. You'll be talking about how well dressed they are next...
2) Man, I thought gay guys were supposed to be cool. Turns out they're all republicans! TV lied! They're not well-dressed at all!
.. And there we go ...
Not that I don't think that these aren't humorous statements. And I don't have too much of a problem with them myself. But I think that the use of such stereotypes could be perceived as engendering homophobia.
Pass me any thread on this subject and I'll find you some similar stuff that could be deemed offensive.
posted by seanyboy at 6:21 AM on October 10, 2007
1) it's faaaaabulous for anyone to make fun of hypocritical idiots
And it's faaaaabulous to use this hoary old stereotype in any conversation about being gay. Way to reinforce. God. You'll be talking about how well dressed they are next...
2) Man, I thought gay guys were supposed to be cool. Turns out they're all republicans! TV lied! They're not well-dressed at all!
.. And there we go ...
Not that I don't think that these aren't humorous statements. And I don't have too much of a problem with them myself. But I think that the use of such stereotypes could be perceived as engendering homophobia.
Pass me any thread on this subject and I'll find you some similar stuff that could be deemed offensive.
posted by seanyboy at 6:21 AM on October 10, 2007
Cortex operates more like an editor who feels free to excise anything which does not strike his fancy.
The front page would be a hell of a lot thinner if I actually did that, caddis. Really and truly. I do my damnedest to keep my opinions far anterior to the guidelines of the site when evaluating posts, and I talk to Matt and Jess all the damn time about this stuff.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:31 AM on October 10, 2007
The front page would be a hell of a lot thinner if I actually did that, caddis. Really and truly. I do my damnedest to keep my opinions far anterior to the guidelines of the site when evaluating posts, and I talk to Matt and Jess all the damn time about this stuff.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:31 AM on October 10, 2007
But I think that the use of such stereotypes could be perceived as engendering homophobia.
I am more offended at the prospects of being murdered, locked up, or treated as a social pariah while society looks on, than at relatively minor quips about how well I might dress.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:47 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
I am more offended at the prospects of being murdered, locked up, or treated as a social pariah while society looks on, than at relatively minor quips about how well I might dress.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:47 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
I kinda thought the whole point was that it's not an isolated incident, which itself makes it news. That is to say, one reading may be "who cares; this happens once a week," whereas another may be "holy crap -- this happens once a week!" I'm leaning toward the latter, but YMMV, as they say.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:57 AM on October 10, 2007
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:57 AM on October 10, 2007
Sometimes tongue-in-cheek stuff is offensive, but it's still tongue-in-cheek. Careful reading, a skill available to all, uncovers this, and mitigates the offensiveness for all but the most obtuse, who doom themselves to labeling obvious jokes human-rights violations.
There's something to be said about the comedy value of such buffoonery, though; someone so hysterically humorless, in any situation, doesn't even need to be the butt of a joke to be funny. Some jokes are made better when an audience member steadfastly refuses to get them, or even consider them humor. Then the joke shifts its focus to the stick-in-the-mud; often they themselves become the joke.
That shit is hilarious.
posted by breezeway at 7:02 AM on October 10, 2007
There's something to be said about the comedy value of such buffoonery, though; someone so hysterically humorless, in any situation, doesn't even need to be the butt of a joke to be funny. Some jokes are made better when an audience member steadfastly refuses to get them, or even consider them humor. Then the joke shifts its focus to the stick-in-the-mud; often they themselves become the joke.
That shit is hilarious.
posted by breezeway at 7:02 AM on October 10, 2007
"The same people who cry out in glee about a Republican outing also invariably hold the position that no one should be outed against their will."
More bullshit without examples.
Which part of that do you disagree with? That people should be outed against their will, or that people are gleeful about Republican outings? Or do you think these are two disjunct groups?
posted by smackfu at 7:02 AM on October 10, 2007
More bullshit without examples.
Which part of that do you disagree with? That people should be outed against their will, or that people are gleeful about Republican outings? Or do you think these are two disjunct groups?
posted by smackfu at 7:02 AM on October 10, 2007
It's not so much that the individual jokes that people make are particularly harmful in themselves, it's that at least some of them don't seem ironic and really give off the smell of “oh, good, now I can make a few homophobic jokes/comments and I won't get in trouble for it”. It's bothersome in that it's unpleasant to see the standard homophobia rear its ugly head among one otherwise supposes are allies and fellow-travelers in gay rights.
I don't have any specific examples, I didn't really even read the particular thread mentioned. I only chimed in to try to offer some support and explanation for both the claim that there's something Not Quite Right in some of these threads and, also, that even if it doesn't pass the smell test, it still may not be the homophobia it seems to be (given my own example with Coulter).
On the other hand, I think a lot of straight people who support gay rights and don't think of themselves as homophobes still, nevertheless, have some residual amount of homophobia. I really felt that in the Craig thread with the extreme reactions many people posted about the idea or experience of being propositioned in a public bathroom. I know that they think it's really an issue of privacy, and I agree that there certainly are matters of privacy and personal dignity at play, but, c'mon, a lot of straight people who are gay-friendly still get quite excessively squicked out at the idea of gay sex. That's not The Problem, certainly the activist homophobes and generally strong homophobes are The Problem, but the fact that there's still a widespread, residual homophobia even amoung liberals and progressives who are, in fact, supporters of gay rights and friends with gays and such...well, I just think that it's not a stretch to look at that and think that there is very likely some minority of people who have a stronger and more conscious and vicious level of homophobia who are just masking it out of peer pressure. And those are the people who will speak up as soon as it seems like it's become appropriate in a certain situation to make gay jokes using derogatory and hoary stereotypes.
Or, looking at it another way, surely many of us have had this experience with racists? People that you didn't think were racist, people that seem to have the right politics to not be racist, in some situation suddenly they get it into their head that, say, racist jokes are (in that situation) just jokes and they then start to recite their vast collection of them, taking an awful lot of enjoyment in doing so, while some or all of the people around them are looking at them like, whoa, we really didn't have to scratch too hard to get under the surface to your actual racism.
I think it's the same thing with homophobia and also sexism. There's a small minority of people that otherwise are masked, and they don't lower that mask until they think it's okay to do so. If they're leftists, and especially if they see actual gays and committed gay activists saying jokey, near-homophobic things in a combination of irony and disgust for the hypocrite, these folks will misinterpret this and see it as an opportunity to express their true homophobia. I do think that's happened here on MeFi. I don't think that the majority of the jokey/vicious comments are examples of this. But I think some minority of them are, and these are the only threads in which these ever appear.
Going back to racism, I know people (well, I guess only online) that found Clarence Thomas and Sowell and Condi Rice and some other black people, all accused of being Uncle Toms, an opportunity to make racist jokes about them that involve the same stereotypes that your regular variety racist makes. And I find this deeply disturbing. I have no desire to make such jokes about anyone, whether they are as noxious as Clarence Thomas, or not.
There's also the problem here that the oppressed class quite often does make such jokes and comments among themselves. There's complex psychology surrounding this, and it's not entirely a matter of pulling the teeth from something used against them—there's a bit of the Stockholm Syndrome going on, too, I think. But whatever the reasons, it simply isn't the same context within which the non-members of the oppressed group make those same jokes. The contexts are very different. If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic, that doesn't make it okay for straights to do the same.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:25 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
I don't have any specific examples, I didn't really even read the particular thread mentioned. I only chimed in to try to offer some support and explanation for both the claim that there's something Not Quite Right in some of these threads and, also, that even if it doesn't pass the smell test, it still may not be the homophobia it seems to be (given my own example with Coulter).
On the other hand, I think a lot of straight people who support gay rights and don't think of themselves as homophobes still, nevertheless, have some residual amount of homophobia. I really felt that in the Craig thread with the extreme reactions many people posted about the idea or experience of being propositioned in a public bathroom. I know that they think it's really an issue of privacy, and I agree that there certainly are matters of privacy and personal dignity at play, but, c'mon, a lot of straight people who are gay-friendly still get quite excessively squicked out at the idea of gay sex. That's not The Problem, certainly the activist homophobes and generally strong homophobes are The Problem, but the fact that there's still a widespread, residual homophobia even amoung liberals and progressives who are, in fact, supporters of gay rights and friends with gays and such...well, I just think that it's not a stretch to look at that and think that there is very likely some minority of people who have a stronger and more conscious and vicious level of homophobia who are just masking it out of peer pressure. And those are the people who will speak up as soon as it seems like it's become appropriate in a certain situation to make gay jokes using derogatory and hoary stereotypes.
Or, looking at it another way, surely many of us have had this experience with racists? People that you didn't think were racist, people that seem to have the right politics to not be racist, in some situation suddenly they get it into their head that, say, racist jokes are (in that situation) just jokes and they then start to recite their vast collection of them, taking an awful lot of enjoyment in doing so, while some or all of the people around them are looking at them like, whoa, we really didn't have to scratch too hard to get under the surface to your actual racism.
I think it's the same thing with homophobia and also sexism. There's a small minority of people that otherwise are masked, and they don't lower that mask until they think it's okay to do so. If they're leftists, and especially if they see actual gays and committed gay activists saying jokey, near-homophobic things in a combination of irony and disgust for the hypocrite, these folks will misinterpret this and see it as an opportunity to express their true homophobia. I do think that's happened here on MeFi. I don't think that the majority of the jokey/vicious comments are examples of this. But I think some minority of them are, and these are the only threads in which these ever appear.
Going back to racism, I know people (well, I guess only online) that found Clarence Thomas and Sowell and Condi Rice and some other black people, all accused of being Uncle Toms, an opportunity to make racist jokes about them that involve the same stereotypes that your regular variety racist makes. And I find this deeply disturbing. I have no desire to make such jokes about anyone, whether they are as noxious as Clarence Thomas, or not.
There's also the problem here that the oppressed class quite often does make such jokes and comments among themselves. There's complex psychology surrounding this, and it's not entirely a matter of pulling the teeth from something used against them—there's a bit of the Stockholm Syndrome going on, too, I think. But whatever the reasons, it simply isn't the same context within which the non-members of the oppressed group make those same jokes. The contexts are very different. If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic, that doesn't make it okay for straights to do the same.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:25 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
I just kinda think that if we allow newsfilter posts at all then we're always going to have this sort of thing.
It's amazing how many people think that the only possible subject-specific (or format-specific, or site-specific) standards for post quality are "the same, fairly low standards we have for posts on most topics" or "completely forbidden." It is possible to hold posts on certain topics, or in certain formats, or from certain websites, to higher standards without completely forbidding them.
If they vote to take rights away from American citizens, they should suffer the consequences.
So, you have evidence that DiFatta has done this? The argument, "we only out closeted gays if they have voted against gay rights" no longer holds water if you don't bother to confirm whether a given person has, in fact, voted against gay rights.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:51 AM on October 10, 2007
It's amazing how many people think that the only possible subject-specific (or format-specific, or site-specific) standards for post quality are "the same, fairly low standards we have for posts on most topics" or "completely forbidden." It is possible to hold posts on certain topics, or in certain formats, or from certain websites, to higher standards without completely forbidding them.
If they vote to take rights away from American citizens, they should suffer the consequences.
So, you have evidence that DiFatta has done this? The argument, "we only out closeted gays if they have voted against gay rights" no longer holds water if you don't bother to confirm whether a given person has, in fact, voted against gay rights.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:51 AM on October 10, 2007
The contexts are very different. If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic, that doesn't make it okay for straights to do the same.
Whilst all your ruminations on this subject seem pretty robust and well-considered, EB, isn't slightly off-colour humour always going to be difficult to fully justify from an intellectual and/or moral standpoint? It doesn't follow that, because someone wheels out one of the standard tasteless gags that crop up after a celebrity death, they have repressed murderous intent. Sure, tasteless humour is neither big nor clever, but I expect almost all of us indulge in some flavour of it from time to time, largely for the release it gives us from the - predominantly reasonable and necessary - social/behavioural restrictions we voluntarily adhere to.
posted by RokkitNite at 7:54 AM on October 10, 2007
Whilst all your ruminations on this subject seem pretty robust and well-considered, EB, isn't slightly off-colour humour always going to be difficult to fully justify from an intellectual and/or moral standpoint? It doesn't follow that, because someone wheels out one of the standard tasteless gags that crop up after a celebrity death, they have repressed murderous intent. Sure, tasteless humour is neither big nor clever, but I expect almost all of us indulge in some flavour of it from time to time, largely for the release it gives us from the - predominantly reasonable and necessary - social/behavioural restrictions we voluntarily adhere to.
posted by RokkitNite at 7:54 AM on October 10, 2007
But the judgment whether or not such-and-such poster is straight or gay lies with whom? Does one have to be well-known and vocal about sex to be gay enough to make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic? Homophobic on whose scale? The touchiest, most humorless, likely-not-gay-but-making-up-for-it-by-sticking-up-for-the-rights-of-the-poor-downtrodden-homosexuals judge-and-jury kneejerk poster here? Or the moderators' scale? What if none of them are gay? If they can't make the comments, can they really judge whether others' comments are homophobic or not? Can they really tell if they themselves are gay or not?
Comparing sexuality to race is troublesome. I can easily find out how anti-gay oppression feels by modifying my behavior. I can't do that with race.
I usually agree that folks aren't careful enough with their words, but to me it's a matter of being careful with your own words, not the words of others. If you read into my words and decide that my humor is actually deep-down hate bubbling to the surface, or fear and intolerance yearning to breathe free, that's up to you. But my motivations, like yours, are far more complicated than anyone outside could give me credit for; all these latent sources are a mystery to you, but for me, I can trace my own thought processes just fine, or at least, better than you can. As a matter of fact, external judgments and criticisms tell us as much or more about our accusers than they do about ourselves.
Sure, we could get into the whole we-aren't-our-best-judges, clouded mirror shit, and that may be true, but just because we aren't the best judges of ourselves doesn't mean that everyone else is a better judge of us than we are. Particularly not the super-sensitive ones who find hair-trigger fault with whatever they can, especially humor. One might have written books on latent homophobia in humor by and for homosexuals, but still might not be the best judge of me and my words.
Maybe it's just the feeling that I can disappear up my own asshole and find out more things about me than you can, disappearing up your own asshole.
posted by breezeway at 8:04 AM on October 10, 2007
Comparing sexuality to race is troublesome. I can easily find out how anti-gay oppression feels by modifying my behavior. I can't do that with race.
I usually agree that folks aren't careful enough with their words, but to me it's a matter of being careful with your own words, not the words of others. If you read into my words and decide that my humor is actually deep-down hate bubbling to the surface, or fear and intolerance yearning to breathe free, that's up to you. But my motivations, like yours, are far more complicated than anyone outside could give me credit for; all these latent sources are a mystery to you, but for me, I can trace my own thought processes just fine, or at least, better than you can. As a matter of fact, external judgments and criticisms tell us as much or more about our accusers than they do about ourselves.
