# Homophobic Super Bowl ad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 7, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226 "2007-02-07T17:14:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/41 "2007-02-08T20:59:24Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Huh. I thought I remembered LeBron James doing it. [/QUOTE] [Nope.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrell_Sprewell) And it happened in 1997. This is only Lebron James’ 3rd year as a pro. He got drafted directly from high school. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/42 "2007-02-08T21:07:58Z")
Am I the only one who saw the chest-hair pulling as even less “manly”? Like waxing all of one’s body hair? (Not that there’s anything wrong with THAT!) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/43 "2007-02-08T21:24:51Z")
[QUOTE=C K Dexter Haven] **Weirddave** : Personal insults are not permitted in this forum, as you well know. Cool it. NOW. [/QUOTE] Of course I know it Dex. Which personal insults would those be? I wasn’t aware that I had made any. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/44 "2007-02-08T21:38:18Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] I found it mostly dumb. It would have been funny if the two guys had been doing something semi-plausible and then suddenly realized it had gay overtones. [/QUOTE] Like, say…playing football? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/45 "2007-02-08T21:39:57Z")
[QUOTE=Loach] [Nope.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrell_Sprewell) And it happened in 1997. This is only Lebron James’ 3rd year as a pro. He got drafted directly from high school. [/QUOTE] Well I certainly apologize to Mr James for falsley asserting that he choked his coach. However, if he in fact made homophobic comments about the possibility of being ravaged by a homosexual teammate in the locker room he’s still a giant douchebag. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/46 "2007-02-08T22:12:33Z")
I don’t imagine it’s any sort of threat of rape or anything. It can be uncomfortable to be the object of sexual gratification without your consent. And so while locker rooms are naked and somewhat intimate and personal, because they’re segregated by sex, people feel secure in not being looked at as a sex object, generally. Of course having someone gay in there changes that. If that’s not a factor, why are locker rooms segregated at all? ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/47 "2007-02-08T23:14:34Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] I don’t imagine it’s any sort of threat of rape or anything. It can be uncomfortable to be the object of sexual gratification without your consent. And so while locker rooms are naked and somewhat intimate and personal, because they’re segregated by sex, people feel secure in not being looked at as a sex object, generally. Of course having someone gay in there changes that. [/quote] Oh balls. I think James is pretty fugly but at any given basketball game there are probably a dozen or two people who find him sexually attractive without his consent (whatever that means; how exactly does one ever consent to being found sexually attractive by someone else?). I’m reasonably confident he’s not up nights worrying about it. And his fear at the idea that one of his teammates might find him attractive is ludicrous and insulting. It’s been a while since I’ve been involved in a locker room sport but when I was, I spent my time in the locker room getting ready to play or winding down from them and spent very little time pondering the sexual attractiveness of my teammates. It’s insulting, not to mention supremely arrogant, for James to think that he’s so hawt that a gay teammate is going to find him attractive. And even assuming that this hypothetical gay teammate does find James attractive, logically wouldn’t James want to know who has teh gay so that he can go dress in another part of the locker room away from lustful eyes? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/48 "2007-02-08T23:57:43Z")
I’m not saying it’s a big deal, but it’s not a totally off the wall idea. Why, honestly, do you think that they have sex-segregated lockers? ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/49 "2007-02-09T01:19:49Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] Why, honestly, do you think that they have sex-segregated lockers? [/QUOTE] Modesty? If we’re working on the assumption that some men may feel uncomfortable around gays because they might inadvertently be object of sexual gratification without their consent, then what’s the difference to them between being ogled by a gay man and being ogled by an unattractive woman? (“unattractive” being relative to the guy in question, of course) “Okay, that hot girl in row six can eyeball me all night, she’s _damn_ fine. But everyone else better not be undressing me with their eyes, I mean it!” ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/50 "2007-02-09T01:39:10Z")
never mind- wrong forum ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/51 "2007-02-09T02:02:47Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > Of course I know it Dex. Which personal insults would those be? I wasn’t aware that I had made any. [QUOTE=Weirddave] (Why? Not getting enough attention lately? Or is it just your vaunted “critical thinking” that the rest of us lack?) [/QUOTE] I think this might be that to which **Dex** was referring. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/52 "2007-02-09T02:03:48Z")
[QUOTE=Guinastasia] Am I the only one who saw the chest-hair pulling as even less “manly”? Like waxing all of one’s body hair? (Not that there’s anything wrong with THAT!) 😉 [/QUOTE] Funny, I had the same thought. I had vivid images of Nads … :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/53 "2007-02-09T02:13:27Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] I’m not saying it’s a big deal, but it’s not a totally off the wall idea. Why, honestly, do you think that they have sex-segregated lockers? [/QUOTE] I think that the history of segregating by sex well pre-dates the advent of locker rooms. It’s a self-sustaining cultural artifact. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/54 "2007-02-09T02:14:31Z")
