Literal Homosexual Steamroller

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Stush
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Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Stush » Tue Feb 25, 2014 8:18 pm

With the latest news from Uganda and Arizona, I felt I had to make a bit of a rant on this topic. I posted it on my tumblr blog thingy, but i'll post it here, too.


I’ve been an idiot lately, i’ve been reading the comment sections of news articles. It is always fun to find out that there’s people out there who have all the same attributes as me, but for some reason they turned out broken in some way.

Remember when you were a kid, and someone told you that girls have cooties? And when you first heard about kissing, or sex, you probably thought “Eww, That’s gross?”

You thought that because you were a kid, you didn’t know any better, You were right, sex is sort of gross! But humans do a lot of gross things for fun. But you probably stopped thinking that once you grew up, because you weren’t a kid anymore.

The problem is, there’s a really large section of the human population who keep thinking this way into their old age, now, of course they don’t think it about a man and a woman having sex, because that’s normal, of course! But apparently if a man and another man love eachother and have sex, “Well, that’s just gross! Ew, it’s so icky!”

These people literally have the mind of a child when it comes to homosexuality, they refuse to grow up and act like adults, and society accepts it, we say they just have different “values”, we allow them to say that there’s something inherently completely different between homosexuality and heterosexuality. But what’s so different?

They’ll say that heterosexual sex creates babies, and that’s why homosexual sex doesn’t make sense. But what percentage of heterosexual intercourse actually ends up producing a baby? It can’t be that high. Or every couple would have, what, hundreds of babies? So can that really be used as a reason.

They say that it spreads disease. But heterosexual sex spreads disease, kissing spreads disease, hugging can spread disease! Humans are pretty dirty, bacteria-filled creatures! You can prevent all of this just by being careful and taking preventative measures. Or you can ban all human contact, of course.

Look at this comment by Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda, “They’re disgusting. What sort of people are they?” he said. “I never knew what they were doing. I’ve been told recently that what they do is terrible. Disgusting.”

Doesn’t that sound a lot like the way you first thought when you learned about sex as a kid? How is it any different? You managed to grow up from thinking that.

What i’m getting at is, if you have a big problem with homosexuality, you’re being a child, thinking in childish ways, Stop it, you’re an adult. The world needs to tell people who think this way to grow up, it’s not a legitimate point. It’s nothing but ignorance.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Angryoptimist » Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:10 am

I think it's pretty childish that these fools seem to think that people have to justify their totally harmless sex lives to anyone. Folks ought to demand right back. "I think that sex between bigots is disgusting; justify your right to bigot sex."

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Classic » Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:37 am

Bigot sex leads to bigot babies.
Bigots raising children leads to new bigots?

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Mothra » Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:13 pm

Cross-posted from the Arizona Is A Blasted Hellscape thread:



Kind of cathartic.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Mothra » Wed Mar 26, 2014 8:25 pm

Alright so I'm kinda in the process of maybe getting into a good ol' fashioned Internet Fight with a guy who commented on a friend's story, referring to transsexuals as suffering from "gender identity dysmorphia." I mean, my gut reaction is to call him an asshole for implying that transsexuals are somehow mentally ill, but then I remembered that homosexuality had some similar-sounding BS psychiatric disorder term up until recently and couldn't remember what became of that.

So, I'm sorta out of my element in that I have no idea if a statement like that is completely false, or if it's just a really shitty way of saying that transsexuals weren't born with the gender they felt like they were supposed to.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby sei » Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:06 pm

Mothra wrote:"gender identity dysmorphia."
...
So, I'm sorta out of my element in that I have no idea if a statement like that is completely false, or if it's just a really shitty way of saying that transsexuals weren't born with the gender they felt like they were supposed to.

  1. It's gender dysphoria.
  2. How is something plain and descriptive "really shitty?" Do you feel that giving someone's state a name, especially if the name has "disorder" in it, somehow demeans them? It's not like it's "irredeemable faggot disease" and its prescribed treatment is execution.
  3. Review how psychological literature treats the condition. As a start, how about taking an actual look at what the DSM V says about gender dysphoria? Or even check Wikipedia's (condition) management section, if you want to be utterly lazy and negligent. The recurring theme here isn't "burn the queer," but rather "here's what has been demonstrated effective at mitigating, if not resolving, people's difficulty."
Conditions like that are called "mental illnesses" (disorders) because they cause discomfort or displeasure to the person who has them. It's not inherently condemning.

It's just sort of noting that if you feel like some jerk stapled a pygmy pachyderm trunk where your cunt should be, you might be unhappy about it.


my gut reaction is to call him an asshole for implying that transsexuals are somehow mentally ill...homosexuality had some similar-sounding BS psychiatric disorder term up

This is another example of the PC attitude that I was bitching about in the pet peeves thread.

