Well, irrespective of who is a ‘real man’ or not while being gay, your Billy Sipple’s would be killer was a middle aged woman, who was holding a pistol that wouldn’t fire. That’s hardly the slam dunk of a 'real man’you are trying to make it. Didn’t bother to read the other one.
Best wishes,
hh
You might want to be careful here: IIRC sexuality was different in those days and it wasn’t so much the sex of your partner as whether you penetrated or were penetrated.
Her gun would (and did) fire, but not accurately. But Sipple had no idea how accurate or inaccurate her pistol was; he simply saw it and lunged at her. A person with a gun is a person with a gun, regardless of gender and age. It takes major balls to do what he did.
‘Didn’t bother to read the other one’?
That’s pretty slack.
[QUOTE=the Wikipedia article cited above]
Reacting instinctively, Sipple lunged at the woman, Sara Jane Moore, just as her finger squeezed the trigger. While the gun did go off, the impact was enough to deflect her aim and cause the bullet to veer wide of its mark.[5] The bullet hit John Ludwig, a 42-year-old taxi driver. Ludwig survived.[6]
[/QUOTE]
Ask John Ludwig if her gun was dangerous or inoperative.
This thread is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that Audie Murphy was gay. When my university’s LGBT club has their week long celebration in October, I’ve never seen Audie Murphy’s picture along side other supposedly famous LGBT individuals (some of which I think the evidence for them being gay or bisexual is dubious at best). In fact, when I google “Audie Murphy gay” this thread is the 4th hit on the list. I admit that I don’t really know everything, but I have a hard time thinking Audie Murphy’s sexuality as gay was something “every fool” knew.
Distinguished gays in the U.S. military go back at least as far as the Revolutionary War. Baron von Steuben (who actually was not a Baron or even an von) was pretty openly gay- had been expelled from the Prussian army over a homosexual scandal- and was considered by no less than George Washington one of the greatest things ever to happen to the Continental Army for instilling European discipline and training them in the modern battle tactics and time-saving musket loading of the Prussian army.
No idea if the “Baron”'s preferences played a role in the design of his memorial, but it’s located across the street from White House in Lafayette Square and is easily one of the most homoerotic monuments in the U.S… Picture.
How they thought of it then really has no bearing on anything.
For the record, Alexander had a long term male companion who was as much a romantic and emotional partner as a sexual one. He had “wives” for political reasons, but his real spouse was Hephaestion.
I notice that the trend of this thread has been to limit “real men” to those who have served in military combat. Is it possible to be a real man with having been in the military?
Given who the OP is arguing with, I doubt even Dave Kopay would be a “real” enough man for his discussion.
‘That’s pretty slack’…why?
Is this for a grade, or is my pay going to increase…? Have you done me some great service that requires me to repay you, and reading the other link is your specie?
More to the point, however, would be to say ‘why should I read something I don’t care about?’
And, everybody’s getting their underwear in a bunch for no good reason. I’m just saying that it’s not world class heroics that Sipple promoted. It was good, and brave, but, in that situation, jillions of others would do the same thing, reflexively.
I said it isn’t a slam dunk: I didn’t say he was a simpering little bitch.
Now, everybody, go sit down, grab some chocolate, and turn on the TV, and relax.
hh
Think of all the thousands of gay men who were kicked out of the military, during DADT, and especially earlier. They weren’t kicked out for being bad soldiers or for not being “real men,” but for being gay.
BTW, what are the cites for Alexander being gay??
hh
Absolutely. But to most people, being in combat, along with some other dangerous jobs like fireman and policeman, is the most prominent example of the kind of toughness and strength of character that indicates a “real man.”
The kind of people who claim that gay men aren’t “real men” are also usually people who think of themselves as patriotic, and venerate the military, so it’s especially damning to these peoples’ rhetoric to bring up examples of gay men who would otherwise be the kind of men they’d greatly admire.
I think that being tough is only one part of being a “real man” - you also have to be compassionate, thoughtful, charitable, respectful, and able to see the good in other people even if you don’t agree with them. But, for many people, “real man” just equals “hard-assed” and, rather than trying to change those peoples’ ingrained notions of masculinity, it’s better just to show them that gay men can be hard-assed motherfuckers too.
