Why do ya even care?!

[Tiassa]

Athelwulf

I think you're overlooking something obvious about the blood tests.

He's raising his own demon to fear.

Use the Force ....

:m:

 

[Asguard]

You know what guys

i think i finally worked it out. It was a missreading something that tiassa wrote that clued me in

its not the fact that gay guys have sex together that is the problem
its the fact that those nansy boys dress up as girls and when im really drunk i might acidently take one home. Therefore i must insist they all be exicuted AT ONCE, just incase

isnt that right tiassa?

we wouldnt want to acidently kiss one of these leppers would we?

 

[Athelwulf]

He's raising his own demon to fear.

Tiassa has a point, dude. I don't know why I didn't see this earlier.

Ye'r basically saying: "Homosexuals have AIDS, so we shouldn't let them give blood". Ya also say this about "junkies, hookers, people who have been to certain parts of Africa in the past six months, people with certain diseases, etc.".

Where's the proof?

Unless ya can come up with proof, ye'r assigning attributes to people, when in fact they have no such attribute.

And this isn't the only time ya've committed this fallacy in logic.

You hide behind this blanket of "tolerance" toward homosexuals. However, you are intolerant toward divergent opinions and attitudes. Just because people don't want to believe the liberal brainwashing, that starts in grade-school, about ultra-tolerance/multi-culti ideologies, you are very quick to bring up all kinds of things to gain support in your favor.

Ya assign the "brainwasher" attribute to me.

You use the "rationalization" ego defense mechanism (by asking for liberal agreement) to convince yourself that what you do is "right" or "moral."

Ya assign the "homosexual" attribute to me.

If I want to be against the corruption, liberisation, feminisation, homosexualization of the American society, there is nothing that can stop me.

Ya assign the "corrupter", "liberalizer", "feminizer", and "homosexualizer" attributes to liberals like me.

Don't even start with the "you're oppressing me with your intolerance" BS.

Again, ya assign the "homosexual" attribute to me.

I just don't believe in the mass homosexualization indoctrination from the left.

Again, ya assign the "homosexualizer" attribute to liberals like me.

I simply developed a theory based on your over-emphasis on the merits of homosexual lifestyles. I took what I knew about psychology, and put two and two together. "Deviant" because it is not the way two people were meant to go together.

Ah, I see I'm still gay. Oh, and look! I'm also a "deviant"! How quaint.

Then the "multi-culti" libs attempt to brainwash the people with "newspeak" (i.e political correctness) and they try to denigrate the traditional white male. They attempt to raise person Y (and feature y) to a height greater than it is, and then have the gall to say that person X is less of a person (and painted as an oppressor) because of their own painting of Y as the victim.
It is twisted, unfair, and not right. But that is how the mental disease of liberalism works. . .

Let's see . . . "Multi-culti", "brainwasher" (again), "newsspeaker", "denigrator of tradition", and "mentally diseased".

Yes, it is supposed to be, but it has been twisted around to fit the liberal agenda.

Ah, now there's an "agenda".

Note, there is a difference betwixt "normal" and "natural." I read earlier in this thread (or maybe it was one of Athelwulf's many other gay threads) that even animals are gay sometimes, and that it may be genetic. This means it may be "natural", but not "normal," because it is an anomaly in the sample.

Homosexuals aren't normal kuz they're "an anomaly in the sample", ya say.

So when Mrs. Smith, the 2nd grade teacher says "Jonny laid down with Timmy, and they should thus be praised for being exceptional to the rest of us because they found a way around the God-given characteristics of human beings," it has been twisted above tolerance. It is a plan for breeding intolerance toward the majority.

So liberals praise homosexuals for being exceptional to the rest of us now? And liberals plan to breed intolerance toward the majority? Interesting.

Basically, you have a problem with gays (or maybe even other minorities) being treated like "any other person" (because you feel all minorities should be held to higher standards) so you elevate them while denigrating the others.

Now I'm elevating the gays and denigrating the heterosexuals.

Actually, it was a perfectly reasonable application of Sigmund Freud's ego defense mechanisms. You need to learn some more about psychology. Go to the library and get a book. I tihnk you will be surprised, and you might even learn a bit about yourself. . .

Now I'm a homosexual that hasn't discovered this aspect of himself.

Do you think serial killers are normal?

Now ya assume that since I think homosexuals are normal, I must also think that serial killers are normal, since both comprise only a small percentage of the population and are "anomalies in the sample".

You probably think that even viruses have feelings. You wouldn't want to exclude any viruses from being able to multiply, now would you?

Now I'm for bacterial rights.

Learn a bit about psychology before you try to use it in your favor!

Now I don't know psychology. Oh, but you know psychology perfectly, and ya used yer knowledge to "figure out" that I'm gay.

There are more examples of this fallacy in other threads, but I'll worry only about this thread for now.

According to you, liberals are "multi-culti", mentally diseased, newsspeaking, feminizing, homosexualizing, corrupting brainwashers who are denigrating tradition, praising homosexuals for being exceptional, and planning to breed intolerance toward the majority. And it's all part of their "agenda".

According to you, homosexuals are abnormal kuz they're "anomalies in the sample", just like serial killers. They also have AIDS.

According to you, I'm a brainwashing, deviant homosexual who hasn't discovered that he is a homosexual kuz he knows less about psychology than you. Also, I elevate homosexuals while denigrating heterosexuals, and I think serial killers are normal and viruses have feelings.

Somehow, this weakens yer entire side of the argument.

And to think I would've let all this pass under my nose utterly unnoticed if it weren't for members like tiassa (to whom a special thanks goes).

 

[Athelwulf]

Oh, and one little thing I hafta say . . .

Keep your love out of my politics.

