I agree with you Scylla. I have had a special dislike lissener ever since he called me an idiot in a Great Debate thread. I was just a newbie posting an opinion in a political thread. He called me an idiot because I expressed an opinion he didn’t agree with. I almost left SDMB because of it.
If I had been attacked like Manda Jo I probably would have.
Ditto what Zumba and Manda JO said. I too think lissener needs to chill. I don’t think he’s a bad guy-he can be funny, and very interesting.
However, he has this knee jerk reaction to label anyone who disagrees with him as a jerk, homophobe, bigot, idiot, etc etc.
If we’re supposed to be fighting ignorance, this is NOT the way to go with it!
Well, he’s back, and it seems like if two weeks go by and he’s looking to get into a pissing contest with someone again.
Rather than contaminate worthwhile threads, I’ll just respond here, until Chucklehead gets the message.
Asked a silly question in the new gay guy thread. I was curious, and I thought it would be cool if we could get some more participation for the next Iron Chef thread.
He pulls his snide little bullshit again
Also looks like he’s spoiling for a fight in the ask the white guy thread.
Both of those are in Great Debates. I don’t even want to bother with links. Same old Lissener.
Just go away. You’re not worth it.
:rolleyes:
How original. It’s like that guy who just posted question marks all the time. Yeah, everybody looked up to him.
If you’re just going to be a jerk, you should at least be professional about it and get original
For example:
Ahem:
"I hope a giant tarantula jumps on your head and sucks your brains out while you stand there grinning like an idiot.
;j "
How hard is that?
I’m going to copy this post from the latest gay guy thread in its entirety.
Now, Lissener’s reply:
That’s about as bigoted a statement as I’ve read. It contains exactly the same kind of knee-jerk generalizations that Lissener claims are so dehumanizing to groups he’s interested in.
When I started this thread, I just thought Lissener was being an ass. I’d hoped to work things out, by calling him to account for his actions. Now it is clear to me that we will not acknowledge his errors.
In his mind he has made none. Straight White Males clearly don’t merit the same consideration as other folk in his eyes.
I can see no other conclusion than unrepentant bigotry.
I’ve known people like this in my life. Usually, it’s pretty stereotypical; the redneck that hates black people, the guy that can’t stand fags. Lissener is a new one in my experience; the gay guy that hates straight white males. This explains his behavior towards me, and others.
I would have thought that having been on the cutting end of dehumanizing stereotypes and bigoted behavior would have perhaps enlightened someone so that they wouldn’t repeat the same behavior to others, so that they would learn how wrong it was to be bigoted, and at least take that positive out of a truly negative experience.
Sadly, I’m mistaken. I’m quite sure that if Lissener were a straight white male, he’d have the very prejudices he despises now.
So, I learn something else from Lissener.
Yeah, this shows that you shouldn’t judge people based on them being gay. They can be just as bigoted as anyone else. It doesen’t really matter what some people experience, only what they consider “reality”.
Hell, we’ve known this for ages already (“we” being the queer community). This is why I roll my eyes when the media begins the whole “sainted minorities” litany.
News Flash!:
We are as bad as the majority!!
Anyone who has some mistaken notion that being on the receiving end of prejudice and bigotry somehow makes us view the world in an empathetic glow of siblinghood and joy should spend some time undercover (no pun intended) in the gay community (probably the only minority community where your racial or religious affiliation won’t stick out, since we’re all types.)
I’ve known gay racists, black racists, Jewish anti-Christians, militant atheist anti-religionists, sexist gay men, sexist lesbians, disabled racists, Asian racists, Native American racists…the list has all the combinations possible.
There was one gay separatist on some of the gay political newsgroups a while back, one Ezekiel Kralin. His big plan was to create a separate gay state where none of the “straight devils” would be welcome and we’d all live in peace and harmony…under Mr. Kralin’s benevolent rule, of course. Idiot.
