The charge isn’t mentioning my name. It’s that you didn’t use my name to reference my opinions. You referenced a made-up opinion and attached my name to it. Thus the pitting. So really this complaint is the same as point 3.
My apologies. I used the pronoun “he” in this thread to respond to post 10 calling me an idiot. I was referring to DrCube, not you. The post Really Not All That Bright quoted was a response to DrCube in the original thread.
Oh fuck me with a burning porcupine…this is ridiculous. Pay attention now, I’ll say it one more time. I SUPPORT “DONT ASK, DONT TELL”. At no point have I ever said anything remotely close to “Gays shouldn’t be in the military.” Rick Jay said “Don’t know, doesn’t hurt” and you said “That’s not what Chessic Sense thinks.” My entire point is based around the idea that the policy keeps me from knowing another’s orientation. You can’t hit on me and I can’t ask if you’re hitting on me. It’s a great plan. How could you miss it that I’m clearly saying “Don’t know, can’t hurt”?
So just to make it conspicuous, instead of implied in every single post in the other thread, I’ll say it nice and clearly now. I, Chessic Sense, am bothered by gay men looking at me naked for the same reason a woman wouldn’t want a straight man looking at her naked. My solution to avoid such a shaming incident is to force all gays in the military to keep it on the DL.
Actually, a better analogy would be a woman who didn’t want to shower with a lesbian.
Frankly, I’d feel extremely uncomfortable showering at a gym with even a gay man, let alone a straight man. (Well, usually.) But I wouldn’t mind showering with a lesbian.
I guess I just don’t get it. I got over the “Ewww, you’re gay!” thing when I was about 13. Anyway, here’s the part I really don’t understand, even if I was squicked out by FODs checking out my ass- you’re for DADT, so you’re perfectly okay with gay men “checking you out” in the shower, just so long as you don’t know they’re checking you out.
Then, you note that “women don’t want to shower with men because they don’t want men seeing them nekkid”.
What you fail to note is that the women wouldn’t be quite so happy with their single-sex shower facilities if they were told that there was a 10 in 100* chance that men were watching them shower through a hole in the wall.
In other words, if you’re squicked out about showering with openly gay men, you should be squicked out about showering with closeted gay men, too. Either way, DADT just doesn’t make sense.
*or however many gay males there are per 100, I forget.
I’m squicked out by both of those. It wouldn’t matter if they were female (well, ugly women I didn’t want to have sex with) or gay males, same rationale. But I can deal with it if they’re not broadcasting it, and thereby violating DADT.
X number of doorknobs have shit particles on them. I bite my nails X times a day. I’m sure I’ve eaten somebody else’s shit. Yet it doesn’t bother me because I can’t tell the difference. But imagine if you could. How freaked out, disgusted, and gross would you feel if you knew exactly when you ate someone else’s shit and when you didn’t? So imagine if I knew exactly when a gay man was checking me out, as in overtly. I’d know precisely when to feel ashamed. I’d rather it be kept out of my knowledge. As I said in the other thread, if the policy were to change, my head wouldn’t explode.
None of this was represented as my opinion in the quoted thread, which is why I started this thread. I’m done repeating myself as well.
My assumption was that “homophobe” in this case referred to the more classic definition, rather than the modern one; someone fearful of homosexuals, rather than hating of them.
No. Or a woman, for that matter (unless, of course, I wanted her). What does that prove? I don’t see what you’re going for, or what I just walked into.
Out of interest, what do you suspect would happen in a hypothetical situation where DADT was repealed if you just said “Please, don’t check me out in the shower. It makes me uncomfortable” to the people you suspect of checking you out? Assuming that there are any who do (no offense intended on that).
What?! You said “…more comfortable?” and I said “No.” How do you translate that as “don’t really care”?!
Revenant, if it ever comes to me having to ask that, the damage has been done. Once again, for the umpteenth time,…no, you know what? I’m not saying it again. I’ve already said it a million times. Moving on.
No, I don’t think you know when to be ashamed. The time to be ashamed is after realising that you’ve insisted that your social discomfort is justification for a rule that forces people to live secretive, hidden lives, fearful of blackmail and social isolation (if not violence). That, or not join the military.