Keep yer religion out of everyone's politics.

 

[RubiksMaster]

How many psychology classes have ya taken? Where and how did ya learn psychology? Kuz it seems like you are the one that needs to learn a bit about psychology before ya try to use it in yer favor. Especially when ya use it to accuse someone of being a homosexual.

As a matter of fact, I have taken one more psyhcology class than you (I know you have taken none). Also, I grew up in a psychological household, as y mother has a masters degree in it. I have read countless books (I can give you titles of some if you don't believe me). I was correct in my explanation of everything.

And about the "you being gay" thing: I meant that ONE interpretation was you being gay. I posted that interpretation simply because I knew there were no misuse of psychological theories. I wanted to post this to see how you would react. I don't reallly think you are gay. Nor do I believe that psychoanalists would think this. In other words, I came up with a possible explanation (albeit extreme) to see your reaction. But I really do know more about psychology than you will probably ever know.

Now I'm for bacterial rights.

No. HIV is a virus, not a bacteria. There is a fundamental difference. Viruses are technicallly not alive.

Now I don't know psychology. Oh, but you know psychology perfectly, and ya used yer knowledge to "figure out" that I'm gay.

You don't. And, as I said earlier, I was joking about 'figuring out" your homosexuality.

Unless ya can come up with proof, ye'r assigning attributes to people, when in fact they have no such attribute.

No. It is necessary to make certain assumptions based on observation. That is the way I interpret the things you do. It is not really a fallacy in logic. Oh, and you do it too.

Somehow, this weakens yer entire side of the argument.

Somehow? Tell me how it does and I will believe you (assuming it is a good reason, of course).

And finally:

Keep yer religion out of everyone's politics.

Keep your politics out of my religion. For some reason, the liberals try to step into my religion and cut it out of society. They are so focused on suppressing christianity.

That is where people like you put politics into my religion.
Keep your politics out of my religion. Marriage is supposed to be religious (at least it was, in part). The fact that you want to change it to fit your interpretation of equality is stepping into my religion.

Your trying to change religion for liberal politcs is where you put politics into my religion.

So I turn it on you once again: Keep yer politics out of everyone's religion.

 

[Asguard]

and you would be stepping on MY religion if you push YOUR definition of marriage

you are compleatly welcome to only accept people you like into your religion but when your talking about limiting a LEGAL entity you cross the line from personal choice into oppression

see every person is intiled to the SAME legal rights regardless of there religiouse belifes and by the way you do realise there ARE churches that WILL marry gay couples dont you?

so your opressing not only there LEGAL rights but by your own words there religion as well

basically keep your religion out of other peoples LIVES all together

 

[RubiksMaster]

and you would be stepping on MY religion if you push YOUR definition of marriage

That's right! We're both guilty.

basically keep your religion out of other peoples LIVES all together

NO! You keep your ahteism out of everyone's life. In fact, you should stay out of my life yourself. Don't talk to me ever again.

its not the fact that gay guys have sex together that is the problem
its the fact that those nansy boys dress up as girls and when im really drunk i might acidently take one home. Therefore i must insist they all be exicuted AT ONCE, just incase

Really? You feel that way? Maybe if you didn't get drunk and go looking for hookers all the time, you wouldn't have those problems. And how would you go about reforming yourself like that? RELIGION.

 

[Asguard]

no i dont

you want to know about me?

im in a steady relationship with a girl who i love so no i dont pick up hockers and never have but the last person i dated was a guy and it puzzles me why i can take this relationship further legally than the last and what gives you the right to abterally chose which i can marry

and why should i stay out of your life when you are refusing to stay out of mine? maybe i will follow you around and peak in your curtains ect and make sure you only ever fuck missionry because any other is an aboimination to my god

you surly understand that dont you?

oh and just as a side note ever herd of SARCASIUM????? i tend to use it alot on people like you because all i feel for people who think they are somehow better than another person is contempt. What gives you the right to push your ideals on me? how would you feel if the state you live in suddenly adopted all the ways of islam or hinduisum or budasisum as law and it became illegal for you to eat your steak or even just practice the faith you belive in? that is how you are treating gays. Your saying "i have the right to decide how you live your life and the law should surport my ways" but there are other ways to live. thats where free will comes in. you have the right to belive whatever you like you just dont have the right to force that belife on ME

think about that please

 

[RubiksMaster]

oh and just as a side note ever herd of SARCASIUM?????

Oh, sarcasium! Yes, I know what that is. It's that thing that's kind of like sarcasm, only not quite.

I did understand your sarcasm, by the way. I only think it is fun to take the sarcasm literally when I don't like the person.

What gives you the right to push your ideals on me?

What gives you the right to push your ideals on me?

Think about that please.

and why should i stay out of your life when you are refusing to stay out of mine?

You really want me to stay out of your llife? Okay. You've got it. Since I don't want anything to do with you, and you don't want anything to do with me, I will leave.


That's right. I am leaving the gay marriage threads forever.
Praise Allah! (or Satan, or whoever you libs worships)
I am sure Tiassa will be happy. I am sure Athelwulf will be happy. I am sure Zanket and, especially, Asguard will be happy.

Bet then again, without me, who would you people argue with?

GOODBYE.

 

[Xev]

Oh-ho, this is funny.

Hi Asguard, haven't seen you around much.

RubicksMaster:

NO! You keep your ahteism out of everyone's life.

Ahteism?
What's that, the belief in sneezing?

"I'm an - ah, ah, ah-THIEST!"

In fact, you should stay out of my life yourself. Don't talk to me ever again.

Dude.
This is the FUCKING INTERNET.

Maybe if you didn't get drunk and go looking for hookers all the time, you wouldn't have those problems.