Sure, we could get into the whole we-aren't-our-best-judges, clouded mirror shit, and that may be true, but just because we aren't the best judges of ourselves doesn't mean that everyone else is a better judge of us than we are. Particularly not the super-sensitive ones who find hair-trigger fault with whatever they can, especially humor. One might have written books on latent homophobia in humor by and for homosexuals, but still might not be the best judge of me and my words.
Maybe it's just the feeling that I can disappear up my own asshole and find out more things about me than you can, disappearing up your own asshole.
posted by breezeway at 8:04 AM on October 10, 2007
The same people who cry out in glee about a Republican outing also invariably hold the position that no one should be outed against their will.
as someone who's pointed this out several times in the context of private individuals having their sex lives exposed, i've got standing to say that in this case, it doesn't wash
it's not "outing" if it's a public act in a public bathroom
it's not "outing" if one is arrested for it, which becomes a matter of public record
this guy and sen craig are fair game - they did it to themselves
posted by pyramid termite at 8:09 AM on October 10, 2007
as someone who's pointed this out several times in the context of private individuals having their sex lives exposed, i've got standing to say that in this case, it doesn't wash
it's not "outing" if it's a public act in a public bathroom
it's not "outing" if one is arrested for it, which becomes a matter of public record
this guy and sen craig are fair game - they did it to themselves
posted by pyramid termite at 8:09 AM on October 10, 2007
pyramid termite : "it's not 'outing' if it's a public act in a public bathroom"
I'm no expert on cottaging, but aren't most bathroom encounters "private acts in public bathrooms"? Sure, if you invite people over or leave the stall door open, that would be public, but if you close the door, that's a private act, right? Or does "private act" just mean "something performed on private property", which wasn't my understanding of it.
Like, if you have a whispered conversation with your girlfriend late at night in an empty park, is that a public conversation just because it's outside?
posted by Bugbread at 8:47 AM on October 10, 2007
I'm no expert on cottaging, but aren't most bathroom encounters "private acts in public bathrooms"? Sure, if you invite people over or leave the stall door open, that would be public, but if you close the door, that's a private act, right? Or does "private act" just mean "something performed on private property", which wasn't my understanding of it.
Like, if you have a whispered conversation with your girlfriend late at night in an empty park, is that a public conversation just because it's outside?
posted by Bugbread at 8:47 AM on October 10, 2007
I'm no expert on cottaging, but aren't most bathroom encounters "private acts in public bathrooms"?
not if someone else sees it
Like, if you have a whispered conversation with your girlfriend late at night in an empty park, is that a public conversation just because it's outside?
not if someone else hears it
discretion and common sense are your personal responsibilities, not society's - discretion and common sense should tell you that the consequences of encounters in public bathrooms are likely to be much greater and more likely than those of having a whispered conversation in a park
posted by pyramid termite at 9:03 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
not if someone else sees it
Like, if you have a whispered conversation with your girlfriend late at night in an empty park, is that a public conversation just because it's outside?
not if someone else hears it
discretion and common sense are your personal responsibilities, not society's - discretion and common sense should tell you that the consequences of encounters in public bathrooms are likely to be much greater and more likely than those of having a whispered conversation in a park
posted by pyramid termite at 9:03 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
"The same people who cry out in glee about a Republican outing also invariably hold the position that no one should be outed against their will."
I agree that no one should be outed against their will. Except, and this is very important, when that person is publicly trying to make me a second-class citizen while engaging in precisely the same behaviour they castigate me for. Actors/musicians/etc? Their sexuality is their business (except inasmuch as I'd generally prefer celebrities to be out and proud, because it gives hope to those kids who get told that being queer is a Very Bad Thing). Politicians? It depends. If they support anti-queer legislation and policy while cheerfully being queer little dirty birds the rest of the time, that's a hypocrisy that needs to have a little sun shone onto it, same as any hypocrisy does.
"There's also the problem here that the oppressed class quite often does make such jokes and comments among themselves."
Exactly. See: African-Americans and 'nigger'. Same deal. Or, for that matter, women and 'bitch'. There's a very different perception when an outsider--no matter how very supportive they are--uses the words of the oppressor.
"Comparing sexuality to race is troublesome. I can easily find out how anti-gay oppression feels by modifying my behavior. I can't do that with race.
"
Queer people of colour that I've known have said it's almost exactly the same experience--except, as you point out, that they can remove the anti-queer discrimination through behavioural changes.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:29 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
I agree that no one should be outed against their will. Except, and this is very important, when that person is publicly trying to make me a second-class citizen while engaging in precisely the same behaviour they castigate me for. Actors/musicians/etc? Their sexuality is their business (except inasmuch as I'd generally prefer celebrities to be out and proud, because it gives hope to those kids who get told that being queer is a Very Bad Thing). Politicians? It depends. If they support anti-queer legislation and policy while cheerfully being queer little dirty birds the rest of the time, that's a hypocrisy that needs to have a little sun shone onto it, same as any hypocrisy does.
"There's also the problem here that the oppressed class quite often does make such jokes and comments among themselves."
Exactly. See: African-Americans and 'nigger'. Same deal. Or, for that matter, women and 'bitch'. There's a very different perception when an outsider--no matter how very supportive they are--uses the words of the oppressor.
"Comparing sexuality to race is troublesome. I can easily find out how anti-gay oppression feels by modifying my behavior. I can't do that with race.
"
Queer people of colour that I've known have said it's almost exactly the same experience--except, as you point out, that they can remove the anti-queer discrimination through behavioural changes.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:29 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
As someone who has defended and committed some of the very worst rhetoric against Coulter, but who is assuredly not a sexist or misogynist
EB, I have the greatest respect for you and I certainly don't think you're "a sexist or misogynist," but I've never cared for your (or anyone else's) vitriolic attacks on Ann Coulter as a woman, it does come off as sexist, and frankly I'm surprised that you of all endlessly-self-analyzing people should trot out the old "I'm no sexist!" defense. To my mind, making apparently bigoted comments is strike one, following that with "...but I love X group! I'm no bigot!" is strike two. I would have thought anyone who's put as much thought into these matters as you would long ago have realized that we all have uncomfortable little nuggets of sexism, racism, homophobia, and various other nastinesses wedged into our psyches just from living in this society. The part of wisdom is to avoid being smug about one's purity, because it's exactly the people who are supremely confident in their own righteousness who casually act badly, sure that whatever they do or say is OK because it's them. I could name MeFi names, but I won't. If I were you, I would avoid attacking Coulter for precisely that reason. But it seems you're leaning in that direction anyway, which is a good thing.
posted by languagehat at 9:38 AM on October 10, 2007
EB, I have the greatest respect for you and I certainly don't think you're "a sexist or misogynist," but I've never cared for your (or anyone else's) vitriolic attacks on Ann Coulter as a woman, it does come off as sexist, and frankly I'm surprised that you of all endlessly-self-analyzing people should trot out the old "I'm no sexist!" defense. To my mind, making apparently bigoted comments is strike one, following that with "...but I love X group! I'm no bigot!" is strike two. I would have thought anyone who's put as much thought into these matters as you would long ago have realized that we all have uncomfortable little nuggets of sexism, racism, homophobia, and various other nastinesses wedged into our psyches just from living in this society. The part of wisdom is to avoid being smug about one's purity, because it's exactly the people who are supremely confident in their own righteousness who casually act badly, sure that whatever they do or say is OK because it's them. I could name MeFi names, but I won't. If I were you, I would avoid attacking Coulter for precisely that reason. But it seems you're leaning in that direction anyway, which is a good thing.
posted by languagehat at 9:38 AM on October 10, 2007
that Mark Foley was a pedophile, despite the fact that all the pages paged were above the age of consent. There's no doubt his actions were incredibly hypocritical and grossly inappropriate, but the rush to brand the guy as a pederast
a pederast is exactly what mark foley is, an adult male with a sexual/romantic interest in adolescent boys, not children per se.
pederasts and pedophiles (adults that are sexually attracted to children) are frequently conflated but very different. foley does not seem to be a pedophile.
also, what you're missing in the foley case is that people would find it at the very least inappropriate and worthy of some level of condemnation if his interest was in, say, high-school aged females. it's an abuse of power and age differential thing more than it was a false "think of the children" agenda.
posted by Hat Maui at 11:21 AM on October 10, 2007
a pederast is exactly what mark foley is, an adult male with a sexual/romantic interest in adolescent boys, not children per se.
pederasts and pedophiles (adults that are sexually attracted to children) are frequently conflated but very different. foley does not seem to be a pedophile.
also, what you're missing in the foley case is that people would find it at the very least inappropriate and worthy of some level of condemnation if his interest was in, say, high-school aged females. it's an abuse of power and age differential thing more than it was a false "think of the children" agenda.
posted by Hat Maui at 11:21 AM on October 10, 2007
also, what you're missing in the foley case is that people would find it at the very least inappropriate and worthy of some level of condemnation...
From my previous comment: There's no doubt his actions were incredibly hypocritical and grossly inappropriate...
a pederast is exactly what mark foley is, an adult male with a sexual/romantic interest in adolescent boys, not children per se
Adolescent boys, or young men? Obviously, there is no clearly defined line between the two categories and either could be applied to 16 year olds, but the former is a far more of a loaded term. The victims of Foley's improprieties were above the age of consent. Their victimization was one of a man abusing his position and authority, but they weren't victims and Foley was not a predator in the manner the majority of people seemed interested in portraying them.
foley does not seem to be a pedophile
Neither do you or I, but you can never be too sure...
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:40 AM on October 10, 2007
From my previous comment: There's no doubt his actions were incredibly hypocritical and grossly inappropriate...
a pederast is exactly what mark foley is, an adult male with a sexual/romantic interest in adolescent boys, not children per se
Adolescent boys, or young men? Obviously, there is no clearly defined line between the two categories and either could be applied to 16 year olds, but the former is a far more of a loaded term. The victims of Foley's improprieties were above the age of consent. Their victimization was one of a man abusing his position and authority, but they weren't victims and Foley was not a predator in the manner the majority of people seemed interested in portraying them.
foley does not seem to be a pedophile
Neither do you or I, but you can never be too sure...
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:40 AM on October 10, 2007
“but I've never cared for your (or anyone else's) vitriolic attacks on Ann Coulter as a woman, it does come off as sexist, and frankly I'm surprised that you of all endlessly-self-analyzing people should trot out the old ‘I'm no sexist!’ defense. To my mind, making apparently bigoted comments is strike one, following that with ‘...but I love X group! I'm no bigot!’ is strike two.”
Ah, but I didn't say anything of the “...but I love X group” sort, which I agree is an ironically reliable way of identifying bigots. I merely said that I know I'm not sexist. That seems risible if you're of the jonmc ‘everyone is a ..ist” school.
And while there's truth in that to the degree that it's impossible for any person to completely remove all traces of a prejudice from themselves when that prejudice is endemic to a society, I think the amount of sexism we're talking about here is of a level somewhat higher than the level which is the absolute minimum for all people in our culture.
Surely you know from what I've said on sexism and feminism here that I've pretty much spent a large part of my entire adult life being very active in this matter. Moreso than either being active, both externally and internally, in antiracism or gay rights. I'm extremely aware of my inner state and habits with regard to sexism and when I started this journey, 25 years ago, I certainly couldn't claim then that I wasn't sexist—even though I started off pretty non-sexist relative to how racist and homophobic I was at the same time. Today, my inner-state and my practices, as far as I can tell, don't have noticeable amounts of sexism in them. I do exhibit typical domineering, patronizing male behavior, but the thing about that is that I do that to everyone, male or female. I feel no more or no less license to behave that way with women than I do with men.
Anyway, that's my defense of my claim to not being sexist. Believe me, I don't know if I could have said this fifteen years ago, certainly not 25. It's been a long and difficult process to weed out sexist thought and habits.
In the specific, I can say that my most vitriolic attacks on Coulter haven't been made with any sort of generalized sexist feelings behind them. My hatred for Coulter is very specific. I have attacked her with sex-specific attacks, and the reasoning and emotion behind that is complex. I already said that I think a big part of it is that it's just too tempting to use the most culturally powerful tools available when you really want to attack someone. And there's a huge number of sexist and very powerful attacks on women available in our culture. Part of what's going on is that I instinctively realize that those potent rhetorical weapons are available, even when I don't feel that the generalized sexism which is their usual motivation is what I'm feeling in my usage against her.
I mean, you know, some of us do this in our personal lives, too. At least until we've learned the self-control to not do so. I was trained by my father's example to use whatever is the most effective rhetorical weapon available. It doesn't matter if it's true or if one means it. It just matters if it's effective. And while I've mostly learned to exorcise those behaviors from my character, when I'm really, really angry at someone like Coulter who I truly believe is a pox on our culture, it's hard for me not to be recidivist and allow my vicious inner self to surface. For that matter, it's hard for me to moderate what I say about amberglow, for the same sorts of reasons. I think he truly represents a dangerous and typical sort of bigoted voice in our culture, that he happens to be on the same side of the political aisle as me only makes it the more infuriating for me. Anyway, I think the whole using the most potent rhetorical weapon available thing while not actually intending or being motivated by a general bigotry, is part of it. And that's why I mentioned it in the context of these outing threads. I think that it's certainly possible that some people are just using the all-too-available homophobic slurs to attack these contemptible people, even though they don't actually feel any homophobia.
The other thing going on with Coulter that complicates matters, I think, is that in the political pundit milleau she lives within, she's strikingly unusual. Both in just being female in the first place, but also being a (relatively) attractive female in the second place. A lot of people, including myself, feel (either vaguely in my case, more pointedly and strongly in other peoples' cases) that Coulter is trading on our culture's sexism as a pundit. It's hard to put one's finger on it, and certainly there's a sort of sexism where attractive women aren't allowed to do certain things by our sexist culture (and so maybe that's involved in some people's reactions to Coulter), but it's really hard to shake the sense that she's quite happy to trade on this cultural sexism to give her an elevated platform from which to speak her venom and not that she wishes she were only listened to because of her mind, so to speak.
So her femaleness is wrapped up deeply in who she is and how she is functioning in our culture. And since her message is culturally conservative and so venomous, and implicitly anti-women, the fact that she's capitalizing on her femininity is deeply galling. Which is a situation quite comparable to these closeted cultural conservative politicians.
