I think they obviously can. That doesn’t mean that one is the same as the other.
Just as a small point of datum: This thread got me reading and posting in another thread. As I read through it, I came across this gem.
Now this squicked me out and seemed inappropriate and yet many others found it funny. Is it different from what **EC ** is accuesed of doing? .
I don’t care enough about it to get upset by the post, but it looked like a good example of what to me is the same behavior.
Sarahfeena & Jodi & especially Evil Captor: Was EC talking about being openly gay or talking about a toleration of talking about gay sex. I think I parsed this entire thing very differently than you did Jodi.
That’s a good answer, although I’d replace “sexual” with “romantic” in the first sentence. If I’m talking about my homosexual relationships, that’s going to include things like going to the movies with my boyfriend, or what he bought me for my birthday, or how I was worried when he was really sick, and so forth. What happens in the bedroom is only a small part of any relationship, homo or otherwise. Bondage, on the other hand, is only about what happens in the bedroom.
What EC said was this:
To me, homosexuality is nothing more than the state of being homosexual. Has nothing whatsoever to do with talking about the details of what people do in bed.
Exactly…thank you, romantic is a much better term for what I was trying to say. And when you think about a couple of any orientation, your thoughts generally don’t leap to what they do in bed together. But when someone descibes a sexual interest, you do…you have to, because as you say…there’s no other arena it belongs in.
Ok, but as he said homosexuality* and not homosexuals, I hope you understand my take on the statement and **Jodi’s ** response to it.
- homosexuality
*1 : the quality or state of being homosexual
2 : erotic activity with another of the same sex *
I took the second meaning and I think that comparing “erotic activity with another of the same sex” to bondage: “sadomasochistic sexual practices involving the physical restraint of one partner” is not so unreasonable.
Jim
Exactly. And IMO the Dope is justifiably more tolerant of “the state of being homosexual” than it is with bondage or other “details of what people do in bed.” Because the former is relevant to a myriad discussions – religious, political, social – whereas the latter is only of interest to those sharing that particular proclivity, and tends to skeeve out those of us that don’t share it. And again, I don’t want to hear the details of what ANYONE is doing in bed, regardless of orientation or interests. It has nothing to do with prudery or intolerance and everything to do with believing that some things are private and that privacy remains a valid concept worthy of defence.
You apparently did. But if EC was talking not about the quality of being gay but rather only about engaging in specific sexual activities of a gay variety – anal sex or oral sex, as the obvious examples – then I think his assertion that the Dope is more tolerant of homosexuality (details of gay sexual gratification) than bondage is patently incorrect, and I’d love to see some cites from EC to prove otherwise. I think he would find it very difficult to locate threads in which any gay Doper talks about their sexual proclivities with the frequency and detail with which he discusses his own. And it is the frequency and detail that draws objection, not the subject per se.
Well… you did see that Cervaise was making a joke, right? I’m pretty sure Cervaise was not describing an actual experience he has had, or even would want to have. That post doesn’t actually tell me anything about Cervaise’s sexuality. On the other hand, EC’s posts, in aggregate, tell me way more than I want to know about EC’s sexuality. Now, the fact is, there’s nothing EC has described in his posts that is anything I haven’t done, or would be adverse to doing if I had an interested partner. For myself (and, I think, most of his critics) what squicks them out isn’t the behavior he’s describing, it’s the way he casually ignores the social boundaries about when it’s appropriate to discuss them. Which is creepy, because you start to wonder what other sexually-related social boundaries he’s ignorant of.
And, of course, he’ll now be by to accuse me of being an intolerant prude, because I’m sick of hearing about his (frankly pretty vanilla) sexual kinks.
Anyone else remember that poster we had a few years back that wouldn’t shut up about how much she loved giving blowjobs? She got a huge amount of stick over that, and she was describing a sex act that’s probably been engaged in (in one role or the other) by 95% of the people on the Dope.
Redundant.
I don’t remember any gay doper doing this, ever. Certainly no one person has done it over and over, and included a reference to it in his or her screen name, so that none of us can ever think about that person without thinking about that particular procilivity.
But let this be a warning, Miller…you can talk about going to the movies with your boyfriend all you want, but the second you start talking about tying him up and whipping him, I am outta here! 
This bolded part of Miller’s post is exactly it for me…it’s just not appropriate and oversteps the boundaries of normal, casual relationships as we all have with each other on the SDMB.
Zoe, Justin Bailey, regarding female leads in movies, here’s an article from yesterday’s LA Times:
It’s a great article: The skinny on Hollywood
True, movies are not real life. We’re talking about a major industry where women are pushed aside so that the men can do the important business.
Well, that would be the expected result, now wouldn’t it?
Not having any statistics on hand, I am going to suggest that perhaps there are less movies tailored to women alone than men alone is that less women go to movies together than men that go together. Perhaps there is something in the social dynamics that makes this so, perhaps women like to sit around and chat when they go out together, and men just like to watch something shiny.
Saying this is because of some sort of gender or sex discrimination is just knee jerking, especially since you ignore the very fact that more TV is aimed for the female demographic and little sappy “mom has cancer and is going to die but learns an important lesson” movies on the Hallmark Channel, Oxygen, and many other shows and channels tailored to women, and not men.
From what I remember from Film School in a class on gender, film and the business of filmmaking - it actually has far more to do with women being used to being able to put themselves in a man’s place, see the world through a male protangonist and still empathize. Because that is the world we are raised in - the books we read in school (and I’m 40) weren’t girly books, men did things in our text books. And men and boys were the main characters in the TV showed we watched. That means a woman will go see a “guys movie” and enjoy it, but its far more rare for men to voluntarily buy tickets to a “chick flick” (I went to go see the third Bourne movie by myself, my husband is highly unlikely to go see Hairspray by himself. ). That means you can simply sell more tickets to movies with male leads than female ones. Things are changing and have been changing for decades now - the hero isn’t almost always the guy for kids anymore and kids read stories in school that feature girls.
Okay, okay! I’ll stick to posting links to my flickr account.
Of you tying up and whipping your boyfriend?
Yes, that was the joke I was going for.
“Don’t! Stop!”
Did I get that punctuation right, Autolycus?
I think Auto was being unusually dense (sorry, Auto)…your joke was loud and clear! 