This is an invalid form of argument of the ad hominem variety, but beyond that it's just silly.
I mean what the heck? Are we supposed to laugh? Be insulted? Chip in five bucks to the hooker fund?

And how would you go about reforming yourself like that? RELIGION.

The typical refuge of a weak mind.
Can't do anything without the helpful ordering hand of authority, eh?

Nor do I believe that psychoanalists would think this.

Let's see - Freudian psycho-analysis posits that the human being is innately aggressive, pansexual - that is, forms libido-attachments to all manner of things and people, wants to overthrow its same-gender parent and take his or her place, that God is the product of a traumatic parricide, and that "civilization is a neurosis"

Yeah...pretty in tune with Christian moral values.

Marriage is supposed to be religious (at least it was, in part).

Marriage serves many different functions.

The fact that you want to change it to fit your interpretation of equality is stepping into my religion.

In any case, if marriage is a religious ceremony, then the US government has no business making laws regarding it. So government shouldn't recognize any marriage, whether homo/hetero/bi or asexual.

For some reason, the liberals try to step into my religion and cut it out of society. They are so focused on suppressing christianity.

Good on them if they are. It'd be the one good thing the liberals ever did.

Athelwulf:

Ya know what else works as "the same marriage laws as everyone else"? Everyone can marry whom they love

I love my warm fur hat, can I marry it and claim it as a dependent?

That's by no means the marriage law that applies to everyone. Marriage laws regulate the union of a man and a woman. Hey, I want them to be amended so that they regulate the union of Xev and a couple hot guys, but that isn't happening any time soon.

Yup, marriage laws are unequal. So are drinking laws - why can't I drink when I am under twenty-one? That's not equality! Why can't I have full driving privileges when I am seventeen? That's not equality either! And why oh why can't those juvenile crime laws apply to me, when I am twenty-one?!

Sorry, you want full equality in marriage? Let me marry my frickin' hat, it's more useful to me than most men are.

 

[Asguard]

hey xev

how you doing?

you know why you cant marry your hat. Because as an unthinking thing it cant give legal consent. And because it cant walk to the hospital to see you when your sick either

oh and by the way about the drinking laws, i feel for you. Its wrong that you can be considered an adult at 18 and still be restricted from making adult choices. That just sucks

and why SHOULDNT pollyhogamy be legal?

i think it should

do whatever you want to anyone who can give legal concent. sorry your hat cant but as it also cant file for sexual assult go for it my friend

 

[Tiassa]

Athelwulf

Use the Force. I swear it's even more obvious than that. It's the kind of point that avoids arguing about whether or not his proof is objective. There's a common-sense point you're overlooking.

Hint #1: Why are homosexuals not allowed to give blood?
Hint #2: How does getting married relate to that answer?​

As I see our friend has departed these discussions, keep that point close at hand for when it's needed again.

Asguard

Almost but not quite. Rather, that's part of it. Think of the American family. Think of the comfortable identity politic, the good tradition of love and hate. And then one day Janie's the masculine one and Bobby's the priss. It's unsettling to a good many parents, brothers, sisters, &c. Best friends don't know what to do, either. The aesthetic reaction lends to all manner of irrationality in personal-identification dynamics.

I'm of the opinion that anyone getting drunk enough to unwittingly hit on a nancy is well-deserving of the surprise. Furthermore, I don't think heterosexual men, especially, should be offended at being hit on by someone of the same gender. If women treated crude heterosexual advances the same way ... well, the only people not singing castrato would be homosexuals.

The last thing people really want in their lives, generally speaking, is to be human. While I find this condition absurd, it seems to be the way of things. Think about "being a man". How many farging identity assignations are there in manhood? How irritating, unsettling, or offensive is a challenge to any one of those facets? What to think, then, when several of them are turned head-over right before your eyes?

Homophobia is a fear, a panic brought on by a lack of understanding that leaves people nervous and unsure about what comes next. Everything about this debate seems to come back to the heterosexual male. Women not acting like chicks, men not acting like men. I do believe conservatives want people's lives to be easier and more pleasing, but I don't think the cessation of thought is really a viable method. That they'd rather not ever face the questions that come with those things they don't understand, that they cannot stand the appearance of admitting ignorance and possibly even helplessness, well, we see the result. They lash out, seek new ways to hurt and deny people. It's all a matter of aesthetics, just like arguing over the FM dial. Garth Brooks or Kylie Minogue? There will always be a faction that feels like it's missing out entirely. But even I get cranky when I'm immersed in country-music culture.

 

[Asguard]

i guess i dont understand for the very reason your stating. In my own relationship i am more feminate mostly than musculan. HELL i even look it. But mostly i just dont get why people think they have the right to decide who gets what rights. Not as in MP's but as in groups of people (not just christans) that think they have the right to pry into other peoples lives when they arnt doing anything to anyone

if xev wants to sleep with her hat and 2 bouncers who cares? more power to her.

and i dont really think that you can say that dissalowing equal rights to everyone is the same thing as not having country music on city stations or that its as irrelivant. The reason they dont have country music is because it doesnt apeal to there consumer base, the law isnt surposed to be about whats popular, or we would be alowed to smoke anything we wanted and kill lawyers and parking inspectors. the law is surposed to be a protcton for ALL even blood sucking lawyers

 

[Tiassa]

Aesthetics

Asguard

An interesting article I've posted many a time before. It comes in the wake of the infamous Oregon Measure 9 of 1992:

Sedgwick argues, and it is true in the discourse surrounding Measure 9, that homosexuality often serves as a figure which condenses and stands in for "wider mappings of secrecy and disclosure, and of the private and the public, that [...] are critically problematical for the gender, sexual, and economic structures of the heterosexist culture at large" (71). Public concern about homosexuality is thus often sparked and bound up with other crises. These wider mappings inform every facet of the Measure 9 discourse, as homosexuality comes to stand in for and answer to other anxieties about class, the family, and the future.

