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I admit that in my younger days, I avoided a lot of situations mentioned in the thread for fear that someone might perceive me as "gay". I actually used to be a competitive bodybuilder (almost 30 years ago) but had an epiphany during my last contest where I became extremely uncomfortable posing on a stage in a speedo when 75% of the audience are other males. I am a very straight male and have absolutely nothing against any LGTBQ person and don't have any "internal" issues, but just the thought of those days makes me quiver.
BTW, I do wear pink dress shirts/Polos to work cause my wife said that color looks good on me....lol
Humans are curious. It makes no difference to my life how your day is going, but if I find myself next to you and ask how your day is going, is that a problem?
This is the worst analogy ever if you're trying to make a salient point. There's nothing curious about idle "howyadoin'"s because in 99.5% of these interactions the asking party couldn't care less about the answer. On the other hand, you're right, it is curiosity that drives one to categorize people as gay or straight, but I go back to my original question: what does feeding this curiosity accomplish? I repeat, as did another poster here, the only way in which someone's being a gay or not matters is if you're choosing a potential mate. Furthermore, the state of my day is not nearly as socially, politically and societally contentious as one's sexual orientation.
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I don’t think it’s a big deal or a negative to be curious if the neighbor living with another guy is gay.
And I didn't say it was either of those things. I merely suggested that a question should be asked about the reasons you feel the need to know or, worse, speculate about it. If it's benign curiosity, sure, whatever. But often it isn't. And my pointing this out has nothing to do with wanting to be offended on behalf of others.
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I suppose in my experience I don’t think it’s a big thing, but maybe others less comfortable with either sharing their sexuality or being around someone with a different lifestyle can be triggered and act differently. Shrug
You've hit the nail on the head there. To you it's not a big deal, but many other people make these assumptions about others with malice aforethought.
No, and I'm not sure how anything I wrote would have caused you to come to that conclusion.That couldn't possibly have been caused by the fact that the majority of men or women who frequent gay bars are not, in fact, straight, could it?You're confusing definition and identification and completely misstating my point. Here, I'll make it easy for you:
Two guys sharing an apartment - it's none of anyone's business if they're gay or not, because this information doesn't impact anyone but these two guys. If you feel the need to define them as gay or not, I feel the need to ask why.
I don't think anyone is saying it is "their business" OR that they would feel a need to ask. Why do YOU think that?
Seriously. We make internal judgements/opinions about everything around us, all day long. It's called being HUMAN. Read the book BLINK if you think otherwise. It is how we live, how we learn, how we get by in the world.
This thread was about a stupid sentence in a book/article that was clearly written to get attention. It was an absurdity, and because of that it does what it was intended.
The thread is way way off course. The original point was simply nonsense from the start.
I don't think anyone is saying it is "their business" OR that they would feel a need to ask. Why do YOU think that?
If you're going to interject yourself into a side conversation that you weren't part of in the first place, at least have the common courtesy to unwind said conversation back to its origin. It's really not hard - this thread is barely five pages long. But because I'm feeling magnanimous today, I will re-quote the post that I was responding to here:
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Originally Posted by ocpaul20
OK, so maybe we examine what we think 'defines' someone to be gay then. How do we make a judgement that one person might be gay and another not? How do we look at two men walking together and decide if they are gay or not? Two men sharing an apartment together - are they gay? How do we determine this?
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Seriously. We make internal judgements/opinions about everything around us, all day long. It's called being HUMAN. Read the book BLINK if you think otherwise. It is how we live, how we learn, how we get by in the world.
Making internal judgments and asking others about their methodology for "defining" people are two different things, don't you think?
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The original point was simply nonsense from the start.
If you say so. I, on the other hand, have seen numerous posts in this very thread that validate the author's point.
What I'd personally like to know is how many people in this thread actually read the article in the OP. Something tells me the answer is quite a fair bit below 100%. The topic of gay perception isn't germane to the article's point (which is: it's difficult to make friends as adults) at all - it's just a blurb within it. OP just ripped it out of context (not to mention hyperinflated with words like "terrified", which were not in the article) for what reasons we may never know.
For what it's worth, homohysteria as a phenomenon is actually a thing that exists and was proven to deserve a closer study. Not by Franco, but by a British Sociologist called Eric Anderson.
Last edited by highlanderfil; 08-04-2022 at 09:16 AM..
If you're going to interject yourself into a side conversation that you weren't part of in the first place, at least have the common courtesy to unwind said conversation back to its origin. It's really not hard - this thread is barely five pages long. But because I'm feeling magnanimous today, I will re-quote the post that I was responding to here:Making internal judgments and asking others about their methodology for "defining" people are two different things, don't you think?If you say so. I, on the other hand, have seen numerous posts in this very thread that validate the author's point.
What I'd personally like to know is how many people in this thread actually read the article in the OP. Something tells me the answer is quite a fair bit below 100%. The topic of gay perception isn't germane to the article's point (which is: it's difficult to make friends as adults) at all - it's just a blurb within it. OP just ripped it out of context (not to mention hyperinflated with words like "terrified", which were not in the article) for what reasons we may never know.
For what it's worth, homohysteria as a phenomenon is actually a thing that exists and was proven to deserve a closer study. Not by Franco, but by a British Sociologist called Eric Anderson.
This thread is not about defining methodology. Or defining anyone for that matter. You seem to want to turn it into something else. I am simply trying to keep it to the original topic. Get over yourself with your condescension.
Based on some of the comments I've read/skimmed here and my own experiences, I think there's at least some truth to the homo-hysteria idea. There are so many "things" like this out there that it's too hard to keep track. Just try to live life well as best as you can. This is good for nerdy type television entertainment. Ironically, I think this has affected me somewhat.
The fact that there is hysteria for someone being homosexual means we live in a world that continues to be at least somewhat prejudice to lgbtq basically
25 years ago, I was on a flight to Australia with my lifelong travel buddy. Drinks were free and he was determined to get everyone's share. While standing at the galley, he noticed that an obviously gay man was getting far better service than him, so he told the gay stewards a "little white lie".
A bit later I was sitting at my seat when one of the stewards came by, smuggling a large bottle of champagne to me "for later". I was mystified but played along and thanked him profusely. Soon, my buddy showed up, drunk, and I asked what this was all about? He said that he told them we were on our honeymoon, and from then on, they treated him like a king.
We were laughing like hyenas when they reappeared with steak & lobster from first class and took away our SpaghettiOs. An Aussie guy seated near us had eavesdropped on our convo and jokingly asked if he could join us in a three-way marriage. I was mildly embarrassed but realized that we would never see any of them again. A few days later, we shared the champagne (and story) with a couple of Aussie ladies we met by our hotel pool.
We still laugh about it, and still travel together about once a year (for more than 50 years now). His girlfriend hated to travel and mine still had 4 kids at home.
Fun times!
Last edited by Futuremauian; 08-05-2022 at 10:32 PM..
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You're confusing definition and identification and completely misstating my point. Here, I'll make it easy for you:
We make internal judgements/opinions about everything around us, all day long. It's called being HUMAN. Read the book BLINK if you think otherwise. It is how we live, how we learn, how we get by in the world. 
An Aussie guy seated near us had eavesdropped on our convo and jokingly asked if he could join us in a three-way marriage. 
I was mildly embarrassed but realized that we would never see any of them again. A few days later, we shared the champagne (and story) with a couple of Aussie ladies we met by our hotel pool.