I always assumed he was a top…
Whoa! What kind of “instruction” is going on there?
Except that a huge number of people who think “real men” can’t be gay also think that homosexuality is unnatural, so would not believe that sexual identity is based on culture. So I don’t think they’d take the easy way out and say “but sexuality was different then: since cultural values are relative, back then it was possible to be a real man and not be homosexual, but not today”.
Plus, men having sex with men is totally gay.
It’s an extremely complicated matter. Bisexuality carried no stigma at the time SO LONG AS you were never ever the penetrated; if you had sex with an equal then essentially you could dry hump all you wanted, with a slave you could do whatever you wanted to, but of course you were still expected to marry and beget children. Alexander’s father Philip is known to have enjoyed the sexual company of boys and men, but his primary interest was women, while Alexander on the other hand seemed to like men far more than women.
His dearest friend was Hephaestion and their love for each other was legendary. There are many stories of Alex’s regard for him- for example, when Alexander received the family of the conquered emperor Darius II they entered his tents and, seeing Hephaestion ,who was taller and more “kingly” to the Persian concept, they mistook him for Alexander and prostrated themselves before him. Several people gasped and a few laughed at their faux pas, but Alexander put his arms around Hephaestion and said “Don’t worry, he’s also Alexander”, basically saying “he’s as much a part of me as I am”. An ancient joke said that “the only battle Alexander ever lost was between Hephaestion’s thighs”, implying they went all the way.
Alexander referred to Hephaestion as his Patroclos, from the friend and lover of Achilles. Alexander was a huge fan of the Iliad and the Odyssey and slept with a copy of them under his bedding, and he would certainly have known of the homoerotic nature of the Achilles:Patroclos relationship.
They were not a monogamous couple. Later Alexander fell for a eunuch sex-toy of the late Persian emperor Darius II and he became not only Alex’s concubine but frequent consort. His men approved; when Bagoas won a dancing contest and Alex decided to show some propriety by not kissing him on the lips as he gave him his prize his men shouted “Kiss him! Kiss him! Go on!”, and he did to their applause. Bagoas was never an advisor or anything more than a sex-toy (literally a sex slave) but he seems to have been extremely enamored of him, though Hephaestion was his first and greatest love.
Alexander married at least two women. The first was Roxanne, an Afghan- a diplomatic alliance undertaken because then as now Afghanistan with its countless caves and nomadic warriors was damned near impossible for an outsider to subdue and he needed an alliance with a very powerful clan. The second was Stateira, the daughter of the former emperor Darius II, which cemented his claims to the Persian Empire; Hephaestion married Stateira’s sister so that their children would be blood to Alexander’s, basically as close as he could come to having kids with Hephaestion.
When Hephaestion died Alexander very nearly went mad. He killed the doctors who had treated him (even though he was generally known for mercy and there wasn’t much the doctors could have done), he went into a deep depression, he ordered the best embalmers and constructed the largest and most elaborate and expensive funeral pyre in history- 30 stories high, hundreds of ships and chariots and gilded everything, something so expensive that even Alexander was considered nuts to pay for something that excessive. It took months to build and then he burned it with Hephaestion’s mummified remains. Alexander had pretty much danced at the funeral of his father and he had lost many advisors and soldiers who were close to him but this was when his men feared for his sanity, and his own life began a sharp decline after Hephaestion’s death: he drank more, was more reclusive and morose, and never stopped crying for Hephaestion.
When he died at least one of his two wives, Roxanne, was pregnant. By some accounts they both were, but accounts agree that Roxanne promptly murdered Stateira and her son, born a few months after his death, was his only legitimate child. (There were accounts of others but mainly from people seeking some claimant to rally around as his empire quickly fell apart; they even placed his mentally retarded brother on the throne in a futile attempt to hold his dominions together.)
I don’t know, but apparently it involves a riding crop and a helmet.
I laughed out loud at the name “Roxanne”. I had no idea that name went back to ancient times.
Word. thought it was just going to be a phallic symbol or something. That is borderline porn.
.jpg){kind=link}