In addition to these contradictions, popular epistemologies of homosexuality in the West since the end of the nineteenth century are also characterized by a co-dominance of what Sedgwick calls "minoritizing" and "universalizing" discourses. The minoritizing view holds that gays constitute a distinct minority, that there are a small number of people who, in some essential sense, "really are" gay. The universalizing view, on the other hand, holds that sexual desire (conceived of in some universal way) "is an unpredictably powerful solvent of stable identities" (85). The specter of a gayness which is distinct yet contagious haunts most twentieth century homosexual panics, and the contradiction inherent in this vision only serves as a spur for narratives which try to explain it. In the past twenty years, these narratives have usually been narratives of child seduction. In these stories, the child's "vulnerability" and "impressionability" help to explain why homosexual desire, although fundamentally alien and abhorrent to all but the "really gay" minority, can nonetheless be thought of as contagious. In my own experience, I can recall first learning the term "gay" in just such a narrative, during orange juice queen Anita Bryant's 1979 crusade against homosexual teachers.

Simon Watney notes that AIDS discourse only reinforced this figuration of homosexuality as contagion/seduction:

Two major streams of images and their related association converge to constitute this shadow. Firstly, the notion of homosexuality as a contagious condition, invisible and always threatening to reveal itself where least expected. And secondly, the spectacle of erotic seduction, in which "innocent," "vulnerable" youth is fantasised as an unwilling partner to acts which, nonetheless, have the power to transform his (or her) entire being [....] There is an important internal conflict at work [...] concerning the 'normal' person's 'disgust', and the seeming ease with which it is apparently over- ridden. (23) ....​

.... Implicit in the image of the closet is an image of containment. In the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "closet" Sedgwick inserts before chapter I, the linguistic connection between the closet and other containers, such as the skin or the sewer, are explicit. The closet is: a small room; "a room for privacy;" a cupboard; "the den or lair of a wild beast;" a toilet; or "A sewer." "This skinne," says one example, "is also called the little closet of the heart" (65). That which resides in the closet is especially frightening (a skeleton, a wild beast), or especially filthy (shit). Danger, rupture, contamination, or death follow the breach of the closet. Thus, a paranoid thematics of containment attends on the closet, because that which is in the closet is that which cannot help but violate if set free. That which is closeted is intimately and inevitably involved with bodily orifices--both food (in the cupboard) and excrement (in the "water- closet," in the sewer) are closeted. Simon Watney discerns the paranoid point of truth behind the fear of homosexual contamination--the gay man, he says, really is a threat to the artificial rigidity of gender identity:

Above all, homosexuality problematises the casual identification of primary power with the figure of the biological male as masterful penetrator. It equally problematises the parallel identification of powerlessness and passivity with the figure of the biological female as submissive and penetrated. For the gay man is truly polymorphous: he may fuck and be fucked... (28)​

Le'a Kent

And that doesn't even get into the juicy part about children.

But we do see the insertion (pardon the pun) of the idea of aesthetics and the psychology involved therein.

"Billy and Chuckie" focuses anxiety on the male child as seducible weak point of the patriarchal family, and on a horrified vision of child sexuality per se. The patriarchal family is envisioned as a container breached by the penetrating, uncloseted gay man. In this scenario, the Porsche-driving gay man penetrates the child simply by being out of the closet and not evidently persecuted-- "Being gay hasn't hurt Mr. Carson, has it?" Although the seduced child becomes feminized and corrupt, the seducer is masculine and aggressive. Has this masculinity been stolen from straight family men by the economically successful, Porsche-driving gay man? This possibility runs throughout "Homosexuality, the Classroom, and Your Children," and is epitomized by a manifesto attributed to "Michael Swift, Gay revolutionary."

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all-male clubs, in your houses of Congress, however men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding.[2]​

Whether the source of this polemic is legitimate or not, what is significant here is that it is reprinted (and evidently felt) as a genuine threat. "Feeble masculinity" is what is at issue here--Billy's feeble masculinity (the product of a divorced family), the feeble masculinity of divorced men who can't keep their families, the feeble masculinity of men whose prerogatives within the family are not what they once were, and, perhaps, the feeble masculinity of depleted and economically abandoned Oregon mill towns.

I quoted "Billy and Chuckie" at length mainly in order to make it available for textual analysis, but also to emphasize what a stunning creation it comprises. It is important, I think, to highlight the fantastic nature of this story. (Indeed, where else but in right-wing fantasy do grade- school teachers drive Porsches?) Somewhere, some OCA minion, some fine upstanding homophobic man or woman, composed this story of pre-teen seduction, and drew the accompanying illustration. It is through and through the creation, not of NAMBLA, not of the "gay agenda," but of the religious right. In this respect, it is like the portrait of the homosexual drawn by Jesse Helms's 1989 National Endowment for the Arts regulation, of which Judith Butler observes:

If the legal statute relies on this figure of the male homosexual, then perhaps the legal statute can be understood as its own kind of fantasy. [...] This law contains [...] a figure of homosexuality whose figurings, whose "representations," are to be forbidden [...] Is this a figure that the law contrives in order to prohibit, or perhaps, prohibits in order to produce--time and again--for its own...satisfaction? Is this a production of a figure that it itself outlaws from production, a vehement and public way of drawing into public attention the very figure that is supposed to be banned from public attention and public funds? [...] In a sense, the Helms amendment in its final form can be read as precisely that kind of pornographic exercise that it seeks to renounce. (Butler 117)​

In the same way, "Billy and Chuckie" can be read as "precisely that kind of pedophilic exercise that it seeks to renounce."

