I’ve explained how I consider the sentiment of expressing disappointment at the idea of someone’s being gay is potentially insulting. It allows for the implication that being gay is wrong or some sort of defect. You’ve said that you did not intend the remark that way, and I accept that at face value.
I’ve already explained several times what the intent of the remark was and have apologized for any hurt feelings it may have caused. It was a comment about the unlikelihood that you will ever meet any of the actors named, not a comment about your hotness or lack of same. I don’t know how hot you are or aren’t, and I don’t care. It’s not what I was talking about.
I didn’t say you wrote exactly “what a shame he’s gay.” I said the “what a shame he’s gay sentiment.” You said you intended no such sentiment and I’ve accepted that at face value.
No, my stated intention was to point out that your remark might be found insulting. Any inference you draw beyond that is your own.
I’ve already apologized, in the OP of this thread. This isn’t about you. It was never about you. You weren’t pitted. This is about the double standard and the bullshit hair splitting that Dex applied in deciding to step in.
However, the staff postition was that your comment about the poster was nasty, regardless how LB phrased it, Dex specifically responded to the apparent attack on the poster.
Otto, go ahead and dismiss me along with EVERY OTHER POSTER in this thread, including at least one who is gay, but you are wrong here.
LavenderBlue’s comment was completely innocuous. I read your comment as a flat out insult to her. Her response that what you said was nasty is NOT a personal insult. You can proclaim that you didn’t mean it that way all you would like, but if everyone else who read the comment took the same thing from it that she did, then maybe, just maybe, she isn’t in the wrong and neither is Dex.
Everytime I’ve heard someone say “Yeah, because you had a shot at any of them.” or something like it, it’s been used to mean that said person is not attractive or interesting enough to warrant the attention of that person or group of people. You can be insulting without intending to be. At the very least, you were that. She was not. Your opinion that her comment is “potentially insulting” is absolutely silly. No one means that they have animus for gays, married people, straight people or whatever when they make that type of remark. It just means “Damn, now I really never have a shot.” regardless of whether a shot with that person was a real possibility or not.
The comment was harmless. Your reaction was bitchy and your explanation for it is absurd. I think the “hair splitting” is in your mind and no one else’s.
You insulted her. She said your insult was nasty. One of these is forbidden, one is not.
Otto, is it possible you do not comprehend which of your statements in the earlier thread people take exception to? It is this one.
Frankly I can’t interpret that as anythong OTHER than a personal insult, even if you meant it to be a joking one. When you insult someone, as a joke. and they don’t get it and take offense, the appropriate response is to apologize and move on.
Forget all the gay-straight-shame crap. It’s arguable, but your first post was not, and instead of apologizing and moving on, you attacked again. No one cares about whether your second point has some vailidity or not. it’s that you used it to duck responsibility for your first post and use the second as another insult – although less directly than the first.
I’m going to go the offenderati route here too and side with **Otto ** - at least on **LB’s ** comment. Yeah, I understand that **LB ** probably didn’t mean anything by it, other than the cliche’d “all the good ones are gay or married”.
But I have to tell you - I used to know someone who - anytime someone was gay would comment “isn’t that sad?” or “Oh, it’s too bad because he’s so good looking.” or “It’s so sad, their kids will have a really hard time with it.” It was always couched in some variant of good will and sympathy, but as a pattern it was hard to listen to, until one day I just went off on her. The blowback was pretty hard, because I couldn’t, of course, *prove * that there was anything homophobic in any given remark. And I think she actually did feel sympathy for gay people. But I’m still glad she finally got the message that NO IT’S NOT A SHAME THAT HE’S GAY. At least around me.
LB: It would be disappointing if so-and-so were gay.
Me: yeah, because you have a shot.
LB: That was a nasty comment.
Me: It wasn’t meant to be nasty. Plus, the idea that someone being gay is disappointing is kind of nasty too.
Dex: Otto, your first comment was an uncalled-for personal comment and your second comment in which you called an idea nasty was another uncalled-for personal comment.
See, right there, that bolded part, is where I’m calling bullshit. I understand that people in this thread think the “have a shot” comment was an insult. I’ve said over and over again that it wasn’t intended as one. Y’all can believe me or not, the thread’s not about that, as much as you might want it to be.
The thread is about the double standard and hair splitting required to come up with the notion that calling a comment nasty is fine but calling an idea nasty is a forbidden personal comment.
I have to go with the majority here, mostly because I expressed the same opinion as LavenderBlue in my own post.
When I (and** LB**) said in that thread “Oh, so sad, all the really cute ones, etc.” it didn’t mean “what a shame, he’s gay”, it meant “what a shame, T.R. Knight will now never be interested in me”, and it was a joke. It was not to be taken seriously. I am fully aware of the fact that I have never had, and will never have, a chance with that actor, and I assume LavenderBlue meant the same.
