Thanks, I’ve reread it and see the obtusely made point.
Knowing that you don’t know everything is knowledge it itself, one that he is similarly ignorant of, so my point stands. And don’t “ummmm” me like I’m an idiot, thanks.
Hmmm. Hey, that’s not “ummm”. Totally different.
Why don’t you climb down off that cross and let Qin hang there for a while.
Jesus, there’s no reason to get all butthurt about it.
The question in the other thread was ‘why are there more openly gay people in the arts than elsewhere?’ - one reasonable answer is ‘because coming out is less difficult there than elsewhere’. Nobody ever said that absolutely none of the gay actors in Hollywood have ever suffered negative effects from coming out. You’re arguing against his point with a totally separate argument. Someone here is building a straw man, but it sure as hell ain’t me.
Look, Spanky . . . your broader point holds. You’ve brought up a lot of issues that homeboy should take to heart, and some of them are even worth pitting. But you’re shrieking about something you misunderstood in the first place, and now you’re acting like a child about it.
Do you really not grok the issue? Or are you incapable of admitting you’re wrong like a grownup? It’s gotta be one of the two . . .
As for that one, that’s pretty much a tenet of Christianity, right? That whole, “Go forth and make disciples of all nations” thing? Christians have been trying to convert the world to Christianity for about 2000 years now, and I think a lot of them would agree that the world would be a better place if everybody were Christian. So, I don’t think that statement is particularly “out there” either. He’s a devout Christian, he thinks the world would be better if more people shared his religion.
Thank you cuntface for engaging with me and pointing out the error of my ways (hope you like your nickname by the way, I like it as much as Spanky).
To be honest I’m now seriously despairing of the fact that people seem to be actively seeking to pile on me rather than engage the wider issue. Not quite clear how that happened, but it’s a trend I’ve watched on this board enough times to recognise it happening here as well, so it doesn’t really matter whether I say “you have a point, I’m wrong”, which I have done many times on other issues and have demonstrated I’m quite capable of doing, or whether I have a strop. The latter made me feel better, so that’s what I’ve done.
Whilst everyone’s piling on me rather than understanding my point about the whole gay in Hollywood bit, I do feel somewhat compelled to respond so that people get what I’m saying (it sure as hell people seem determined not to). So, why don’t I break it down and see if this helps (no doubt people will accuse me now of still not getting it, but what the hell…)
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Paul in Qatar starts a thread asking why so many gay people are creative. The terms of his OP discuss creativity in general but gives the film industry as an example.
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It is posited in the thread that there are a lot of people working in the creative fields, which is more than just people who are famous. I would agree with this on the whole, but I don’t know whether it’s just the gay people in those fields are out and visible, or if they genuinely are overrepresented.
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Qin says “I’d imagine its because homosexuals who are in a position of fame can “come out” and be more accepted than if they were say random office drudges.” The operative phrase here is “position of fame”. This would, in my interpretation, mean a famous actor, singer, performer or someone in the public eye. It also hypothesises that famous people can come out more easily than people who are not famous.
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I present a series of links stating that I don’t agree with him.
Article 1 is a well-known film star saying he would advise film stars that are gay not to come out because when he did so he felt it harmed his career, disproving Qin’s point.
Article 2 is about a moderately known start who acted for 14 years before coming out, not really suggesting it’s something that people jump at, again I believe disproving Qin’s point.
Article 3 is a counterpoint to 1, but concedes that homophobia existed at the BBC in his time there. He also agrees with Everett that there are more gay people in Hollywood who are gay than are out because of the pressure not to be. I don’t think this supports Qin’s point.
Article 4 says that in a survey of gay actors, only 57% of them felt they could be out to their agents, the people that control their careers. It cites anecdotes of people specifically advised not to come out. I think this disproves Qin’s point.