Le'a Kent

So let's start the example with Joe. We can imagine Joe as an "average" American family man, part of that "middle America" that screams to be accommodated despite the Constitution.

Joe is raised to believe sodomy is morally and functionally wrong, and that there is something wrong with gays. Additionally, Joe is subject to any number of heterosexual worldview stereotypes. Joe is not a saint, but neither is he a horrible guy. One day, Joe starts to wonder if his son, Scott, is gay. What tips him off at first is that Scott is too pretentious about his own appearance. And something about Scott's voice seems mincing. Now, I as the narrator must insert my voice here to point out that I've known plenty of effeminate-seeming heterosexual males. And I've known plenty of masculine-seeming lesbians. However, I'm not Joe.

The first thing we might ask concerns Joe's criteria: Are the points upon which Joe's suspicion fair?

I'm reminded of a day I went to a Portland State football game. I rode down with my father, who met up with an old friend from his coaching days. The man had two sons, my age and younger. The younger boy had gotten green ink on his hands somehow. I forget how. It's not important. As young boys do, of course, he showed his Dad. I think the joke was about "Swamp Thing". But the father wasn't amused. "You look like a goddamn faggot leprechaun!" he stormed. "Go wash your fucking hands!"

What's wrong with looking like a faggot leprechaun? I mean, no I don't like the shoes much, and the hat's not for me; nor would it have looked good on this young boy. But we both liked the cereal, so what's the problem with a faggot leprechaun that children like?

A common comedy routine about birth is the expectant, anxious father who doesn't know how to react when he finds out his child is a daughter. True, sonic imaging can solve this problem months beforehand, which is why we don't see the joke as much, but think sympathetically for a moment about that kick in the gut. Looking forward to teaching the boy to throw a baseball, swing a bat, or catch a football ... all that disappears.

Why does it disappear? Because of other social prejudices. The Canadian version of the joke might involve trading in bulky hockey skates for neat, trim figure-skating blades. In the U.S., nobody even considers the softball, so the father is supposed to drop the mitt while looking stunned while trying to hide his disappointment. But the whole bonding experience a father looks forward to, the teaching a boy to become a man--a fundamental reinforcement of the father's manhood--evaporates and that passage is left to be governed by a mother.

Getting back to Joe, we might consider what the poor chap is supposed to think when he finds out thirteen years later that his bonding experience, his leading a son to manhood, will be alien to his own manhood? He might as well, for all the value of cultural prejudice, have found out his son was a daughter.

.... homosexuality problematises the casual identification of primary power with the figure of the biological male as masterful penetrator​

Translation: Homosexuality undermines gender identity, challenges "manhood".

In this very flip, so many things fall apart. In addition to the collapse of common identity and transfer of manhood as rite of passage, internal standards--morals--are challenged in unfamiliar contexts. A manly man might well enough "respect" women, and teach a boy to "protect" his sister or be decent to women. But in a culture where "sex is violent" (Jane's Addiction) or "sex is a weapon" (Pat Benetar), repetition can take its toll.

Who among us who is sexually active for a period of years does not have in their history an encounter they regret for personal standards that give two fingers to social mores? For a man who values manhood, the thought that some faggot's penis will do to the son what the father did to the mother becomes intolerable. The man knows he's sodomized his wife. He knows it's not pretty. He knows how she clenched her fists and ground her teeth. He knows the primal sound she makes as he impales her. And now that image is irrevocably assigned to the son.

Facing the demons of his own sexual past, the father seeks to avoid the issue. The frustration builds, and the surrogate enemy is homosexuality.

.... (H)omosexuality shapes, is shaped by, and stands in for wider conflicts and tensions in society ....

.... (H)omosexuality often serves as a figure which condenses and stands in for "wider mappings of secrecy and disclosure, and of the private and the public, that [...] are critically problematical for the gender, sexual, and economic structures of the heterosexist culture at large" ... Public concern about homosexuality is thus often sparked and bound up with other crises. These wider mappings inform every facet of the Measure 9 discourse, as homosexuality comes to stand in for and answer to other anxieties about class, the family, and the future.​

Thus, whether it is the scandalous memory of his own sodomite encounters with his wife or former girlfriends, the failure of his own sexual prowess, the collapse of his marriage, or the loss of his authority to govern the lives of his family, the father seeks to blame this concept--homosexuality--that is so alien to him and inserting itself into his local dynamic.

So Joe will lash out at his faggot son, even if for no better reason than causing a headache.

And this whole example is drawn in media res. Note the lack of discussion of the origins of cultural prejudice. The simple reality is that Joe's visceral reaction to his son's outing derives from concepts learned by rote instead of for their actual value. Like the kid in third grade who always scored well on his multiplication tables for memorizing them, but couldn't multiply. Every school has at least one.

And Joe doesn't even understand the processes of his own moral structure. Changing perspectives forced by the son's outing, or even Joe's mere suspicion--the son needs not necessarily be gay for the purposes of this example--are exaggerated against a blank backdrop. Joe doesn't know what to think or do, which condition makes the problem he perceives seem all the more pressing.

We might also point out that I have focused on men. There are two reasons for this. First, I'm male. The male dynamic is inherent in my perspective. The female perspective is most likely more foreign to my sensibilities than, say, the Canadian or Australian outlook regardless of sexuality. (Some would argue the point; not that the Canadian or Australian outlook is tremendously foreign, but that I'm more effeminate than I give myself credit for.)