People like Kralin and lissener make things harder for those of us who actually realize that we have to live with the straight folks. And live in a numerically unequal situation…that’s just the way it is. While we’re working on making the culture more comfortable for everyone, bigots on both sides want the comfort to be exclusively theirs.
Well, since this is the Pit…calm the fuck down, lissener. Take your medication, do some breathing exercises, and calm down. Y’know what? My parents are straight. My brother is straight. So’s his wife. A lot of my friends, both online and off, are straight. My relatives are pretty much all straight. I live in a straight world. Here’s the kicker, lissener…so do you. If you insist on covering yourself with rhetorical sandpaper, of course you’re going to get a rough time for it. A self-fulfilling prophecy is pretty much the responsibility of the prophet who made it.
Now get a life and quit standing in the way…'k?
jayjay
Maybe I’m naive, but that realization is something of a surprise to me.
I’d kinda figured that if you hate it when people poke you, then you probably wouldn’t go around poking other people.
I guess it doesn’t work that way.
Unfortunately, no. Understand that I’m not saying “We’re all horrible, evil, racist, sexist, nasty, religionist pigs.” But it’s probably about the same proportion as it is in the general population. Being hated doesn’t instill any natural defenses against hating, I’m afraid.
I wince when the Choirs Angelic of the political Left start their Paean to the Minorities, because we don’t deserve it any more than you straight white folks do.
We’re people. It’s kind of ironic that the Great Phrase of minority acceptance “X are people, too,” almost never has its full implications thought out by the folks who use it the most. We are people, too. This means we are bad people as well as good people. 
I hate to shatter people’s illusions, but this is the place to fight ignorance…
Sorry, Scylla.
jayjay
Thanks Jayjay. I’m gonna think about this one some.
(So if you smell something burning, and hear rusty gears grinding don’t be concerned.)
Let it be said, by the way, that this realization would actually be a great aid to the struggle for minority rights. It’s often the Left’s interpretation of minorities as some sort of chaste idols that causes a lot of the resentment that fuels racism, sexism, religionism, and homophobia.
I’ve always thought that if we could just get everything out on the table instead of having to fight our way past the hordes of guilt-ridden liberal mainstreamers who keep trying to push us into the GOOD PEOPLE molds (and some of us are just as bad in trying to pull us in from our side of the fence), the case for equal rights would be a lot clearer, and a lot easier to reason out.
jayjay
Right on, Jay Jay!
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Lissener and Scylla are characters in a Rock Hudson/Doris Day flick, where the protagonists start out hating each other, then halfway through the movie fall madly in love?
Yeah, well, if either of them starts singing “Que Sera, Sera” I’m taking a hostage, I swear…
FTR, I thought lissener’s theory, from a societal point of view, had merit. SWM have, from an historical perspective, maintained the upper hand in society (and specifically Europe and the U.S.), even despite not being a representative majority in some places and times, which nods towards the “tenuous hold on the reigns of power.” And even more so, women’s groups have always taken note to the fact that men in general, straight or no, have indeed steered much of history, regardless of why or how, and that system ought to change to be a little more representative. When someone asks the question of why the gay community has been so condemned in recent history, does applying a little socio-psychology to society and history make one a de facto bigot? Or was it just the jadedness and perhaps callousness of the post stick in your craw?
Esprix
Goboy, I think that’s just you. And pass me the popcorn.
I think what made me go off on that post was the corporative tone of it. I generally have a gut-level detestation of any attempt to describe people in mass groups. The “straight white men” group as used by lissener in that post includes Pauly Shore, Scylla (I’m assuming the white part), Bill Clinton, Eugene V. Debs, V.I. Lenin, King Frederick the Great of Prussia, and my father. Is there anything that the members of that group that I named share besides being straight and white?
Similarly, “gay men” as used by lissener includes you, goboy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Alan Turing, Oscar Wilde, Caligula (most likely), me, James Baldwin, and Elton John. Again, is there any trait besides being a male who sleeps with other males that all of these people share?