I think its instructive to compare her with Michelle Malkin. Both of them are pretty damn far to the right and say a great number of extremely risible things, even by the standard of your average conservative pundit. But Coulter says things a whole standard deviation more outrageous than does Malkin, which is saying a lot. Coulter gets away with simply saying in the titles of her books that liberals are America's traitors, for example. And Malkin, though also an attractive woman, doesn't (to me, anyway) have that smell of capitalizing on her feminine attractiveness to both open doors to her that would otherwise be closed and to shield her from the backlash that an unattractive woman or a man would face. I don't mean a backlash from the left, I mean a backlash from the center. The center, with its low level sexism, sees Coulter's outrageousness as a cute affectation. They patronize her, and she likes it just fine. She takes that patronization to the bank.
All that said, what I said in my previous comment is true. Both the reasons and motivations that I have attacked Coulter as I have, attacks that specifically involve her sex, seem to me to be very shaky reasons when looked at carefully. Neither prove me to be a sexist, and I'm certain I'm not, but both are, at best, rationalizations for vicious and immoderate behavior. And, at worst, even if I'm not sexist, I'm appearing sexist and implicitly encouraging actual sexists in their sexism.
All of this applies, I think, to how I and others should behave in these conservative outing threads. I think that some minority of people making apparently homophobic comments in those threads actually are homophobic. But for the same reasons that I think I'm not sexist in my Coulter comments, I suspect that the larger portion of people who make apparently homophobic comments in conservative outing threads probably aren't actually homophobic. But that's not reason enough to say that those kinds of comments are a good thing. They're bad on balance because partly they are just expressions of the not very good or noble sides of our natures, and partly because they encourage actual homophobes.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:11 PM on October 10, 2007
Ah, but I didn't say anything of the “...but I love X group” sort, which I agree is an ironically reliable way of identifying bigots. I merely said that I know I'm not sexist. That seems risible if you're of the jonmc ‘everyone is a ..ist” school.
And while there's truth in that to the degree that it's impossible for any person to completely remove all traces of a prejudice from themselves when that prejudice is endemic to a society, I think the amount of sexism we're talking about here is of a level somewhat higher than the level which is the absolute minimum for all people in our culture.
Surely you know from what I've said on sexism and feminism here that I've pretty much spent a large part of my entire adult life being very active in this matter. Moreso than either being active, both externally and internally, in antiracism or gay rights. I'm extremely aware of my inner state and habits with regard to sexism and when I started this journey, 25 years ago, I certainly couldn't claim then that I wasn't sexist—even though I started off pretty non-sexist relative to how racist and homophobic I was at the same time. Today, my inner-state and my practices, as far as I can tell, don't have noticeable amounts of sexism in them. I do exhibit typical domineering, patronizing male behavior, but the thing about that is that I do that to everyone, male or female. I feel no more or no less license to behave that way with women than I do with men.
Anyway, that's my defense of my claim to not being sexist. Believe me, I don't know if I could have said this fifteen years ago, certainly not 25. It's been a long and difficult process to weed out sexist thought and habits.
In the specific, I can say that my most vitriolic attacks on Coulter haven't been made with any sort of generalized sexist feelings behind them. My hatred for Coulter is very specific. I have attacked her with sex-specific attacks, and the reasoning and emotion behind that is complex. I already said that I think a big part of it is that it's just too tempting to use the most culturally powerful tools available when you really want to attack someone. And there's a huge number of sexist and very powerful attacks on women available in our culture. Part of what's going on is that I instinctively realize that those potent rhetorical weapons are available, even when I don't feel that the generalized sexism which is their usual motivation is what I'm feeling in my usage against her.
I mean, you know, some of us do this in our personal lives, too. At least until we've learned the self-control to not do so. I was trained by my father's example to use whatever is the most effective rhetorical weapon available. It doesn't matter if it's true or if one means it. It just matters if it's effective. And while I've mostly learned to exorcise those behaviors from my character, when I'm really, really angry at someone like Coulter who I truly believe is a pox on our culture, it's hard for me not to be recidivist and allow my vicious inner self to surface. For that matter, it's hard for me to moderate what I say about amberglow, for the same sorts of reasons. I think he truly represents a dangerous and typical sort of bigoted voice in our culture, that he happens to be on the same side of the political aisle as me only makes it the more infuriating for me. Anyway, I think the whole using the most potent rhetorical weapon available thing while not actually intending or being motivated by a general bigotry, is part of it. And that's why I mentioned it in the context of these outing threads. I think that it's certainly possible that some people are just using the all-too-available homophobic slurs to attack these contemptible people, even though they don't actually feel any homophobia.
The other thing going on with Coulter that complicates matters, I think, is that in the political pundit milleau she lives within, she's strikingly unusual. Both in just being female in the first place, but also being a (relatively) attractive female in the second place. A lot of people, including myself, feel (either vaguely in my case, more pointedly and strongly in other peoples' cases) that Coulter is trading on our culture's sexism as a pundit. It's hard to put one's finger on it, and certainly there's a sort of sexism where attractive women aren't allowed to do certain things by our sexist culture (and so maybe that's involved in some people's reactions to Coulter), but it's really hard to shake the sense that she's quite happy to trade on this cultural sexism to give her an elevated platform from which to speak her venom and not that she wishes she were only listened to because of her mind, so to speak.
So her femaleness is wrapped up deeply in who she is and how she is functioning in our culture. And since her message is culturally conservative and so venomous, and implicitly anti-women, the fact that she's capitalizing on her femininity is deeply galling. Which is a situation quite comparable to these closeted cultural conservative politicians.
I think its instructive to compare her with Michelle Malkin. Both of them are pretty damn far to the right and say a great number of extremely risible things, even by the standard of your average conservative pundit. But Coulter says things a whole standard deviation more outrageous than does Malkin, which is saying a lot. Coulter gets away with simply saying in the titles of her books that liberals are America's traitors, for example. And Malkin, though also an attractive woman, doesn't (to me, anyway) have that smell of capitalizing on her feminine attractiveness to both open doors to her that would otherwise be closed and to shield her from the backlash that an unattractive woman or a man would face. I don't mean a backlash from the left, I mean a backlash from the center. The center, with its low level sexism, sees Coulter's outrageousness as a cute affectation. They patronize her, and she likes it just fine. She takes that patronization to the bank.
All that said, what I said in my previous comment is true. Both the reasons and motivations that I have attacked Coulter as I have, attacks that specifically involve her sex, seem to me to be very shaky reasons when looked at carefully. Neither prove me to be a sexist, and I'm certain I'm not, but both are, at best, rationalizations for vicious and immoderate behavior. And, at worst, even if I'm not sexist, I'm appearing sexist and implicitly encouraging actual sexists in their sexism.
All of this applies, I think, to how I and others should behave in these conservative outing threads. I think that some minority of people making apparently homophobic comments in those threads actually are homophobic. But for the same reasons that I think I'm not sexist in my Coulter comments, I suspect that the larger portion of people who make apparently homophobic comments in conservative outing threads probably aren't actually homophobic. But that's not reason enough to say that those kinds of comments are a good thing. They're bad on balance because partly they are just expressions of the not very good or noble sides of our natures, and partly because they encourage actual homophobes.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:11 PM on October 10, 2007
Also, I agree with Alvy Ampersand's point to some degree. I think the simple truth is that generally in our culture, and even within MetaFilter culture, there's a stonger visceral reaction against an adult man propositioning a teenage male than there is an adult man propositioning a teenage female. (And let's not even mention adult females propositioning teenage males.)
There's a bigger tendency to just equate someone like Foley with, say, a Priest molesting an eight-year-old boy than there would be to assume that an adult male seducing 17 year females is also someone who would molest 8 eight-year-old females.
Of course, there's a general problem in our culture now with equating ephebophilia with pedophilia and doing so in Foley's case should be seen in that context, as well.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
There's a bigger tendency to just equate someone like Foley with, say, a Priest molesting an eight-year-old boy than there would be to assume that an adult male seducing 17 year females is also someone who would molest 8 eight-year-old females.
Of course, there's a general problem in our culture now with equating ephebophilia with pedophilia and doing so in Foley's case should be seen in that context, as well.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
I don't quite get this point from breezeway:
Comparing sexuality to race is troublesome. I can easily find out how anti-gay oppression feels by modifying my behavior. I can't do that with race.
Assuming that breezeway is straight, how can he know how a gay person in the face of anti-gay oppression? He can pretend to be gay, but he always knows he is straight and can stop the behavior and end the oppression.
For me, as a gay man, I could pretend to be straight. Even if I did that, I could still feel anti-gay oppression, all the while hiding my feelings. I choose instead to be out, and not hide.
I think a better way of comparing race and sexuality would be to look at the phenomenon of "passing for white." Go rent "Imitation of Life" or maybe "Showboat," and you'll see what I mean.
posted by Robert Angelo at 3:50 PM on October 10, 2007
Comparing sexuality to race is troublesome. I can easily find out how anti-gay oppression feels by modifying my behavior. I can't do that with race.
Assuming that breezeway is straight, how can he know how a gay person in the face of anti-gay oppression? He can pretend to be gay, but he always knows he is straight and can stop the behavior and end the oppression.
For me, as a gay man, I could pretend to be straight. Even if I did that, I could still feel anti-gay oppression, all the while hiding my feelings. I choose instead to be out, and not hide.
I think a better way of comparing race and sexuality would be to look at the phenomenon of "passing for white." Go rent "Imitation of Life" or maybe "Showboat," and you'll see what I mean.
posted by Robert Angelo at 3:50 PM on October 10, 2007
If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic
Ya know, that really deserves a hearty "fuck you," EB. Please feel free to provide a link to any of my comments that "seem homophobic."
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. roll truck roll and Ethereal Bligh are tossing around accusations of homophobia far too lightly - it's like playing the race card at a moment's notice - without providing a single example of this horrid homophobia they're oh-so concerned about. It's pathetic behavior, and they need to put up or shut the fuck up already about how jokes aimed at lying hypocrites are somehow equivalent to homophobia.
posted by mediareport at 4:05 PM on October 10, 2007
Ya know, that really deserves a hearty "fuck you," EB. Please feel free to provide a link to any of my comments that "seem homophobic."
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. roll truck roll and Ethereal Bligh are tossing around accusations of homophobia far too lightly - it's like playing the race card at a moment's notice - without providing a single example of this horrid homophobia they're oh-so concerned about. It's pathetic behavior, and they need to put up or shut the fuck up already about how jokes aimed at lying hypocrites are somehow equivalent to homophobia.
posted by mediareport at 4:05 PM on October 10, 2007
*listens to crickets as he awaits a response from roll truck roll to the MeTa thread he began*
(EB, I'm just gonna ignore you at this point. Your position has been made very clear; the last thing it needs is more words.)
posted by mediareport at 4:07 PM on October 10, 2007
(EB, I'm just gonna ignore you at this point. Your position has been made very clear; the last thing it needs is more words.)
posted by mediareport at 4:07 PM on October 10, 2007
“Ya know, that really deserves a hearty ‘fuck you,’ EB. Please feel free to provide a link to any of my comments that ‘seem homophobic.’”
I think you misunderstood me. First of all, I included you not because any of your comments fit that description, but because you're a self-identified gay man. Second of all, I used the word seem quite deliberately. My point was that if any gay person makes a jokey or insulting comment that seems homophobic—and, c'mon, gays and lesbians will joke among themselves using stereotypes that are offensive coming from straight people—then it's because the context in which they are saying those things is emphatically not the same context as when a straight person say those things.
Any invocation of gay stereotypes to ridicule a gay person seems homophobic, even when it's very mild. That's because those stereotypes are, in the common straight hegomony, not benign, they're part and parcel of the culture's homophobia. But when members of an oppressed invoke such stereotypes, they do so knowingly and with full awareness of what they mean. It's partly a subversion, partly a bit of internalized self-oppression, and partly simply that they are quite aware that when they use those sorts of words and phrases it just doesn't mean the same thing as when the oppressing group uses them.
All oppressed groups do this. It's an interesting quirk of human psychology.
And whether or not you've made such comments in the conservative outing threads, other self-identified gays have done so. And I think this isn't a good thing in a mixed environment like MeFi because it confuses the people that are mostly not homophobic (or X bigoted in the general case) and it encourages the covert homophobes to let loose and have plausible deniability if they're called on it.
At any rate, this is all pretty simple and obvious and you're reacting as if I was claiming that you've personally said things that are actually, intentionally (or subconsciously) homophobic in the sense that real homophobes say such things. But I was clearly just using you, along with two others, as examples of out people on MeFi; and when I did so, it was clearly a hypothetical, not a claim about actual, specific behavior.
I don't know why you're so angry. I think my main argument is pretty uncontroversial: that there are plenty of covert or semi-covert bigots, even (!) in largely leftist environments like MeFi, that will take the opportunity to express it if the specific topic seems to give them even the smallest leeway to do so. And especially when members of the oppressed group in question are saying things that, from an oppressor's mouth, would be prima facie unacceptable. How many times have you heard a white racist use the excuse that a black comedian makes a lot of the same jokes with a lot of the same stereotypes? People like this will always show their heads when given the opportunity. I think that the conservative outing threads exhibit some indeterminate, small, but still significant amount of this type of thing.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:57 PM on October 10, 2007
I think you misunderstood me. First of all, I included you not because any of your comments fit that description, but because you're a self-identified gay man. Second of all, I used the word seem quite deliberately. My point was that if any gay person makes a jokey or insulting comment that seems homophobic—and, c'mon, gays and lesbians will joke among themselves using stereotypes that are offensive coming from straight people—then it's because the context in which they are saying those things is emphatically not the same context as when a straight person say those things.
Any invocation of gay stereotypes to ridicule a gay person seems homophobic, even when it's very mild. That's because those stereotypes are, in the common straight hegomony, not benign, they're part and parcel of the culture's homophobia. But when members of an oppressed invoke such stereotypes, they do so knowingly and with full awareness of what they mean. It's partly a subversion, partly a bit of internalized self-oppression, and partly simply that they are quite aware that when they use those sorts of words and phrases it just doesn't mean the same thing as when the oppressing group uses them.
All oppressed groups do this. It's an interesting quirk of human psychology.
And whether or not you've made such comments in the conservative outing threads, other self-identified gays have done so. And I think this isn't a good thing in a mixed environment like MeFi because it confuses the people that are mostly not homophobic (or X bigoted in the general case) and it encourages the covert homophobes to let loose and have plausible deniability if they're called on it.
At any rate, this is all pretty simple and obvious and you're reacting as if I was claiming that you've personally said things that are actually, intentionally (or subconsciously) homophobic in the sense that real homophobes say such things. But I was clearly just using you, along with two others, as examples of out people on MeFi; and when I did so, it was clearly a hypothetical, not a claim about actual, specific behavior.
