An open letter to Ambivalid

[wolfpup]

@Ambivalid

I acknowledged over and over that I made a mistake in posting that OP. You all are quite right, i should have kept my mouth shut. But the vitriol is misplaced. I only continue to post in yhis thread because i feel the need to defend my words from slanderous misinterpretations from a select few posters.

And i dont see how your link is in any way addressing the issue it was responding to. Someone telling me to keep my mouth shut doesnt do anything to dispel a lifetime of experience.

You totally, completely miss the point. You’ve created a ridiculous stereotype of gays that has managed to be insulting to both straights and gays alike, since it’s stupidly wrong. And you keep on trying to justify it, rationalize it, and explain it, over and over and over and over. And over and over.

What you should have done in that Tupac thread is what you said you were going to do, but didn’t: walk away. Specifically, the thing to do in situations like that is walk away and, if necessary, take a Valium. In your case, take two. If you had done that, the thread would likely not have devolved into a complete trainwreck, which it only did with your obsessive participation, and this thread would not have existed at all. And, dare I say it, we’d all have been better off for it.

[Slash1972]

@wolfpup

What you should have done in that Tupac thread is what you said you were going to do, but didn’t: walk away. Specifically, the thing to do in situations like that is walk away and, if necessary, take a Valium. In your case, take two. If you had done that, the thread would likely not have devolved into a complete trainwreck, which it only did with your obsessive participation, and this thread would not have existed at all. And, dare I say it, we’d all have been better off for it.

Hey, I thought it was fairly enjoyable!

[Ambivalid]

@wolfpup

You totally, completely miss the point. You’ve created a ridiculous stereotype of gays that has managed to be insulting to both straights and gays alike, since it’s stupidly wrong. And you keep on trying to justify it, rationalize it, and explain it, over and over and over and over. And over and over.

What you should have done in that Tupac thread is what you said you were going to do, but didn’t: walk away. Specifically, the thing to do in situations like that is walk away and, if necessary, take a Valium. In your case, take two. If you had done that, the thread would likely not have devolved into a complete trainwreck, which it only did with your obsessive participation, and this thread would not have existed at all. And, dare I say it, we’d all have been better off for it.

I wanted to walk away but i just prefer not to have my words blatantly misrepresented. That’s all ive been doing since page 1 of this trainwreck. If everyone wants me to shut up and go sway stop posting yourselves. I’m happy to accept criticisms that are actually based on my posted words. However, throughout this thread I haven’t been doing anything but responding to posters that I feel are misrepresenting or misreading my words.

And I created no stereotype. How absurd. Its just that I’ve relied upon it, in the back of my head, to help me discern between the various people in my day-to-day life. Because that’s just the only reality I’d ever experienced. I know its something I need to work to rid my internal self of. I owe this in part to the scattershot solid criticism I’ve received in this thread. Im not advancing any stereotype, I’ve just been trying to be honest as to why this wasnt as easy for me as just telling myself “ok, that stuff is not true”. No, I was coming up against decades of feedback telling me one thing.

There is no rationalization that excuses the continuation of the propagation of stereotypes. I am not excusing my mistakes. What i am explaining are the miscommunications i seem to have encountered throughout this thread (miscommunications for which i take partial responsibility).

I’m only a part of what has continued to breathe life into what should be a memory of a thread by now.

[Miller]

@Ambivalid

I wanted to walk away but i just prefer not to have my words blatantly misrepresented. That’s all ive been doing since page 1 of this trainwreck. If everyone wants me to shut up and go sway stop posting yourselves. I’m happy to accept criticisms that are actually based on my posted words. However, throughout this thread I haven’t been doing anything but responding to posters that I feel are misrepresenting or misreading my words.

What you’ve been doing since page one of this trainwreck is digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. Your initial thread gave the impression of someone who thinks he’s being funny, but is actually being kind of an asshole. Over the course of your “defense” in this thread, you’ve managed to shift that to, “Guy who has definite issues with queer people.” wolfpup just gave you the best possible advice for dealing with the situation you’re in, and you just told him, “Fuck you, I’m not giving up my shovel.”

[digs]

I keep flashing back to another poster who claimed almost hourly that he was leaving… but just had to come back to his latest trainwreck because he couldn’t leave any mischaracterizations unchallenged.

Here’s an assortment of his rantings, though they may sound more like our OP…

This is yet another instance where someone has taken my words, applied a completely different interpretation or set of standards to them, and then attempted to hold me responsible for the distortions they’ve created.

This is nonsense. You (and others) keep characterizing what I said as “no big deal,” when what I actually said was that “it wasn’t that serious.”

It’s also worth noting that many Dopers are quick to jump to the wrong conclusion when they read things.

If I were to try to contend with all the lies, misrepresentations, tortured logic and hysteria, I’d have time for nothing else.
… [my] opinions and words have been mocked and mischaracterized and lied about.

Gahhh! So little time, so much dumbassery!!!

I’m getting more than a little tired of this. Maybe if I put it in caps it’ll finally sink in: I DID NOT SAY, AND I HAVE NEVER SAID, THAT!
I’ll mail you a check for $100 if you can prove I ever said that.

Show where I said this or admit you’re a lying piece of shit!

QUOTE from a helpful friend: “You’d be better off if you’d shut the fuck up.”
Why? What exactly have I said - in actual words as opposed to in your fevered imagination - that is so bad?

[Ambivalid]

I have not said I was leaving this thread one single time in it’s entirety. I am not sure where this little nugget came from. And any objective reader who wishes to wade thru all the tediousness of 4 plus pages of this crap can see for themselves that I’ve been oddly misinterpreted or misread myriad times. We’re REALLY getting into outrageous territory now, comparing me to SA.

[Hilarity_N.Suze]

Bad case of “People are misinterpreting me, what’s wrong with all of them?”

But one of the problems I think is the part I’ve bolded here. You have relied on this, for what? To decide whether other men are gay or not. Since you’re not gay, what does it matter? Do you think you need to protect yourself, or what?

@Ambivalid

…
And I created no stereotype. How absurd. Its just that I’ve relied upon it, in the back of my head, to help me discern between the various people in my day-to-day life. Because that’s just the only reality I’d ever experienced. I know its something I need to work to rid my internal self of. I owe this in part to the scattershot solid criticism I’ve received in this thread. Im not advancing any stereotype, I’ve just been trying to be honest as to why this wasnt as easy for me as just telling myself “ok, that stuff is not true”. No, I was coming up against decades of feedback telling me one thing.

There is no rationalization that excuses the continuation of the propagation of stereotypes. I am not excusing my mistakes. What i am explaining are the miscommunications i seem to have encountered throughout this thread (miscommunications for which i take partial responsibility).

I’m only a part of what has continued to breathe life into what should be a memory of a thread by now.

[TokyoBayer]

In Ambivalid’s thread:

In all that time I never once gave the slightest credence to the occasional whisper saying Tupac was gay. After he died, the rumors only intensified, which only further cemented my certainty that theze rumors were the product of a vicious smear campaign of haters to tarnish the dead man’s legacy.

That leaves me confused.

Why did it matter if there were rumors of him being gay? “I never once gave the slightest credence” to that rumor, rather than simply shrug it off. What specifically was there about Tupac that gave you such absolute certainty that he was heterosexual? Because he was in gangsta rap? Why couldn’t a gay person do that?

When other say Tupas was gay, they are doing so as part of “a vicious smear campaign by haters.” These are your exact words. It sounds like the premise is that being gay is not a neutral trait, but something extremely negative. If being gay were not such a vile thing then it would not be only haters who would be spreading this rumor.

More importantly, who cares if he was or wasn’t gay?