posted on October 18, 2001 10:24:23 PM new
Sara - Maybe AW needs to implement some new rules here regarding oppression and fag bashing. I am just the activist to fight for it, too.
posted on October 18, 2001 10:28:35 PM new
I'm outta here for tonight. I'll slug it out with ya tomorrow. I have cats to cuddle and music to write, I AM NOT IN THE MOOD TO BE MAD!!!!!!!!!! Rocker
posted on October 18, 2001 10:29:50 PM newCos I don't need a bigot to like me or agree with me. You have insulted the queer community here countless times.
Hey! What the HELL do you call what YOU just said?? THE QUEER COMMUNITY??? You have alot of nerve to accuse ME of being a bigot. Thats what you actually think of me, rocker? I was wrong about you. Very wrong. Fine, I dont need a twofaced BIGOT as a friend either.
posted on October 18, 2001 10:30:13 PM newyou think it's okay for the US to equate terrorists with gay people.
I think it helps if you remember these sailors are not in their living room removed from the action like we are they are in a very real action. There is a chance that sailor that wrote that graffiti wasn't making the political statement he's given credit for. It seems like some are taking it as the US policy directed that graffiti be included on the bomb.
You think the sailor was trying to make a statement as inflammatory as general and sweeping as this?
When I see an American flag, to me it has always meant "Anti-Gay, Sexist, Macho Pig Country".
posted on October 18, 2001 11:26:29 PM new
"Fags" -- (see, I can post that term and it doesn't get spell-checked right off the bat)
-- is one of the last highly inflammatory terms left to those who might otherwise say "_______" or "______________" or even "_____-___________"
Like it or not, admit it or not, we as a nation have a number of terms for those who are perceived to be out of the mainstream of society. I can't name any of them here. Except "fags".
posted on October 18, 2001 11:37:31 PM new
plsmith
Thanks for a good post.
But it looks like they refuse to think about it. [insert picture here of ostrich head in sand]
posted on October 18, 2001 11:53:22 PM new
Hep - Obviously another thing you don't know, is the "QUEER COMMUNITY" is an actual phrase we use, NOT a bigoted slur. (I can't believe I have to EXPLAIN this.) See, we are not ashamed to be Queer, just because our country is ashamed of us. The word QUEER is only a slur when it is said by people who use it with the intention to hurt.
Uaru - [i] You think the sailor was trying to make a statement as inflammatory as general and sweeping as this?
When I see an American flag, to me it has always meant "Anti-Gay, Sexist, Macho Pig Country". [/i]
Uaru I wouldn't be making a statement like that if I had the same rights YOU have to legally marry who I love, to hold hands with who I want on the street, without having to worry my brains are gonna be bashed in and I will be stabbed to death like Matthew Sheppard or Brandon Teena. I guess I can't expect you to understand, living with the priveleges you have and take for granted every day. Try living without them for a while and see how patriotic YOU feel.
I have lived with oppression since I came out in the late 70s. I have heard the cruel comments over and over and over and over again just for being who I am, which is not hurting anyone. Now there is an attack in our country, in the city where I live, and as I am mourning the loss in this city, I am hit again with yet another gay bashing comment, EVEN in the midst of this crisis, this sh*t doesn't stop. Hmmm let's see, things are not bad enough yet, let's think of something ELSE to add insult and injury. Not enough hatred for ya yet? Hmmmmm let's see, what's next.
posted on October 18, 2001 11:56:33 PM new
Plsmith - A big sincere thank you to you. It is people like you who help heal the pain of having to deal with people like them.
posted on October 19, 2001 12:18:03 AM new Nycrocker, the "people like them" have -- in my experience -- people like you, whom they'd rather diswown, disavow, or otherwise shove under a convenient carpet when the association becomes "inconvenient". I live in a cosmopolitan area -- many of my friends (and, sadly, PAST -- as in DECEASED -- friends) had to deal with the rising stigma of AIDS-identification, on top of having to incur the random, uncalled-for slurs of "fag" -- and the outside-the-nightclub beatings which accompanied them. Just promise me that you'll take to heart that there are still many decent people in this world, who wish you happiness, and who don't demand that your happiness be a version they'd choose for themselves.