I really, really want to make clear that I’m not flaming you, Esprix. I respect you immensely and I’d feel horrible if you thought I was screaming at you here. But corporative views of humanity don’t hold water except at a great distance.
jayjay
Esprix:
It would have been more accurate if Lissener had merely mentioned the perhaps boneheadely obvious fact that those in power tend to want to retain that power.
This is a truism regardless of race, sex, or sexual preference.
Instead he prefers the undisguised attack specifically at SWMs, and makes no attempt to hide his obvious contempt.
He makes generalizations about people based on race, sex, and sexual preference in the above post, and elsewhere.
In general he treats SWMs with less consideration than others.
He makes that little nasty assertion that SWMs automatically feel threatened by gay men.
SWM’s are not treated by him as equals.
That’s bigoted.
I’m not angry. I was when I just thought he was being a general asshole.
Now, I just have no respect whatsoever for the guy.
I’m not willing to let him get away with this bullshit, though.
Rather than corrupt worthwhile threads, when he attacks either myself, of his chosen taget, SWMs, I’ll just chronicle it here.
Either he’ll figure it out and stop, or, if he keeps it up, like most trolls and bigots he’ll lose all credibility and be laughed at every time he posts. It will stop being fun for him.
Either way is fine with me.
Goboy:
Actually this feels more like a musical than a movie to me.
All right.
My first impression was that Scylla’s post was just another lame, self-deluding attempt to resurrect this dead horse of a thread (his third such lonely attempt), but then when I saw that several other people, including a friend whom I asked for an objective opinion, were victims of the same misunderstanding, I decided to respond—to clarify, not to defend.
I’m sorry that I dashed off my post in such a way that it came of as angry, or sourgrapey, or as a personal, specific attack on Scylla—which is how he took it, to my utter bafflement. (Sorry, Scylla: I really spend very little time thinking about you, let alone expend any energy on subtle attacks. It’s only your own very limited little world that revolves around you, not the real world. :rolleyes: ) I honestly wrote it with a kind of “sociological” detachment, and was speaking about the Straight White Male purely as a cultural construct, not about any specific individual SWM.
Though there are few arguments less compelling and more cliché than “But some of my best friends are ________,” I’ll nonetheless indulge in it, for the record, since jayjay has already gone there.
So. For the record: I’m known as someone who has a talent for making friends, odd as that may seem. I’ve been told by many people that they envy my ability to just strike up an immediate camaraderie with whatever stranger I find interesting. My birthday parties are an annual event among my various circles of friends because they can always be sure to meet other very interesting people they might otherwise never have met. As self-serving as that sounds (and certainly is, to some extent), it really is more or less true.
Nonetheless, in my very large circle-of-circles-of-friends, I have only two close friends who are gay men, and they’re both back in Chicago. I have yet to meet any interesting gay men in Seattle. Among my, say, five very closest friends, four of them are straight white men; I was best man in three of their weddings. My very closest friend in the world is a straight white woman (yes, I know, shades of Will and Grace).
So the misinterpretation of my post as indicative of a bigotry, or even a hatred, toward white males in general, is just that: a misinterpretation. Since Scylla, the only Doper I know of who has a very deep-seated, personal axe to gnaw with me, is not the only person who labors under this misinterpretation, I must conclude that this is my fault, and that I did not express myself clearly.
That said, of course I meet many straight white men for whom I am—individually—unable to develop any respect (as I’m sure is the same for all of you), I honestly I don’t think I judge any of them—individually—with any prejudice. I’m the same with gay white men, gay black men, straight Asian women, gay Hispanic women, straight Basque males, etc.
The Straight White Male (note the capitals) I was referring to in my initial, clumsy post on this topic, is the cultural entity that holds political and cultural power in this country (indeed, in most of the Western world, AFAIK), not any specific individual who may fall under that rubric.
