Hey red_dragon60, I’m not going to flame you… too badly. I just had to take issue with some of your comments in MPSIMS. I didn’t want to hijack the thread any more than nesecary.
You posted this.
to which Rasa replied (and it’s simply coincidence that I’m quoting her, really )
to which you replied
Do you have any FUCKING idea how hard it is to be a queer teen? Do you know what kind of presure they face? Do you have any idea how common suicide is? Have you ever been the subject of a gay bashing?
Didn’t think so.
You are definetely not helping things with this attitude. Would you laugh and point at someone with a pink triangle? Do you realise what you’re doing to them?
What you are suggesting doing is FUCKED up… No lighter way to put it.
All I can say is I hope you realise what you’re doing is completely wrong, and that if you know anyone else that enjoys that kind of behavior, you have the balls to stand up and tell them it’s wrong.
PINK TRIANGLE (np.) Symbol used to identify homosexual prisoners of the Nazis during the Holocaust, permitting them to be singled out for the especially vicious torture that was their lot. Later converted into a symbol of gay resistance to oppression. Syn.: rose winkel.
Incidentally, oldscratch, I agree with you. The suicide rate among gay teens is fourteen times higher than among their straight counterparts. That joke was in extremely poor taste.
Hmm. While we agree on the message, scratchie, we seem to disagree on methodolgy.
[sub]God DAMN, this must be the Pit if Rasa and oldscratch are disagreeing![/sub]
I saw this post naivete, or innocence. I don’t think the poster thought about what he/she was saying, just used a generic insult that is, unfortunately, in common usage. This, however, does not excuse it.
So, I’d encourage the poster to stop and think before using words like queer and fag to insult others. While they might be meaningless words and not have value or meaning, they hurt. Using them tells other teens that are gay that they’re different, in a bad way. If you hear other kids using these words, point out to them that what they’re saying says something to people that hear those words, and furthers negative stereotypes. Who knows? You may be helping a friend and not even know it.
Ignorance left untreated is wrong. That’s what the intention of this thread is… so hopefully it can serve its purpose in a kinder, gentler way.
I agree with you, tomndebb and Myrr21; thanks for pointing that out. (Heh, thought I had, but in my zeal to educate, I spaced on it.) That’s part of what led me to believe that the poster wasn’t even conscious of what he had said–I pointed it out and it went WHOOSH! over his head.
I looked at the thread the comment was ill thought out for sure. Because coming out in high school is terrifying. And gay teens are subject to ridicule. My daughter tells me about two boys at her school that are on the recieving end of gay predjudice.
I also think it speaks worlds about red_dragon’s true attitude. Some of you may not agree. But it wouldn’t even cross my mind to get back at someone with that particular type of revenge.
I know that I will be disagreed with here…But way back awhile ago when I first came here there was a thread in MPSMS something about if Christopher Lowell and Richard Simmons got into a fight who would win. I found it offensive and not terribly funny. Several of the gay posters said I was being a tight ass about it, too politically correct. I just didn’t think it appropriate that adult supposedly enlightened people should be creating an entire thread around a couple of effeminate guys having a hair pulling match. It certainly perpetuated a stereotype. How do we know that Christoper Lowell isn’t a black belt at TaeKwonDo or something. Just because he can place a pillow in the right spot and has effeminate mannerisms doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. I couldn’t see it as being much different than starting a “Do Blacks really eat more watermelon” thread.
So I agree…red_dragon should be called for this comment. I think it says an awful lot about how he feels about gays. Of course he wasn’t thinking when he said it, if he was then he wouldn’t have had the nerve to reveal his true attitude about being gay, that it is something that is subject to ridicule and shame. It would make a good tool for revenge. Hopefully the teenager is a little more enlightened himself.
Somehow, when I think of the word “gaybaiting,” I think of some straight guy in waders throwing out a flyfishing line in Dupont Circle with a “Cabaret” CD or a leather vest on the end.
Red_Dragon absolutely needs to be busted. It’s unthinking prejudice like that which causes such misery for gay teens.
It’s too bad most teens (and most adults) are not sufficiently educated to remember that some of the toughest fighters in history, the Spartans, were a product of a culture that encouraged intercourse between the opposite sex only for procreative purposes, and real erotic love was reserved for men among men. Indeed, it was a crucial part of a teen boy’s training to be paired off with an older man to learn how to be a real badass (and form a loving relationship as well).
When I was in high school, our team was The Spartans, but oddly enough, no-one ever brought up the historical reference beyond their indomitable warrior reputation. Go, Spartans!
Ok Goboy I know you aren’t to keen on me but is it fair for you to be able to make sterotypical gay wittys just because you are gay? I realize you were ragging on the gaybaiting term but doesn’t that way of thinking just grow. Or do you think it’s OK to poke a little fun at sterotypes like gays know how to decorate or they all collect Barbara Striesand albums? I try to stay away from that way of thinking as much as possible even though I realize that sterotypes are sometimes based on legitimate observations.
And it does irk me that the mental picture of some bubba standing around with a Liza Minelli CD on a fishing line is rather comical. Thanks for the image and doing damage to my resolve.
Not only is it fair for him to do so Needs2GetYourHeadChecked, it’s fair for about anyone. If red_dragon had done so, I would have laughed, if DavidB had done so I would have laughed, hell, if Lizard had done so, I would have laughed.
Lighten up
Also, I don’t want to be too hard on red_dragon. I started this as an educational thread.
Having read the original thread that gave rise to this a short time ago, I noted that **red_dragon60[/b} has good-naturedly acknowledged the point y’all made there and here. Progress does happen.
It’s funny in the movie Heathers, which is IMMEDIATELY what this thread made me think about. But I don’t find it funny when real-life teens use “gay” as an insult. For the reasons already mentioned in this thread. I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was in 6th grade that was the big playground slam among my peers. One of our teachers called a class meeting and asked us if we knew what it meant, and told us why she hated hearing us use it as a personal insult to each other.
It wasn’t tight-assed, it was thought-provoking, and she was right to nail us for being the little bigoted assholes we were.
Of course, I don’t know if this incident is really gay-baiting–it’s just an ignorant, perhaps immature, bigoted poster being a little loudmouthed. If he regrets his choice of words in retrospect, the cockles of my heart feel warmed.
)