posted on October 19, 2001 12:20:01 AM new
When I was a little girl I had a cousin who came to spend two weeks with us every summer. Keith loved to play with the girls, loved to hide in my closet and play dress up with my clothes and best of all - loved to use my sparkly nail polish. I didn't understand the concept of a gay person at the time. We were young adults before he realized and accepted that he was gay and eventually he told me. Keith died of aids 12 years ago but there are two things that I will always remember about him. First, he used to laugh and joke about his "fags - what he called his friends." There were a lot of things he was serious about and he was very active in the fight for gay rights. But, he didn't see anything wrong with calling himself or his gay friends fags. Maybe he just did it for the fun of shocking me - and it did - but, he got a kick out of using that term. So, I guess because of that I've never thought of it as a derrogatory term. On the other hand when Keith was chased down a backstreet in New Orleans one night and had crosses burned on his back he told me from his hospital bed that he remembered hearing the men who were attacking him chanting over and over "Queer - F-ing Queer." They almost killed him.
Needless to say that word never sounded quite so innocent to me again. So, when you make a remark as you did above about the "queer" community it brings back instant pain for me - awful memories of what Keith went through all because of his sexual identity.
But, I'm sure that you had no way of knowing that. My point is that there are a lot of ways that we can unknowingly hurt each other. One way is to use hateful terms (labels) and another way is to attack a person you're supposed to be friends with who obviously sincerely doesn't understand why she's being attacked.
I know you're emotional about this and I don't blame you for your anger. I made a rant here not long ago about our need for labels and how it hurts us all. But, I wish you'd tried to see Hepburns side too. We can't all see the world through your eyes. So, how could she have known what that word represented to you?
posted on October 19, 2001 12:22:20 AM new
Plsmith
Now THAT'S the kinda Americans I like!!
Thank you {{{{{BIG HUGS}}}}} I am very sorry about the loss of your friends.
And don't worry, I have not given up on all people. There is just that occassional person I have to X out of my life. And move on to nicer people
xoxo
Rocker
[ edited by nycrocker on Oct 19, 2001 12:24 AM ]
posted on October 19, 2001 12:26:38 AM newNYCRocker: I'm trying to remember if you and I have ever talked. I don't think so. Given that you don't know me, what makes you think you KNOW me?
You missed my point entirely. It had nothing to do with the word-it could have been any word that is currently on the PC-verboten list for all I care-and everything to do with priorities. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what's written on those bombs, as long as the bombs go where they're supposed to go and do the job they're supposed to do so perhaps, just perhaps, my baby boy won't have to pick up a gun and fight on the front lines to save YOUR right to be judgemental about people you don't even know.
You also missed the fact that I never said that I agreed with the word used. All you had to do was ask if you had a question and I would have answered. But no, you went right off the deep end as though I advocated pinning a big pink star to your t-shirt front. That was quite a leap of presumption on your part.
Oh, and you missed the question about the photographer, too. So tell me-if you had never seen that picture, would your panties have been in such a wad? Is it beyond your ken that the photographer MAY have taken that picture because he/she KNEW it would get those who tend to get worked up at the slightest provocation and cause exactly the response you've shown?
Perhaps before you shot off your keyboard with baseless accusations, you should have considered that you're not the only one in the world who takes heat for lifestyle/political/whatever choices and that different people have different priorities or concerns. My priority and concern is to have my loved ones-and all the loved ones who might be going into battle- survive this mess and come home safely. If that frosts your butt, so be it. Somehow, I'll manage to muddle through without your esteem.
Edited to fix a sentence I accidentally partially cut.
posted on October 19, 2001 12:38:49 AM new
MyBid I am very sorry about your cousin. I never lost anyone to AIDS and I can't even imagine how sad that is.
I DO understand how that word brought that pain up for you which I of course did not mean to do. I said it in the same way your cousin did, ya know, we say it with pride, cos it was always meant to hurt us, and this is our way of empowering ourselves. One day I was standing outside the Lesbian and Gay community center and a van full of guys drove by and shouted to me "LESBIAN!!!" I yelled back "YES - THANK YOU!" I was not hurt because they knew I was a lesbian - I am not ashamed of that - but I WAS hurt that people do try to hurt other people on purpose. It is just cruel.
