This is a hard thread to read. Losing GoBear and Eve??? This board just won’t be the same without you guys. Please consider staying.
Agh!
Really, Eve. If you left us it would break the hearts of those dopers who value posters on content alone, who are probably in the majority.
Of course, that’s only incidental and shouldn’t really have a lot of weight compared with what you want personally, but… but… waaaaaaah!
[/selfish bastid]
Eve, if you don’t want to talk about that aspect of your life, just don’t. It’s not like you have a responsibility to.
I think it’s far enough in the past that it shouldn’t be an issue at all for you anyway.
I think you don’t even need to be connected with it.
Okay, how about everyone agrees not to mention her when gender issues comes up anymore? If some antagonist starts to, we can all defend her, right?
And Gobear, it’ll be sad to see you leave too. You piss me off sometimes, but I like you.
What-what-what? What’s going on here?
I agree, but it works the other way around, too. While keeping one’s proverbial sanity by avoiding stress would certainly trump “taking one for the team”, in short, if people let the bullies get to them, the bullies have won. And now that the uppity [insert derogatory terms for Q/GQ/TS] aren’t around anymore, they’ll find someone else to pick on.
Life is more of a continuity than an easily compartmentalized contrast between male and female, gay and straight, good and evil, online and offline. Picking someone to death online shades into harassment at work shades into discriminatory workplaces shades into a discriminatory moralistic world shades into violence shades into mass murder. Where will we be content to give the minority of extremist assholes free reign?
As would I, but I wonder how much of the constant bringing up of one’s sexuality is due to not ignoring inconvenient threads. I know that you yourself say it’s brought into in irrelevant contexts, which I agree would be annoying, but I seriously can count on one hand the number of times a seemingly innocuous poster called people out on something like that.
I myself have had the opportunity to do so, but have avoided it even when extremely appropriate: in fact, people have called me out on the irony of another poster’s sexuality in a statement I made to them, but I did take that into account and decided it wasn’t relevant to the conversation.
Of course, you would notice it more if it’s directed at you, and everyone needs to balance their own feelings with those of others.
And despite not voicing my sycophancy as of yet, I would think the SDMB community would become little bit lessened if it lost posters such as Gobear and Eve.
Eve, your my favorite doper, although I never found an appropriate time to tell you that. Now seems to be a good time. A lot of people here not only enjoy your company, but look up to you.
Mostly a lurker, but ditto. I’m sorry at how you are constantly brought up for dissection on the subject in question…I’ve long wondered how you tolerate it with such grace. To me you’ll forever be the person who answered my questions about 50s dress styles.
I haven’t been here long, but its been long enough to notice the wonderful wit of this good woman. If she does go, she can always come back. The true jerks usually don’t stay for long, anyway. All I have noticed is what a nice woman she is.
As for gobear, he nice too; I’ll miss him. But we do all have e addresses to keep in touch!
Eve, I understand that you have to do what’s best for you now. Please sleep on your decision before you make any hasty decisions. I, and apparantly a lot of other dopers, think the world of you. We’ll all respect the decision you make, but I am selfish and hope you decide to stay.
Eve: do what ya gotta do, but if that means you have to go then know that a lot of Dopers will miss you. Including me.
Damn…I swore I wasn’t going to tear up…
Jeez Eve, I wish you wouldn’t go. I love reading your posts, and I always open the threads you start, even if I am totally lost in the subject matter!
(Why should one only wear odd-numbered strings of pearls?)
I have to stay the hell away from some threads because the subject is so close my me that it is part of who I am, you know? Oh sure, for a while I had to jump in and fight ignorance and tell people they were full of shit because they had no experience in the matter. But I don’t anymore because it’s tiring and I never changed an ignorant mind (at least I don’t think I did).
Some people will never view the group I am part of with anything but contempt. Fuck 'em.
I don’t want you to be hurt, but I would miss you very much if you left. I would understand, I just wouldn’t like it.
Eve, you’re a very cool lady. I liked you before you were outed, and I like you now. I’ve changed my ideas about transsexuals so much in the last few years, largely by reading your posts, that I forgot that the subject probably wasn’t as interesting to you as it was to me.
