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For:
>In just the same way, a person who has said that he or she is gay in the past could change his or her mind. Perhaps he or she was wrong. Or perhaps "gay" is far too simple a term to describe their range of attractions.
read:
In the same way, a person who is commonly believed to be gay nowadays by his own actions may not in fact identify with the term. Even if s/he has said s/he is gay in the past, s/he may have been under pressure, or may have used it in a sense that was only appropriate to the context. Maybe s/he was wrong. Or perhaps the word "gay" itself is far too simple a term to describe their range of attractions.
For some reason I'm feeling exceedingly dozy at the moment, so please excuse the absence of my usual razor-sharp wit (/sarcasm). Er...
Speaking of which, I really resent the way that it's possible to get "out" of the closet, but never to get back into it. It's a type of homophobia that is just about politically correct and will probably never go away in my lifetime. Have a homosexual encounter in private once or twice and you might get away with it. But once it becomes public knowledge (and by which I mean *public* knowledge, not just known to a small circle of friends), woe betide you if you decide that homosexuality's not for you after all. People simply won't view you as "straight". You're at best "bisexual". Does it matter? Supposedly not, in this day and age. But it's a bit of a discrepancy.
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Yup, it's realy hard to unring a bell.
Impossible in fact.
To quote Popeye.... "I am what I am and thats all that I am".....
It is a hard choice, coming out of the closit. One that must not be taken lightly. No one should make the pronouncement without being absolutly sure they are aware of all the implications and problems that come with it.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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>please excuse the absence of my usual razor-sharp wit (/sarcasm)
Interesting, now I come to think of it, that sentence could mean two things with diametically opposite meanings:
i. that my razor-sharp wit was in fact present
ii. that my wit (which isn't razor-sharp) is absent
Which did I mean? Answers on a postcard, please.
I do this when I'm tired... launch into a stream of consciousness that is completely useless to everyone else as it makes little sense, even to myself.
Speaking of which, has anyone else read Douglas Adams's "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"? It not only has a character who constantly talks to himself whenever he rings up someone's answering machine, so he has to get his secretary to contact everyone he rings and take down the messages he left on their answering machines so he can remember what he was thinking about at a particular time, but also the most original and ingenious explanation of how a sofa could have got stuck up some stairs. Read it. It's just as good as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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Deeej
I very much take all the points you made about use of the word "gay". Certainly, it can refer to anything from emotional attachment without sex to sex without emotional attachment, and can be romatic, friendly, physical, or all-or-none of these. It encompasses "men-who-have-sex-with-men" (as the current jargon goes), and the Victorian idealisaton of romantic friendship. It's also very true that the current usage of the word is specific to Western Culture over the past twenty-or-so years, and it doesn't make a great deal of sense to apply it to other periods and cultures.
Nevertheless, I do think the "famous gay people" series is / has been valuable. There are STILL large areas of life where there are zero role-models (in the UK, professional football is notorious for only ever having had one out gay footballer for example). I think it's important - both for those of us who have self-identified as "out gay men" for many years, and for those who are still uncertain or undecided - that we keep reminding ourselves of the sheer range and variety of human relationships that involve others of the same sex.
In short, I think that 'famous gays' has been great, but that some of us could have got an even greater benefit from it if the question-setters had gone into more details about what kind of ("gay") person someone was. Of course, I may not be the only person to have looked up most of those who have appeared in the series in assorted places on the net - I have certainly learned a great deal from this!
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Oh, I do agree with you, NW. The "famous gay" series has been very useful in many ways.
Political correctness has many problems. It might be okay now to say "this person (especially historical figures) was gay, and that's fine", but if that person in fact was not gay in the modern sense of the term then it will only confuse the issue, and possibly cause animosity amongst (for want of a less inciting term) homophobes. It should also be fine to say "this person was not gay, because he or she does not identify with the concept of homosexality" (or with modern people, with being "gay") but in many cases that goes entirely against what the public or the media believes to be the case.
If a Catholic priest has homosexual inclinations (ugh! what a horrible, tainted phrase) but remains entirely celibate, and does not identify with being "gay" or even "homosexual", then we simply cannot lump him into that category.
The other day I got involved in a debate on the Daily Telegraph's web site over whether Simon Hughes was lying when he said that he was not homosexual. I argued that his privacy was paramount. There are an interesting number of opinions there, some pretty homophobic and ignorant, and others fairly positive.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=P30&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2006/01/26/ublview26.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/26/ixportaltop.html
The easiest thing would be to stick to actions -- relationships, recorded expressions of love, et cetera. As long as we justify our positions then there shouldn't be a problem. Provided that we don't try to use generalisations to project our beliefs or expectations onto other people, there's no reason we can't even include people who once identified as being gay, but no longer do, simply to show the breadth of human sexuality. But in that case we should put a clear disclaimer that the party in question no longer identifies as being gay.
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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This thread of logic, taken to the finest degree of generalization might digress to include people called "queer" in the halls of their school.
Disclaimers do little to justify an apparent inclination of someone being gay.
I think we need to rely on evedence a bit more concrete.
That being said... How far can this se4arch for famous gay personalitles go before we begin scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever poor soul we can emblazen with the great and prowd mantle of gayness?
