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Discussion of forum political discussions thread Continued--keep it decent

desertanimal

desertanimal

2003 UB313
No biggie. Indeed, historically threads have been locked at the OPs behest, and indeed, they have sometimes been subsequently continued by another with a request to keep it clean/civil/whatever.

tailfeathers--In your haste to defend your good buddy Dale, you missed the point. The REASON I referred to Dale in my list of things that straight people can do here is BECAUSE he reliably refers to women and his attraction thereto in a non-offensive way. Dale's my buddy, too, and I know he wouldn't mind being used as my example of the straight man with healthy appetite, so I use him. The particular reference to redheads was to a joking conversation I had with him a looong time ago, not to Arial and whoever. Just chill. No one was attacking your or Dale, and the convo. wasn't about you anymore. Please try to think things through in this thread before replying, so that this one doesn't get locked.

Fizzle--Sort of. It was sort of a political discussion about hetero/gay rights that was asked to be taken to PM. But why should it? Can we not have political discussions about women's equality here? About immigration? About other sensitive political topics? We can and we have, and lately, actually, they've gone just fine. Everyone has been able to act like adults and some of them just agree to disagree. Why should THIS political issue be relegated to PMs when other sensitive discussions are not?

Susan--I apologize for offending you. I wasn't being literal, just jokingly acknowledging that tyflier's concerns for his future adolescent daughter are well-founded, and his desired solution is actually a safe one, statistically speaking. I wouldn't say the same for men, because that's not statistically safer than being hetero (for one, you run the risk of being beaten up). And I wouldn't say the same for being gay in some other countries, where the personal risks to gay women are very high.

I would rather have had you respond to my post and tell me that you were offended by that particular remark so that I could have recanted/explained and apologized to you than have you tell me to take discussions of homosexuality to the PMs. The implications of the two responses are vastly different, in my opinion.
 
Out of respect for you, Stephanie, I'm going to try to keep control of my feelings, and just say I do not see why any of your conversation wasn't suitable for the thread.
Perhaps it's because I've got more gay than straight close friends, in particular my best friend for whom I was a pretend girlfriend for two years to stop his parents harrassing him. I was with my friend through his years of self-loathing, and he's still scarred by the bad times he had. He's fully accepted by my family, my mother, sister and brother, and by my sons. He's been more of a father and male role model to my boys than their own biological father ever has been.
In a perfect world he'd have been straight or I would have been a gay man, and we would have been made for each other.
My SO totally accepts my friend's role in my life, which was another thing the boys' father never managed.
As for being chatted up by girls when we're out clubbing, I've never been anything but flattered. (Ok, I'm totally vain enough to get a kick out of it!)
Sorry to ramble, but I found myself as shocked by the 'take it to PM' as if a member had been told to hide their skin colour and as unacceptable. Shocked, saddened and more angry than I can decently express without getting banned. Janine
 
desertanimal said:
Fizzle--Sort of. It was sort of a political discussion about hetero/gay rights that was asked to be taken to PM. But why should it? Can we not have political discussions about women's equality here? About immigration? About other sensitive political topics? We can and we have, and lately, actually, they've gone just fine. Everyone has been able to act like adults and some of them just agree to disagree. Why should THIS political issue be relegated to PMs when other sensitive discussions are not?
Click to expand...

My point was really an off-the-cuff comment about why the issue was asked to be taken to PM. It was stated that it was because it was about relationships when it was in fact about a lifestyle. Maybe the discussion could have been left alone to see if it 'actually' had gone political, but I think it was more of a preemptive strike before it could get heated. :shrugs: It's just one of those subjects that tends to get extremist riled up from both ends of the spectrum. (I'm not inferring that anyone here is a said extremist.)

If we could count on 100% of the members here to act in an adult fashion 100% of the time, I would see no reason why ANY topic couldn't be discussed. Simple fact is this: We can only be certain in the uncertainty of people. I know it's a shame. Since we can't rely on people, as a whole, to be adults...we get limitations to what we 'should/shouldn't' discuss.