Secondly, I might simply refer you to the article itself; there is a section called, "Sufficiently Invisible Lesbians", which asserts rather soundly that the gay fray in the culture seems to focus on the gay male:

Lesbians are elided within the General Voters' Pamphlet as well. Although one sentence in Argument in Favor 6 states that "Lesbian propaganda dominates Women's Studies courses at Portland State University" (GVP 96), the homosexual the OCA is concerned with is the male homosexual. Argument in Favor 4, submitted by the OCA, persistently uses masculine pronouns to refer to its "promoting homosexual:"

...if a person is using his job to promote, encourage or facilitate the behaviors listed in the initiative, inquiry by a superior is required....Remedial actions should be proportional to the degree that the individual has made his private sexual behavior a job-related factor. (95)​

Although it's probably not surprising that the OCA, an organization responsible for a statewide anti- abortion initiative in 1986, would fail to use gender- neutral language, the elision of lesbians is even clearer in the catalogue of "homosexual practices" in Argument in Favor 5. In addition to drawing on the "child protection" and "family values" rhetoric prominent throughout the GVP, this argument attempts to marshal disgust through the following statistics, obviously chosen for visceral appeal: Studies by leading researchers show that the following practices are regularly engaged in by many homosexuals: fellatio 100%, fisting 41% (inserting fist and forearm into rectum), rimming 92% (licking rectum), water sports 29% (urinating on partners, drinking urine), mud wallowing 17% (defecating on partner), sadomasochism 37% (beating, piercing, another person for sexual pleasure), public sex 66% (public restrooms, bathhouses, parks), pedophilia 46% (sex with minors). (Nebraska Medical Journal, 1985 and Lancet, June 9, 1984).

Sodomy and other routine homosexual practices tear and rupture the tissue of the lower bowel and allow for easy transmission of viral and bacterial infections. It's no wonder that Portland's homosexual newspaper JUST OUT (July, 1992), reports that homosexuals account for 92% of all AIDS cases in Oregon to date....A 1982 Center for Disease Control study showed that homosexual men infected with the AIDS virus had averaged 1160 partners. (GVP 96)

In addition to its (mis)use of scientific authority [5], this list interests me for two reasons. First, although the list of statistics (as well as the legal force of Measure 9) is supposed to apply to all homosexuals, lesbians are completely elided in this argument ("fellatio, 100%"), as well as in most other OCA propaganda. [6] Historical lesbian invisibility, combined with the (near- )absence of lesbians from AIDS discourses, seem to collude to erase lesbians from this particular debate. As Eve Sedgwick has said,

...a certain anal-erotic salience of male homosexuality is if anything increasingly strong under the glare of heterosexist AIDS-phobia; and several different historical influences have led to the de-genitalization and bodily diffusion of many popular, and indeed many lesbian, understandings of lesbian sexuality. (35)​

In other words, lesbians are not a target in Measure 9's discourse because they are already effectively closeted.

Le'a Kent

I actually disagree with Kent in part. Lesbians might be "effectively closeted", but lesbianism is also more accepted and traditionally more encouraged. Many who would support traditionalist-marriage notions or gay-exclusion laws don't recognize the conflict of the erection lesbian pornography brings them. I used to have (and may still, though I haven't seen it for a couple years) a Penthouse issue (purchased for a different photo spread) that not only contained lesbianism in the form of two women with bodies airbrushed to mystical-rainbow-piano forms, but the women were sisters. In Oregon, where regular customers of strip clubs are often homophobes--and supported the very measure Kent analyzes--the men stood up and cheered for the twins doing the sexy bump and grind onstage.

Kent may see lesbians as "effectively closeted", and I won't deign to argue, since there are aspects of her assertion that still reach beyond me, but the "sufficiently invisible lesbian" also owes her transparency to the fact that many homophobes simply don't think of lesbians as "homosexuals" unless specifically asked. No penis, no problem.

But the sufficiently invisible lesbian, for whatever reasons she is reduced to a shadow player in this drama, is subject to bigotry of lust instead of the bigotry of social supremacy.

And that's a big cue that this is about aesthetics. That the lesbian both undermines the prevailing phallocentrism in American society and challenge the exclusivity of masculine authority as well is enough to condemn her. Furthermore, listen to the savage jokes about lesbians. How many of them start with, "So these two dyke hotties walk into a bar ..."? Very few, and probably told by the lesbians more often than by the hetero men. Most jokes about lesbians require a bull-dyke, preferably in leather, and if she has a hairy mole on her chin, well, that just seals it.

Aesthetics. Appearances. The ugly dykes are ridiculed. The hottie dykes give men erections. There is an aspect of jealousy, there, but how long can I carry on with this post? It should suffice to merely suggest the possibility that the dyke is ridiculed in general for denying the heterosexual male another hole and heartbeat to choose from. And we can further speculate that the difference in how we treat lesbians based on their appearance has to do in the case of the hottie dykes with the fact that something desirable has declared a manly manhood's chance of proving itself nil, while the ugly dykes take the brunt of the frustration since the guy "wouldn't do her, anyway".

Style. Aesthetics. Appearances. Over and over the superficial bubbles up in this stew.

Would Lysistrata be a classic if it hinged on sodomy?

And talk about a double-punishment. Not only is the husband denied intimacy itself, but he must also sit by excluded from what is widely acknowledged as being perhaps the most beautiful sexual act in the world--lesbianism according to the imagination of a virile heterosexual male.

When cornered, the homophobe will usually resort to the basic truth: the thought of the act is disgusting. When questioned if that opinion is worth screwing up the laws and trashing the Constitution, the homophobe will abandon that honesty and return to politics. Trying to pin down even a sincerely decent homophobe on the subject is a little like trying to tack up a poster while standing ten feet away from the wall. It just generally can't be done. Somebody, however, will eventually invent the finglonger. And then the women will have even less use for the men, but that's beside the point since it's sarcastic.

