If I hear another butch faggot bitching about femme guys I am going to go postal.

The BBQ Pit
21

Quick comment on a hijack above: I think friedo was doing a mock-flame based on the Esprix one-trick-pony “flaunting” flame threads of a short time ago. At least I read his post as very tongue-in-cheek (rimshot?) :eek:

Matt’s rant ought to be taken in a very much more general sense than just “I can be as swishy as I wanna be” – where in hell did the idea of demanding that everybody conform to your standards that some idiots seem to have come from? I’m sorry, but I’m just plain not interested in basketball, so take your NCAA sweet sixteen and stuff it in the nearest basket – like that one over there with the wadded up paper in it. If you want somebody just like yourself, you moron, go clone yourself. Or at least perform the act that starts the process.

I’m me. And I like who I am. Matt’s himself. Neither of us is interested in being somebody we’re not. Nor, I think, is anybody else reading this thread. I know about a dozen Dopers in real life, and I enjoy greatly the wild and woolly individuality they all have. And miss getting together with them IRL. To reiterate a catchphrase I coined a few months ago, pigeonholes are for pigeons.

22

matt, you fucking rock. Tell it like it is, then walk away, baby.

Nym - who is tired of everyone poking fingers into everyone else’s lifestyle/tax exemption/sex life/wardrobe

23

sob You like me! You really like me!

I’d like to thank the Academy…

gracefully accepts thrown bouquet

24

Hell, and not all sissy boys are gay! I had a friend who was very feminine, because he happened to grow up in home where his father died when he was two, and he had three sisters. So he tended to talk with a lisp and do the wrist thing, but he was straight. I mean, anyone can be anyway they want.

Unless you wanna be Joe Don Baker. PLEASE don’t be like Joe Don Baker!

25

Um, I heard someone was in need of some manly lovin’ in here? Ah, there’s my baby.

Everyone? Could you excuse us for a few days? I’m just going to yoink matt here into a room, lock us up with some power bars and Gatorade and, well, um… {ahem} “improve his self-esteem.”

Most appreciated. No need to send in rescue teams… unless they’re hot. :wink:

Esprix

26

It’s sad that with a community fighting so hard to get recognition as human beings that their is fighting amungst the ranks so to speak.
And no, not everytime this kind of rant comes up is someone looking for the “oh, poor little you” response. Sometimes it is a sounding board, or even just to let off steam. Which is what I gathered from this.
I am bi, but most of my poor little me threads have been about what is going on with my kids problems. Not about my orientation.

So Matt, to echo most of the fine folks here honey, let it all hang out and then some.
Esprix, I won’t send in a search party if you promise to come up for air every once in a while! :wink: (oh, and as requested only if they are hot)

And Andygirl, I know we discuss the toaster thing and trading up for bigger and better prizes, but you never mentioned the tax deduction! Would I get some sort of cut for being bi with a male bi husband? There has to be some clause for that somewhere?

27

Kricket: good call. You want to know why there’s so much infighting? Because it seems like each successive group drops out of the fight when they get what they want. It’s not a political movement, it’s a set of corporatist pigeonholes.

In a culture that favours straight rich white men, the first queers to get some semblance of rights were straight-acting rich white gay men. The straight-acting rich white lesbians weren’t far behind. And then a lot of them - particularly those of them who go around and write articles for Out and The Advocate - up and forgot about the rest of us.

That’s why you get otherwise very nice people like Rev. Brent Hawkes saying things like “gay marriage is the #1 gay rights topic left to face.”

Well, he may think this way. I on the other hand think that maybe dealing with the fact that FOURTEEN TIMES AS MANY GAY KIDS KILL THEMSELVES AS STRAIGHT ONES may just be a teensy bit more important. It’s difficult for me to worry about gay weddings, busy as I am worrying about gay funerals.