I don't know why you're so angry. I think my main argument is pretty uncontroversial: that there are plenty of covert or semi-covert bigots, even (!) in largely leftist environments like MeFi, that will take the opportunity to express it if the specific topic seems to give them even the smallest leeway to do so. And especially when members of the oppressed group in question are saying things that, from an oppressor's mouth, would be prima facie unacceptable. How many times have you heard a white racist use the excuse that a black comedian makes a lot of the same jokes with a lot of the same stereotypes? People like this will always show their heads when given the opportunity. I think that the conservative outing threads exhibit some indeterminate, small, but still significant amount of this type of thing.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:57 PM on October 10, 2007
On the other hand, I think a lot of straight people who support gay rights and don't think of themselves as homophobes still, nevertheless, have some residual amount of homophobia. I really felt that in the Craig thread with the extreme reactions many people posted about the idea or experience of being propositioned in a public bathroom. I know that they think it's really an issue of privacy, and I agree that there certainly are matters of privacy and personal dignity at play, but, c'mon, a lot of straight people who are gay-friendly still get quite excessively squicked out at the idea of gay sex.
Good god. You're still convinced that because you're perfectly content to communicate with others while taking a shit in a public toilet, everyone who isn't must necessarily be homophobic.
I think your moral high ground sometimes confuses you, EB. It certainly does cause you to speak condescendingly towards others, make grand pronouncements about their tolerance toward others' behaviours, and post exceedingly long dissertations on the subject.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:44 PM on October 10, 2007
Good god. You're still convinced that because you're perfectly content to communicate with others while taking a shit in a public toilet, everyone who isn't must necessarily be homophobic.
I think your moral high ground sometimes confuses you, EB. It certainly does cause you to speak condescendingly towards others, make grand pronouncements about their tolerance toward others' behaviours, and post exceedingly long dissertations on the subject.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:44 PM on October 10, 2007
fff, I think EB has a point. A lot of otherwise very gay-friendly people (but by no means all, or even a majority I think) are somewhat viscerally disgusted by gay sex, though they bury it. Does tend to, ahem, come out though.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 5:56 PM on October 10, 2007
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 5:56 PM on October 10, 2007
I included you not because any of your comments fit that description, but because you're a self-identified gay man.
And you wonder why he's angry? Here's a hint: if I were included in a group of people being chastised for some behavior that I didn't exhibit, and then been told that it didn't matter whether I exhibited it or not because my fellow white people/atheists/heteros/whatever exhibited it and I was one of them, I'd be angry too.
posted by languagehat at 6:06 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
And you wonder why he's angry? Here's a hint: if I were included in a group of people being chastised for some behavior that I didn't exhibit, and then been told that it didn't matter whether I exhibited it or not because my fellow white people/atheists/heteros/whatever exhibited it and I was one of them, I'd be angry too.
posted by languagehat at 6:06 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
pyramid termite writes "not if someone else sees it"
Is that really how it works? What if someone has sex in their bedroom, and someone peeks through the window? Is it public, then? What if the windows are closed but they peek through the gap in the blind slats? Or via hidden camera? Is public just defined as "witnessed by third parties"?
pyramid termite writes "discretion and common sense are your personal responsibilities, not society's"
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with this part. When I say that something done outside is private, I don't mean it's other peoples' responsibility to avoid seeing it. Not all viewings of private things are "violations of privacy", that involves will. If you steal someone's home sex tapes, you're violating their privacy. If they put the wrong tape in when doing a video presentation, showing everyone at the office their home sex tape by accident, nobody is invading their privacy, but that sex tape is not a public sex tape, either, it's a private tape that got seen by the public.
dirtynumbangelboy writes "A lot of otherwise very gay-friendly people (but by no means all, or even a majority I think) are somewhat viscerally disgusted by gay sex, though they bury it."
I agree, but: so fucking what? (That's phrased strongly, but it's not directed at you). I'm "gay-friendly", and I'm squicked out by gay sex. The difference (and it's an important one) is that I'm not squicked out by the fact that people have gay sex, and I'm not squicked out by the people who have gay sex.
Gay sex is like natto (Japanese fermented soy-beans). I'm squicked out by natto. I'm squicked out by the eating of natto. I'm not squicked out by the fact that my wife and son eat natto, nor by the fact that they like natto, nor by my wife or son themselves.
posted by Bugbread at 6:17 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
Is that really how it works? What if someone has sex in their bedroom, and someone peeks through the window? Is it public, then? What if the windows are closed but they peek through the gap in the blind slats? Or via hidden camera? Is public just defined as "witnessed by third parties"?
pyramid termite writes "discretion and common sense are your personal responsibilities, not society's"
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with this part. When I say that something done outside is private, I don't mean it's other peoples' responsibility to avoid seeing it. Not all viewings of private things are "violations of privacy", that involves will. If you steal someone's home sex tapes, you're violating their privacy. If they put the wrong tape in when doing a video presentation, showing everyone at the office their home sex tape by accident, nobody is invading their privacy, but that sex tape is not a public sex tape, either, it's a private tape that got seen by the public.
dirtynumbangelboy writes "A lot of otherwise very gay-friendly people (but by no means all, or even a majority I think) are somewhat viscerally disgusted by gay sex, though they bury it."
I agree, but: so fucking what? (That's phrased strongly, but it's not directed at you). I'm "gay-friendly", and I'm squicked out by gay sex. The difference (and it's an important one) is that I'm not squicked out by the fact that people have gay sex, and I'm not squicked out by the people who have gay sex.
Gay sex is like natto (Japanese fermented soy-beans). I'm squicked out by natto. I'm squicked out by the eating of natto. I'm not squicked out by the fact that my wife and son eat natto, nor by the fact that they like natto, nor by my wife or son themselves.
posted by Bugbread at 6:17 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
languagehat writes "And you wonder why he's angry? Here's a hint: if I were included in a group of people being chastised for some behavior that I didn't exhibit, and then been told that it didn't matter whether I exhibited it or not because my fellow white people/atheists/heteros/whatever exhibited it and I was one of them, I'd be angry too."
EB just phrased himself spectacularly badly, that's all. His was just a hypothetical ("if a gay person were to blah blah blah") that derailed itself by using examples of gay folks on MeFi instead of sticking to the general group. Basically, he mixed specifics into his hypothetical, making it readable in ways other than the intended.
posted by Bugbread at 6:27 PM on October 10, 2007
EB just phrased himself spectacularly badly, that's all. His was just a hypothetical ("if a gay person were to blah blah blah") that derailed itself by using examples of gay folks on MeFi instead of sticking to the general group. Basically, he mixed specifics into his hypothetical, making it readable in ways other than the intended.
posted by Bugbread at 6:27 PM on October 10, 2007
A lot of otherwise very gay-friendly people (but by no means all, or even a majority I think) are somewhat viscerally disgusted by gay sex, though they bury it.
So what? I'm disgusted by licorice and dogshit, but that doesn't make mean I hate the Dutch and fear dogs. A guy who doesn't like blow-jobs isn't called misogynistic1. And it's utterly ridiculous beyond belief that reacting strongly to the idea of a stranger engaging in inter-stall communication as one's dropping a load could be called homophobic.
1. They're called hypothetical.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:43 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
So what? I'm disgusted by licorice and dogshit, but that doesn't make mean I hate the Dutch and fear dogs. A guy who doesn't like blow-jobs isn't called misogynistic1. And it's utterly ridiculous beyond belief that reacting strongly to the idea of a stranger engaging in inter-stall communication as one's dropping a load could be called homophobic.
1. They're called hypothetical.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:43 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]
Oh, god, natto. That's the perfect analogy. That stuff is vile beyond belief. I'd rather like an arsehole than eat natto.
It'd have to be a clean arsehole, though.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:45 PM on October 10, 2007
It'd have to be a clean arsehole, though.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:45 PM on October 10, 2007
EB just phrased himself spectacularly badly, that's all.
An apology would be nice for sloppily insinuating I make homophobic comments. I don't expect one, but until I get it, he can go fuck himself on this site, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by mediareport at 6:47 PM on October 10, 2007
An apology would be nice for sloppily insinuating I make homophobic comments. I don't expect one, but until I get it, he can go fuck himself on this site, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by mediareport at 6:47 PM on October 10, 2007
“An apology would be nice for sloppily insinuating I make homophobic comments. I don't expect one, but until I get it, he can go fuck himself on this site, as far as I'm concerned.”
I don't think I phrased myself spectacularly badly, even less that you have any real reason to be so mortally offended. Here is what my sentence in its entirety:
“If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic, that doesn't make it okay for straights to do the same.”
I don't choose the words I use at random. The if and the seem make all the difference, particularly given the preceding sentences which provide the context that I'm talking about how members of an oppressed group will use the same language and stereotypes that the oppressors use, but that it's not the same thing. I'm clearly merely providing specific examples of known gays on MeFi to make the point that if they (you) exhibit such behavior, that doesn't make it acceptable for others. I didn't use the word when, I used the word if. And the word seem makes it clear that I'm not saying that such hypothetical comments are actually homophobic, but that they only seem to be homophobic. Also, the present/future tense make as opposed to made also makes it clear that I'm making a generalized hypothetical with an example, not pointing to actual, past behavior.
If you misread that as my claim that you, personally, have actually in the past made actually homophobic comments, then perhaps you ought to actually learn to fucking read instead of demanding an apology and telling me to go fuck myself.
“if I were included in a group of people being chastised for some behavior that I didn't exhibit, and then been told that it didn't matter whether I exhibited it or not because my fellow white people/atheists/heteros/whatever exhibited it and I was one of them, I'd be angry too.”
Which is also an egregious misreading of my comment. I wasn't including mediareport or the other two mefites in the group being chastised, which makes everything you wrote following that invalid.
Here, let me rephrase it:
The contexts are different. It's not the same thing. If handicapped people like Ethereal Bligh, UserX, and UserY make jokes about handicapped people, or use derogatory words or stereotypes that seem bigoted about disabled people, it's not the same thing as when an abled person does so.
There, how's that? And, you know, I don't happen to use such words or stereotypes. But if someone else had written that paragraph in service of saying the same basic thing I was saying, I wouldn't be offended. Because I'd recognize that A) the writer was discussing something very common among oppressed groups (the N-word is the best example); and B) the context for the paragraph was a hypothetical, which was signaled by C) the use of the word if; and which was followed by the word seem which makes it clear that the hypothetical Ethereal Bligh isn't actually making bigoted comments which apply to himself, because, as I had already said at least twice, the context is different.
I choose the words I use far more carefully than people seem to realize. In fact, this was a big argument between me and some others here on MetaTalk in the past. Because I'm verbose and appear to be careless in some respects—and, hell, I'm almost certainly careless about avoiding unnecessarily repeating myself—people seem to not realize that I pick my particular words carefully, especially qualifiers. To me, the phrase when EB used bigoted language about disabled people means something quite importantly different than if EB uses seemingly bigoted statements about disabled people. That mediareport can't be bothered to discern the difference and would even be insulting and demanding an apology after I took pains to explain it to him...well, that's squarely in the realm of it being his problem, not mine.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:57 PM on October 10, 2007
I don't think I phrased myself spectacularly badly, even less that you have any real reason to be so mortally offended. Here is what my sentence in its entirety:
“If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic, that doesn't make it okay for straights to do the same.”
I don't choose the words I use at random. The if and the seem make all the difference, particularly given the preceding sentences which provide the context that I'm talking about how members of an oppressed group will use the same language and stereotypes that the oppressors use, but that it's not the same thing. I'm clearly merely providing specific examples of known gays on MeFi to make the point that if they (you) exhibit such behavior, that doesn't make it acceptable for others. I didn't use the word when, I used the word if. And the word seem makes it clear that I'm not saying that such hypothetical comments are actually homophobic, but that they only seem to be homophobic. Also, the present/future tense make as opposed to made also makes it clear that I'm making a generalized hypothetical with an example, not pointing to actual, past behavior.
If you misread that as my claim that you, personally, have actually in the past made actually homophobic comments, then perhaps you ought to actually learn to fucking read instead of demanding an apology and telling me to go fuck myself.
“if I were included in a group of people being chastised for some behavior that I didn't exhibit, and then been told that it didn't matter whether I exhibited it or not because my fellow white people/atheists/heteros/whatever exhibited it and I was one of them, I'd be angry too.”
Which is also an egregious misreading of my comment. I wasn't including mediareport or the other two mefites in the group being chastised, which makes everything you wrote following that invalid.
Here, let me rephrase it:
The contexts are different. It's not the same thing. If handicapped people like Ethereal Bligh, UserX, and UserY make jokes about handicapped people, or use derogatory words or stereotypes that seem bigoted about disabled people, it's not the same thing as when an abled person does so.
There, how's that? And, you know, I don't happen to use such words or stereotypes. But if someone else had written that paragraph in service of saying the same basic thing I was saying, I wouldn't be offended. Because I'd recognize that A) the writer was discussing something very common among oppressed groups (the N-word is the best example); and B) the context for the paragraph was a hypothetical, which was signaled by C) the use of the word if; and which was followed by the word seem which makes it clear that the hypothetical Ethereal Bligh isn't actually making bigoted comments which apply to himself, because, as I had already said at least twice, the context is different.
I choose the words I use far more carefully than people seem to realize. In fact, this was a big argument between me and some others here on MetaTalk in the past. Because I'm verbose and appear to be careless in some respects—and, hell, I'm almost certainly careless about avoiding unnecessarily repeating myself—people seem to not realize that I pick my particular words carefully, especially qualifiers. To me, the phrase when EB used bigoted language about disabled people means something quite importantly different than if EB uses seemingly bigoted statements about disabled people. That mediareport can't be bothered to discern the difference and would even be insulting and demanding an apology after I took pains to explain it to him...well, that's squarely in the realm of it being his problem, not mine.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:57 PM on October 10, 2007
I'm telling the FCC on all of you. Especially you.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:04 PM on October 10, 2007
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:04 PM on October 10, 2007
If amberglow and Blazecock Pileon and mediareport make jokey, ironic comments that seem homophobic to Ethereal Bligh, that doesn't make it okay for straights to do the same at least in my opinion. But then, hey, maybe I should let our local gay culture decide what's offensive.
Fixed that for you.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:08 PM on October 10, 2007
Fixed that for you.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:08 PM on October 10, 2007
In happier news, I now have an internet crush on WolfDaddy for that comment.
That he is a WolfDaddy is mere icing upon this cake of awesome.
posted by heeeraldo at 8:21 PM on October 10, 2007
That he is a WolfDaddy is mere icing upon this cake of awesome.
posted by heeeraldo at 8:21 PM on October 10, 2007
“Good god. You're still convinced that because you're perfectly content to communicate with others while taking a shit in a public toilet, everyone who isn't must necessarily be homophobic.”