The whole public fight about sexuality stems from heterosexual insecurity that manifests itself every time a person looks in the mirror. Comparing the self-image and its necessity to the ill-understood image of homosexuality, the homophobe simply can't stand what takes place inside their own skull. The discord compels them to lash out irrationally, even hatefully.

But then, we must remember, that even the hateful homophobe does not actually hate gays, but merely wants to hurt them in any way they think is acceptable under the law. Apparently, there's a difference.

One should not take this indictment of homophobia as complete. The motivations of homophobia, like any other idea in motion, are as diverse as its adherents. But by and large, those diverse motivations can be classified with relative ease according to their underlying device. Aesthetics alone is not the sole motivating factor, but rather is emerging in my view as the primary culprit.

Take gay marriage, for instance. It will be very hard for the traditionalists to show injury warranting a legal response in the accepting of same-sex unions. Yet by playing on people's insecurities and juxtaposing those with cultural-aesthetic prejudices, homophobes can easily spread the fear of (nonexistant) injury to such a point that many people "who don't hate gays" are willing to hurt gays as much as the law allows.

And some of them won't stop at what the law allows, either. Some of the measures put before the people in Oregon would have legitimized the "acute homophobia" defense discussed in relation to the murder of Matthew Shepherd.

But that's not hate. It's merely aesthetics. And we know how important aesthetics are.

Watch the American gay fray closely enough, and you'll see the "hate-free" aesthetic revulsion bubbling to the surface.
____________________

Notes:

Kent, Le'a. "Abnormal, Wrong, Unnatural and Perverse: Taking the Measure (9) of the Closet". See http://eserver.org/cultronix/kent/​

 

[Asguard]

its genrally acepted that women are more comfetable with gay men than hedro men are (and even some times they are more comfetable than they are WITH hedro men) and men are very comfetable with lesbians so i wonder what women in genral feel about lesbians?

but back to your points tiassa is asetics really that important?

my apologies for this analogy but what about to HUGE obease people mauling eachother in a public park where other couples do it all the time (hell there is even a park in melb where every second person you walk past is fucking and i dont mean in the bushes, its nice on the grass). Now those fat people are anything but pleasing to the eye (unless you have a specific sexual preferance) so why atack the 2 cute guys next to them?

if asetics is really the problem why dont we outlaw fat sex?

and about the guy thinking about whats happerning to his son in bed, ICKY. who really wants to think about there children (or parents for that matter) screwing?

one last point about teaching your children. My GF's dad always says that her sister should have been born a guy. Thats not because HE wants a son nessarary but this girl is into all those "male" persutes. She is one of the biggest revheads i have met and she is only TEN. my GF on the other hand is compleatly different. she is quite girly (especially when she wants something). My point is that who is really that dissapointed in finding they have a girl anymore? i wouldnt be, i would love a daughter. Oh and arnt you being a little steriotipical to say that all gay's are into girly things? what about the masculan gays? you know like bikys or those ones portraide playing american football and making all the other guys uncoumfetable

 

[Bowser]

What?

 

[Tiassa]

its genrally acepted that women are more comfetable with gay men than hedro men are (and even some times they are more comfetable than they are WITH hedro men)

So it would seem. I've always figured the reasons are simple:

• Heterosexual women don't feel "targeted" by gay men, who have no interest in having sex with them.
• Heterosexual men are accustomed to feeling gratified by a woman desiring sexual intercourse with them; this is thrown in the air and flipped all to hell when that offer of sex is unwanted. To take your example, there is no polite way to turn down a fat woman if aesthetics are that important to a man.
• As to how hetero women feel about lesbians? I'll hold my tongue, as only stereotypes are apparent, and they never really do make for a decent answer.​

Now those fat people are anything but pleasing to the eye

And a skinny guy mounting an obese woman "doggy-style" looks absurdly hilarious, getting lost between the buttcheeks. To the other, when I quietly admitted I was having an affair with a rather large woman, one of my friends who insists on "hotties" just nodded and said, "Why turn it down when you can bury it to the hilt?" which was my point exactly in having the affair in the first place.

However, more to the point:

if aesthetics is really the problem why dont we outlaw fat sex?

Because that would tread on "natural" sex between "a man and a woman as God intended it". A common quip from my youth was that "Spandex is a privilege, not a right". Funny thing is that it's the super-skinny chicks I'd ban from wearing Spandex.

However, in that case the concern is the same as it always is with daughters: someone's screwing your daughter. Doesn't matter if she's hot or not, fit or fat, a virgin or daddy's favorite toy. In that case, it's largely aesthetic, as well; the man knows how ugly and ridiculous he looks and acts during sex, and cannot stand the thought of someone visiting that on his precious baby daughter.

Myself? I choose to think about it as little as possible. I've told the story, before, many times, about a friend of mine who found out his girlfriend was pregnant with his daughter. His thoughts went from baseball and football to how he would kill the first boy who tried to get into his daughter's panties. As if that phrase wasn't disturbing enough, he gnawed on the subject for a couple days. At some point, he was simply including sexual intercourse and his daughter in too many sentences for my comfort. I mean, really ... it was creepy. You could see his eyes scanning the images in his mind. I wanted to ask if she was a screamer or a grunter, but that seemed a bit excessive.

In the end, I've always wondered how obese anatomy goes together. And I've wondered as little as possible for the sake of my sanity.

But outlawing fat sex doesn't make sense. People know that weight problems come from genetics and also from behavior-defining trauma, as well as other factors. Picking on fat people is just fine for most people when it comes to seats in movie theaters or airplanes, but as far as I can tell, "fat" compared to "hot" occurs just before you reach that point where you can drive all the way into a woman without feeling like you're going to break her. Not only does my culture have a strange definition of what "fat" is, but it also hates to think about obese people. The effort of outlawing fat sex would cause many to think of fat people having sex more than they want to.