[QUOTE=rjung] Modesty? If we’re working on the assumption that some men may feel uncomfortable around gays because they might inadvertently be object of sexual gratification without their consent, then what’s the difference to them between being ogled by a gay man and being ogled by an unattractive woman? (“unattractive” being relative to the guy in question, of course) “Okay, that hot girl in row six can eyeball me all night, she’s _damn_ fine. But everyone else better not be undressing me with their eyes, I mean it!” [/QUOTE] To some degree, I would imagine people would feel differently about someone they’d be attracted to vs repulsed by. People’s reactions are shaped by the attractiveness of the other person to an extreme extent. A cute person smiles on you on the bus, and you think “aw, they’re nice”, and yet an ugly person with the same intention smiles at you, and you think “what the hell are they looking at?”. But other men cross a barrier that unattractive women don’t, to most men. But it’s a matter of degree - a moderately ugly girl your age might be less oogy than a 60 year old woman, who in turn might be less so than a man where you can’t even relate to their feelings of sexual attraction. In the locker room example, it’s far more likely that women will be the recipients of unwanted attention by men than the reverse, though. But nudity to some degree brings vulnerability for most people, and so they’d they’re more exposed in such situations and would be particularly aware of how other people view them. To give an analogy of sorts - if someone bumped into you, brushed up against your shoulder or something, while you were walking on a busy street, no big deal, right? But what if you were to find out that this person has a weird fetish about just touching strangers at all, and you knew they were getting sexual gratification from the contact? Suddenly you feel weird about it, whereas it was insignificant before. Yet it’s the same action. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/55 "2007-02-09T04:13:47Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] To give an analogy of sorts - if someone bumped into you, brushed up against your shoulder or something, while you were walking on a busy street, no big deal, right? But what if you were to find out that this person has a weird fetish about just touching strangers at all, and you knew they were getting sexual gratification from the contact? Suddenly you feel weird about it, whereas it was insignificant before. Yet it’s the same action. [/QUOTE] The difference being that someone brushing up against you is an affirmative act and should you find out about the fetish you would know that you’ve been actively used for sexual purposes against your will. There is an enormous difference between being actively touched against your will and being in a locker room with someone who might or might not find you attractive should s/he see you naked. ---
**Author:** ![teemingONE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@teemingONE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teemingONE)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/56 "2007-02-09T05:31:17Z")
I found it offensive. I’m a hetero and I found it made us heteros look stupid. I’m glad Snickers pulled it. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/57 "2007-02-09T08:04:18Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > Well I certainly apologize to Mr James for falsley asserting that he choked his coach. However, if he in fact made homophobic comments about the possibility of being ravaged by a homosexual teammate in the locker room he’s still a giant douchebag. [Found it](http://images.si.com/2007/basketball/nba/02/07/amaechi.ap/index.html). It’s not as blatant as I remembered it being (James’ quote, I mean), but it still has major homophobic-paranoia overtones: > [@LeBron James](#): > > With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you’re gay and you’re not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy … So that’s like the No. 1 thing as teammates – we all trust each other. You’ve heard of the in-room, locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays in there. It’s a trust factor, honestly. A big trust factor. To be fair, he _could_ just be saying that teammates shouldn’t keep secrets from each other, in general. OK–considering the rampant homophobia in the world (NBA superstars) Mr. James lives in, if that’s all he was saying, that’s not too bad. Philadelphia 76ers forward Shavlik Randolph was more direct: > [@Shavlik Randolph](#): > > As long as you don’t bring your gayness on me I’m fine. As far as business-wise, I’m sure I could play with him. But I think it would create a little awkwardness in the locker room. While Randolph may–if you give him the benefit of the doubt–be only vaguely uncomfortable by a concept he doesn’t feel he understands fully, rather than being a full-blown bigot, his teammate Steven Hunter felt no need to mince words (bolding mine): > [@Steven Hunter](#): > > Nowadays it’s proven that people can live double lives. I watch a lot of TV, so I see a lot of **sick perverted stuff** about married men running around with gay guys and **all types of foolishness**. Mr. Hunter went on to note that an openly gay teammate would have to make a special effort to be “like a man” and “like a good person”: > [@Steven Hunter](#): > > As long as he don’t make any advances toward me I’m fine with it (having an openly gay teammate) … As long as he came to play basketball **like a man** and conducted himself **like a good person** , I’d be fine with it. The Orlando Magic seem to be more open-minded: > [@Grant Hill](#): > > The fact that John (Amaechi) has done this (come out), maybe it will give others the comfort or confidence to come out as well, whether they are playing or retiring. > [@Pat Garrity](#): > > They would have teammates that would accept them for being a good person and a good teammate, and there would be people who would give him a hard time about it … I think that’s true if you’re playing basketball or in an office job. That’s just how the world is right now. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > If that’s not a factor, why are locker rooms segregated at all? How many NBA arenas have locker rooms separated by gender in the first place? They can fit all the women on each team into the same locker room and nobody would even notice they were there. ---
**Author:** ![Geobabe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/geobabe/32/3908_2.png) [@Geobabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geobabe)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226/58 "2007-02-09T23:12:57Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] Philadelphia 76ers forward Shavlik Randolph was more direct: > [@](#): > > As long as you don’t bring your gayness on me I’m fine. As far as business-wise, I’m sure I could play with him. But I think it would create a little awkwardness in the locker room. While Randolph may–if you give him the benefit of the doubt–be only vaguely uncomfortable by a concept he doesn’t feel he understands fully, rather than being a full-blown bigot… [/QUOTE] To give a little context, Shavlik Randolph was raised in a very conservative Christian family, and was known in college for being kind of sheltered, so it is likely that he doesn’t know a whole lot obout homosexuality. That’s really a pretty tolerant statement coming from someone with his background, IMO. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homophobic-super-bowl-ad/391226.md?page=2)