About sex and (homo)sexuality

[Scavenger]

What I don't get when people say "Keep your gayness to yourself" (which is what a lot of people in this thread have stated) is; what does that actually mean? Can someone "Keep their straightness to themselves"? What counts as flaunting your sexuality?

If someone is aggressively (and stereotypically) straight, with the beer swilling, football watching, lewd comment at attractive women making, does that make you just as uneasy as someone who is aggressively (and stereotypically) gay?

Would a gay couple be able to share a kiss in your presence, if say, they were in a public place, the same kind of place a straight couple would share a kiss? (Not talking french kissing here, just the passionate displays you see on train platforms and such) Would they be able to hold hands?

If it is just the sex act that makes people squicky, do these same people get uncomfortable if a straight man or woman talks about their conquests?

I'm genuinely curious as to why people qualify "I don't mind gay people" with "So long as they keep it to themselves". If that's true, shouldn't all people keep their sexuality to themselves, no matter what it is? After all, a guy talking non stop about hot chicks is functionally identical to him talking about hot guys. He still wants to nail a person, they just have a different gender.

[Armageddon]

I have no problem with it, but most of the gays that I have known try to shove it down your throat and flaunt "Oh I'm gay, you have to respect me." I hate it when anyone does that. So yeah, I don't know.

[Khris]

Scavenger:
It's a really wide, grey area. There's a lot of things that I don't like to look at. Seeing other people hawk up snot makes me nauseous, for example. But I also don't want to see really fat, ugly, straight people make out. Seeing something like that I can't help but feel sightly disgusted, too. (I'm not directly comparing ugly people to snot, please bear with me here.)
And, watching two guys make out just happens to fall into the same category. In fact, I mind it less if they are good-looking.

So not wanting to see X do Y doesn't mean you're intolerant of X. There are situations where an intensive display of Y is fine and even necessary, but if people are doing it because they're attention whores, criticizing it stops being intolerant.

[Eggie]

Every other thread here ends up having some kind of sideline about boobs and ladybits and there are guys on this forum who have a problem with people 'flaunting their sexuality'?

What the ningnang bicky backy bigoted bullshit is this?

[Noctambulo]

Well, years ago, I went to Germany and for the first time ever I saw gay people showing affection in public. It was kind of akward for me, because it was something "weird", at least for the standards from where I live.

But that was MY problem, as you can't blame gay people for how other people react to the fact of them doing something absolutely normal for any other couple.

[InCreator]

Everything WHAM said. I like WHAM-land.

[Igor Hardy]

Don't care about either. Or "anything goes" depending on how you look at it.

And I don't like excessive rules for decent conduct. I mean I can understand that everyone expects to have some quiet and privacy, but other than that people's behavior shouldn't be restrained.

[Noctambulo]

I mean I can understand that everyone expects to have some quiet and privacy, but other than that people's behavior shouldn't be restrained.

I don't like how some people behave in public, no matter if they`re straight or not. There must be some limits.

[ddq]

You don't have the right not to be offended.

[Sam.]

You don't have the right not to be offended.

This is the most sensible post in the thread.

Sexuality is individual to each person, Gay or Straight is a very limited way to view things. Everyone has the right to their own opinion, even to be offended by other's behaviour. I don't mind if you are offended, that doesn't mean the thing you are offended by shouldn't have happened. It's all part of the rich tapestry.

[miguel]

My great nation has a special police division, the GIA
They make gay people wear really tight clothes. Straight people can wear baggy trousers and black guys don't have to use a belt on their trousers. That's it.

Honestly, who cares? I personally find gay people to be funny in a good way. They just bring some colour to our somewhat grey times over here.
Also, there's no point arguing if some guys here act like guys and comment on boobs, it's natural, just like gay people feeling offended with it. Of course they're not, they just wish to be doing the same.

Sexuality should be a private issue for most people, but some want to show the world who they sleep with, what can we do?

[deadsuperhero]

I had a great post lined up for this thread yesterday, but it was lost in a "closed the wrong tab" incident, and all was lost. So, I've taken some time, and I'm going to try and reshare my thoughts from the other day.

Bigotry, in general, is a stupid concept. It is very much an indulgence in this perverse idea that because people are different from one another, one group must surely be better than another. People set up walls, and really, having some kind of small subculture as a scapegoat is a pretty efficient way to keep the good old "Groupthink" going.

It's a form of control, and that form says "Think and act like me, or you're worthless."

People have died because of this way of thinking. If you look at the homicide rate against gay and transgender people, it's through the roof. Same with the suicide rates of both demographics. Some groups of people love to bully those that are misunderstood and mislabeled. It's treated like a disease.

I dealt with this kind of treatment quite a lot during my senior year, when I came out to everyone that I was dating a transgendered Male-to-Female woman. There was a lot of relentless teasing, and I'd occasionally hear people call me a "faggot".