(I’ll skip over the poor choice of analogy, what with comparing someone looking at you to knowingly eating shit.)
Good day, Chessic Sense, I’m wolfstu. I’m a military officer, I take showers, and I’m gay. Oh, but don’t worry, I’m not sizing you up for rape, or whatever you’re worried about. I’m not from the US; I live in the kind of country where I can’t be kicked out of the armed forces for my sexuality.
And just like you, if you’ve got any social skills, know when not to grab a woman’s ass, and just like anybody who hasn’t grown up in a cave knows when comments, contact, or even just lascivious staring make someone uncomfortable, I know that I have a responsibility to the people around me not to sexually harass them. True, there’s the odd jackass out there, and certainly harassment does happen in society, but most of us know how not to make people around us uncomfortable.
If you’re cute, I’ll notice it when you’re on the bus, on the street, or at a dinner party. And I won’t stare across the table, lick my lips in your direction, or gawk to the point of discomfort on the sidewalk either. And on the beach, where you’re wearing nearly nothing, I might very well notice the same thing, even though clothing is a big part of accentuating sexuality. And still, I’ve got the good sense not to lean over and drool on every handsome boy on the seashore.
So in the shower, where, like in every social setting, there are social cues and mores to govern conventional behaviour, I know how not to make people uncomfortable. And if you’re good-looking, I just very well might notice it, and keep that to myself as appropriate. Just like everywhere else.
If your cue to be ashamed is knowing that a gay guy is around, and therefore must be staring at your irresistable man-package, you need a new cue. Gay guys are checking you out on the street, too. No more than they do anywhere else, and no more than you check out the girls.
So your discomfort is your emotion to learn to live with. And you already have, with your strategy of just not knowing which particular guy in the room might be gay (let alone find you attractive – maybe you’re like those ‘ugly women [you] didn’t want to have sex with’, in which case you’re safe, right?). But of course, like the traces of shit under your fingernails, it’s not a question of the problem going away when you’re unaware of it. It’s not that it doesn’t matter if you don’t know, it’s that it doesn’t matter. And this is your turn for emotional growing-up.
I know what it’s like to be uncomfortable in the shower. I was shy when I was young; I’d been taught to keep my private parts private. And I also know the discomfort that comes out of the fear that someone in that shower room might find out that you’re gay. Not even find out, just have the slightest reason to accuse. And then what? Trust me, I know the discomfort – the terror – of knowing how insecure straight boys feel about queers, and knowing how hard the shower wall would feel against my skull. I won’t tell you just what happened to my friend from flight training (straight, as it turns out) who got a hard-on in the shower once.
But to say that your self-conscious discomfort is worth the terror of my youth, to say that men who might be thought to find you attractive should live in secret and in fear of discovery – fear for their careers and their safety… to say that your extrapolated fear of what so many women have felt from aggressive straight men is worth a policy of “Isolation or Exclusion” in employment is out of line altogether.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” protects you from reality – gay men are already there, and maybe one of them has glanced at you. Meanwhile, it opens a whole class of people up to blackmail, fear, and ruined careers.
If you can grow some balls about being glanced at, that whole class of people can stop living in fear.
I thought that was disallowed. Gosh that makes things confusing. It’s bad enough that there aren’t avatars. Now we have to keep track of figuring out who people are when even their screenname changes? People better start having really really unique writing styles if they expect me to remember who they are.
It can be confusing, particularly when it happens in the middle of a discussion and when people are referring to each other by acronyms that no longer fit. However, it is permitted, though generally only once per member. And it’s been going on for a long time. (Search isn’t going through for me right now, but the thread I was going to link to is a few years old, and titled “Official recordation of name changes thread” or thereabouts)
The problem is that your discomfort creates real-world problems for others.
Is your personal “squicked out” feeling more important than the civil rights of an oppressed class? Would you think it is appropriate to keep men of a different race out of the military if other people felt uncomfortable having them around?
Further, the US military is overextended and continues to have huge staffing needs. Is this, in your view, less important than feeling slightly uncomfortable about potentially being ‘checked out’ and knowing about it?
That’s even better, but I didn’t want to distract the poor boy from my point with all that implied potential homo-ogling.