As far as other political issues being allowed in the past, I haven't been around all that long. I'm fairly limited in my knowledge of how things were vs. how things are. :)

:cheers:
 
Fizzlefry22 said:
It's just one of those subjects that tends to get extremist riled up from both ends of the spectrum.
Click to expand...
True dat. I think I understand where you were coming from now.

But I can't avoid it as a topic of discussion because of it. That would be self-degrading and self-undermining, and I'm not one for that.

It just so happens that I discuss by analogy a lot of the time, and my analogies will often involve gay rights/gay issues, because it's something I think is important and I know a lot about. If we were talking about censorship in schools, I would tend to use analogies about teaching evolution, because it's also I think is important and I know a lot about. So I'm often going to tend to drag the conversation in that direction one way or another. Not because I'm purposely being "in anyone's face" or trying to "cram anything down anyone's throat," but because it's something that's salient to me, and something I can speak well about, and something I can therefore easily and effectively use as an analogous example a lot of times to bolster my argument about something else (or re-couch it in a way that someone can better understand what I'm getting at). That's just what I was doing that got us here.

I don't try to cram or be in someone's face. Conversely, I'll not avoid talking about it when it's the natural thing that comes to mind for me. I've not censored myself (been in the closet) before, and I'm not starting now because it might sometimes provoke someone who feels passionately about it one way or another. I'm only responsible for what I say, and I don't say anything too graphic or deliberately inflammatory on the boards.
 
Thanks, Janine. It's all good. Thanks for weighing in in a controlled fashion. :)

It's still early-ish here, but later, I'll raise one to ya. :cheers:
 
:) Right back at ya! I've had to be pulled off my friend's homophobic brother-in-law before now after he made an insulting remark so I had to really bite down before posting here. One of the things that annoys me most is that I was just getting to the end of that thread and about to express my feelings, and it was blinking locked!
 
diamondlil said:
:) Right back at ya! I've had to be pulled off my friend's homophobic brother-in-law before now after he made an insulting remark so I had to really bite down before posting here. One of the things that annoys me most is that I was just getting to the end of that thread and about to express my feelings, and it was blinking locked!
Click to expand...
I knew you'd want to post once you saw the thread. That's why I started another one--just for those who didn't get a chance on the first. I'm a champion of letting discussions go where they go and end when they end, and it was no trouble to start a new thread. It doesn't need to be connected to the old one for posterity. This conversation isn't for posterity. It's just for us right now.
 
Does anybody really care if I'm offended by comments like, "Please everybody give this person your thoughts and prayers.."? I hope not. You have every right to post them. If this site ever became the kind of place that didn't allow that kind of comment I wouldn't want to be here. I would also take issue with some forum members being told that they couldn't talk about religion, race, creed, and sexual orientation. I do know that the site can make any rules it sees fit, or rulings for that matter.. I'm just talking about my own comfort level here. As long as we aren't posting profanity or descriptions of what we do in the bedroom it shouldn't be any more anybodies business than whether we believe in the power of prayer.
(For the record- I only find it mildly annoying that anyone thinks "my thoughts" are ANYTHING close to a prayer.. not offensive really. And as I mentioned before, nobody need worry for a second how I feel about that.:shrugs:)
 
mbdorfer said:
Simple fact is that we don't have a 100% adult audience.
Let's not start another monster.
Click to expand...

Hence the reason we can't rely on an 'adult' perspective on everything. I really hope that a simple statement such as the one I made in my last post wouldn't create a monster if you will...I left my godzilla repellant in my other pants. :sidestep:
 
Jon, the create a monster reference was not intended for you.
My point is, that there are members here as young as 10 yrs old.
 
desertanimal said:
tailfeathers--In your haste to defend your good buddy Dale, you missed the point. The REASON I referred to Dale in my list of things that straight people can do here is BECAUSE he reliably refers to women and his attraction thereto in a non-offensive way. Dale's my buddy, too, and I know he wouldn't mind being used as my example of the straight man with healthy appetite, so I use him. The particular reference to redheads was to a joking conversation I had with him a looong time ago, not to Arial and whoever. Just chill. No one was attacking your or Dale, and the convo. wasn't about you anymore. Please try to think things through in this thread before replying, so that this one doesn't get locked.
Click to expand...