Even the employers that fired me at my fast-food job when I was 18 referred to me as a faggot after I had left. You try to think the best of the world, and that it's so opportunistic and open-minded, just ready for social progress, and then you experience things like that.

My own dad tried to take me to therapy, because he thought I was mentally ill. It's not fun having your own preferences described as a mental illness; if anything it's incredibly degrading.

My point: who cares what way a person swings, what gender a person was biologically born as, or what swings between a person's legs? We should take it upon ourselves to at least treat each other with a shred of decency. All these people want to do is find somebody that loves them for who they are, get married possibly, and maybe start a family someday. It's nice to see their portrayal is slowly getting better in the media as a whole, but having to deal with the onslaught of homophobes trying to run for president in the US (under the veil of "The War on Religion", no less) really puts a damper on how I feel about my country sometimes.

Hey, at least gays can die for their country now, by serving in the Armed Forces. But, until some of these social problems and constructs are fixed, I really am not sure that the US is entirely worth dying for.

[voh]

Sex? Great!

Homosexuals? Not a problem!

I think it's a consequence of where I'm from (at least, as a result of how the Netherlands used to be), but tolerance was something I grew up with. Everyone's allowed to do whatever the hell they please, as long as it's not hurting someone else (or otherwise illegal, though if being gay was illegal then that'd not be okay).

What the hell should I care how people find love? And since most everyone deserves to love and be loved, all the more luck to everyone!

[Noctambulo]

Bigotry, in general, is a stupid concept. It is very much an indulgence in this perverse idea that because people are different from one another, one group must surely be better than another. People set up walls, and really, having some kind of small subculture as a scapegoat is a pretty efficient way to keep the good old "Groupthink" going.

It's a form of control, and that form says "Think and act like me, or you're worthless."

People have died because of this way of thinking. If you look at the homicide rate against gay and transgender people, it's through the roof. Same with the suicide rates of both demographics. Some groups of people love to bully those that are misunderstood and mislabeled. It's treated like a disease.

Tell me something... Who do you "blame" for this situation? How do you think it can be changed?

[deadsuperhero]

Tell me something... Who do you "blame" for this situation? How do you think it can be changed?

There's a number of different people that contribute to the problem, but pointing fingers isn't going to solve anything. The best thing that can be done is educating people, and teaching kids from a young age that alternative lifestyles are acceptable and even normal. If someone grows up in an environment where these kind of relationships aren't ridiculed or treated strangely, they aren't going to think twice about LGBT relationships.

It's not unlike the seperatism we saw in the US, pre-Civil Rights Movement. All kinds of people were trying to find ways to throw down and support segregation, and the religious arguments against interracial marriage were appalling.

Society just needs to evolve past this petty bigotry and work towards something more progressive.

[Noctambulo]

It's not unlike the seperatism we saw in the US, pre-Civil Rights Movement. All kinds of people were trying to find ways to throw down and support segregation, and the religious arguments against interracial marriage were appalling.

Well, I don't think that segregation is something that doesn't exist in the US. Maybe it's less evident, but still...

[deadsuperhero]

Well, I don't think that segregation is something that doesn't exist in the US. Maybe it's less evident, but still...

That's beside the point, what I'm talking about was society's perception and support for such things in that era, simply on the pretense that so many other people viewed it the same way and took little time to consider the implications. You can draw a lot of parallels to the LGBT community back from the 70's onwards, and the set of social challenges and inequalities they still have to deal with now.

[Noctambulo]

That's beside the point, what I'm talking about was society's perception and support for such things in that era, simply on the pretense that so many other people viewed it the same way and took little time to consider the implications. You can draw a lot of parallels to the LGBT community back from the 70's onwards, and the set of social challenges and inequalities they still have to deal with now.

That's exactly the point: Europe it's way "more advanced" than the US, and I think that the gap is growing. One thing that I'm trying to understand it's why the US have a society with such perception of the LGBT community (and other things, like segregation).

[deadsuperhero]

One thing that I'm trying to understand it's why the US have a society with such perception of the LGBT community (and other things, like segregation).

You try living in a country that games a two-party system, one of which parties is highly conservative and sometimes uses the worst contexts of their own religion to shape their party policies, and by extension, legal legislation. That isn't to say that there isn't social progress, but just take a look at some of the homophobes running for president this year (Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, etc)

It's an awful problem.

[Noctambulo]

You try living in a country that games a two-party system, one of which parties is highly conservative and sometimes uses the worst contexts of their own religion to shape their party policies, and by extension, legal legislation. That isn't to say that there isn't social progress, but just take a look at some of the homophobes running for president this year (Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, etc)

It's an awful problem.

Already did that...

And I have been in Europe (as turist, not living there), but still I don't really get why it's so different. In Spain, to name one country with a relatively new democracy after a fascist regime, there is a LGBT community far more "free" than the US LGBT community.