Aha, the Monophysite heresy arises! (Sorry, I’ve been reading a lot of Byzantine history lately)
Does Monophysite Heresy mean 1000 foot cock then?
I’ve taken my rest. Thanks to everyone who had something positive to contribute.
And for the record, of course I realize and acknowledge that not all straight men are this ignorant.
Esprix
I didn’t specify FTM’s, and what I’m talking about is bigger than just that. For some people, it is that clear cut. For others it’s just not, nor is it indecision between one thing and another. But if you feel the need to rigidly police your own sex and sexuality stereotypes, then I’m going to object.
It’s sort of a sad footnote that, in trying to fight back against stereotypes, oftentimes well meaning people create more of their own. As someone who went to a college (Wesleyan) that had a great LGBTetc. group prescence, I know firsthand how the seemingly productive and empowering desire to get absolutely everything neatly defined into it’s own perfect little category can ultimately be a huge, nasty mess: more insulting to everyone, in the end, than just letting people be whoever they are. At the worst, it turns into bullying about denial, its own form special of social guilt (why can’t you just be properly “LABEL”?? You are just in denial!!), and so-on.
For instance, I didn’t want to point it out, because it’s a minor quibble with something gobear said that doesn’t really affect his point, but in the real world, there actually are some lesbian couples who enjoy the idea straight men watching them. Who knows how that fits into their sexuality (in the case of the couple I met, it was a power trip), and really, who cares: it’s their business to figure it out, and not have people screaming at them that they’re doing this or that wrong and defaming the true lesbians or whatever.
There are straight guys that love sex with women that like getting blowjobs from men. “No no! They must be gay.” But they’re not. Maybe you’d like to dump them into “bisexual,” but that isn’t quite right either. And really, I couldn’t give a godamn if we come up with some cute name for this sexuality. All I care about is that not be something that ridiculed and looked down upon for itself.
Maybe in a trully sexually free world, straight guys could proposition lesbian couples to let them watch, and gay men could proposition a married straight couple to let them join in: because they would be honest propositions made without any expecation of some stereotype. We certainly don’t live in that world, and almost always those propositions are just based on some rather nasty assumption. So the propositions are almost never sincere.
But we DO, right now, live in a world where there are people who enjoy all sorts of different things that most people would never ever imagine and that go outside of the tiny little world of the twenty or so carefully couched sexuality and gender definitions that college freshman are supposed to duitifully learn during orientation. And people with all sorts of desires and turn-ons somehow DO find ways to proposition each other for these things, without being insulting. I’m not sure how they do it (well, for one, they do it in the Village Voice: directing it at people in general, rather than at specific people who might get offended that someone could ask a specific thing of THEM in particular).
And I think part of the fear is that people feel threatened about their own sexuality. When someone recieves an offer that doesn’t fit in with their own conception of their sexuality, they bristle “how dare you assume that about me?!!” But the reality is that there actually IS a good answer to this question: “but how would I know unless I asked? How would even YOU know unless I seriously asked? Why make eternal assumptions about even yourself, much less ask me to make them about you?”
And there is an answer to THAT too: “Because I DON’T feel free and safe about my sexuality. Maybe if I lived in a world where my sexuality wasn’t under malicious attack and ridicule, and I felt I could happily just say “no thanks, I’m not into that.” then everything would be fine. But in this world, my sexuality is looked down upon and constantly threatened by people who want to change it. And I can’t afford to make distinctions between those who are malicious, and those who are just curious. In this world, the only way I can interpret your proposition is “I don’t like what you seem to be, and I know better than you what you should want.””
And so the stalemate there is that, for now, ads in the Voice and specialty clubs and so on are the only practical way for people to negotiate these sorts of things without threatening each other. Certainly, no glib put on in a messageboard is every going to be sincere.
But anyway Doc, back to the point where you have me wrong, and where your offense is something I object to. Here’s what you could have to said:
And the answer to that would have been “yes, that’s another important case, but that wasn’t exactly what I meant.”
Now, does that make more sense to you as an interchange between us? Because I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, in that you weren’t, as it strongly seemed, trying to tell people what is the proper way to describe what they feel, or the proper way to describe it. I certainly wasn’t trying to tell FTM or MTF’s or anyone else in specific or general how to talk about their experiences.