No. I'm not content to talk with someone while I'm taking a shit in a public toilet, much less so being propositioned. But it doesn't freak me out, either. It doesn't inspire in me the desire to hit someone, as at least one person said would be a reasonable response in that thread. It's a discomfort-making, embarrassing thing. It's not the end of the world. There are a bunch of other uncomfortable things that I have to deal with in life.
Making a really big deal about this, about how it's so horrible, blah blah blah...that's just cover for homophobia. Maybe, if this applies to you, you're not aware of it. As I said in a previous comment, there's a large middle-ground between being squarely in the normal in our homophobic and sexist culture and being, for almost all purposes, sexism and homophobia free. The casual nature at which I can discuss my experiments with gay sex belie that fact that at the age of 18, I was about as homophobic as any other straight American male, and the idea of a gay man hitting on me really weirded me the hell out. Even once I began to change my thinking on the matter, I still had a long period where my acceptance was pretty real and complete in the abstract, but my visceral reactions had not yet caught up.
I'm still not comfortable with very effeminate gay men and I'm pretty certain there's still a component of homophobia involved in that, although it's complicated for me by the fact that I really find conventional gender roles not merely distasteful, but offensive in many cases and thus I am doubly annoyed that some gays and lesbians will adopt extreme personas which, typically, seem to include (in either case) what seem to me to be the worst traits of that gender role. Anyway, my point is that it's these gut reactions that are the last things to go, even when we've eradicated the bigoted ideas from our beliefs and conscious behavior.
I absolutely believe that there's something very disturbing to the typical straight North American male psyche in the idea of gay men hitting on other men and having sex in public bathrooms. I think it hits people right where they're most vulnerable to still having homophobic feelings, even when otherwise they are very gay-friendly. And because there is the context of the discomfort and weirdness of being approached in a public bathroom, then that becomes the place where people locate as the origination of those feelings. My self-example about very effeminate gay men is an example of this. I have a good and reasonable argument for being uncomfortable with them, and it's almost certainly true that some of my discomforts originates there. But because I so much don't want to be homophobic, the fact that I have what seems to me to be a valid alternative explanation for my reaction creates kind of a roadblock for resolving if it really is, in fact, homophobic.
I think there's something similar going on with gay pedophilia. There's hardly anyone more demonized in our culture than the adult man who molests boys. While there's probably a magnitude greater number of adult males who molest girls, it's the male/male variety which truly captures the publics' imagination as the worst human being ever. But good luck getting anyone to admit to this disproportionate response between the two examples.
On Preview: “But then, hey, maybe I should let our local gay culture decide what's offensive.”
No. We're all human beings, we all have an equal ability to identify bigotry and an equal interest in fighting it.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:34 PM on October 10, 2007
No. I'm not content to talk with someone while I'm taking a shit in a public toilet, much less so being propositioned. But it doesn't freak me out, either. It doesn't inspire in me the desire to hit someone, as at least one person said would be a reasonable response in that thread. It's a discomfort-making, embarrassing thing. It's not the end of the world. There are a bunch of other uncomfortable things that I have to deal with in life.
Making a really big deal about this, about how it's so horrible, blah blah blah...that's just cover for homophobia. Maybe, if this applies to you, you're not aware of it. As I said in a previous comment, there's a large middle-ground between being squarely in the normal in our homophobic and sexist culture and being, for almost all purposes, sexism and homophobia free. The casual nature at which I can discuss my experiments with gay sex belie that fact that at the age of 18, I was about as homophobic as any other straight American male, and the idea of a gay man hitting on me really weirded me the hell out. Even once I began to change my thinking on the matter, I still had a long period where my acceptance was pretty real and complete in the abstract, but my visceral reactions had not yet caught up.
I'm still not comfortable with very effeminate gay men and I'm pretty certain there's still a component of homophobia involved in that, although it's complicated for me by the fact that I really find conventional gender roles not merely distasteful, but offensive in many cases and thus I am doubly annoyed that some gays and lesbians will adopt extreme personas which, typically, seem to include (in either case) what seem to me to be the worst traits of that gender role. Anyway, my point is that it's these gut reactions that are the last things to go, even when we've eradicated the bigoted ideas from our beliefs and conscious behavior.
I absolutely believe that there's something very disturbing to the typical straight North American male psyche in the idea of gay men hitting on other men and having sex in public bathrooms. I think it hits people right where they're most vulnerable to still having homophobic feelings, even when otherwise they are very gay-friendly. And because there is the context of the discomfort and weirdness of being approached in a public bathroom, then that becomes the place where people locate as the origination of those feelings. My self-example about very effeminate gay men is an example of this. I have a good and reasonable argument for being uncomfortable with them, and it's almost certainly true that some of my discomforts originates there. But because I so much don't want to be homophobic, the fact that I have what seems to me to be a valid alternative explanation for my reaction creates kind of a roadblock for resolving if it really is, in fact, homophobic.
I think there's something similar going on with gay pedophilia. There's hardly anyone more demonized in our culture than the adult man who molests boys. While there's probably a magnitude greater number of adult males who molest girls, it's the male/male variety which truly captures the publics' imagination as the worst human being ever. But good luck getting anyone to admit to this disproportionate response between the two examples.
On Preview: “But then, hey, maybe I should let our local gay culture decide what's offensive.”
No. We're all human beings, we all have an equal ability to identify bigotry and an equal interest in fighting it.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:34 PM on October 10, 2007
I choose the words I use far more carefully than people seem to realize.
Aha. I understand what you are saying here. Been there, done that. What I learned is to use far, far fewer words, so that the important words don't get drowned out.
I suggest that effective writing for this particular form of "bulletin board system" requires a different approach than effective writing for other approaches to communication.
Think PowerPoint, not Word. Be laser-focused. Short paragraphs, single topics each. Beware the wandering thought; remove it. Better to say too little than say too much.
And don't try to juggle several ideas in a single conversation. It'll always end in tears. It just multiplies the crosstalk and ends up confusing or offending people.
Oh, and of course the big one for this type of forum: let the conversation flow. MeFi can be modelled as a Canadian pub1 environment: you can hold conversations, and pretty good ones; it's round-robin conversation; there aren't "threads", "signatures", nor full-text pull-quoting; and the topics are going to change and develop organically as people take turns having their say.
1 Pub, not sports bar.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:38 PM on October 10, 2007
Aha. I understand what you are saying here. Been there, done that. What I learned is to use far, far fewer words, so that the important words don't get drowned out.
I suggest that effective writing for this particular form of "bulletin board system" requires a different approach than effective writing for other approaches to communication.
Think PowerPoint, not Word. Be laser-focused. Short paragraphs, single topics each. Beware the wandering thought; remove it. Better to say too little than say too much.
And don't try to juggle several ideas in a single conversation. It'll always end in tears. It just multiplies the crosstalk and ends up confusing or offending people.
Oh, and of course the big one for this type of forum: let the conversation flow. MeFi can be modelled as a Canadian pub1 environment: you can hold conversations, and pretty good ones; it's round-robin conversation; there aren't "threads", "signatures", nor full-text pull-quoting; and the topics are going to change and develop organically as people take turns having their say.
1 Pub, not sports bar.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:38 PM on October 10, 2007
Er, what WolfDaddy said, then. If it isn't appropriate for our queer users to decide what is and is not appropriate gay-themed humour, then either this place shuts down — someone is bound to be offended by — or we kow-tow to your whims and wishes.
Thanks, Matt, it's been fun!
posted by five fresh fish at 8:43 PM on October 10, 2007
Thanks, Matt, it's been fun!
posted by five fresh fish at 8:43 PM on October 10, 2007
Is that really how it works? What if someone has sex in their bedroom, and someone peeks through the window?
i'm sure you know there are laws about that
Is public just defined as "witnessed by third parties"?
it's defined by law and custom - the first question you need to ask is "whose property is it?"
the second question you need to ask is how aggressive a particular viewer would need to be to witness it
the third question you need to ask is "is it something that john q public would find upsetting, shocking or indecent and does he have a reasonable chance to avoid seeing it?"
so in the case of a peeping tom, i think it's fairly clear that it's not his property (or his privilege to view such things if he's the landlord) and that he's being really aggressive about viewing - although he might find it upsetting or shocking, it's easily avoidable by moving back off the property and minding his own damned business
in the case of two guys hooking up in a bathroom stall, it's not their property and anyone who walks in there may be made aware of what's going on without putting any effort into it at all - avoidable? - well, no, if i've got a full bladder, where else am i going to go?
(damn, doesn't anyone rent motel rooms anymore? - don't quote me on this but it's my understanding that you can often find some near an airport)
two people whispering on a park bench? - true, it's not their property - on the other hand, a person would have to be pretty aggressive to listen in - and even if the subject matter was upsetting, it can be avoided easily by moving beyond earshot
so that's how i see the whole public/private thing - and if you're going to pick it apart further, well, then i'm first going to have to ask you what metrics you have in mind for an alternative
posted by pyramid termite at 8:44 PM on October 10, 2007
i'm sure you know there are laws about that
Is public just defined as "witnessed by third parties"?
it's defined by law and custom - the first question you need to ask is "whose property is it?"
the second question you need to ask is how aggressive a particular viewer would need to be to witness it
the third question you need to ask is "is it something that john q public would find upsetting, shocking or indecent and does he have a reasonable chance to avoid seeing it?"
so in the case of a peeping tom, i think it's fairly clear that it's not his property (or his privilege to view such things if he's the landlord) and that he's being really aggressive about viewing - although he might find it upsetting or shocking, it's easily avoidable by moving back off the property and minding his own damned business
in the case of two guys hooking up in a bathroom stall, it's not their property and anyone who walks in there may be made aware of what's going on without putting any effort into it at all - avoidable? - well, no, if i've got a full bladder, where else am i going to go?
(damn, doesn't anyone rent motel rooms anymore? - don't quote me on this but it's my understanding that you can often find some near an airport)
two people whispering on a park bench? - true, it's not their property - on the other hand, a person would have to be pretty aggressive to listen in - and even if the subject matter was upsetting, it can be avoided easily by moving beyond earshot
so that's how i see the whole public/private thing - and if you're going to pick it apart further, well, then i'm first going to have to ask you what metrics you have in mind for an alternative
posted by pyramid termite at 8:44 PM on October 10, 2007
“or we kow-tow to your whims and wishes.”
That's a false alternative. (Which was the theme of today's radio interview with the spectacularly articulate and intelligent Elizabeth Kucinich who I listened to on the way to my doctor's appointment. She and Dennis were in town, campaigning.) I don't get to decide community norms any more than any other individual does. I'm just saying that we all have an equal vote in determining what is bigoted and we each have a right to express our thoughts and opinions on the matter.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:50 PM on October 10, 2007
That's a false alternative. (Which was the theme of today's radio interview with the spectacularly articulate and intelligent Elizabeth Kucinich who I listened to on the way to my doctor's appointment. She and Dennis were in town, campaigning.) I don't get to decide community norms any more than any other individual does. I'm just saying that we all have an equal vote in determining what is bigoted and we each have a right to express our thoughts and opinions on the matter.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:50 PM on October 10, 2007
Oh, and this:
“If it isn't appropriate for our queer users to decide what is and is not appropriate gay-themed humour”
Well, both humor and what they themselves say, especially in combination, are another matter. I still think that anyone still has the right, even the responsibility to decry bigotry, but doing so is a very iffy proposition for an outsider to make such a judgment about insider culture, especially when humor is involved. I do happen to think that some of the appropriation and usage of bigoted language and stereotypes by oppressed people is really a form of self-hate, but it's also often something very different and it's very difficult for an outsider to make that judgment.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:02 PM on October 10, 2007
“If it isn't appropriate for our queer users to decide what is and is not appropriate gay-themed humour”
Well, both humor and what they themselves say, especially in combination, are another matter. I still think that anyone still has the right, even the responsibility to decry bigotry, but doing so is a very iffy proposition for an outsider to make such a judgment about insider culture, especially when humor is involved. I do happen to think that some of the appropriation and usage of bigoted language and stereotypes by oppressed people is really a form of self-hate, but it's also often something very different and it's very difficult for an outsider to make that judgment.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:02 PM on October 10, 2007
Do we all get to slam our opinion into policy using the sledgehammer tag of homophobia? Or could it be that in this case, "we all" shouldn't have equal voice?
If our homosexual users are not uncomfortable with others using gay themed humour because they understand how funny works when there aren't undercurrents of hate — which I think is likely the case here — then surely they're further ahead of the tolerance curve than you.
But you get to wield that homophobia sledgehammer and whack the shit out of anyone who offends your delicate, neo-homophobic1 sensibilities.
1. Someone who is not homophobic themselves, but afraid of laughing at homosexual's own self-deprecating humour for fear of appearing homophobic.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:03 PM on October 10, 2007
If our homosexual users are not uncomfortable with others using gay themed humour because they understand how funny works when there aren't undercurrents of hate — which I think is likely the case here — then surely they're further ahead of the tolerance curve than you.
But you get to wield that homophobia sledgehammer and whack the shit out of anyone who offends your delicate, neo-homophobic1 sensibilities.
1. Someone who is not homophobic themselves, but afraid of laughing at homosexual's own self-deprecating humour for fear of appearing homophobic.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:03 PM on October 10, 2007
I'm trying to figure out how I, alone, am managing to “slam” my opinion into policy by saying what I think on this topic here. Has Matt made some MetaTalk post announcing new site policy that I've not seen?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:10 PM on October 10, 2007
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:10 PM on October 10, 2007
You don't understand that tagging things as "homophobic" that are not is the equivalent of godwinning?
posted by five fresh fish at 9:17 PM on October 10, 2007
posted by five fresh fish at 9:17 PM on October 10, 2007
*listens to crickets as he awaits a response from roll truck roll to the MeTa thread he began*
Okay, here I am. I'm actually just now looking at this for the first time since last night. I'm sure it looks like I've just left a burning bag of shit on this thread's front porch and run away, and I apologize. In reality, I don't get to spend much time here anymore, now that I have a way more time-consuming job.
I think you might have slightly misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was definitely not referring to any commenters in particular, and I was also not referring to Metafilter in particular, which I thought I made clear in the comment. It's more just a feeling that stories like this bring out something very gross and hateful in people. Sometimes we have a way of turning into a parody of our enemies without realizing it. I don't really do callouts anymore, but this thread has some extremely cringey moments.
My comment in the Joey DiFatta thread was rather obnoxious. I was making unfair assumptions about where the thread was going to go. Really, I was just irritated by the lack of context. This was about a local politician. Many of us (self included) don't know anything about Joey DiFatta's policy, and not much information was provided. The whole thing seemed excessive to me. I'm from the midwest; conservative men like to play with each other too.