Hell, I don't know. It really just has something to do with men and women and prejudice and the fact that fat people need love, too. And many of them raise fine, upstanding children. After all, in a world where we are unable to feed the people already on the planet, even obese people are encouraged to have more children.

and about the guy thinking about whats happerning to his son in bed, ICKY. who really wants to think about there children (or parents for that matter) screwing?

When I was a teenager, my mother walked in on my girlfriend and I being close. We weren't up to the naked-and-insertion point yet, but my mother still has it that way in her mind. In the end, she was very dignified about it. She just stopped, turned, and walked back upstairs. When we came up, looking all sheepish, she said, "Let's go get ice cream", and then we had a talk about responsibility and being good to each other. My father's reaction was somewhat different, and led to me putting condoms on his breakfast plate, but that's another story.

In the end, I don't even want to think what my mother would have thought if she walked in and I was blowing some guy, or getting my ass pounded. That might have blinded her.

Of course, some years later we were standing on the fourth green at a golf course west of Salem, Oregon, whose name escapes me, golfing on Christmas as I recall, when she started talking about grandchildren. "Even if you're gay," she said, "that's okay. You can still adopt."

Much courage, that. And I had no idea she even suspected; I am, technically, closeted to my family. My brother might be in denial. I never ask.

But I think about that day so many years ago now (fourteen, really?), and yeah, it might have dropped my mother to see me getting nailed.

At any rate, though, I do get your point. But that's the thing: the gender of the sex partner of the child makes a certain difference in the parents' opinions.

Looking back to Ms. Kent's article, I would point to the middle sections on Epistemology, Containment/Anxiety, and Family Under Siege.

My point is that who is really that dissapointed in finding they have a girl anymore? i wouldnt be, i would love a daughter.

I wasn't disappointed to find out I was to receive a daughter; I was thrilled. I would not have been disappointed with a son, but I would have been very worried inasmuch as the last thing the world needs is another me running around, especially in this day and age.

But there are two levels of disappointment I can relate; one I've seen for real, the other is mostly a writing convention.

• Real: Collapse of anticipated bonding experience; teaching a son to be a man is a bit different from teaching a daughter to be a woman. I, personally, don't look forward to discussions about sex or menstruation, but I know they'll probably be left to me. In fact, it might be the preferable option, given my opinion of my partner's communicative needs. Drugs should be the same headache either way.

• Convention: An exaggeration of the real, usually set against a backdrop of a lone brother among five sisters who lives in a home with his wife, two daughters, bitch dog, and female cat. Often characterized with a team jersey on the father and a tiny baseball mitt in his hand. Chauvinism is usually a sublimated but working theme: Not another fucking woman!​

Oh and arnt you being a little steriotipical to say that all gay's are into girly things? what about the masculan gays?

As with the "sufficiently invisible lesbian", that appearance may be framed by the boundaries of the debate (see Kent, section on Family Under Siege).

In John Waters' 1998 film Pecker, there is a great scene where the locals are invited to a "New York"-styled affair. A man comes into a club to find his son teabagging an overweight, Big Apple, Jewish art aficionado. The man is devastated; the son is horrified, and tries to justify himself; he doesn't go down on the men, they only go down on him.

The implication is, of course, that it doesn't matter. How would one draw that line in the sand? "I'm comfortable that you like sodomizing men, but no son of mine will ever be sodomized"?

And "comfortable" parents are such a minority as to be treated as a joke. Waters recounted his own parents on The Daily Show. Walking through the airport together, Mom asked what he was working on, and he said the name of the film was Pecker. She immediately grabbed her husband's arm and said to her son, "The other night, we were watching _________ (TV show) and he called it a Johnson." It's a great punchline for the comedy-talk circuit, but even for a man as worldly as John Waters, it wasn't what he expected of his own mother.

Witness also Christopher Ashley's rich 1995 comedy Jeffrey. At one point, his mother asks, "Sweetheart, are you a top or a bottom?" as well as the infamous quote, "Dad, I am not going to have phone sex with you and mom!"

Or my own mother. I relate the golf-course story as a joke. It still brings a big ol' grin to my face.

On that point, though, I will make note that "Randy's mom" in Maggenti's The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love was pretty cool about things, although the mother of the rich girl has a code-red freak-out that's worth both a chuckle and a cringe.

• • •​

In the end, and despite all else, I draw the aesthetics theory from giving attention to homophobes. When you get right down to it, that's all that's left. It's not logic, it's not even legalisms in this country. It's a gut thing, a visceral reaction to something very alien.

Additionally, and with apologies to whomever it is I leave without credit, someone once pointed out to me--in response to the story about my mother on the golf course--that her generation may be warming to homosexuals for other, more obscure reasons. And here I'm glad I'm not crediting anyone, since I'm about to get it wrong, anyway: It has something to do with identifying with oppression. I overstate it as it was related to me, but with interracial marriages taken care of a long time ago, this is the latest seemingly-irreconcilable issue in which a mother proves her undying love.

And one film I've never seen but ought to recommend, anyway, since its script promises to be an example of some sort, is called The Sum of Us (1994, Burton and Dowling dir.), and features Russell Crowe as a young gay man looking for love while his father re-enters the world of heterosexual romance following the death of his wife. I'm told it's charming. Hell, I would have given it the green-light on mere premise. But I have no idea how the script reads.
____________________

Notes:

Kent, Le'a. "Abnormal, Wrong, Unnatural and Perverse: Taking the Measure (9) of the Closet". See http://eserver.org/cultronix/kent/​