So again, Scylla, this was so not about you, your continued, transparently disingenuous, pathetic attempts to keep this unseaworthy boat afloat notwithstanding: your response should quite obviously have been made in the thread in which I posted my “theory.” Instead of continuing the debate and responding with substantive challenges to it, you dragged it over here so you wouldn’t have to produce anything beyond hollow whingeing.
If you have a serious disagreement with my theory, which seems perfectly sociologically sound to me, and which I’m perfectly willing to debate, please do so in the original thread.
My practice till now has been to ignore this thread and snicker smugly as I watch it slip slowly down and down and disappear below the horizon no matter how many times you childishly (and amusingly) dredge it back up to watch—no doubt with a solitary tear, reflecting a wavering cathode blue, rolling slowly down your cheek—as it founders and sinks once again to Page 2. But since there seemed to be something of a consensus regarding my unclarity, I decided to respond here. Once. I’m not interested in debating this in the Pit: until it’s resolved, or we agree to disagree, it still belongs in Great Debates.
And jayjay, if you’ve read enough of my posts, you’ll see that I agree with you 104% (that is, I’d venture to say I feel even more strongly about sweeping generalizations than you do). In fact, when such discussions have, in the past, included both Scylla an me, invariably they feature Scylla defending such generalization, and me trying patiently to explain to him how such generalizations have no basis in reality, and that he had a long way to go before he was free of such blatant dehumanizations of those “other” than him. See this thread, for one (starting about a third of the way down, where I come in and our dialogue begins), in the OP of which (whose overwhelming sense is that Scylla is absolutely unable, despite some noble attempts, to shake the bone-deep conviction that blacks and whites, and gays and straights , are irrevocably separate, and that he’s utterly unable to see these terms as artificial social constructs falsely dividing the human race) Scylla says (emphasis mine):[ul]* "As a non green [“green” is the trasparently disingenuous euphemism he comes up with so he can pretend he’s not really talking about blacks.] one needs to be sensitive that a green person may see things a little differently and be touchy on issues. . . .
“If you are green, I think you have to remember that you are always on stage when issues of amphibioussness, er, greenness (sorry,) are at hand and behave accordingly.”[/ul]And in which I say:[ul]“Needless to say, I’m as subject to knee-jerk generalization as the next human, so if you combed through my entire body of SDMB posts you’d probably be able to find me doing such a thing, but I’d hope that if it were pointed out to me I’d acknowledge it and use it as reminder of my responsibility to be more diligent about such impulses.”[/ul]And this thread, which was dedicated to what the OP perceived as Scylla’s bigotry, in which Scylla defends himself, in my opinion, very weakly; and in which he writes:[ul] I picture myself walking into a gay deli and ordering a tuna sandwich.
"‘Did he say “TUNA?”’ somebody shouts.
“Next thing you know I’m running down the street chased by a bunch of irate people.*[/ul]And in which he also says, in response to Hastur’s *”. . . The spectrum of diversity within a group is too broad to catagorize":[ul]"Don’t make me laugh. You are obviously wrong. There are differences and in generalizing it is valid to describe them. Take somebody who is leading a “Biker gang” lifestyle and drop them into a formal black tie dinner, and tell me that these differences won’t be apparent.
"Take your average Brooklyn Irishmen, and set him next to some Masai tribesmen, and tell me you can’t make a valid generalization.
"The BSM *[Bondage-Sado-Masochism, I assume] *lifestyle of both gays and straights is very similar in Northern California (regardless of sexual preference) Your basic Harlem black guy isn’t going to have a lot of common ground or share the same mores as basic Wasp Prep school attendee.
“I have a real estate agent as a client who has an adage. ‘Follow the Gays.’ Why, because ‘the gay lifestyle,’ as he knows it, follows a pattern. Gay people move into an underutilized area and reform it. They fix up the houses, rejuvenate the parks, improve the downtown, open interesting stores, and add a lot to an ailing community. This makes it desirable, and real estate values go up. This has occured in Hoboken, and Key West that I have seen personally, and indeed is occuring all throughout certain communities in America. Once the place starts being really popular, it stops being cool, and the gays move out, selling at the top of the market, and moving elsewhere to start again.”*[/ul]And this thread, in which Scylla demonstrates how cavalierly he tosses about such terms as bigot and Nazi.