The main body of the “queer” “rights” “movement” has forgotten about anything that’s not relevant to beautiful men with dotcom startups or grinning lesbians on TV. They don’t give a shit about queer youth’s problems. They don’t give a shit about transgendered problems. They don’t give a shit about the problems of queer people of colour, about queer people of alternative sexualities, poor queer people, disabled queer people, anybody who isn’t “just like everybody else.”
What’s The Advocate printing? Ooh, let’s check out the latest issue. Gay military, gay military, gay boyscouts, gay marriage, more boyscouts, more military, some alcohol and cigarette ads, and some straight celebs who think that being gay is A-OK. Then - out of a 118-page issue - they have one page on gay kids. This in a space that often features such blockbusters as some twit telling us that she knows everything about trannies and what she knows is that they shouldn’t have sex change operations and that we should call a trans woman “he” if she has a penis.

There’s something wrong when I can get better gay politics coverage from XY - which, for gods’ sake, is a gay teenybopper magazine - than I can from The Advocate. (This, by the way, is not a joke, and it’s a compliment to XY as much as an insult to the other. XY is fabulous.)

It’s despicable.

28

I hear you, Matt.

You know what the problem with XY is? They do some decent stuff, but they go about it in the most half-assed way. XY is a joke in the industry. Their finances are a shambles, they have a “fuck you” approach to spelling, and their standards are lax at best.

Did I every tell you about the gay journalism award I got? Vice Versa Award for Best Contribution by a Young Journalist. The awards ceremony (and the gay press summit) was held over the weekend of the Millennium March. The Advocate, Curve, Girlfriends, gay.com, Poz… all of the majors and a lot of the minors were there.

There’s not really much competition for “young journalist”. I was the youngest one there by quite a bit. And at the ceremony I gave this big speech about how the gay media can’t ignore gay teens. People are moved to tears, I get a bunch of business cards… blah blah blah.

I still remain unimpressed by the gay teen coverage. They say, “Oh, we want a young journalist!” and then the damn syndicate says that my column is just isn’t hitting a large enough target audience. Sorry, come again. So I stick to my little paper with pride.

Curve gives Gina DeVries six inches and calls Marty Pfeiffer, Kellie Peterson and Anthony Colin activists for our times. I know these kids. I’m friends with some of them. Gina can’t sound off about youth issues at all, and Marty and Tony are given, “Oh, you’re so cute” lip service once and awhile. It’s pathetic. Meanwhile, youth journalists (yeah, all six of us) are told “oh, you’re so cute! I wasn’t out at your age! Go write for the pile of suck that is Oasis!”

You want to change homophobia? Get to the schools. Want to lower AIDS transmission and change policy? Get to the gay kids under 25. Scare them, shake them up, force them to not be complacent. Teach them their history.

Damn it, I don’t care about marriage. I care about survival.

29

Now that is very, very funny. I don’t think I’ve heard, “go fuck yourself,” put so well. :smiley:

30

Well, i’d only say that if it was some woman asking me to try sex with her.

But, I agree, that attitude is sad, and devisive. I welcome all kinds. It’s sad that those who do say such things are so hung up on that shit.

31

See that, matt? Your dream about you, me, and Doob may come true after all… :wink: (Only this time, leave Jesus out of it - he’s not my type!)

Esprix

32

Not to contradict you, hon, but I think XY deserves more credit than that.

  1. Their finances are a shambles because nobody wants to advertise with them. They’ve had the most enormous fights with advertisers who don’t want to be associated with them for fear of accusations of supporting pedophilia. :rolleyes:

  2. They spell things in their articles correctly. However, they encourage whatever style their contributors want to use, including “incorrect” spelling.

  3. I don’t know to what you’re referring when you talk about their standards, but for one thing, they don’t accept ads from cigarette or alcohol companies (which leads to a good deal of Problem #1), and they run some of the most incisive articles I’ve ever seen. (A while ago I read a heartrending article about the gay underground railroad, an unofficial network of safe houses for gay teens fleeing abusive families and institutions.)

33

But didn’t you ever watch Priest? “You see a crucifix… but I see a man… naked, and utterly desirable.”

:smiley:

34

This is true. However, they’ve also had some stuff that was a result of plain mismanagement, IIRC.

Like the “skewl” issue? :wink:

Didn’t see that one. I suppose some of it is a matter of personal taste. I 've known them to be inaccurate and simplistic. <shrug>

Of course, I’m a little bitter that there’s no sister magazine. :wink:

35

I wasn’t saying that. I was saying that matt_mcl seems to have a need to make the world aware that he is gay at least once a week. Just gets annoying after a while, that’s all.