Godamn it Doc, now you have me saying it: that quote should have been “some people who are genetic men are actually women in the wrong body.”
But now that I think about it, it makes just as much sense TO ME to say that someone feels like a woman as it does to say that they are a woman, because they’re one and the same when it comes to sexuality as far as I am concerned, and at the very least, someone who identifies as a woman ALSO feels like a woman.
In any case, I do call people women, regardless of their genetics, when THEY decide that it’s right, and I guess I kinda resent your implication that I don’t, or am ignorant of the fact or practice.
Whoa, what the FUCK? Got issues?
Malacandra, it may be because it was totally said in jest and those who knew the guy were aware of that, that I found it apropos and amusing and not offensive – it was, to be sure, “over the top” – but in a way that seemed to fit the circumstances and the personalities involved. On looking at it through different eyes than those of memory, thanks to your post, I can see how it would be taken as an inappropriate response. Peace.
Turning to another point, I think much of what Apos said in his long post above is quite true – people don’t fit stereotypes very well. The categories are there for easy conceptualization of the general overview accurate to some degree for a group that they describe, but one should never confuse map and territory. I don’t fit any stereotype; neither does AHunter. The team of friends that is Dreamer and musicguy breaks nearly every stereotype in the book. And I’d hazard a guess that my political views, taken as a group, are much closer to the GLAAD stance than are gobear’s.
I think there’s a distinction to be made between accurate terminology and courteous usage, and that one can use the former with due attention to the feelings involved. An example would be a discussion I had with, IIRC, lissener a while ago in which I said that my mental processes were geared to analyze based on the norm and exceptions, and that that meant that in issues of sexuality, I started with heterosexuality as the statistical norm and examined bisexuality, homosexuality, and transgendered issues as exceptions to that norm – “abnormal” in a strictly statistical sense, explicitly excluding the common connotation of “abnormal” as “and therefore bizarre and wrong.” I go beyond “not having any problem with people being gay” to feeling a positive issue of my own integrity in being supportive of the issues about which they need to combat – but I do so on the perception that every human being, be he part of an overwhelming majority or the sole person in the world in his particular situation, has a right to live his own life and pursue his own happiness untrammelled by the prejudices of others. And in doing that, I recognize that my own mental processes deal with norms and variations from them, and attempted to explain that.
Had I used “abnormal” without an explanation of my perceptual stance and that careful exclusion of the offensive connotation, I would have been insulting to every gay person on this board, and I realize that. But as structured, and as discussing my mental processes, it was an honest statement with no insult intended, and I believe none taken. OTOH, I think that my sole responsibility towards someone whose personal hot-buttons I am not aware of is to apologize sincerely if I inadvertently press one of them. Esprix may remember a situation where I did just this back in our early days here when we were dealing with the old gay/religious questions with Gaudere and FriendofGod.
Poly Could you please not stop making Christian men look like reasonable, truthful, good people?
So, is it OK to be a straight white middle-aged, middle-class, suburban american male this decade, or am I still personally responsible for oppressing everyone else for the last 500 years?
I like to look at lesbian porn and I had a 3-some with a couple bisexual girls once, but I don’t drive an SUV so I must be a decent person. Right?
Nevermind. I realize that the next time some straight guy makes an un-funny comment, the PC sensitivity squad will jump all over not only him but all straight males. But for the next week or so we can enjoy an uneasy truce and I don’t have to be ashamed of myself. :rolleyes:
Whaddyamean, back burner? I needed a way to end my post. That sort of thing I think up all the time. Just ask my friend, Moe Juste.
Issues? With people who offer grossly excessive physical violence occasioning serious bodily harm over a perceived insult, or insult by proxy? With people who think someone else doing so is the acme of wit? Hell yes. However Polycarp has put things in context and I feel a little less ruffled. Apparently it’s just an everyday story of quick wit and repartee among the knife-wielding classes, and I shouldn’t worry. No harm, no foul.
Okay, that’s twice now. Two times I have composed a deeply heartfelt and meaningful response to this thread. They were good posts, full of quotes and allusions and reason.
The hamsters are hungry, hungry beasts.
Let me summarize, and include much swearing because maybe that was what was lacking to get the posts to go through.
