Finchie, you need to use bold when highlighting inside quotes.
Indeed I do. Always forget that. The emphasis was supposed to be on activity, but hopefully you got the drift of my question anyhow.
Buh? As shown by different-coloured dots of glitter-paint on the forehead, I presume?
Seriously, what evidence do you have for this assertion? And how do you propose that one moves up the Ladder of Gay, accumulate Gay Karma, whatever?
Wow, once again you pop up with some bizarre assertion, no evidence to back it, claiming some kind of horrible behavior on the part of queers. A “caste system”?
Do you understand the difference between truth and untruth? Do you care about whether your beliefs match reality? If you think “homosexual activity” is immoral, why do you feel the need to follow it up by imputing all manner of horrible things to gay people?
I follow (my understanding of) the Bible in finding homosexual sexual activity to be wrong.
Your ‘manual’ sex conjures up wonderful images of a couple hard at it with The Joy of Sex in one hand trying to work out how to get into all those exotic positions.
For my reference to a “gay caste system”, I am once again indebted to various dopers, who have talked about the ultra-competitive gay sub-culture that tends to leave some unfortunates on the scrapheap.
You’ve extrapolated from the fact that there’s a competitive club culture (which you seem to be implying doesn’t exist among straight people) to the idea that there’s a “gay caste system” that leads to homelessness?
Words fail me.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but maybe he’s referring to couples where one turns up HIV positive (and doesn’t necessarily know it at the start of the relationship) and the other person chooses to accept the risk because they are a couple and are presumably emotionally bound for life? The point I’m making is that it might be possible that some couples make informed decisions to take the chance – that may be the “some kind of right” that would be inferred.
My education is now complete.
You are definitely wrong, and clearly you didn’t read the column in question. As we have already established, Dan Savage (who uses a fairly informal, snarky tone a lot of the time) was being sarcastic. He was using understatement to emphasize the ridiculousness of the idea that HIV+ men have some right to go out and infect others. Later in the same column, he refers to such men (and the HIV advocates who defended them after a column he wrote a few months back condemning that behavior) as “gay sociopaths and their apologists.”
The use of the word “sociopath” as well as his instructions to the letter writer to yell at the two idiots who were planning on barebacking leave no doubt that it was just a turn of phrase that roger thornhill had considerable difficulty with. Why he couldn’t have inferred its meaning from the context of the column - which pulled no punches in regard to men who do this - is the bigger mystery.
Well, besides that, the usual discrimination on the basis of race/gender/trans status/disability/economic status/age is present in the Queer community just as in the larger society, and there are some ways it manifests that are unique to us, and this, indeed, can have severe practical consequences – for example, people from certain marginalized groups who may not be in a position to get support from Queer social services – beyond the quite-sufficiently-severe problem of social exclusion.
It’s not what I would call a ‘gay caste system,’ though, because it mirrors the class system that exists in the community at large. We are not, unfortunately, special in this regard.
There’s no doubt about the fact that queers are as classist as anyone else in society. It’s an unfortunate fact of our society that we permit anyone to become homeless. But roger’s statement is even more weirdly delusional (“caste system”? roger thornhill, do you understand what the phrase “caste system” refers to? Can you describe the Hindu caste system? I ask because it’s so absurd that you think that it could possibly describe anything about queer culture. How could one subgroup of people within a larger society even implement a caste system? And how do you extrapolate from your (obviously incorrect) belief that queers are especially classist to thinking we have a caste system? The scary thing is that I don’t think you even understand how ridiculous your statement is.)
It’s especially delusional, though (returning to before my parenthetical) because it presupposes that the primary cause of queer people being lower on the socioeconomic ladder is other queer people. Apparently, in roger thornhill’s mind, we are poorer and more marginal in society because we deliberately oppress each other in order to reinforce our “caste system” and this infighting keeps us all poorer, to the point that we make each other homeless in order to reinforce our “caste system”.
In reality, of course, the major reason that queers are more likely to be transient or homeless is because queer youths are so often kicked out of their parents’ houses. It’s a major social problem - urban areas tend to have large populations of gay or transgendered teenagers on the streets because they have no place to go.
roger thornhill, why do you keep throwing these bizarre accusations at queer society? Do you have some need to believe that queers are this bunch of evil creatures you describe? Or are you simply so lacking in critical thinking skills that you can’t evaluate and discard impossible ideas? I’m suddenly reminded of old myths that Asian women’s vaginas are horizontal (they’re not, roger.) Like those myths, roger’s beliefs don’t stand up to even the most simple logical scrutiny.
In two instances in this thread, roger, you’ve confessed to forming some bizarre idea about queer people on the basis of something you misunderstood. “Most gay men think it’s acceptable to casually infect others with HIV,” and “Queer people have created a caste system invisible to larger society that is so extreme that it leaves the people at the bottom of the ladder homeless.” Ideas like this reflect a pathological thought process; they bring to mind the sorts of conspiratorial thinking that flourish among the uneducated. Both types of thinking require a belief in not only counterfactual but counterlogical premises - they don’t stand up to even the most perfunctory examination. roger is of course not shy about discussing his educational credentials, but I can’t imagine how someone with such education could be so prone to absurd ideas.
Thanks. I knew Roger’s statement was more ridiculous than I pointed out in my post, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
(confidential gay stuff to matt_mcl. no peeking, heteros!)
Sometimes I wonder if we should get rid of that system . . . it’s tragic, really. My friend Jeff was born a Rich Bitch, and his whole family disowned him just because he fell in love with a Party Boy. Can you imagine?
Oh, totally. As a Genderqueer Activist I realized the unfairness of it all the first time I went into a 2nd Cup for a latte and was brutally beaten for mixing with the Village Twinks.
Now I’m homeless.
Sorry…I was distracted and unable to really read the column. I’ll have to take another look when I can devote some time to it.
Ooh, that was unnecessarily snarky of me. Sorry about that. Most of my snark is reserved for thornhill, who (given his technical training in teasing out meanings from language) ought to have ‘gotten’ the column. The context made it clear.
I first saw Savage Love in Cecil’s usual spot in the Washington City Paper. I think Dan Savage is an idiot and his column is tripe. Then again, I think “Seinfeld” is tripe so I’m used to being in the minority.
Thanks for your thought-provoking post. That’ll give those of us who are having a discussion here something important to mull over.
How’s this? Dan Savage pales in comparison to the OP. 