I'm not an apologist for psychology, but I find it tiring that people find such persecution in what (to me, as an admittedly total outsider) in descriptive labels.
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Mothra » Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:19 pm

Doesn't feel right to say transsexuals have a mental illness, is the long and short of it.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Blossom » Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:25 pm

sei wrote:
my gut reaction is to call him an asshole for implying that transsexuals are somehow mentally ill...homosexuality had some similar-sounding BS psychiatric disorder term up

This is another example of the PC attitude that I was bitching about in the pet peeves thread.

I'm not an apologist for psychology, but I find it tiring that people find such persecution in what (to me, as an admittedly total outsider) in descriptive labels.


Yyyeah this is kind of the thing. 99% of the time, when someone incorporates "PC" into what they're saying, it's because they're trying to excuse not being an asshole.
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby sei » Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:39 pm

Is there a better term? Nomenclature probably isn't the issue, though.

I figure anything even in the ideological ballpark of "PC" is going to have the same problem. As you mentioned when the term arises, it's usually in disagreement over how much sensitivity or going-out-of-one's-way is owed to a particular issue or demographic.
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Büge » Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:55 pm

These days it seems like any time I see the term "politically correct", it's being used as a bogeyman by bigots to justify their behaviour.
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Mongrel » Wed Mar 26, 2014 11:08 pm

Hasn't that always been the case, really?
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby sei » Wed Mar 26, 2014 11:14 pm

Term getting struck from vocabulary. I think suggesting "I think this is oversensitive" is probably inherently demeaning and dismissive, regardless of wording.

I'll try asking questions so I can understand things better, instead.

Thanks, guys.
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Thad » Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:13 am

Awhile back, Neil Gaiman made a remark on his blog where he referred to Ireland as one of "the British Isles". Someone emailed him and told him that Irish people find that offensive; someone else wrote and said it's not offensive, it's a simple statement of fact. Gaiman said something -- and I'm paraphrasing -- along the lines of "I like to be told when I say something that's accidentally offensive, so that I can avoid it in the future. If I'm going to offend someone, I want to make sure it's on purpose."

There are two components here.

One: Is it valid for someone to be offended by a term like "gender dysphoria" or "mental illness"? Yes.

Two: Does that mean the use of those terms is intended to offend? No.

Three: But is it insensitive? Maybe.

It's really easy for people to get defensive, on either side, and that makes it pretty easy for communication to break down and for two perfectly well-meaning parties to fail to reach any kind of understanding.

I think you've got the right idea: if someone says "That's offensive," you say "Sorry, that's not how I meant it, and I'll keep that in mind for next time." Explaining where a term comes from and why you didn't consider it offensive can be useful in helping to reach understanding too, but it doesn't mean the other party is wrong for not liking it.

And that's probably the answer to Mothra's problem too -- the guy probably didn't mean anything negative by it, and indeed sounds like he's got the facts right, at least according to current medical consensus. But wading into an emotional subject with a lay crowd using jargon that includes potentially alarming phrases like "mental illness" is not usually an effective means of communication.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Classic » Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:32 am

I dunno:
The DSM is an iterative document which previously cataloged non-disorders relating to gender and attraction, including homosexuality that have since been overturned. IN the interim, however, these non-disorders were used to justify discrimination against these groups even amongst professionals who we'd expect to know better, to say nothing of it's continuing effects on the imaginations of laymen at large. Personality disorders, no matter how benign, carry quasi-legally protected stigma used to disadvantage those who need help and limit people with these diagnoses from contributing normally to society.
The only reason I can see to use this technical term in a non-professional context is to create a sense of distance and otherness toward this group. Or to play at being the smartest person in the room.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Thad » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:05 am

Classic wrote:The DSM is an iterative document which previously cataloged non-disorders relating to gender and attraction, including homosexuality that have since been overturned. IN the interim, however, these non-disorders were used to justify discrimination against these groups even amongst professionals who we'd expect to know better


Do you think that's what's happening here, though? Because that's not been my observation. Modern psychology seems to hold that having a gender identity that doesn't match the biology you were born with is a legitimate, inborn state, possibly with a genetic component, and that it's not a disease to be cured but that it can cause anxiety and depression, which ARE diseases that need treatment.

Classic wrote:to say nothing of it's continuing effects on the imaginations of laymen at large.


I'm with you on that.

Classic wrote:Personality disorders, no matter how benign, carry quasi-legally protected stigma used to disadvantage those who need help and limit people with these diagnoses from contributing normally to society.


I'll agree with that but it's a whole other can of worms. I think we need to foster a better understanding of people who aren't neurotypical rather than protest that no they're actually totally neurotypical and let's not lump them in with those CRAZY PEOPLE. The stigma against people who fall outside typical parameters as "crazy" is the problem, not that the wrong people are being classified as atypical.

Of course, that's all hypothetical big-picture stuff from a guy who's neurotypical himself. I'm not about to tell people who suffer from anxiety or depression -- or worse mental conditions -- that they should just be open and public about it to foster a dialogue. Fostering a dialogue is great, but so is not being fired because your boss found out you had a spectrum disorder and made up some excuse.