But anyway, I apologize to everyone. If you look in my metafilter commenting history, you'll see a lot of dumb things. I hope we're still friends, mediareport. I'm glad you liked my Joe Brainard post.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:22 PM on October 10, 2007
Okay, here I am. I'm actually just now looking at this for the first time since last night. I'm sure it looks like I've just left a burning bag of shit on this thread's front porch and run away, and I apologize. In reality, I don't get to spend much time here anymore, now that I have a way more time-consuming job.
I think you might have slightly misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was definitely not referring to any commenters in particular, and I was also not referring to Metafilter in particular, which I thought I made clear in the comment. It's more just a feeling that stories like this bring out something very gross and hateful in people. Sometimes we have a way of turning into a parody of our enemies without realizing it. I don't really do callouts anymore, but this thread has some extremely cringey moments.
My comment in the Joey DiFatta thread was rather obnoxious. I was making unfair assumptions about where the thread was going to go. Really, I was just irritated by the lack of context. This was about a local politician. Many of us (self included) don't know anything about Joey DiFatta's policy, and not much information was provided. The whole thing seemed excessive to me. I'm from the midwest; conservative men like to play with each other too.
But anyway, I apologize to everyone. If you look in my metafilter commenting history, you'll see a lot of dumb things. I hope we're still friends, mediareport. I'm glad you liked my Joe Brainard post.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:22 PM on October 10, 2007
“You don't understand that tagging things as "homophobic" that are not is the equivalent of godwinning?”
There's not a lot of Nazis left in the world. There sure as hell are a lot of homophobes. Get back to me when it's not still a vicious bigotry, encountered almost everywhere, and because of which people are regularly murdered. Then maybe I'll agree that the accusation should be avoided because it stifles speech.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:25 PM on October 10, 2007
There's not a lot of Nazis left in the world. There sure as hell are a lot of homophobes. Get back to me when it's not still a vicious bigotry, encountered almost everywhere, and because of which people are regularly murdered. Then maybe I'll agree that the accusation should be avoided because it stifles speech.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:25 PM on October 10, 2007
This was about a local politician.
A local politician with state Senate aspirations.
Many of us (self included) don't know anything about Joey DiFatta's policy, and not much information was provided.
A quick Google search shows that DiFatta's Senate website confirms suspicions about where he, in showcasing his Republican bona fides, stands on "values" policies.
But that's neither here nor there. The guy made a career out of being a creep and received karmic payback. I just hope there's more to come for the rest of them.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:29 PM on October 10, 2007
A local politician with state Senate aspirations.
Many of us (self included) don't know anything about Joey DiFatta's policy, and not much information was provided.
A quick Google search shows that DiFatta's Senate website confirms suspicions about where he, in showcasing his Republican bona fides, stands on "values" policies.
But that's neither here nor there. The guy made a career out of being a creep and received karmic payback. I just hope there's more to come for the rest of them.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:29 PM on October 10, 2007
Metafilter ≠ Real Life. When a bunch of on-line pals, some of whom are gay, are acting silly together, it's okay. Not every conversation needs to be a war.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:18 PM on October 10, 2007
posted by five fresh fish at 10:18 PM on October 10, 2007
There's not a lot of Nazis left in the world.
Point = missed. Godwinning is the destruction of conversation by making it impossible to continue. It's the "you know who else liked to..." joke: if the Nazi's like to do it, then it must be bad and evil and verboten, and so we can't talk about it any more.
It is counter-productive to drop the H-bomb on a thread, and the way you dropped it in the Craig thread was crass and stupid. You are harming your own damn mission, man.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:25 PM on October 10, 2007
Point = missed. Godwinning is the destruction of conversation by making it impossible to continue. It's the "you know who else liked to..." joke: if the Nazi's like to do it, then it must be bad and evil and verboten, and so we can't talk about it any more.
It is counter-productive to drop the H-bomb on a thread, and the way you dropped it in the Craig thread was crass and stupid. You are harming your own damn mission, man.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:25 PM on October 10, 2007
there's not a lot of Nazis left in the world.
I wish that were true. At least they have very little power, but there are a lot about and that just sucks for the world.
posted by caddis at 10:57 PM on October 10, 2007
I wish that were true. At least they have very little power, but there are a lot about and that just sucks for the world.
posted by caddis at 10:57 PM on October 10, 2007
Ethereal Bligh: "I don't choose the words I use at random. The if and the seem make all the difference, particularly given the preceding sentences which provide the context"
Yeah, but you're a careful guy, usually. If you were being careful, you'd use "were" in your hypotheticals. "If A, B, or C were to do blah blah blah". Skipping the "were" to just say "If A, B, or C do blah blah blah" is fine most of the time, but can be parsed two ways: as a pure hypothetical, and as a "and maybe they do" sentence. (Sorry, my phrasing is far from clear here too). I understand that you meant it in the former sense, and that's the way the conditional is usually used in English, but in cases like this, you have to (or rather, it's more productive to) choose the more accurate phrasing. It only adds two words.
pyramid termite: "so that's how i see the whole public/private thing - and if you're going to pick it apart further, well, then i'm first going to have to ask you what metrics you have in mind for an alternative"
No, your answer was pretty clear and comprehensive. Thanks.
posted by Bugbread at 12:20 AM on October 11, 2007
Yeah, but you're a careful guy, usually. If you were being careful, you'd use "were" in your hypotheticals. "If A, B, or C were to do blah blah blah". Skipping the "were" to just say "If A, B, or C do blah blah blah" is fine most of the time, but can be parsed two ways: as a pure hypothetical, and as a "and maybe they do" sentence. (Sorry, my phrasing is far from clear here too). I understand that you meant it in the former sense, and that's the way the conditional is usually used in English, but in cases like this, you have to (or rather, it's more productive to) choose the more accurate phrasing. It only adds two words.
pyramid termite: "so that's how i see the whole public/private thing - and if you're going to pick it apart further, well, then i'm first going to have to ask you what metrics you have in mind for an alternative"
No, your answer was pretty clear and comprehensive. Thanks.
posted by Bugbread at 12:20 AM on October 11, 2007
I suck at grammar, but I think of that tense of were as being for counterfactuals and, um, something like a very specific future hypothetical, not a general hypothetical. I don't know if that makes sense. “If I were to have done X, then Z would be true” or “If I were to do X, then Z would be true" as opposed to “If I do X, then Z is true”. I dunno what the tense really is in that last case (which is what I used in my comment), but it seems very general—not a counterfactual or a specific future hypothetical, but rather just a schematic “If X, then Y”. Does that make sense?
Or, looking at it from the other direction, the were usages imply that I didn't ever do X, or that I'm specifically only talking about what might happen in the future if I do X, respectively. The usage I chose without were was intended to be deliberately indeterminate about what has happened in the past and what may happen in the future. It's not at all about specific occurrences, past or present or future. It's just schematic.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:10 AM on October 11, 2007
Or, looking at it from the other direction, the were usages imply that I didn't ever do X, or that I'm specifically only talking about what might happen in the future if I do X, respectively. The usage I chose without were was intended to be deliberately indeterminate about what has happened in the past and what may happen in the future. It's not at all about specific occurrences, past or present or future. It's just schematic.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:10 AM on October 11, 2007
perhaps you ought to actually learn to fucking read
You're full of crap here, EB; the context was clear and horrid. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop including me in your examples of people who "seem" to make homophobic remarks. Other than that, we're done.
I hope we're still friends, mediareport.
Yeah, sure, roll truck roll. Please stop throwing around accusations of homophobia when you don't have specific examples to back the charge up. It's a serious thing for some of us, and it still feels an awful lot like "shut up and get back in the closet" to tell us we can't celebrate when our most vicious political opponents take a very public fall.
posted by mediareport at 5:27 AM on October 11, 2007
You're full of crap here, EB; the context was clear and horrid. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop including me in your examples of people who "seem" to make homophobic remarks. Other than that, we're done.
I hope we're still friends, mediareport.
Yeah, sure, roll truck roll. Please stop throwing around accusations of homophobia when you don't have specific examples to back the charge up. It's a serious thing for some of us, and it still feels an awful lot like "shut up and get back in the closet" to tell us we can't celebrate when our most vicious political opponents take a very public fall.
posted by mediareport at 5:27 AM on October 11, 2007
mediareport : "You're full of crap here, EB; the context was clear and horrid."
I dunno. You say it meant A, he says it meant B. That's pretty much the definition of "unclear", isn't it?
posted by Bugbread at 6:17 AM on October 11, 2007
I dunno. You say it meant A, he says it meant B. That's pretty much the definition of "unclear", isn't it?
posted by Bugbread at 6:17 AM on October 11, 2007
Nah, bugbread, it was clear enough.
posted by mediareport at 6:22 AM on October 11, 2007
posted by mediareport at 6:22 AM on October 11, 2007
“I dunno. You say it meant A, he says it meant B. That's pretty much the definition of ‘unclear’, isn't it?”
Which is beside the point. He's saying that I meant what I've said I didn't mean. In other words, he's calling me a liar. Which, you know, is pretty weird. His whole reaction here has been an overreaction. Well, it's not an overreaction if he really and truly has firmly believed from the moment I said differently that I was lying about what I meant. So he thinks that I quite deliberately said, and believed, that he, mediareport, has specifically posted comments that were sincerely homophobic in past threads. I can see why that would make him mad. I can't see why he would be so certain this is true.
Putting aside the fact that my explanation of what I meant was very plausible, there's the problem of why I would have the motivation to make such a claim. I didn't post this callout, for one thing; and, for another, my two or so comments which preceded the one that got him so upset were clearly not the example of someone who is all outraged and calling-out particular MeFites. In fact, quite the reverse. My initial comment was of the “on the one hand...but on the other” nature.
From my first comment, I argued that while some comments in these threads may truly be homophobic, others are not and it's hard to tell the difference. I used myself as a specific example of someone who has made comments that may seem to be sexist, but were not actually motivated by sexism. Which really makes his interpretation of my disputed comment more strange—so I'd have spent a lot of time arguing that what seems like bigoted commentary may not, in fact be bigoted commentary, but when I used the word “seem” in the disputed comment as applied to him, in that case I really meant that the comments were actually bigoted?
If you look at mediareport's comments in this thread, you see that he was angry and defensive from the beginning. Here is roll truck roll's initial comment:
I don't know what his deal is, but the problem is with him, not the people he's attacking. It's like he's continuing an argument he had elsewhere.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:19 AM on October 11, 2007
Which is beside the point. He's saying that I meant what I've said I didn't mean. In other words, he's calling me a liar. Which, you know, is pretty weird. His whole reaction here has been an overreaction. Well, it's not an overreaction if he really and truly has firmly believed from the moment I said differently that I was lying about what I meant. So he thinks that I quite deliberately said, and believed, that he, mediareport, has specifically posted comments that were sincerely homophobic in past threads. I can see why that would make him mad. I can't see why he would be so certain this is true.
Putting aside the fact that my explanation of what I meant was very plausible, there's the problem of why I would have the motivation to make such a claim. I didn't post this callout, for one thing; and, for another, my two or so comments which preceded the one that got him so upset were clearly not the example of someone who is all outraged and calling-out particular MeFites. In fact, quite the reverse. My initial comment was of the “on the one hand...but on the other” nature.
From my first comment, I argued that while some comments in these threads may truly be homophobic, others are not and it's hard to tell the difference. I used myself as a specific example of someone who has made comments that may seem to be sexist, but were not actually motivated by sexism. Which really makes his interpretation of my disputed comment more strange—so I'd have spent a lot of time arguing that what seems like bigoted commentary may not, in fact be bigoted commentary, but when I used the word “seem” in the disputed comment as applied to him, in that case I really meant that the comments were actually bigoted?
If you look at mediareport's comments in this thread, you see that he was angry and defensive from the beginning. Here is roll truck roll's initial comment:
“I said it there and I'll say it here too: the homophobia in those threads always creeps me out, both in MeFi and elsewhere....and here's mediareport's response:
‘Hypocrisy’ doesn't make middle-school jokes okay.”
“You know, this accusation would have more weight if you'd actually point to a specific example of homophobia in ‘those threads.’ Because scorn for lying bigotry =/= homophobia, and saying it does is total insulting bullshit.”He's reading into roll truck roll's comment a bunch of stuff that wasn't there, and responding extremely aggressively to it. While roll truck roll thinks that middle-school type jokes about gays is homophobia (a very reasonable claim), that he's seen such behavior in these threads (a contestable claim, but not unreasonable), mediareport interprets this as being a claim that “scorn for lying bigotry is homophobia”. Which he then gets angry about because he says (rightly) that a claim that scorn for lying bigotry is homophobia is insulting bullshit. But who made that claim? No one. Mediareport is putting words in roll truck roll's mouth, just as he's being offended at something I quite clearly didn't say.
I don't know what his deal is, but the problem is with him, not the people he's attacking. It's like he's continuing an argument he had elsewhere.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:19 AM on October 11, 2007
Yeah, but you're a careful guy, usually. If you were being careful, you'd use "were" in your hypotheticals. "If A, B, or C were to do blah blah blah". Skipping the "were" to just say "If A, B, or C do blah blah blah" is fine most of the time, but can be parsed two ways: as a pure hypothetical, and as a "and maybe they do" sentence.
Exactly, and it's the nonhypothetical reading that is most prominent (because there's a specific verbal form that can be used if you mean the hypothetical). I myself read it as putting mediareport in the "does it" camp. I believe you that you didn't mean it that way, but you should recognize that that's a perfectly good and likely meaning. If I were you I'd apologize to mediareport, but now that you guys are in a pissing match I realize that's unlikely to happen. But you should really think a little harder before responding with something like:
perhaps you ought to actually learn to fucking read
...because that just makes you look like a dick.
posted by languagehat at 3:38 PM on October 11, 2007
Exactly, and it's the nonhypothetical reading that is most prominent (because there's a specific verbal form that can be used if you mean the hypothetical). I myself read it as putting mediareport in the "does it" camp. I believe you that you didn't mean it that way, but you should recognize that that's a perfectly good and likely meaning. If I were you I'd apologize to mediareport, but now that you guys are in a pissing match I realize that's unlikely to happen. But you should really think a little harder before responding with something like:
perhaps you ought to actually learn to fucking read
...because that just makes you look like a dick.
posted by languagehat at 3:38 PM on October 11, 2007
...specific examples of homophobia from the left in that thread...Holy fuck...I don't know how you could take me further out of context. Unless, of course, taking me out of context was entirely your intention.
1) it's faaaaabulous for anyone to make fun of hypocritical idiots
And it's faaaaabulous to use this hoary old stereotype in any conversation about being gay. Way to reinforce. God. You'll be talking about how well dressed they are next...
