That seems to tell a bit more about the listener than the speaker now, doesn’t it?
The *technical *definition? How about the *actual *definition?
I suppose asking for vinegar on my salad is right out, then.
Oh please. You do what I said and get back to me with the results, mr brave definition man.
What makes you think I’ve been offended on the behalf of anyone but myself? I am gay. I’m not going to act like I’m not offended when other members of the LGBT community are treated like dirt, because that affects me.
Your signature trick was cute. I didn’t remember saying that, but obviously I did, and it wasn’t the first or only time I identified as “100% straight”. Being that I was a little confused for the first 21+ years of my life, I said that kind of stuff a lot. I was lying to myself and to the rest of the Board. For the latter, I apologize. The former is a natural part of being raised in a heteronormative society where those of us who have homosexual desires are, by and large, taught to repress, deny and loathe them.
Of course, when you change your signature (would you really keep your signature on that quote for any reason other than to harrass me?), this post won’t make sense, and your little trick will fly under the radar forever. Again, cute.
In a larger sense, you’re right. In cases like this, though, the reality on the ground is that openly gay men are being treated like lepers just for being honest with themselves and the world about who they are. The gay man in question could have been closeted and the risk would have been the same (close enough to zero that it’s not worth counting). Or he could have been a man identifying as straight who nevertheless had sex with men on the side, which is common enough, and the risk would have been the same. In the end, though, a host is singling out someone for prejudiced, discriminatory reasons and saying “You can’t partake in this group activity to which everyone else is invited, because you’ll get your gay germs all over me, you disgusting gay.” Can you imagine what it must feel like to be him in this situation?
Because of the social and individual harm done to LGBT people, and especially gay men, in these situations, members of our society are obligated by the social contract to educate themselves at least minimally about this, so that they can treat gay men as people, not plague rats.
To be fair, it’s an archaic word which really doesn’t come up often, to the extent that we consciously avoid using it just about every time we talk about parsimony. We can’t expect everyone to know the Latin roots of every single interesting word, can we?
That dog don’t hunt. To this day, 25% of HIV+ people have no idea they’ve got the bug, and that’s with the most advanced testing, treatment and safety knowledge we’ve ever had–and that’s in the US. It follows that the third world probably has staggering rates of infection unknown to the infected, and that in (for example) the UK, where heterosexual women are at higher risk than MSM, they may not take the proper precautions or get tested because they think of HIV/AIDS as a “gay” disease.
Diabetes and high blood pressure are known or perceived to be common among much of the male African-American population. Should I avoid inviting black guys to my chocolate fondue parties, just to be on the safe side?
On a related note, who the hell throws fondue parties anymore, and why am I not being invited?
Oh, wait…
Obviously, you don’t know the lesbians I do. Or straight men, for that matter. But hey, you’re the expert, because you remember reading something in the paper, right?
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
Turns out it’s Scandinavian. And IME, it’s used quite often, but that is mainly because my mother used it as her basic word for cheap. I never made a racial connection, nor with niggle, Niger, or Nigeria. And as I pointed out, black people may have a history of suffering from lots of negative stereotypes, but cheapness really isn’t even on the radar, so it doesn’t even compute how offense comes up other than by severe ignorance coupled by blind determination to be a victim.
I’m not sure the last time a fondue party was thrown in Sub-Saharan Africa – most of the discussion here has been, naturally, in the context of the world where such parties are held. Fondue parties are (to indulge other stereotypes) the province of upper-middle-class, educated, probably white but if not white, well-educated buppie or the like people. In this world, people know or should know their status or risk level, and yet in this world, as witness Andrew “glutes of steel” Sullivan, some of them still do incredibly stupid things that could harm them or others.
C’mon man. Potentially transmissible, acquired disease vs. impossible-to-transmit conditions? Weak.
Throw your own – they are fun and easy to set up.
Unless it’s your contention that lesbians engage in penetrative, fluid exchanging anal sex as often as homosexual men do, my point remains.
I bow to the crushing power of your inexorable logic. And I say that with nary a snigger.
I think either you had an unusual experience or there has been a total generational shift. I don’t know how old you are, but AFAICR I’ve never actually heard the word vocalized, and I had never heard of it until that big hullabaloo with the DC city employee who used it.
You were talking about the spread of AIDS, which, since it is a pandemic, is naturally a worldwide issue. In a pandemic, the factors of the disease in other countries affect it here, especially in today’s smaller world.
I don’t know who Andrew Sullivan is and I am not going to do the research just to indulge your right to treat gay men like lepers. I’ll just say this: in this world, people know or should know the basic information about HIV/AIDS that has been transmitted over public channels for 20+ years.
You have not only missed the point, you’re about 10 feet left of the bullseye.
Your point remains what? Presumptive? Discriminatory? Laughable?
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
So your ignorance of basic, verifiable facts is perfectly excusable. It’s only when others are ignorant that we should heap scorn upon them.