Otto, if you have an issue with LB’s implications–like you said in your next post after the “like you had a shot with him” post–call her out on that, don’t make cheap shots.
Look back at your post. It’s not obvious, but it sure seems to a lot of people that you’re implying that LavenderBlue thinks being gay is disappointing, which is a personal slur. Maybe you can come in and correct me.
Yes!!! My initial comment about being disappointed was totally tongue in cheek. I didn’t see your earlier comments or I would have simply agreed with you.
I’m very happily married. My husband and I have been married dozen years. I adore him.
All I meant is that T.R. Knight is now less likely to show up in my unconscious fantasies. That’s really the mostly reason I watch Grey’s Anatomy anyway: the sex and the hot guys. And Sandra Oh’s fabulous acting. The medical plotlines are fun but borderline ludicrous. For example the one they did last season with the two people held together by a pole but still conscious was just not believable. There was an article in the NY Daily News by a doctor stating it was physically impossible.
This season has started out veering even more from reality. IANAD but I have a hard time believing that Isobel wouldn’t have been let go for her role in Denny’s death.
If the whole “Of course the idea that someone’s being gay is a “disappointment” is kind of nasty too,” thing is what you’re referring to as the second insult, I’d agree with Dex on that too. If you want to take offense at something that I believe most of us have come to a consensus on is bullshit, and then throw out the insinuation that the other poster believes that gay people in general are a disappointment…well, pot, meet kettle.
Don’t pretend like you were taking the high road and taking issue with “only the idea”. I think you were clearly directing those remarks at LavenderBlue.
And this whole nitpicky “I’m calling out a double standard” thing is BS too. Nobody has disagreed, and other mods have come in to confirm, that attacking an idea A-okay, but when you direct that idea into an accusation and quote another poster while doing it I’m sure it crosses into that personal-accusation territory.
Count me on Dex’s team.
I guess if you look hard enough for something to be offended at, you’ll find anything. [rolleyes]
I don’t know how to explain it any more clearly than I’ve done already. I don’t see any difference between calling a thought bad and calling a thought written down as a comment bad. I don’t see that calling an idea bad is a personal comment and I definitely don’t see the reasonableness in drawing the connection “thought bad” —> “you might think bad thought” —> “you bad” and calling “thought bad” an insult. If calling a bad idea a bad idea is a personal insult, then how does GD even happen?
Again, I don’t think anyone has said that simply calling an idea bad is what is at issue here. Basically, you said something that was directed at LB personally. Dex called you on it.
Now you’re trying to pretend like what was taken at issue was the fact that you called the idea bad, not that you directed it at LB.
Otto, you got in trouble for making a comment that LavenderBlue thought was mean. Me, I thought it was funny. I agree with you that if you’d put a smiley after it, this all would have been avoided.
I looked at the rule Dex cited, and, boy, if that’s his basis for stepping in, we’d all better watch out, because your comment wasn’t insulting in the least. His citation of that rule seems to be that if you post something that isn’t insulting, but someone nevertheless takes offense, you’re in trouble. (If that’s truly the rule, I urge the administration to rethink it because that’s not fair or workable.) The fact that LavenderBlue is in a sense an eggshell-skull plaintiff is what got you in trouble. (I did love the “please stop insinuating I’m a homophobe” comment, though, as a rhetorical device; you hadn’t insinuated that at all but it served as an excellent distraction for a number of people.)
Having said all that, my advice is simply to walk away. Abandon this thread and move on with your life. Nobody is focusing on what you actually said or did; they’re focusing on the fact that for whatever reason, LavenderBlue got upset that she’s never going to get a shot at a bunch of grungy-looking guys on a TV show, and they’re imputing to you things you didn’t say. Whatever. This isn’t worth your time.
What I really don’t understand how you can find Otto’s snarky “Yeah, because you had a shot at any of them,” comment funny even if he had put a smiley next to it. It’s just a nasty, unprovoked and inappropriate comment. He followed it up with another one by stating, “of course the idea that someone’s being gay is a “disappointment” is kind of nasty too,” when I said and implied nothing of the of sort.
Since I’ve also stated my initial comments about the guys on the show were tongue in cheek I also don’t get where you think I’m upset about allegedly “never getting a shot at bunch of grungy-looking guys on a TV show.” If you don’t get that (after I’ve repeatedly stated it), maybe the “eggshell-skull” here is your own?
I am only upset because I am needlessly being called a homophobe by a man who can’t seem to understand why his comments were out of line.
Leaving aside the rest of your post, please provide me citation to a post where Otto called you a homophobe. Not a post where you believe that one could read between the lines to find an insult, but a post where, as you have repeatedly asserted, Otto called you a homophobe.
Because, frankly, if you can’t do that, this statement is incorrect: