As a straight guy, I can’t imagine why anybody would be offended or annoyed by you, Panzerfaust. :rolleyes:
Actually, the comment was generalized, and had nothing to do with either offense, or annoyance. Being offended and annoyed by my antics is expected, as I’m generally an offensive, abrasive person. However, there have been some implications of my intolerance, which exists only in the imagination of certain people prone to towering, self-righteous displays of victimization. The distinction, for some reason, is important to me. To paraphrase an earlier comment I made - I’m not a bigot, I’m a loudmouth.
Let me posit the question to you, Panzerfaust: despite your opinion of how homosexuality comes about, do you feel it is right and moral to discriminate against someone based on their orientation? Would you vote for laws banning discrimination based on sexuality? If the answer is no, explain how that is not intolerance.
I’ve seen some people argue that its all bad environment, but who are not bigoted in any sense of the word. One does not necessarily follow from the other, it just makes the other easier to justify.
Priam, I sincerely appreciate your open-mindedness here. Thanks.
Question #1: Inasmuch as I regard anything as “right” and “moral” (I try to avoid these concepts altogether, personally), of course not, any more than it’s okay to fire me from a job, or not hire me at all, or not allow me medical insurance, or whatever, because I like tequila over whiskey, or the color green, or black coffee. To me, these preferences are of the exact same “moral” impact, which is to say, “plastic flowers on videotape”.
Question #2: If I voted, or believed that voting changed anything, I’d seriously consider it. If the proposition seemed like it would require quotas, or something along those lines, then I’d vote against it without hesitation, as that approach is just discrimination the other way, and I won’t be a part of that. However, if someone pushed Merlin’s Magic Ballot under my nose, and by punching a hole in Box B, I’d have a hand in abolishing discimination species-wide as a neurological event, I’d be all about it. And, more realistically, if I was inclined to vote and I saw a reasonable proposition to the effect you describe, yeah, I’d vote for it, no question.
The qualities I’m intolerant of are stupidity, deliberate ignorance, hypocrisy, and neophobia. Oh, and “…people prone to towering, self-righteous displays of victimization,” as above. And when it comes to those, I’m a right prick.
Panzerfaust, I’m a very experienced loudmouth myself. Thing is, you sound like you have a persecution complex.
From your first post over here, you went off about “people popping up, screaming, “BUT I’M GAY AND THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN WITH ME AND OMFG STOP CATEGORIZING MEEEEEEEE” and etc.” like they’d offended you personally, or indeed, like anybody had posted such a thing (or like your post would prevent it). And whenever somebody asks what bug crawled up your ass, you assert you’re a loudmouth, not a bigot (or a troll). Those things aren’t mutually exclusive!
The stuff in your first post characterized homosexuality as aberrant behavior - and despite your insistence that you don’t deal in right and wrong, anybody who can read would pick up on the clear implications that you think it’s wrong or deviant - and surprise surprise, not everybody liked that. Most of what you said in your second post was just plain wrong, so after that you stopped making points and just railed about the wrongs perpetuated against you.
Well, you said one of the causes of homosexuality was “poor upbringing,” and every time you’ve discussed it, you’ve said in so many words that people are gay because something is wrong with them. (Again, this seems to be based on your incorrect assumption that the role of genes is to perpetuate themselves.) And most of the rest of the time, you’ve been trying to defend yourself against the ‘intolerant’ crowd who wants to silence you, and the intolerant facts that disagree with you. Get over yourself.
I offend a lot of people and I enjoy it. But you seem to be completely incapable of realizing that you’re not offending people by telling them the truth, you’re doing it by being obnoxious and pig-headed and (factually) wrong. That doesn’t earn you any points or medals for valor. It just makes you a :wally
And somehow or another, even though he registered in June 2003, Panzer claims he and I had an argument over a year ago (that he still seems to be holding against me).
Anybody know who this guy is?
Esprix
“BUT I’M A LESBIAN AND THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN WITH ME AND OMFG STOP CATEGORIZING MEEEEEEEE”
Phew. Glad I got that out of my system. Now I can re-engage my brain here.
Seriously, I think what we do when we ask “what causes homosexuality?” or even “what causes sexual orientation” is that we ask the completely WRONG questions.
Strictly biologically speaking, there are only two kinds of sexual acts: procreative and non-procreative. Both kinds of sex exist in the animal world (including homosexuality, excellent book on that here), and non-procreative sex exists for a variety of evolutionary reasons: it provides a means of communicating dominance. It provides a means for bonding groups. In some animals it also feels good, so it’s used for pleasure, including masturbatory pleasure.