My joke was in the midst of discussion about the appropriateness of joking, hence I used the joke to reference the subject matter at hand.
I am shocked at how far the stick is up your ass on this subject. No wait, I'm not. After all, that ass-stick of yours is what started this mess.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:13 PM on October 11, 2007
“...because that just makes you look like a dick.”
Languagehat, he had already told me to fuck off. And whether or not I sufficiently signaled the hypothetical, you're not addressing that fact that he completely ignored the seems and that I'd already established A) that I was saying many comments which, um, see homophobic actually aren't, and B) his angry response and continued defense of it are all clearly predicated upon his interpretation that I was claiming that he made actually homophobic comments.
Any one of the individual misunderstandings is not that large. Cumulatively, though, they form a pattern and become egregious. He's very badly and willfully misreading me. And what exactly am I to apologize for? He wants an apology, basically, for me calling him a homophobe. Which, of course, I did not. I won't and can't apologize for something I didn't do. If I apologize for not being clearer in my phrasing of that hypothetical, I doubt that would satisfy him because his misreading of me goes far beyond that.
I have a demonstrated history here of admitting when I'm wrong and apologizing. But I don't ever falsely apologize, or “admit” I'm wrong when I don't really believe, just to keep the peace. Whether or not that's best, my integrity in such things matters to me. I want people to know that when I admit I'm wrong and when I apologize that I'm sincere.
At any rate, let me make it clear that I don't think that mediareport has made comments that were homophobic or even seemed homophobic.
“Holy fuck...I don't know how you could take me further out of context. ”
It's possible that he just scanned the thread looking for such comments in answer to the challenge to find some, and didn't see the surrounding text which provided the context you describe. You should consider that before you jump to the assumption that he deliberately quoted you out-of-context with the intention to mislead.
Not that it wasn't his responsibility to get it right. I'm just saying there's a quite obvious and likely reason that he gor it wrong.
These jumping to the conclusion that other specific people have ill-will is really the bane of discourse on the web. I wont' claim that I don't do this, sometimes, too. But without the human face of actual personal interaction, it's far too easy to take offense at something someone wrote and just jump to the conclusion that they intended the offense or had other ill motives. In real life, I think we're less likely to do this because we see other people as other people (well, to some degree, not enough) but here everyone becomes, even when they are very familiar, abstracted versions of themselves which are also often thought of even more abstractly as representing some stereotyped group or political position. Or something, you know what I mean.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:26 PM on October 11, 2007
Languagehat, he had already told me to fuck off. And whether or not I sufficiently signaled the hypothetical, you're not addressing that fact that he completely ignored the seems and that I'd already established A) that I was saying many comments which, um, see homophobic actually aren't, and B) his angry response and continued defense of it are all clearly predicated upon his interpretation that I was claiming that he made actually homophobic comments.
Any one of the individual misunderstandings is not that large. Cumulatively, though, they form a pattern and become egregious. He's very badly and willfully misreading me. And what exactly am I to apologize for? He wants an apology, basically, for me calling him a homophobe. Which, of course, I did not. I won't and can't apologize for something I didn't do. If I apologize for not being clearer in my phrasing of that hypothetical, I doubt that would satisfy him because his misreading of me goes far beyond that.
I have a demonstrated history here of admitting when I'm wrong and apologizing. But I don't ever falsely apologize, or “admit” I'm wrong when I don't really believe, just to keep the peace. Whether or not that's best, my integrity in such things matters to me. I want people to know that when I admit I'm wrong and when I apologize that I'm sincere.
At any rate, let me make it clear that I don't think that mediareport has made comments that were homophobic or even seemed homophobic.
“Holy fuck...I don't know how you could take me further out of context. ”
It's possible that he just scanned the thread looking for such comments in answer to the challenge to find some, and didn't see the surrounding text which provided the context you describe. You should consider that before you jump to the assumption that he deliberately quoted you out-of-context with the intention to mislead.
Not that it wasn't his responsibility to get it right. I'm just saying there's a quite obvious and likely reason that he gor it wrong.
These jumping to the conclusion that other specific people have ill-will is really the bane of discourse on the web. I wont' claim that I don't do this, sometimes, too. But without the human face of actual personal interaction, it's far too easy to take offense at something someone wrote and just jump to the conclusion that they intended the offense or had other ill motives. In real life, I think we're less likely to do this because we see other people as other people (well, to some degree, not enough) but here everyone becomes, even when they are very familiar, abstracted versions of themselves which are also often thought of even more abstractly as representing some stereotyped group or political position. Or something, you know what I mean.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:26 PM on October 11, 2007
Languagehat, he had already told me to fuck off.
Yeah, I know, and your response is totally understandable. I might well have done it myself. I find myself looking like a dick too often for my own comfort. I'm just saying it's a good idea to cool down before responding.
And note that I didn't say you should apologize, just that I would have (I think/hope). Because I've decided that the best thing I can do to make up for the looking-like-a-dick thing is to apologize at the drop of a hat, even if the other person misunderstood me and a "reasonable" person wouldn't have taken offense. It costs nothing and it tends to improve the atmosphere.
Anyway, I'm not calling you out or anything. I was mainly just pointing out that mediareport wasn't alone or irrational in the way he took your comment.
posted by languagehat at 6:46 AM on October 12, 2007
Yeah, I know, and your response is totally understandable. I might well have done it myself. I find myself looking like a dick too often for my own comfort. I'm just saying it's a good idea to cool down before responding.
And note that I didn't say you should apologize, just that I would have (I think/hope). Because I've decided that the best thing I can do to make up for the looking-like-a-dick thing is to apologize at the drop of a hat, even if the other person misunderstood me and a "reasonable" person wouldn't have taken offense. It costs nothing and it tends to improve the atmosphere.
Anyway, I'm not calling you out or anything. I was mainly just pointing out that mediareport wasn't alone or irrational in the way he took your comment.
posted by languagehat at 6:46 AM on October 12, 2007
So we dance on, to the music of blame. How easy it would be to take our seats for a spell, but we whirl instead, our throats parched and our knees shaking and our feet bruised. Let's take a stroll on the veranda, where the music isn't so loud; we can probably find somewhere to sit, away from all this racket, we'll say what we mean and it won't be anyone's fault at all.
We almost make it through the dancers to the great glass door and safety, and then the band plays our song, the one we can't resist, and we kick and toss and everyone gives us space and sees us flushed and wild and beautiful and in our element, dancing steps we made up long ago, turns made easy by long habit, dips so deep we frighten each other.
After a while the crowd thins and limps home, and the band strikes, and we walk arm in arm to the veranda, where we sit, and talk, and fall in love a little more; all the dancing suddenly feels like a waste of time, knowing what secrets we share in the silence of the garden, far removed from the insistent blare of blame.
posted by breezeway at 8:01 AM on October 12, 2007 [1 favorite]
We almost make it through the dancers to the great glass door and safety, and then the band plays our song, the one we can't resist, and we kick and toss and everyone gives us space and sees us flushed and wild and beautiful and in our element, dancing steps we made up long ago, turns made easy by long habit, dips so deep we frighten each other.
After a while the crowd thins and limps home, and the band strikes, and we walk arm in arm to the veranda, where we sit, and talk, and fall in love a little more; all the dancing suddenly feels like a waste of time, knowing what secrets we share in the silence of the garden, far removed from the insistent blare of blame.
posted by breezeway at 8:01 AM on October 12, 2007 [1 favorite]
When people are saying "Hey, your writing was careless, overly broad, and offensive," perhaps one shouldn't say "I pick my words carefully, so learn to read dumb-ass."
Perhaps one should instead learn how to write for his audience.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:11 PM on October 12, 2007
Perhaps one should instead learn how to write for his audience.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:11 PM on October 12, 2007
I have a demonstrated history here of admitting when I'm wrong and apologizing.
No, you do not. You have a history of repeatedly claiming that you admit you are wrong and apologizing. But, in fact, while you manage to talk about yourself endlessly, you do not admit wrong in specific cases. You back pattingly do it at best allusively, in general and long after the fact in three thousand word essays brought to us by the letter 'I'--you being the one person here who can and regularly manages to use the first person pronoun six to seven times in one sentence. Unctuous apologies and admissions of wrongdoing made after the fact and at extreme self absorbed length come off not as apologies but as self flattery:
Look at me: how, unlike you morons, noble I am. I was bad once at an undisclosed location and time and I feel so bad about it. Forget the details--focus on me and my suffering. How I suffer. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the nobility! Unlike you morons.
posted by y2karl at 7:32 PM on October 15, 2007
No, you do not. You have a history of repeatedly claiming that you admit you are wrong and apologizing. But, in fact, while you manage to talk about yourself endlessly, you do not admit wrong in specific cases. You back pattingly do it at best allusively, in general and long after the fact in three thousand word essays brought to us by the letter 'I'--you being the one person here who can and regularly manages to use the first person pronoun six to seven times in one sentence. Unctuous apologies and admissions of wrongdoing made after the fact and at extreme self absorbed length come off not as apologies but as self flattery:
Look at me: how, unlike you morons, noble I am. I was bad once at an undisclosed location and time and I feel so bad about it. Forget the details--focus on me and my suffering. How I suffer. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the nobility! Unlike you morons.
posted by y2karl at 7:32 PM on October 15, 2007
“No, you do not.”
Yes, yes I do. Why don't you try searching my comment history instead of just pulling shit out of your ass.
Also? This obsession with the first person pronoun, both in the way you comically avoid it and in how you are quick to arm-chair psychoanalyze others who are not as obsessed with avoiding it like you are...well, look up the term projecting in your armchair psychoanalysis reference.
Christ, you're such a passive/aggressive little whiny asshole, posting your pathetically crafted insult into a thread that is three days stale. I'm amazed you've managed to overcome your timidity enough to show up at a meet-up. Try very hard not to cry if for some strange reason your presence isn't greeted with the cheers you so obviously crave. If your feelings are hurt, you can always try to make yourself feel better with another MetaFilter post, which makes you feel important.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:03 AM on October 16, 2007
Yes, yes I do. Why don't you try searching my comment history instead of just pulling shit out of your ass.
Also? This obsession with the first person pronoun, both in the way you comically avoid it and in how you are quick to arm-chair psychoanalyze others who are not as obsessed with avoiding it like you are...well, look up the term projecting in your armchair psychoanalysis reference.
Christ, you're such a passive/aggressive little whiny asshole, posting your pathetically crafted insult into a thread that is three days stale. I'm amazed you've managed to overcome your timidity enough to show up at a meet-up. Try very hard not to cry if for some strange reason your presence isn't greeted with the cheers you so obviously crave. If your feelings are hurt, you can always try to make yourself feel better with another MetaFilter post, which makes you feel important.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:03 AM on October 16, 2007
I've made a terrible mistake, please don't respond to me, just let this die.
posted by smackfu at 11:28 AM on October 16, 2007
posted by smackfu at 11:28 AM on October 16, 2007
...how you are quick to arm-chair psychoanalyze others
well, look up the term projecting in your armchair psychoanalysis reference.
Considering the source, comedy gold indeed, Mr. I and I and I and I and I ad InfInItum...
posted by y2karl at 12:09 PM on October 16, 2007
well, look up the term projecting in your armchair psychoanalysis reference.
Considering the source, comedy gold indeed, Mr. I and I and I and I and I ad InfInItum...
posted by y2karl at 12:09 PM on October 16, 2007
Hey, EB, it's time to jack up the meds. You're turning into a real asshole on MeFi.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:08 PM on October 16, 2007
posted by five fresh fish at 6:08 PM on October 16, 2007
Christ, you're such a passive/aggressive little whiny asshole, posting your pathetically crafted insult into a thread that is three days stale. I'm amazed you've managed to overcome your timidity enough to show up at a meet-up. Try very hard not to cry if for some strange reason your presence isn't greeted with the cheers you so obviously crave. If your feelings are hurt, you can always try to make yourself feel better with another MetaFilter post, which makes you feel important.
I don't recall writing anything like that upthread.
posted by y2karl at 6:38 PM on October 16, 2007
I don't recall writing anything like that upthread.
posted by y2karl at 6:38 PM on October 16, 2007
EB, step back from the keyboard, relax, there is life beyond this website. You have been really aggressive toward folks the last few weeks, and it has been building up it seems even for longer. You know, it is better to just state you point and not try to pummel your opponents into agreement. They won't agree, it just makes you look mean and petty. You are also getting way too personal in your attacks. Give it a rest. If I were you I would take a few week holiday to regain composure.
posted by caddis at 7:31 PM on October 16, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by caddis at 7:31 PM on October 16, 2007 [1 favorite]
Um, caddis and fff? Did you notice the intensely personal attack on my by y2karl that came out of nowhere in this thread?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:32 AM on October 17, 2007
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:32 AM on October 17, 2007
You made a claim. I disputed it, accused you of being self-absorbed and talking about yourself too much and made light of your fondness for the first person pronoun and the word 'moron'. No names were called. Your reaction, on the other hand....
Taking your suggestion, I have walked back through your comments and found a great deal of such belittling and insults. The record is replete with them. You are like the King of Belittle.
But apologies made specifically to anyone regarding a specific situation ? No. Not yet. They could be there but they are not common. If you apologize, you do it very rarely. Which is not that unusual around here.
I have seen a lot of people here go too far with the personal insults, then feel shame or guilt for having done so and and then apologize. That is a bit less unusual. You have written more than your fair share of belittling personal attacks here but you have never apologized for writing shit like that quoted just above. Not that I have ever seen. But you should have a better idea of where to find such than any of us. Sample, please ?
posted by y2karl at 6:00 AM on October 17, 2007
Taking your suggestion, I have walked back through your comments and found a great deal of such belittling and insults. The record is replete with them. You are like the King of Belittle.
But apologies made specifically to anyone regarding a specific situation ? No. Not yet. They could be there but they are not common. If you apologize, you do it very rarely. Which is not that unusual around here.
I have seen a lot of people here go too far with the personal insults, then feel shame or guilt for having done so and and then apologize. That is a bit less unusual. You have written more than your fair share of belittling personal attacks here but you have never apologized for writing shit like that quoted just above. Not that I have ever seen. But you should have a better idea of where to find such than any of us. Sample, please ?
posted by y2karl at 6:00 AM on October 17, 2007
“Sample, please”
Well, oddly enough, here's something from only a few days ago and was the most recent exchange between us:
“Oh. Sorry. I didn't get it. (Still don't.) I just thought you were snarking and making up a spelling because you'd not seen it actually written out (which seems weird to me, but then I live in New Mexico).”