And Scylla, this—"[lissener] makes generalizations about people based on race, sex, and sexual preference in the above post, and elsewhere."—is an outrageous and boldfaced LIE, which of course is why you don’t link to any illustrations of it.
And again, I honestly believe that the “theory” I was attempting to elucidate remains valid, though I failed to communicate it clearly. I therefore offer to try to restate it more clearly, in its home thread, if there is any real interest in debating it.
Lissener:
I didn’t think it was personal attack on myself. I thought, and still do think that it shows your contempt for SWMs as a whole, quite clearly.
Suppose with sociological dertachment I drew a caricature of the stereotyupical gay guy, lisp, limp-wrist, etc. What would you think of that. It’s not sociological detachment, it’s bigotry, bud.
[quote]
Since
Scylla, the only Doper I know of who has a very deep-seated, personal axe to gnaw with me, is not the only person who labors under this
misinterpretation, I must conclude that this is my fault, and that I did not express myself clearly.
[quote]
Actually I had a great deal of respect for you until your unprovoked attack in Stoid’s thread, and your disingenuous nastiness in the gun thread. Your actions have changed my opinion.
Again, try it differently. Let me draw a stereotypical picture of a drug-dealing, gangbanger and refer to that as the “Black male.”
It would be a stereotypical generalization, and it means you’re bigoted if that’s how you view SWMs in general. That doesn’t make it better, Lissener. It makes it worse.
Yes, I know. That’s why this thread is about you.
No. I have too much respect for Esprix and what he’s done to fuck-up his thread.
That’s nice. I’m in awe of your self-confidence and superiority. I really don’t care where you’d like to debate whatever subject. There’s lot’s of nice and interesting and courteous people who argue sincerely. I see no reason to waste my time with you until and unless you demonstrate you’re worth it.
I don’t even really want to hear your rationalizations anyway. You were wrong. You refuse to admit it. Whatever.
I’ll simply ignore you until you attack me or another unfairly, and then I’ll document it here. You’ll either stop or you won’t. That’s your problem.
As for the rest, where you catalogue my missteps.
What’s your point?
I’ve done lots of things that were wrong. I’ve had attitudes, and I’ve held opinions that I learned were wrong. I’ve hurt people through these mistakes.
No doubt, I will continue to make mistakes. When I becoime aware of them, I strive to understand what I have done wrong. I acknowledge my mistake, make amends if I can, determine to do better next time, and then move on. In cases where I have found myself to be wrong I have always apologized.
You have said that I do not, and have so far refused to provide a cite. You just walked away from your accusation.
I don’t understand your motivations for bringing this up. I had thought it was a closed issue. I had apologized for the things I’d done wrong, and I’ll be more than happy to do so again. I have sincerely held no grudge from those exchanges, and as I’ve said held a pretty high opinion of you up till recently when you forced me to reevaluate it.
I don’t expect it to be thrown in my face every time I have a disagreement with somebody, and especially not by somebody who accepted my specific apology after putting me through the wringer about it.
If your motivation is to say “Look, I’m not the only bad one. Scylla has been bad too,” what do you think that proves?
I’m flawed. No doubt. However, I acknowledge it and strive to improve. You’re just the same. But, as you say, this isn’t about me and my behavior. This is about you.
If you want to beat on me go start another pit thread. That’s fine with me.
Actually, the evidence is right here in this thread. I stand behind that statement.
Actually, I beleive you honestly do believe your little theory. You’ve made your feelings about SWMs perfectly clear. You hold them, as a group, in contempt.
WOuld I disagree with the concept that power structures seek to preserve themselves? Of course not. It’s ludicrously obvious.
Your “elucidation” of this simple self-evident truth sheds no new light on this fact other than your own personal prejudices.