Once you get into more social animals such as primates, especially Bonobo chimps, then it gets a bit more complicated. Humans are an especially complex group so it makes sense that our sexuality has its own set of complexities-- enough to engender most of the world’s religions to set up strict rules about who with and when.
In other words, we’re trying to reduce a fairly complex system of nature and nurture and reduce it into categories such as “homosexual” and “heterosexual” that are categories that we’ve made up as sociopolitical beings, categories that are at best horribly fuzzy and ill-defined (bisexuals, anyone? People like my current wife who were fairly happily married for nine years and THEN realized they were gay? Both fairly common.)
Harvard researcher John Money has a theory that sexuality is as individual as a fingerprint, and is a combination of genetic, uterine, hormonal and infant developmental factors. (For the record, Money’s an ass, but I think he’s on to something here.) This means that sexuality is a complex system that our system of categorization simply cannot grasp.
Therefore, these categories don’t have any meaning in terms of procreative and non-procreative sex-- plenty of self-identified homosexuals procreate, even heterosexually. Plenty of heterosexuals don’t. And, to make things even more interesting, how is a heterosexual with such a huge foot fetish that they don’t even HAVE traditionally heterosexual sex with their partners “normal” and a homosexual man with a kid and a partner “abnormal”? Statistically, they’re both outside the norm. Socially, I’d say the latter is slowly becoming more accepted, and the former would probably for the most part prefer NOT to talk about his sexual fetishes, since by all appearances he probably has a fairly typical “straight” life if in reality it was anything but.
In many senses, non-procreative sex might be almost as useful for determining the success of a species procreative sex. There’s a great link on the “uncle theory” on this board but the server is slow and I’m not getting it. I’ll link it tomorrow.
FWIW, now that I’ve said I’d prefer to abolish categories, this is a good read anyway for anyone who wants the latest on sexuality research:
“BUT I’M A LESBIAN AND THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN WITH ME AND OMFG STOP CATEGORIZING MEEEEEEEE”
Phew. Glad I got that out of my system.
Seriously, I think what we do when we ask “what causes homosexuality?” or even “what causes sexual orientation” is that we ask the completely WRONG questions.
Strictly biologically speaking, there are only two kinds of sexual acts: procreative and non-procreative. Both kinds of sex exist in the animal world (including homosexuality, excellent book on that here), and non-procreative sex exists for a variety of evolutionary reasons: it provides a means of communicating dominance. It provides a means for bonding groups. In some animals it also feels good, so it’s used for pleasure, including masturbation.
Once you get into more social animals such as primates, especially Bonobo chimps, then it gets a bit more complicated. Humans are an especially complex group so it makes sense that our sexuality is exactly that-- complex enough to engender most of the world’s religions to set up strict rules about who with and when.
In other words, we’re trying to reduce a fairly complex system of nature and nurture and reduce it into categories such as “homosexual” and “heterosexual” that are categories that we’ve made up as sociopolitical beings, categories that are at best horribly fuzzy and ill-defined, if useful in a general sense. Therefore: Bisexuals, anyone? People like my current wife who were fairly happily married for nine years and THEN realized they were gay? Both fairly common occurences.
Harvard researcher John Money has a theory that sexuality is as individual as a fingerprint, and is a combination of genetic, uterine, hormonal and infant developmental factors. (For the record, Money’s an ass, but I think he’s on to something here.) This means that sexuality is a complex system that simplistic categorization cannot grasp.
Therefore, these categories don’t really have any well-defined meaning in terms of procreative and non-procreative sex-- plenty of self-identified homosexuals procreate, even heterosexually. Plenty of heterosexuals don’t. And, to make things even more interesting, how is a heterosexual with such a huge foot fetish that they don’t even HAVE traditionally heterosexual sex with their partners “procreative” and a homosexual man with a biological child and a partner “non-procreative”? But while one has procreated at least once, the latter won’t although categorically we’ve already placed them in those categories.
Additionally, in many senses, non-procreative sex might be almost as useful for determining the success of a species as procreative sex. There’s a great link on the “uncle theory” on this board but the server is slow and I’m not getting it. I’ll try linking it later.
FWIW, now that I’ve said I’d prefer to abolish categories, this is a good read anyway for anyone who wants the latest on homosexuality research:
Cripes. Sorry for the double-post. Read the last one.