Anyway, don't conflate admitting when I'm wrong with apologizing for insulting someone. I said that I have an established history here of admitting when I'm wrong. You said I don't. I do, and the most recent occasion when someone specifically made that accusation against me I responded with a comment I had made less than 48 hours earlier that was a blunt admission I had been wrong. I admit when I'm wrong at least as often as average for MetaFilter, and probably moreso.
I don't generally apologize for insulting or belittling people because I usually mean it when I insult or belittle people. I'm not going to apologize for something I intended and don't regret.
You, on the other hand, have a history of doing things like you've done here and then apologizing for it by saying that you've been in a bad mood, having a hard time, blah blah blah. That's just your passive/aggressive pattern. Whether you're sincere in your apologies or not, you don't actually change your behavior.
You forget no insult ever done to you, you nurse grudges lovingly for years. And if the mood strikes you, you'll walk into a stale thread like this and make some pissy little insult like this one.
In general, I have empathy for the weak. But I have nothing but contempt for weak and whiny people that passive-aggressively attack others in self-pity and the certainty that everyone treats them so unfairly.
Your “I” thing was not a mild aside. It's your fucking obsession. It's not the first, or fifth time you've accused me of being self-obsessed as revealed by my supposed overuse of the first-person pronoun; and I'm not the first or second person you've insulted in this way, either. And while normal people may avoid its use as part of supposed good writing, normal people do not avoid it obsessively, nor do normal people track other peoples' usage of it obsessively, nor do they make a habit of using it as a basis of an accusation of self-involvement. You are not a normal person, and your freakish obsession with “I” is clearly a pathological overcompensating attempt to pretend you're not the narcissist you so clearly are.
Well, at least I can look forward to only another week or so of your bitchy acting-out before you go into your “down in a funk and mostly staying away from MeFi” phase which, if we're lucky, will last more than a month. In the meantime, please pick one of your other grudges to act upon.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:51 AM on October 17, 2007
Well, oddly enough, here's something from only a few days ago and was the most recent exchange between us:
“Oh. Sorry. I didn't get it. (Still don't.) I just thought you were snarking and making up a spelling because you'd not seen it actually written out (which seems weird to me, but then I live in New Mexico).”
Anyway, don't conflate admitting when I'm wrong with apologizing for insulting someone. I said that I have an established history here of admitting when I'm wrong. You said I don't. I do, and the most recent occasion when someone specifically made that accusation against me I responded with a comment I had made less than 48 hours earlier that was a blunt admission I had been wrong. I admit when I'm wrong at least as often as average for MetaFilter, and probably moreso.
I don't generally apologize for insulting or belittling people because I usually mean it when I insult or belittle people. I'm not going to apologize for something I intended and don't regret.
You, on the other hand, have a history of doing things like you've done here and then apologizing for it by saying that you've been in a bad mood, having a hard time, blah blah blah. That's just your passive/aggressive pattern. Whether you're sincere in your apologies or not, you don't actually change your behavior.
You forget no insult ever done to you, you nurse grudges lovingly for years. And if the mood strikes you, you'll walk into a stale thread like this and make some pissy little insult like this one.
In general, I have empathy for the weak. But I have nothing but contempt for weak and whiny people that passive-aggressively attack others in self-pity and the certainty that everyone treats them so unfairly.
Your “I” thing was not a mild aside. It's your fucking obsession. It's not the first, or fifth time you've accused me of being self-obsessed as revealed by my supposed overuse of the first-person pronoun; and I'm not the first or second person you've insulted in this way, either. And while normal people may avoid its use as part of supposed good writing, normal people do not avoid it obsessively, nor do normal people track other peoples' usage of it obsessively, nor do they make a habit of using it as a basis of an accusation of self-involvement. You are not a normal person, and your freakish obsession with “I” is clearly a pathological overcompensating attempt to pretend you're not the narcissist you so clearly are.
Well, at least I can look forward to only another week or so of your bitchy acting-out before you go into your “down in a funk and mostly staying away from MeFi” phase which, if we're lucky, will last more than a month. In the meantime, please pick one of your other grudges to act upon.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:51 AM on October 17, 2007
I don't have a freakish obsession with using 'I'. I use it all the time. It's just that I don't use it seven times in one sentence.
Which was what that the comment to that previous quote was about.
Now my initial comment above, which set you off, contested your I have a demonstrated history here of admitting when I'm wrong and apologizing. You do not have a demonstrated history, in my opinion. You made a claim you did. I disputed it. The quote you linked was not an apology.
In my experience, you really resent being told you talk about yourself obsessively. And you resented my suggestion that you really don't apologize to anyone for anything specifically.
We don't like each other. I don't run you down at length, I don't call you names. The people about whose opinion I care the most do not like to read that sort of thing. I try to avoid it. That is one difference between us of late. I don't make claims about how much I admit I am wrong and how often I apologize for it. That is another. I don't waste people's time talking about myself incessantly. You don't see me going all Klein bottle 3D Screensaver pretzel logic in making myself right by making everyone else wrong like in you did in the epic saga of the unfortunate Liberty University president.
I don't have a problem using the word I. I just don't don't waste people's time talking about me me me me. Or I I I I, if you will. You do. So that's another difference.
posted by y2karl at 11:24 AM on October 17, 2007
Which was what that the comment to that previous quote was about.
Partly I've done this because while I don't mind making people angry and causing them to dislike me because I've said things I really believe and think are true (the subject of this thread is an example), I do mind generating a lot of antipathy simply because I've said something provocative to make a point.Either you didn't get it or you did, but your reply was:
I Caramba! I-eee!! I yI yI yI!!!
??? ?? ????! Getting ¡ay, caramba! so wrong is not unlike getting oy vey! wrong. Uff da!That section of back and forth above had nothing to do with you being wrong and apologizing. There, you were either being obtuse or cute.
Now my initial comment above, which set you off, contested your I have a demonstrated history here of admitting when I'm wrong and apologizing. You do not have a demonstrated history, in my opinion. You made a claim you did. I disputed it. The quote you linked was not an apology.
In my experience, you really resent being told you talk about yourself obsessively. And you resented my suggestion that you really don't apologize to anyone for anything specifically.
We don't like each other. I don't run you down at length, I don't call you names. The people about whose opinion I care the most do not like to read that sort of thing. I try to avoid it. That is one difference between us of late. I don't make claims about how much I admit I am wrong and how often I apologize for it. That is another. I don't waste people's time talking about myself incessantly. You don't see me going all Klein bottle 3D Screensaver pretzel logic in making myself right by making everyone else wrong like in you did in the epic saga of the unfortunate Liberty University president.
I don't have a problem using the word I. I just don't don't waste people's time talking about me me me me. Or I I I I, if you will. You do. So that's another difference.
posted by y2karl at 11:24 AM on October 17, 2007
y2karl writes "I don't waste people's time talking about myself incessantly."
Whether or not your other claims are true, this one doesn't really hold water for pretty much anyone on MeFi. All we do here is talk about ourselves incessantly. There are just two big differences between EB's way of doing it and most other folks: 1) He is much more verbose (he isn't talking more about himself, but he's using more screenspace to talk the same amount), and 2) he doesn't hide it in absolutes. By which I mean: every time someone says "band A sucks", they're really saying "I don't like band A", but hiding the "I" to make their statement have more authority. The same with "government policy B is evil", "people who do C are racists", etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. It's all stating one's opinions, while avoiding the "I" word in some weird attempt to make their statement stronger. EB just tends to avoid that particular type of absolute statement (though he does make others). End result is that he's talking about himself just as much, but it's more obvious.
posted by Bugbread at 4:52 PM on October 17, 2007
Whether or not your other claims are true, this one doesn't really hold water for pretty much anyone on MeFi. All we do here is talk about ourselves incessantly. There are just two big differences between EB's way of doing it and most other folks: 1) He is much more verbose (he isn't talking more about himself, but he's using more screenspace to talk the same amount), and 2) he doesn't hide it in absolutes. By which I mean: every time someone says "band A sucks", they're really saying "I don't like band A", but hiding the "I" to make their statement have more authority. The same with "government policy B is evil", "people who do C are racists", etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. It's all stating one's opinions, while avoiding the "I" word in some weird attempt to make their statement stronger. EB just tends to avoid that particular type of absolute statement (though he does make others). End result is that he's talking about himself just as much, but it's more obvious.
posted by Bugbread at 4:52 PM on October 17, 2007
It's all stating one's opinions, while avoiding the "I" word in some weird attempt to make their statement stronger.
You didn't preface that with "I think".
posted by smackfu at 5:04 PM on October 17, 2007
You didn't preface that with "I think".
posted by smackfu at 5:04 PM on October 17, 2007
smackfu writes "You didn't preface that with 'I think'."
You mean you don't think I prefaced that with 'I think'.
posted by Bugbread at 5:30 PM on October 17, 2007
You mean you don't think I prefaced that with 'I think'.
posted by Bugbread at 5:30 PM on October 17, 2007
“EB just tends to avoid that particular type of absolute statement...”
It's very astute of you to be aware of this. I'm very careful to make my subjectivity explicit when I state my opinions. And Y2Karl's avoidance of the first person pronoun results in a great many statements of objective fact that hide their subjectivity. He also uses the passive voice very often, which also tends to obscure the questionability of assertions by hiding from whence they come.
What's ironic about this with regard to Karl's accusation is that his unqualified objective statements that pretend his subjectivity doesn't exist have the cumulative effect of solipsism where what is true for the universe is what is true for him. My statements made explicitly from my subjective viewpoint have the cumulative effect of underscoring that my opinions are only one among many.
This difference is also evident in Karl's penchant for excessive quotes—he obfuscates the subjectivity of his opinion by presenting it in a superficially objective form (“I just report the news.”)
I intentionally talk about myself via anecdotes because I don't pretend to myself or anyone else that my worldview, my grasp of facts, my claims about what is true and what is false, is not deeply influenced by who I am and the peculiar contingencies of my personal experience. Other people—and y2karl is an extreme example of this—depersonalize their views and abstract them, pretending that this is more “objective” when, instead, the refusal to acknowledge subjectivity is a false objectivity, the typical subjectivity that can't differentiate itself from the truth. People who talk about ideas and politics and such without contextualizing it in their personal experience are privileging their own subjectivity to the extent that they are pretending it doesn't even exist. Which is more the product of egotism?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:35 PM on October 17, 2007
It's very astute of you to be aware of this. I'm very careful to make my subjectivity explicit when I state my opinions. And Y2Karl's avoidance of the first person pronoun results in a great many statements of objective fact that hide their subjectivity. He also uses the passive voice very often, which also tends to obscure the questionability of assertions by hiding from whence they come.
What's ironic about this with regard to Karl's accusation is that his unqualified objective statements that pretend his subjectivity doesn't exist have the cumulative effect of solipsism where what is true for the universe is what is true for him. My statements made explicitly from my subjective viewpoint have the cumulative effect of underscoring that my opinions are only one among many.
This difference is also evident in Karl's penchant for excessive quotes—he obfuscates the subjectivity of his opinion by presenting it in a superficially objective form (“I just report the news.”)
I intentionally talk about myself via anecdotes because I don't pretend to myself or anyone else that my worldview, my grasp of facts, my claims about what is true and what is false, is not deeply influenced by who I am and the peculiar contingencies of my personal experience. Other people—and y2karl is an extreme example of this—depersonalize their views and abstract them, pretending that this is more “objective” when, instead, the refusal to acknowledge subjectivity is a false objectivity, the typical subjectivity that can't differentiate itself from the truth. People who talk about ideas and politics and such without contextualizing it in their personal experience are privileging their own subjectivity to the extent that they are pretending it doesn't even exist. Which is more the product of egotism?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:35 PM on October 17, 2007
Both y2karl and EB need to give this up. EB, you have been kind of losing it in general as of late, at least from my perspective. You are way too aggressive and personal. I have been and so have many others. This is hardly unique. Nevertheless, it is not healthy to you or your relationships in the community. y2karl, you should just ignore EB's attacks. You have a fan base wide and deep here and in part it comes from you habit of putting up these rather controversial posts that make everyone think deeply about the subject, but often have people spout off also, and then you just sit back and watch rather than defend. Walk away here. No one, except EB, will fault you. You have made your point eloquently, and you don't really need to say anything more.
In the past these personal squabbles in MeTa went largely ignored. However, now with "Recent Activity" etc. anyone who dropped by at any time in the thread has this personal spat thrown in their face any time they hit refresh. All the more reason to walk away. No one will win, everyone will lose, when it gets this long and this personal.
My vote is for the admins to close this thread. It should probably be Matt just because it is so long protracted etc. and the at of closure would be controversial and he can take it more than Jess or Cortex, being the supreme leader and all. This thing is just toxic at this point. Posters whom I have a lot of respect for are hurting themselves and the site and I just wish it would stop.
I love a heated debate over issues, but this is just too personal and toxic. Closure please.
posted by caddis at 6:01 PM on October 17, 2007
In the past these personal squabbles in MeTa went largely ignored. However, now with "Recent Activity" etc. anyone who dropped by at any time in the thread has this personal spat thrown in their face any time they hit refresh. All the more reason to walk away. No one will win, everyone will lose, when it gets this long and this personal.
My vote is for the admins to close this thread. It should probably be Matt just because it is so long protracted etc. and the at of closure would be controversial and he can take it more than Jess or Cortex, being the supreme leader and all. This thing is just toxic at this point. Posters whom I have a lot of respect for are hurting themselves and the site and I just wish it would stop.
I love a heated debate over issues, but this is just too personal and toxic. Closure please.
posted by caddis at 6:01 PM on October 17, 2007
What caddis said. All of it. This thread needs closure, and some people need to calm down.
posted by languagehat at 6:19 PM on October 17, 2007
posted by languagehat at 6:19 PM on October 17, 2007
If I wrote that last paragraph for a nun, the backs of my hands would be hurting right now, not that there would be anything wrong with that. I would deserve it, with all the mistakes that survived because I failed to proof it before hitting post. Matt should implement a grammar checker that provides a not too mild shock to us when we fail to proofread our comments. There is the guy named Milgrim who, if he is still with us, could perhaps help.
posted by caddis at 6:31 PM on October 17, 2007
posted by caddis at 6:31 PM on October 17, 2007
I agree with caddis, too. EB, you've seemed pretty angry lately. Y2karl, you've seemed pretty feudy lately. Y'all should probably just relax.
Well, that's what I think, anyway.
posted by Bugbread at 6:45 PM on October 17, 2007
Well, that's what I think, anyway.
posted by Bugbread at 6:45 PM on October 17, 2007
I'll close this up on the suggestion of several people...
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:06 PM on October 17, 2007
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:06 PM on October 17, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
;-)
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:40 PM on October 9, 2007