My Side: lighten the fuck up, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, good people say stupid things on a regular basis and whatever the straw might be that breaks the camel’s back if you concentrate on it there are going to be a whole lot of people who just see the one straw.
The Other Side: It is possible to express a coherent thought without randomly insulting large groups of people, and it is also possible to say “Oh, sorry” without having the ghosts of George Orwell and Joseph McCarthy come and haunt you for the rest of your fucking life.
We either all need to take a large amount of Valium ™ or start a single thread for everybody who wants to post for or against offensive language and let the meltdowns and resultant bannings eliminate this argument from every damned pit thread I read.
It’s getting real old real fast.
I agree with Apos. It is usually a lame joke, but the words themselves can also be a sincere expression of someone’s feelings. Many people have had gender stand in the way of attraction. My best male friend and I have often talked about our woes with women, and joked that we wished we were gay as we would be perfect for each other. Is that offensive? I don’t think so. Even though it is said as a joke, there is an element of truth to it. There are also far more direct cases.
I once fell in love with a girl who I later found out was a lesbian. We had similar senses of humor, liked the same things, and could talk endlessly together. We never had sex, but I didn’t consider that a problem as I was in no hurry. After I found out, I was devastated. I started imagining what it would be like if I was a woman. I thought we would be together and happy. Imagining our hypothetical life together, I did at times wish I was a woman. But this is very different than actually being a woman trapped in a man’s body. I just felt like one at times. I am effeminate in many ways, and I don’t consider my inner self to be male or female. And I very much wanted to eliminate the barrier between us. I have never told anyone that I was a “lesbian trapped in a man’s body”, but I have thought it at times. And I thought it sincerely.
Strangely, I have no interest in watching lesbians. Lesbian imagery did absolutely nothing for me, until I imagined myself as
a woman together with the woman I loved.
I can also see how this could be offensive to lesbians, which is why I wouldn’t bring it up except in a discussion like this. But I don’t feel ashamed of the sentiment.
Perhaps your audience would be more receptive if
(1) You acknowledged that “this ignorant”, “ignorant fucks” and “wastes of sperm” were inappropriate in this case. The consensus is that the remarks in question were unfunny, but hardly deserving of such a level of bile.
and
(2) You realised that the title of this very thread is similarly inappropriate. The remarks made in the linked threads do not make straight men appear like ignorant fucks, or anything for that matter. Your disclaimer – not all straight men are so offensive – is irrelevant since the assertion is completely false.
That’s MtF, not FtM. FtMs are men.
Fortunately, this is changing.
I generally find the “joke” annoying and have called people on it before, but I’ve stopped bothering unless it pops up in a thread I’m already active in. And, to be fair, I don’t consider myself a “lesbian trapped in a man’s body” for the simple reason that it’s my body and I’m not a man.
Neither am I. I’m a Martian (gyrrq!q is the nearest I can get to it in the Roman alphabet, but I don’t consider the familiar English word offensive, and it’s easier to pronounce).
Actually, I was under the impression that you were an Oyarsa, but whatever… 
Polycarp, it depends on whether you’re talking about what order of creation, or where in the Field of Arbol. Viritrilbia, Perelandra and the rest of them are Oyersi, but not Martian. Simply put, one can be hnau or Oyarsa; one can also be Martian or not. The two aren’t mutually implicatory.
**
:smack:
And to think I voted against smackie
Apos
After your further clarification, your position and mine are the same. I simply misinterpreted your words.
BTW-I’m also against rigid definitions. They can deny people their identity.
Relating Barely To The OP-
I think now is the right time to finally post a fantasy I’ve had about Kelly for a long time now.
There's a knock at the door, just once, a single and commanding rap. I open it and Kelly stands upon my threshhold. She does not wait for welcome or invitation, but strides into my home. Looking about with scorn, she selects a table. With a sweep of her arm she clears it. She places a black leather valise on the table and opens it. Out of the bag come probes of many lengths and strengths, plugs in astounding variety of shapes and sizes, and a dizzying array of spring-loaded clamps.
I can stand it no more. I fall to my knees.
"Teach me! I beg you! Teach me!"
And she does. She takes my hand, lifts me to my feet, and teaches me everything I’ve always wanted to know about electrical engineering.
Next Week-
Anthracite Gets Doc All Revved UpSo you’re saying you can’t resistor?