For my part, I’m going to do my best to think of you the way I used to, primarily as the witty lady who writes like Dorothy Parker and knows all about movies I’d never heard of before, and less as the lady who used to have an extra pound of flesh.
I’ll certainly understand if you need to take a break. But I hope you’ll be back. You have to do what’s right for you.
Eve, my dear… don’t worry about the little people. You are, after all, a star.
Let me worry about the little people. I’ve got a club.
:eek:
Say it ain’t so!
Well, I for one would be disappointed if you left, but if you do, you sure as hell better come up with a better justification than that weak shit.
I haven’t seen all the cases you claim people are playing the homo trump card on you, but I’ve seen a couple of them – hell, I’ve written a couple of them. And it wasn’t being “thrown in your face as a weapon,” but as an analogy. If somebody’s in a debate with you, he’s trying to convince you of something, and one of the best ways to convince somebody of something is to compare it to a different idea that you know he’s already familiar with. You want to see real cases of being a homo being used as a weapon against somebody, I can show you links, on this message board and elsewhere.
This is a big message board, and for all the personal stuff that gets slung out around here, most of it doesn’t stick. There are whole threads in MPSIMS about what gets remembered about posters and what doesn’t. Being gay is an easy thing to remember about someone, so we get lumped in the gay group. Big deal. For whatever reason, I happen to remember that you live in the Virginia/DC area – as soon as I can come up with a way to compare living in DC to religious intolerance, I’ll bring it up in a debate.
It used to bug me when I’d be posting along in a perfectly innocuous thread and then all of a sudden it would turn all gay on me. I mean, it’s the least interesting thing about me and I have so much more to offer, right? But then I realized: well no, dumbass! Maybe if you didn’t go on about it all the time and post in every single gay-related thread, whether or not you had something relevant to say, then it wouldn’t be the only thing people remembered about you.
And then I realized that I don’t particularly give a shit. One Doper in particular got all over my case and told me that I shouldn’t care what other people think about me, and to a certain degree he was right. People can remind me I’m a homo all they want, because I am and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Sometimes it’s relevant to the discussion, sometimes it’s not. Whoop-de-shit. If what you’re saying in any given conversation is valid, then it’s valid whether or not you’re gay. Or American. Or southern. Or male, or female, or Christian, or atheist, or white, black, Asian, buttered-side up, or buttered-side down.
As for Eve, FaerieBeth hit the nail on the head. The reason Eve keeps getting thrown out into the spotlight every single time the “question” of gender identity and transsexuality comes up, is simple: because she’s one of the most interesting people on the message boards. Not because of some operation she had years ago, but because she’s just a genuinely fascinating personality without having to use that as a crutch. Without even making an issue of it.
And to the assholes who’ve said, “You don’t want to talk about it, then stop reading those threads”: Bullshit! When you read something that’s plainly wrong, you step up and correct it. When you have an opinion, you state it. And if you’re in a community of adults, then everyone understands and everyone benefits from your knowledge, instead of pigeonholing you into a group and using you as the poster child for whatever topic it is.
Before I started reading these boards, I had no idea what “those gay people” were really like, and I had no idea what “those transsexuals” were really like. And that’s because they’re not “like” anything; they’re all people with some traits they happen to have in common. It’s just that some people are more interesting than others. Fighting ignorance, and all that.
Look, people, I paid my $14.95 for the Straight Dope Message Board. That includes Eve’s double entendres, and gobear’s periodically telling me that I’m hot. I deserve to keep getting what I paid for.
Eve, I can understand why you may have to leave the board. If you decide that is what you need to do for your peace of mind, all I can do is wish you the best.
I am one of those who will miss you, if you do leave. You’re a class act, and I’ve always appreciated that.
One of the reasons I joined was because I so enjoyed Eve’s posts.
um, uh… excuse me a minute, just have to clean this up…
And that reason would probably be that it says so in your Location: line. Pick some other detail, and my point is still valid.
I always stop and read your posts when I’m skimming through a thread, Eve. I invariably learn something. I really hope you stay, but I get why you’d want to leave.
Don’t go, Eve! You were one of my favorite posters when I first joined the Dope, and I’ve only grown to like you more. You will be sorely missed, as you can see from the responses. <clings to Eve’s ankles> Don’t go!