Article 5 describes the representation of LGBT individuals in Britain who are famous, but says that 1/3rd of them (from the same survey in 4) have experienced direct homophobia. 57% in this survey had also experienced homophobia from other performers in their field (suggesting that they’re not particularly readily accepted, even by the peers they’re open with). Whilst this article also says that high numbers of a actors are out to fellow performers or generally, it is not clear that these are people who are famous, or whether they are simply jobbing actors who are on a par with someone in an office, which I feel doesn’t support Qin’s point.
Article 6 is about an actor who started his career being out and then, the more famous he got, eventually retracted his previous openness about being gay and now even says he has a female partner, which I definitely think disproves Qin’s point.
Articles aside, virtually every out gay actor or singer has gone through a “straight” period previously before they were honest. Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris, even Sean Hayes, felt they couldn’t be out and wouldn’t be accepted as gay men for a significant period of time. Not to mention those who it is suspected that they are gay, but they “won’t talk about their private lives”, like Anderson Cooper (despite the fact that he has published a biography where he talks about everything else in his private life). I think these examples disprove Qin’s point. -
Somehow, using parallel universe logic, these series of article and other facts aside prove that Qin is right, and that it is easier to be a) out if you are famous and b) accepted if you are. Not only that, he is right and no-one else can see what I’m talking about, and references to gays in sports or engineering are made which have dubious relevance to what I was talking about.
So am I still wrong without all shadow of a doubt? Or have I presented a case that people are going to stop piling on and accept that I may actually have some kind of argument? Is that adult enough for you? Or should I throw in some Dalai Llama quotes?
Moving forward, I’m kind of in a bind now: either I continue participating in my pitting which I made in entirely good faith and in an attempt to genuinely engage with someone about how their approach frustrates me, or I follow my instincts which tell me this is a futile exercise now because people would rather focus on one point I made to the exclusion of everyone else as if that seems to invalidate what I say and continue to argue with me, and so stop following the thread. If I do the former I’m pigheaded, huffy and a bit suspect for not able to talk nicely with the adults, and if I do the latter then I have committed the sin of pitting someone but then running away with my tail between my legs because I couldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Any suggestions?
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My knowledge of world history has led me to conclude that making the world more Christian would not make it better by my entirely subjective (but I think quite fair and something like the UN could get behind) standard of more equitable, better social outcomes, tolerance for others and less violent. America is an overwhelmingly Christian country and has been involved in around 20 separate wars in the last 100 years (not including the world wars). China, a non-Christian country and the subject of that debate has been involved in 3 international wars since the current country’s inception in 1949. So there’s one metric where Christianity fails miserably. If you want to try and argue highly Christian countries (like most of southern Africa) are nice places then by all means do so, and I’ll be happy to tell you why I think you’re wrong.
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I get that that’s his belief, and what he said was consistent within that belief system. It doesn’t change the fact that the belief is irrational, not based on any real evidence or logic, and (as I said) asinine. Whilst I’m a moral relativist and don’t believe there is any objective system of morality that we need have reference to, that doesn’t follow that all beliefs are equally true and valid simply because they are held sincerely.
Ah, ok. It really is because you don’t grok it. No worries, then.
Disagree, and I’m not the only one. The operative is “and be more accepted”.
Your links demonstrate that homophobia and prejudice exist in the entertainment industry. They indicate that there are barriers to coming out. Yes.
But–and here’s the important part–they do not show that it is harder to come out in the entertainment industry than in any other.
No. It’s just that they don’t prove him wrong.
But they are relevant to what he was talking about.
I already said you made very good points. It’s just that when you pit someone for their awful and erroneous behavior, and your very first example is inaccurate at best, well it kinda undermines your moral high ground a little, that’s all.
I think that’s being a little disingenuous. How often, really, do you see calm and measured conversations about relative posting styles after someone’s been the target of a Pit thread?
I’m sorry you feel so picked on. It sucks to have a Pitting turned on you. But if you’re going to call someone out, you’d really best have your nose clean and your ducks in a row. When you stare long into the Pit, the Pit also stares into you.
I would go with “You’re right, sorry–that one example was probably not a good choice. Let’s look at the other shit he does that drives me nuts.”
Even if you still don’t get it.
