I usually never come back to a thread after I say 5000, but I have to this time:
“Into the Woods” is my favorite musical ever. I’m sure my mother wondered about my sexuality when I was a 16 year old who was playing showtunes full blast, all the while singing them (girl parts too - especially the witch):
I caught them in the autumn in my garden one night.
They were robbing me!
Raping Me!
Rooting through my rudebega!
Raiding my arugula!
I worked so damn hard to get those tunes out of my head. Now, I’m screwed for the next month. Thanks, gobear. Hell, I’m so screwed with those tunes in my head right now, I may have to just go see the new revival with :shudder: Vanessa Williams. She’s no Bernadette Peters, that’s for sure.
Somehow, my sig seems pertinent to the thread…
(BTW, I’d really rather people didn’t use c–t unless they’re in the middle of hot sex and it’s the only word that will come to mind to explain what they want.)
Okay, thread just got a little more gay. Lesbian posting here.
I read the OP and then filtered down through most of the messages up until now.
I don’t know that I would immediately jump on Phlip for his comments. My first thought upon reading the OP was not that Phlip hated homosexuals - it was that “familiarity breeds contempt.”
I think Phlip read a bunch of threads where Esprix talked about being gay or related the OP to being gay or homosexuality. So now Phlip is thinking, “Man, this guy posts whenever there is the slightest connection to homosexuality.” So he reads a thread and sees homosexuality mentioned and thinks, “Oh boy, here comes that Esprix guy.” And boom - there’s Esprix. Let’s say this happens 1 or 2 more times. Pretty soon, for no damn good reason at all, Phlip has contempt for Esprix simply because Phlip finds him predictable. It’s contempt.
I think Alice Miller said this: Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings.
Now I think it’s been said (I think even by Esprix) that Esprix can be a bit of a one-trick pony where this topic is concerned. The difference is that most of us don’t look upon that fact with contempt for Esprix.
I don’t think it’s particularly useful or powerful to come back at Phlip and say things like, “You must want Esprix.” In some weird way, it’s an attempted insult that basically says, “You’re a man and you want to sleep with a man.” Now, I know that it is said to Phlip specifically because the expectation is that it will bother Phlip in particular and that we don’t think it should. But I still think it’s…uncomfortable…or just doesn’t sit right with me that this is supposed to egg someone on.
**My conclusion:
Phlip, careful where you point the contempt - it sometimes backfires. You may not be a homophobe but being filled with contempt is not a great alternative.**
I hope this makes sense to someone other than myself.
(Excerpted from “Carefully Taught” by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the musical South Pacific; I found no copyright data but believe the estates of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II retain copyright.)
dalovindj, it’s rutabaga (a.k.a Brassica napus v. napobrassica), not rudebega.
Unfortunately, I think it takes the intelligence of a root crop* to claim that demeaning/racist language can be harmlessly recycled. It doesn’t matter how pure of heart you think you are - as this thread shows, you won’t get away with it.
*I’m not being judgmental - I have the greatest respect for root crops.
Um, at the risk of perpetuating this already-probably-too-long thread, I have a question to ask the gay Dope community about the use of the word “gay.” I completely understand that it can be offensive when used as a synonym for “bad,” but what about when it is used to describe something that exhibits traits commonly thought of as queer? Okay, I understand that “queer” is a subjective term and that the population of gay people in this country run a complete gamut of identities, but maintstream America (or whereever) is more likely to identify, I dunno, say, showtunes with the homosexual community than, say, rugby. Okay, maybe not rugby. NASCAR, or something. I’m not saying it’s right, and I would completely support someone who says that this kind of silliness is stereotyping. However, it is sort of a mainstream thought. So, okay, basically, my question boils down to this:
If I were to see, for example, the Barbara Streisand Complete DVD Collection for sale on Amazon, and described it as “completely gay,” would that be offensive? Personally, I tend not to think this way, but I’ve heard things like that so described, and I wonder if homosexuals, as a rule, are offended by it…
The man knows his rutabagas and his echidnas? Madness.
Say, I’ve got a semi-serious proposal – any minority group which wishes to retire an insult has to come up with a replacement insult so as not to chop at our already truncated language. As in – Whoa! Not all gay men are unmasculine. You mean swish!
By the way, we still get to use cretin, moron, idiot and lame. Oh, and niggardly, spic and span, and chink in the armor. Quick, before the disabled get their act together and make lame an offensive term to the fall-prone.
You know what I consider the most annoying thing that Esprix, Scott Evil and a few other posters to this thread do?
They sign their posts.
Esprix
-s.e.
Hey, your name is right over there in the left-hand column. Don’t be redundant. Your keyboards will wear out early from excessive use, and then where would we all be? Save those keystrokes for the witty reparte, please.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by reprise *
**I am now stuck with a mental picture of Esprix in spandex with a velvet cape, defending the universe with his supershowtune™ powers. **
[/QUOTE]
This is all funny assed shit!! All I get from Philp’s original post is that he has created a gay bashing/loving contest between hetero and homosexual communities. There must be some motive to his posts other than his intended question. Maybe he gets some sort of weird, kinky pleasure knowing he is putting gays on the defensive and really is questioning his own sexual preference. Who knows…but you all rock as I haven’t laughed like this in years. Just reprise’s post painted this weird image of the stereotypical gay guy. Like in those 70’s action hero cartoons where at the beginning he stands on a tall building with his name announced loudly by a deep throated narrator.
“It’s SKIPPY the WonderQueer!! Here to save the gay universe from the clutches of the evil and corrupt Straights of the World!!” theme music to some gay musical in the background
Sorry, but I’ve always signed my posts on this and my other message boards, one of which I’ve belonged to for over two years, with the offensive “- s.e.” No one’s had a problem with it before you, honey.
The “Philip wasn’t so bad with his questioning” camp.
The “lets hijack this into some verbal-masturbatory-parody” camp.
The “lets make sense of this whole thing” camp.
The “Philip can go to hetero hell” camp.
The “blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah…” camp.
The “WHO GIVES A FUCK and god WHY did I read all this blather” camp.
I’m with the latter of the group. If something bothers you ignore it, people. People are the way they are and that rarely ever changes. I don’t really see how Philip was so bad in this thing and I respect his bowing out of it all, way more than the good part of you out there still cutting up on him. One word comes to mind here…lame…
But if he’s saying this for humorous effect and doesn’t actually walk with a limp, will y’all laugh and point and say, “Exactly!” or will you jump on him for exploiting the disabilities of others for his own humorous ends?
Watch that slope, guys…watch it VERY closely.
And if he does walk with a limp, I guess he IS lame. And I’m a silly cocksucker. But in both of our cases, those terms are merely descriptive.
I wish I had been paying more attention to this thread. I feel it’s probably too late to to make my pont in a way that will mean anything, but I feel compelled to contribute.
For the life of me, I don’t understand the like fo dalovindj and those who wish to continue using the word “gay” to mean lame or bad.
If I called someone “gay” and someone I respect and did not wish to offend told me that he was bothered by my use of the word, I’d stop using it.
If I called someone a saint and they told me that they thought it bothered them because it showed disrespect to their religion (or for whatever reason), then I would no longer use that word.
If you are so fanatically devoted to you speech patterns that they are more important to you than the actual feelings of your fellow human being, then that doesn’t speak very highly of you in my opinion.
Well, Hamadryad, I’m glad that somebody is taking the SDMB to task for not noting and condemning every single instance of bigotry that has ever occurred anywhere in the world. This oversight should be quickly corrected: Scott Kurtz is a big doo doo head.