I mean, eventually any well will run dry.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... in that it is addressing more than one topic in a way which confuses, rather than clarifies the basic issue.
I accept entirely everything that has been said about historical differences, about the impossibility of returning to the closet once you leave it, and indeed about any other peripheral points that have been raised. What I don't agree with is the the 'politically correct' aspects of the discussion; I think that political correctness, which is a concept which arose long after the word 'gay' came into common use, is a very counter-productive characteristic of modern Western society.
I won't embark upon a major dissertation on the wider subject, but 'gay' is a word which - like many other words - is capable of different shades of meaning according to the context in which it is used. The same was true of 'queer', the word which it supplanted in common use. To most casual heterosexual users of the word, it applies to a person who is attracted (with implied sexual undertones) to others of the same sex. Language needs a word to convey this meaning; if one word falls out of favour, another will replace it.
To refer to a blind person as 'visually challenged' achieves nothing; it still means that the person's eyes do not function properly. To say that someone is blind is not offensive, it's merely descriptive and a pretty significant factor in describing that person. The word 'spastic' is often used to defend the politically correct re-naming of aspects of the human condition, but in that case the circumstances were specific and very different. Firstly, medical science had identified the original condition as part of a wider group of disabilities known as cerebral palsy, and secondly, in the United Kingdom, the word 'spastic' had passed into slang usage as a deliberately derogatory term for anyone with physical or mental difficulties. There was nothing inherently wrong with the word itself - the UK supporting charity was originally 'The Spastics' Society' - but medical advances made it inaccurate and slang usage made it offensive, so - quite rightly - it became a word to avoid. Incidentally, offensiveness was clearly more significant than inaccuracy, as supporting charities in several other counries still use the word.
So back to 'gay'. It's a word most of us don't find offensive in ordinary use. In the gay community it normally excludes bisexual, and we understand that; in the wider community it may or may not be extended to include bisexuals. The point is that, in general, those who use it know what they mean by it, as do those to whom the comment including the word is addressed. We can qualify the term by describing someone as 'actively gay' or 'a closet gay' or indeed a 'celibate gay'. As with any word, it can be subjected to philosophical scrutiny in an attempt to define it more precisely, but any such discussion is simply an academic indulgence, because the word doesn't have a universally precise meaning.
I would therefore argue that 'Famous Gays' is a perfectly acceptable title for our continuing thread, because we (almost!) all know exactly what we mean by it. To us, in this context, it means someone who admits or admitted to, or in the case of historical characters was widely suspected of, an attraction to others of the same sex. 'Famous' is equally imprecise, but we seem to have accepted that it simply means someone who has had media or literary exposure.
Quod erat demonstrandum! So let's get on with the game! 
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Deeej wrote:
> read:
> In the same way, a person who is commonly believed to be gay nowadays by his own actions may not in fact identify with the term. Even if s/he has said s/he is gay in the past, s/he may have been under pressure, or may have used it in a sense that was only appropriate to the context. Maybe s/he was wrong. Or perhaps the word "gay" itself is far too simple a term to describe their range of attractions.
This one was under no pressure. I think it is worth showing who he is and what, so far as we know, was going on:
Article 1: http://www.outsports.com/wire/20020619peterson.htm
Article 2: http://www.outsports.com/wire/20020825derrick.htm
It is, of course, his business how he labels himself, and frankly no-one should care either way. He was (after reading articke 1) a good example of a successful athlete who is gay. After reading article 2 we have no idea. He is simply interesting.
> Speaking of which, I really resent the way that it's possible to get "out" of the closet, but never to get back into it. It's a type of homophobia that is just about politically correct and will probably never go away in my lifetime. Have a homosexual encounter in private once or twice and you might get away with it. But once it becomes public knowledge (and by which I mean *public* knowledge, not just known to a small circle of friends), woe betide you if you decide that homosexuality's not for you after all. People simply won't view you as "straight". You're at best "bisexual". Does it matter? Supposedly not, in this day and age. But it's a bit of a discrepancy.
This one puzzles me. I suppose it is this way because homosexuality is not an ailment so one os not an "Ex Homoexual" like one is an "Ex Drug Addict". And a homosexual encounter may well be pure "I wonder what it;s like" and never repeated, rather that being able ot be "in love with one of the same gender".
Even so it is hardly possible to undeclare your orientation. And why should it be? The amusing thing is how few people believe mine.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote:
(snip)
>
> Even so it is hardly possible to undeclare your orientation. And why should it be? (snip)
I'm not sure that it's a question of "undeclaring" one's orientation, but that anyone's orientation, and their understanding of it, may change through time. I know mine did!
I was happy in my twenties to self-identify as "mainly gay", but that didn't rule out occasional friendly sex with women friends. That hasn't happened for a couple of decades, and I rather doubt that I'd be capable of achieving an erection with a woman nowadays, but I can't completely rule out the possibility of it happening again.
The trouble with any label is that at best it is a description of a point in time - not a prescription for the future. But we do need labels as convenient social shorthand (it would be tedious in the extreme to describe myself as "someone whose sexual range includes other men" for example, or to refer to "Famous Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer or Questioning People" for the thread. But I'm pretty sure that people here - whose sexuality is unlikely to be self-identified as 100% heterosexual - uinderstand the limitations of labels, as Cossie suggested.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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