-cuntface-
Maybe find some more of Qin’s lame ass posts and break them down. He might learn something from that. And to be honest, I understand your frustration, and I get where you are coming from; but I also never realized that Qin was just a kid, not that it should excuse all of his B.S.
Wow, poor logic ahoy.
Qin Shi Huangdi said:
Note the word *more *in there. Note the lack of assertion that it is easy for actors to be out and that they are always accepted with no consequences whatsoever. All he said is that it is *easier *to be out in many artistic careers than it is in many non-artistic careers. You are arguing with that idea, implying that you think it’s harder or at least equally difficult to be out in Hollywood as it is to be out in say, an office or an NFL team.
He never made an absolute statement, you’re the one acting like he did. All he said is that being visibly out is often easier in certain fields, and if you don’t think that’s true you’ve clearly never been backstage in a theatre. Incidentally, a ‘position of fame’ doesn’t necessarily mean screen acting, it could mean stage acting, production, directing, theatre or film design, fashion design, music, etc.
Clearly you don’t like this avenue of discussion, but that’s the way pit threads go sometimes, fartblossom. You brought it up, you described his statement as ‘complete and utter bullshit’ and ‘completely wrong’, so yeah, people are going to point out that it’s not bullshit and that your articles don’t prove any kind of point at all except that the acceptance of homosexuals is not 100 % complete in any part of the western world in 2012. If that’s all you were trying to prove, then congratulations, but that has virtually nothing to do with the subject at hand.
It may disprove the point you think QSH was making, but none of your cites addressed the point that he was actually making. Are you really incapable of seeing this? He didn’t claim that out gay celebrities were treated just the same as straight or closeted celebrities, that coming out would not affect a celebrity’s career, or that out gay celebrities are universally accepted. He just said he thought a famous person who came out would find more acceptance than a “random office drudge”. This may or may not be true, but stories about actors and surveys of actors do nothing to disprove his claim because he was talking about celebrities relative to ordinary people such as low-ranking office workers.
While your cites indicate that life isn’t perfect for gay actors, they tell us nothing about whether people who are gay, out, and famous have it better or worse than people who are gay, out, and not famous. I personally don’t find it difficult to believe that coming out might have hurt the careers of non-actors, or that the percentage of gay workers who are out to “the people that control their careers” in some non-acting fields might be well under 57%.
Beyond that, even if QSH is completely wrong about this, why on earth are you so worked up about it? He made a brief, neutrally phrased post in which he made it clear that he was speculating about a possible explanation for Paul in Qatar’s question. He didn’t even argue with you when you called his post “complete and utter bullshit”. I don’t see why this inoffensive post was included in your OP here at all, much less why you chose it as your opening example of his ignorance and ridiculousness.
If you wanted to engage with QSH then this was probably the wrong place to do it; it’s my recollection that he’s said he doesn’t even read the Pit. I note he hasn’t made an appearance here. So even if this thread went the way you wanted it to, it may not make any difference to him at all.
I have one: stop being such a whiny little bastard.
Yeah. Stop whining about a Pitting that backfired. It happens. If you can’t stand the heat, and all…
:smack: Either my memory was wrong (likely) or QSH has since changed his policy on the Pit, because he has posted in another current Pit thread.
I’ve pretty much just accepted that he’s some 40 year old dude that interrupts his video game and fap sessions with internet intellectual fap sessions by trolling you all into thinking he’s some argumentative fetus (since his age seems to go down every time you guys discuss him). “Look how dumb these liberals are! They can’t even out argue someone they think is 3 months old!”
And stop making me side with Qin! Do not want!
He will remain ignorant forever, that kinda stupid does not give up easily even with maturity.
He’s started a good number of pit threads. One amusing time was when he used to start a new thread pitting the lowest hanging fruit he could find seemingly every time the last one had dropped off of the front page.
Soldier Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians For Sport
Pitting the National Socialist Underground
Man Beats Six-Year Old Stepson To Death
Good Riddance Warren Jeffs
Nothing says you’ve got balls of brass like pitting Nazis.