Holy shit, I nominate this for the “best analogy of the [time period]” award. Nice job.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Jeesh this thread turned to shit fast. As for the OP:
You keep restating the question as if it was not being answered. No, I am not willing to accept that the average person would know so little about HIV. The average person is not a complete moron and, when the average person is imitating a complete moron, they should be corrected not accomodated.
Referring the the OP; there’s just too many things wring with this situation. Already stated: not all gay men have AIDS. Also already stated: saliva isn’t a very good transmission vector for HIV. But the thing that jumps out at me is that this person was worried about getting a disease from the amount of saliva that collects in a fondue mix from double-dipping. Seriously? Are we really talking massive quantities of spit. Gobs of mouth juice? If one of your companions has a penchant for spraying that much spit across the dinner table, you’d think that would be a clue not to eat with them in the future. Yeesh.
When did I say I didn’t know what the word “niggardly” meant? The aforementioned hullabaloo happened when I was 12 years old. How old were you when you started using the word?
If I’ve even implied that ignorance of the word’s meaning is “excusable”, it’s because it’s an archaic word and most people are more familiar with it as an accidental epithet than as a useful adjective. What’s the point of using a word with such a high risk of misinterpretation and such a low possible gain? Sure, we can and should shake our heads at the ignorance–I know I do. But it’s hard to stretch this thing out far enough to say that being unable to use “niggardly” freely, amounts to discrimination against users of the word. You can just choose to use a word like “cheap” or “parsimonious” and it won’t be an issue. On the other hand, if I’m treated like a leper for being openly gay, I can’t just re-closet myself and forget it ever happened.
You’re trying to equate discrimination against a word, which has no feelings or real significance other than its recently degraded semantic meaning, with discrimination against a person. I guarantee that if you treat a word like a leper, the word will not feel pain. Hell, you could write the thing out on a piece of paper and set it on fire, with nary a complaint from the lexical item.
That said, your original analogy was apt, and I agree that both reactions are equally unreasonable. I’m just saying “unreasonable” means something different for a word than it does for a real, live person.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
Basically, do these count as a time I shouldn’t have fondue or whatever?
astro-how is this anymore of a worry than someone “double-dipping” when it comes to chips and dips? So, as long as someone isn’t “double dipping”, I would assume it’s safe-at least as regards to ordinary germs like colds or whatever.
In fact, I think it’s far more likely you’d catch a cold than you would AIDS.
(And heaven forbid someone go to vacation in Montenegro!)
I think we came to the general conclusion that there was enough info out there that if a moderately educated person was going to take an alarmist stance on the perceived dangers of gay saliva that this was not an intellectually “reasonable” thing to do. However, with respect to your perception of the “average person’s” level of knowledge about the specifics of HIV transmission I think you are being wildly optimistic. I would be willing to posit that a very significant proportion of the married and/or otherwise monogamous heterosexual population of the US doesn’t pay all that much attention to the specifics of the why’s and wherefore’s of HIV beyond "don’t share needles and don’t have anal sex without a condom’.
In the average American heterosexual person’s view if they are having penis-vaginal sex with what they believe to be a strictly heterosexual, non drug taking/needle using partner, the chances of them getting HIV is extremely small, and from a risk analysis perspective they would be right. There are large numbers of people for whom the various messages about HIV over the years have become irrelevant (to their lifestyle) noise other than “gay man fluids = danger”.
If you were to take a random survey of sexually active adults ages 18-70 I think you you would find the level of awareness about the specifics of HIV transmission mechanisms is pretty low.
That’s an interesting point. Surely, though, these surveys have been taken. Got any cites for your claim here?
Even if this were true, it wouldn’t give someone reason to worry about having a homosexual at their fondue party. Nothing indicates the hostess was planning to invite everyone to shoot up and have unprotected anal sex after they’d finished eating.
Your asserting that doesn’t make it true. I can believe that many people would be worried about coming in contact with a gay man’s blood or semen, but it should be obvious that most American adults do not really believe that casual contact with gay men will kill them. If people really thought that then homophobia would be much worse than it is. We’d regularly be hearing calls for Jim Crow-style laws to protect the public from the risk of encountering the tiniest drop of “gay man fluids”.
No, the characterizations I am making re level of knowledge in specific groups are my personal impressions based on interaction with people in those cohorts. What’s more fascinating to me is that, per your request, I went to google cites to buttress my impressions, and expected to covered up with referenced studies about the level of awareness about HIV transmission hazards in the US, but there was almost nothing in the way of near term studies looking at the level of HIV transmission awareness among heterosexual US populations. There was plenty on other nations but re the US almost nothing relevant seem to be coming up. Possibly my google fu is failing me, but the lack of studies about a topic that I would imagine should be almost studied to death on a public health & public policy basis is a bit strange.
That is strange, astro. I’ll ask around at the LGBT Resource Center and the Critical Gender Studies department and see if there are any big studies, since this is now a topic of some interest to me, too.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
I gotta say I’m pretty apprehensive about sharing saliva with most people. Ick.
Apprehension about sharing saliva? Reasonable.
Thinking it applies to fondue? Unreasonable.