Classic wrote:The only reason I can see to use this technical term in a non-professional context is to create a sense of distance and otherness toward this group. Or to play at being the smartest person in the room.


Or you could just bust out Hanlon's Razor and figure he really didn't realize that language like that would be controversial.

Of course, it's also entirely possible we're talking about someone who took psych 101 or read an article on Wikipedia and is now acting like an expert.

It bears adding, too, that assuming everyone who belongs to a certain category will have the same opinion about a choice of phrasing is itself an unfair generalization. Some transgender people are perfectly fine with the phrase "gender dysphoria" and with discussing it in a DSM context. Some aren't. The best way to communicate effectively is to find out what your audience is comfortable with and respect it.

For example, I've done my best to avoid the use of the word "normal" in referring to neurotypical people in this post, and hopefully have been successful. Same with referring to heterosexuals in a discussion about LGB issues. I could argue that "normal" is a neutral statistical term, and that's technically accurate, but then again, so is "deviant". If you're talking to a statistician, those words are perfectly all right, but in conversation with laypeople they have other connotative meanings and you should definitely be aware of that.

(Of course, on the other hand, there are also cases of well-meaning people using language that they think is more sensitive and the people they're describing not liking it very much. I don't know anyone who'd rather be called "Native American" than "Indian", or "hearing impaired" than "deaf". But then again, I don't know that many Indians or deaf people either -- certainly not enough to assume they're representative, and even if they are, I'm sure some people DO prefer Native American and hearing impaired. If one guy prefers to be called one thing and another guy prefers to be called another thing, there's nothing wrong with switching up your choice of nomenclature depending on which one you're talking to and which term he prefers.)



...I've picked at this post and added multiple paragraphs as I've gone and I don't even know if it's coherent at this point. I should really get to bed. But we've gone and found an intersection of a few of my favorite subjects -- language, science, social issues -- and it turns out I have a lot to say. If we managed to work copyright law and computer programming in there I really WOULD be here all night.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Classic » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:59 am

Thad wrote:Do you think that's what's happening here, though?

I don't know, but I think it's "common knowledge" enough that the social stigma around homosexuality at the time it was included in the DSM isn't too different from the social stigma around uncommon gender identity. For it to be bought without much struggle in an argument. Besides, it's mostly a segue to the real reason you shouldn't carelessly use scary-sounding technical terms to people without similar educational privileges.

Thad wrote:The stigma against people who fall outside typical parameters as "crazy" is the problem, not that the wrong people traits(?) are being classified as atypical.

I could agree with that entirely if we could reasonably assume that the DSM is going to remain close to static for the future.


Thad wrote:being fired because your boss found out you had a spectrum disorder and made up some excuse.

It's not something I track, but I don't think you actually need a different excuse to do so in a lot of states.

Thad wrote:
Classic wrote:The only reason I can see to use prefer this technical term in a non-professional context is to create a sense of distance and otherness toward this group. Or to play at being the smartest person in the room.

Is that more diplomatic and less "Fuck you"?

Thad wrote:The best way to communicate effectively is to find out what your audience is comfortable with and respect it.
Knowing your audience is half the battle!

Thad wrote:I don't know anyone who'd rather be called "Native American" than "Indian",

I use "AmerIndian" as my default. But I think I use that because it's from ShadowRun. :derp: I thought American Indian and Native American are generally, at least, heart-is-in-the-right-place accepted. But I mean, there's people on the boards who might want to tell us otherwise?

Thad wrote:or "hearing impaired" than "deaf"

The relationship of deaf people to the language of speakers (which, it occurs tome I use because that's the one foible of ASL that stuck in my mind) around them is a fantastical clusterfuck that I don't really understand.


Thad wrote:If we managed to work copyright law and computer programming in there I really WOULD be here all night.

Well, now I know the next stage of my plan to make Thad so sleep deprived he accidentally gives everyone admin privileges.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Mar 27, 2014 5:18 am

Somehow, I don't think you've thought your cunning plan all the way through.

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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Joxam » Thu Mar 27, 2014 5:26 am

The problem with the whole 'Indian' 'Native American' debate, as far as my family is concerned is that its completely without meaning. Almost every single one of the people on these boards that lives in the USA has just as strong a claim to the term 'Native' 'American' as anyone who is labeled a 'Native American.' Indian at least has an identity.
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Büge » Thu Mar 27, 2014 7:33 am

As I understand it, the term du jour is "indigenous" or "First Nation".
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Re: Literal Homosexual Steamroller

Postby Mongrel » Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:18 am

At least in Canada, there are a lot of natives who really cling to "Indian" as a descriptor and prefer it to alternatives. When the Bureau of Indian Affairs changed it's name, a whole pile of native folks got mad about the change. Of course opinions can vary a lot from tribe to tribe and I'm sure you could also find a whole bunch of folks who dislike the term too.

I just say "natives" for practical reasons, because in a country loaded with both indigenous people and brown dudes, using the same word for both gets confusing fast.
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