36

Trying to keep tabs on what the International Gay Conspiracy is up to these days (since Hastur hasn’t put me on the mailing list for his newsletter) ;), I buy two gay magazines regularly: The Advocate and XY. The other stuff on the stands: Out, Genre, and such, devotes less attention to any serious issues than Eve’s magazine does.

What I’ve seen of XY gave me the following impressions:
[li]Their actual staff is two or three: Peter Cummings, Mike Glatze, and Benjie Nycum. The rest of the masthead is hangers-on.[/li][li]Financing appears to have been totally Peter’s money (i.e., shoestring), with a fan businessman having recently made a personal loan to pull them out of the hole.[/li][li]Their editorial operation is hurting, thanks to the problems that lost them Benoit Denizet-Lewis and converted Nathan Smorzynski to “stringer” status.[/li][li]That article on runaways and several other pieces, including the Laramie background-on-Matthew-Shepherd story and the one about the murderous rent boy, were either reprints from local coverage or stories sold to XY and other media as well by the writers. Apparently Peter does this whenever a suitable story comes available and he can afford it.[/li][li]They do try to tackle tough issues – often, as Andy suggests, with less-than-competent results. (As compared to the well-financed other publications that specialize in glitz.)[/li][li]Peter’s efforts to deal with the “advertiser boycott” Matt mentioned have been counterproductive. I cannot imagine anyone reading that expose of why they don’t get clothing, etc. ads and placing their company’s ads as a result – quite the reverse.[/li][li]They do use proper spelling and such – the “skewl, str8” and related stuff are a spastic attempt to match their target audience’s trendiness. (Sidebar note: Barb and I have adopted the use of “kewl” – distinguished from “cool” by being said with an exaggerated “ewww” sound – in private conversation, usually for sarcastic effect, as in “Eric thinks that being a wiseass to his mother looks kewl, but all it’s doing is proving what a jerk he can be.”)[/li][li]Their articles are generally polemic in nature – quite reasonable in view of the “embattled” social stance of their target audience. (Matt, I’m sure you have a lot more to say on this.)[/li][li]But somebody should teach them the rudiments of journalism, like the distinction between repertorial and opinion pieces and the need for fact-checking.[/li]
But in sum, Andy, I’d have to comment that, although they’re doing a less-than-adequate job at their stated goal, while the rest of us are sitting around critiquing their shortcomings, at least they’re out there doing it. As a side note, have you tried self-marketing your column to the gay weeklies? I know of several freebies in the upper South and Atlanta has several publications. Some of the gay community and the pro-gay citizenry of the board can get you addresses, etc. Your syndicate sounds like the highway engineers I used to know who maintained that no road was needed anywhere there wasn’t one already, even though the parallel routes were overloaded. Ditch 'em.

37

Note:friedo, I’m not direciting this at you personaly. Please don’t think that.

I notice that someone says this

about a gay/lesbisn/bi/atheist/fundamentalist/morman/etc. poster at least once a month. If something is a large part of your life, you will let it show on the boards. I don’t think anyone is simply reminding us that they are anything, I think they are just letting themselves shine through. Please don’t expect anyone to put aside who they are to post here. If we all followed that rule, we would be a pretty boring bunch, wouldn’t we? :slight_smile:

38

To Friedo: I would like to humbly apologize for making reference to my wife in my previous post. I would not want to rub your nose in my straightness.

To the rest of the membership:

  1. I withdraw my defense of Friedo from an earlier post.
  2. Kindly avoid making any reference to your sexuality, marital status, interest in dating, or any other thing that might give an impression that you are anything other than a sexless, celibate individual, in any thread, to avoid giving offense to Friedo. Or not, as you choose.
39

Shut the fuck up Friedo

Go take your bigotries and slink off you stupid little shit.

40

Good god almighty, friedo, do we HAVE to start this shit again? Doesn’t it get old after awhile? If you don’t want to read what matt is saying, DON’T. OPEN. THIS. THREAD.

I don’t get it…why do people always bitch about certain kinds of threads constantly instead of just reading the ones they ARE interested in…
:rolleyes: