Assuming you found racism and sexism to be wrong in the first place, of course.
I didn’t personally find anything in that thread remotely offensive. Gay bars named after bad sex puns are an established tradition, and most of the really risque names in that thread were from actual gay bars. “The Back Door” may be an “inane suggestion,” but if you Google back door gay bar, you get a full pages of links to actual establishments.
Answering for myself, not for MrDibble - I think it’s a relevant distinction. A thread like “what amusing gay bar names have you come across” would be fine, because self-referential humor is completely different than “humor” targeted at you by someone else. This is especially true when the targeted group is a minority or historically persecuted group.
Gays naming or frequenting a bar with a double-entendre name is about taking control of a stereotype to make fun of it and thereby reduce its power. Straight people coming up with joke names is just perpetuating that stereotype and reducing gay men to a single defining trait. The words might be the same, but who is making the joke really does matter.
I think the majority of posts in that thread were fine. But the specific thread subject opened the door for not-OK posts, and some of those slipped in too.
Yeah but you’re not allowed to actually find those names funny unless you’re gay :rolleyes:
http://thenandnowtoronto.com/2014/10/then-now-stages/
Yes, there are bars of all types, including gay bars that provide safe spaces to celebrate, to party, to dance and to meet one another.
Bars, including gay bars, are places where people congregate, imbibe in alcohol, interact with other people through conversations and recreational activities e.g. darts, listening to bands and dancing), and develop friendships, relationships and communities, including political communities such a gay rights communities.
In Toronto, the gay community that frequented bars such as the St. Charles Tavern and the Parkside Tavern were, along with the somewhat overlapping University of Toronto gay community, key in changing Canada from a country in which gays were jailed, reviled, beaten and murdered to a country in which gays have equal rights and freedoms, are socially [del]accepted[/del] welcomed by everyone other than bigots, and are a very important part of who we are as a society.
***Freedom, love, expression, understanding. ***Those are key to Toronto Pride, where for ten days in 2014 World Pride was held – 2 million visitors, $719,000,000 economic impact, and a 12,000 person parade with 280 floats and 100,000 spectators lining the streets.
So yes, gay bars exist, and in many cultures they exist to the degree that extended gay communities form, become socially acceptable, change practices and laws for the better, lift societies up by the bootstraps until bigots no longer rule the roost, and remind us of who we are as individuals and who we want to be as a society.
If people express that they’re hurtful and why, shouldn’t you take a beat to think about it?
I read your post (as a poster, not as a moderator) in that thread posted after this one. “…there is perhaps a little more sniggering than is appropriate.”
Here is some of it.
I concur. But even tho not Homophobia, many of the "jokes’ are sophomoric at best, perhaps that isnt the best thread to have on the SDMB.
Manhole
hole-in-the-wall (the real one is named Hole In The Wall Saloon)
The Back Door
Peckers
The Gay Bar
Dick’s
All of these on your list are names of real gay bars, verified with google. Some are closed now, but all operated at some point.
Velvet Spike - fictional gay bar from the movie Brothers (1984)
You personally might be offended by the names, but you are going to have a hard time convincing me that the names themselves are offensive when they are the names of real establishments.
This was why I did not moderate the thread. If the real names weren’t called out as such, you wouldn’t be able to tell most of the fake names from the real names, and some of the fake names suggested are in fact names of real gay bars.
- How many of those are still open? What used to be “cute” might be seen as crude now.
- The suggestion was “Dicks”, not “Dick’s”-big difference.
My personal take on it is that what to name a gay bar is more on par with what to name a cowboy bar in Texas. As long as the names aren’t intentionally insulting, I don’t see a problem with it.
I am more than willing to discuss this though with anyone who has a different opinion.
Manhole - Chicago, currently closed, but that appears to be due to the virus. It has opened and closed several times and was open as recently as some time in 2020.
Hole In The Wall Saloon - San Francisco, CA, open
The Back Door - Bloomington, IN, open
Peckers - Nashville, TN, open
The Gay Bar - Gay, Michigan, open but named for the town (owner admits on their web site that they are having fun with the name so the gay reference is intentional). Admittedly not really a gay bar, but it is relevant to the thread.
Dick’s - New York, closed several years ago
Velvet Spike is from a 1984 movie, so fair point. Values were significantly different back then.
While the name Dick’s can certainly be something that isn’t a reference to the male sex organ, in this case it was a gay bar in a known gay area of New York City. I have a hard time believing that the dick reference wasn’t intentional in this specific case.
/nm
The thread had moved on.
Because, I think, it’s not really the right comparison. If you’re talking about race, I’d suggest instead that there’s often an… let’s say uncomfortably racial component to a lot of “most unusual names” discussions (not necessarily on the Straight Dope, but in general—y’know, the people who swear they went to school with Phat Ho and Oranjello and “shuh-THEED”). And while a) it’s pretty obvious that an “I just thought of a perfect name for a Black kid” thread would be at best looked at with a pretty serious side-eye here, b) I hope it’s as obvious that “yeah, but other races really do give their kids weird names” isn’t a compelling affirmative defense. And I guess c) even as someone who acquired a thick skin dealing with that kind of racial stuff growing up, I’d understand if other Asian-Americans were bothered by a “funny Chinese restaurant ideas” thread even if it didn’t trouble me personally.
Establishments run by and frequented by queer people presumably. Something far different than a bunch of straight people sniggering behind their hands at the idea of the promiscuous gay man.
Though that the jokes were so dire was far more lamentable, in my opinion, than their homophobic nature.
Poor choice of example on my part - I’m not talking about the post referencing an actual bar named that, I’m talking about the other posts riffing off it by suggesting non-real equivalents.
If you want a fair comparison, I’d suggest a social venue that’s specifically for people who are psychiatric survivors, former mental patients, etc, to congregate.
There’s definitely a sense of dark humor that would lead to embracing names that some other folks would find disturbing: The Asylum, The Psycho Social Club, Lunatic Fringe, Manic Decompression, DSMemberment, The Decompensation, Chock Full o’ Nuts, Crazy Eights…
I don’t like to embrace every “established truth” that comes down the pike about how the marginalized people get to do this and that but the privileged majority better not, but I have to agree with the general notion that we get to make fun of ourselves and it’s different when someone who isn’t us starts doing it. When we do it, we’re actually mocking the people who have seen us that way, and called us those things.
And to that end, it seems to me there’s a difference between gay folks discussing cutesey names for gay bars and the general population doing the same thing. If it doesn’t bother them, that’s cool too, but if it does, it does.
That wasn’t a list of names, it was a list of posts with sniggering in them. You may argue with me about some of them, that’s as may be, but I want to be clear that a) I am not offended, the lameness of the posts is not worth that much emotion, and b) if I were offended, it would not be by the names per se, but by the attitudes of the posters in those posts. As I said in that thread, it is giving a lot of people the opportunity to take shots without any consequences.
I think part of the issue is that it is difficult to tell the real names from the made-up ones, so we can’t tell which ones we can snicker at and which ones are sacrosanct. They are based on the same thing, and they are riffing in the same way.
Make up a jokey name, and then get offended when people laugh. That kind of defeats the purpose.
How many marginalized groups does it take to change a light bulb? I think you know this one already.
Regards,
Shodan
That list included my post, which contained no sniggering.