As for your friend, well, you may defend her all you want, but that is not a friend to me. This is not the first time she has insulted us and I have had it. It is too long to go into here and I really am not in the mood tonight.
Ever hear this one? I don't know who originally said it, but I think it's great:
When they came after the Blacks, I didn't stand up for them because I wasn't Black.
When they came after the Jews, I didn't stand up for them because I wasn't a Jew.
When they came after the Gays, I didn't stand up for them because I wasn't Gay.
Now they're coming after me, and there is no one left to stand up for me.
posted on October 19, 2001 12:47:33 AM new
I like the bottom line meaning of the poem. But, I'm completely convinced that it is just that type of labeling that keeps us all divided. We are spirtual beings on a physical journey - but yet we seem to insist that everything in our lives has to be labeled according to our flesh. As long as we do that there will always be someone to bash.
I don't know what you're referring to with Hep so I'll just leave that alone.
posted on October 19, 2001 12:50:28 AM new
Shadow,
All you had to do was ask if you had a question and I would have answered. But no, you went right off the deep end
Hmmm that's funny, I don't see any going off the deep end here, all I see is that I DID ask you a question. See?
Shadow, just wondering, if they had written a black slur like "HiJack This, N****R" or an Anti Semetic Slur, or... the list goes on and on, would you still think that? Just wondering
Nope I don't know you, don't judge you, etc etc. Speaking of getting your panties in a wad, maybe you took the rest of my posts as if they were meant for you, but, they were not. I addressed Hep and Uara where indicated. However, if the shoe fits, feel free to wear it.
Mods, of course you ALWAYS threaten to close the gay threads instead of moderating the gay bashers. Go ahead and lock it, it's useless, not many people here care about the word FAG on the bomb anyway. God Bless America whoo hooooo.
[ edited by nycrocker on Oct 19, 2001 12:52 AM ]
posted on October 19, 2001 12:55:54 AM newS-Kitty, I am not judging you at all! I *Know* you! I responded to this thread on a visceral level ... some things didn't seem right to me (among them the fact that we're STILL allowed to say "fags" here with impugnity).
We'd all have to be Nycrocker for a day (or a year, if we had the guts) to understand the toll which the constant cultural vernacular (not to mention the paying of taxes without representation and REAL LIFE experience of apartment-rental denial and Lord-knows-what-else) takes upon this "sub-culture". Want to know the truth? It's this very ignorance -- as in, IGNORE -- that makes me "suspicion" (Southern verbiage I picked up in a Flannery O'Connor book and cannot put down) our PC stance... sure, we know better now than to say _ _ _ _ _ _ , or _ _ _ _, but, by God, it's still open season on "fags".
And nothing would please me more than to be suspended for having used [that] derogatory term. How about it, AW? Are you going to take a stand on the denigration of gay people in your forums? PLEASE DO SO... SOON!
edited for lousy ubb... you're on your own with the lousy grammar...
posted on October 19, 2001 12:58:06 AM new
nycrocker,
Your last post has earned you a warning as you continued to make personal comments to other posters even after my previous posts.
Everyone, this is a sensitive issue for many - please treat your fellow posters with respect and consideration and get back to addressing the Topic of the thread.
posted on October 19, 2001 01:48:17 AM newFoppie: I hear what you're saying and agree. I haven't walked in NYCRocker's sneakers so I have no idea what she's experienced. I understand that. I even understand the point she's trying to make.
My issue isn't with who NYCRocker is or what she believes but with being judged unfairly and in such a narrow manner. AFAIC, any pejorative name would have been inappropriate and I would hope that whoever painted such would be called on the carpet by their shirt(First shirts are WAY more scary than commanders).
I wonder. Would there have been such a response if the bomb had carried a different verboten word?
posted on October 19, 2001 02:35:02 AM new
I just imagined how I would react if I learned the kitten had done such a thing...
He may be bigger and stronger than me but I would see to it that he would regret his lapse of judgement. First shirts may be scary but angry momma cats are downright terrifying.
posted on October 19, 2001 03:06:15 AM new
Probably the whole mess could have been avoided if the wits with the chalk had stuck to the President's own get-tough term for the enemy. How much more powerful the message would have been had it read:
High Jack This, Evildoers
I'll probably have more to say about this tomorrow (or later today, whatever). I'm too tired to think at the moment.
Rocker 