Actually, I don't think I saw any of your posts that mentioned Dale or me. I was just talking about the fact that he and I kept coming up in other people's posts.

You're cool. I like you. I don't think you could offend me. You take things seriously that deserve to be taken seriously. You don't just choose to take issue with random, insignificant things for the sake of flexing your debate muscles. :cheers:
 
diamondlil said:
Out of respect for you, Stephanie, I'm going to try to keep control of my feelings, and just say I do not see why any of your conversation wasn't suitable for the thread.
Janine
Click to expand...

I agree with Janine on this as well. Yes, most of the time I stay away from serious topics or just do what Dale does and post a joke or 2. I think he does it with better flair than I but whose counting.
We have a very good friend who is gay, and Lord I know more info about his taste than any straight man should. Sherry loves him like a brother and we just don't see him enough. But I digress, The reason why I posted my comments was, I didn't think it was fair to Stephanie or any other poster here who is gay.
I felt all and any negative comments was exactly what Zwatt was trying to say in his original post. There are a lot of negative comments posted here. Be it towards adults, women posting pictures of them selves or just people getting upset with the advice that is given for their snakes.

The problems are not just about sexuality or how women are treated but it runs deeper around here.
I think personally alot of it started with the infamous argument over on chat when CS and Fauna shared a chat room. Many members left to never return. It happens, many of these members would post very intellectual threads about morphs and husbandry care for the animals. They were some dandy threads.
I see kinda where Zwatt was going with this as well, we do not see many posts around here like that that seems to go on forever. Maybe who is left isn't interested in these types of intellectual topics. I will read them but I really do not have much to say. I have been in this hobby for years but I never really got the grasp of many of the different morphs out there.
I just like the corn snake and its temperament. I know in the next few years I plan on breeding on them so I need to start reading up on the different morphs and what makes them (see I am rambling now)

I don't know what I am rambling about.. I am tired and feeling very icky. I think I need a nap.
 
mbdorfer said:
My point is, that there are members here as young as 10 yrs old.
Click to expand...
A good point. I didn't know what they youngest members' ages were. I have a niece who's 10, so that gives me a good frame of reference for self-censoring my posts. I might have pushed those boundaries for a 10-year old reader before, but certainly I won't in this thread.
 
mbdorfer said:
Jon, the create a monster reference was not intended for you.
My point is, that there are members here as young as 10 yrs old.
Click to expand...
There certainly are, but my lieblings have had a gay father-figure in their lives since before they can remember. I don't, I really, really don't see that they have been exposed to anything harmful in that. My friend would never discuss details of his preferred practices in front of them, any more than I would. They just accept that he turns up with a boyfriend in tow every now and then. It's just not a big deal. They turn to him for general discussion about 'man things' and get grouchy when he gets too busy to visit for a while.
 
My thought on the entire situation is this: Threads are locked and/or the conversation stopped because something that should not be happening is, in fact, happening. This can be for many different reasons. It can be because the thread was taken way off topic, or it can be because the material is inappropriate. I would fully agree that the original thread was taken well off topic. But the discussion was a good one.

I can easily see how many parents would not want their children reading a thread about the dynamics of a woman's reaction to sexual advances and homosexuality. However, many parents are also not fond of dead mice lurking in the freezer. To this crowd, the conversation is much more controversial than dead mice. But that is this crowd. In another crowd, these topics could be equally controversial. I know a few people who are card-carrying vegans, and absolutely abhor the idea of a dead animal - or worse yet, myself killing an animal.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that what's appropriate depends on the person.
 
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