[asterisk-biz] Manners (was: Re: "Whats New at Digium the Asterisk Company")

[Nick Seraphin]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007, Matthew Rubenstein wrote:

> 	People call something that isn't a sexual human "gay" to insult it,
> because lots of people have treated gay people as really bad things. We
> don't say a bargainer tried to "jew us down" any more, either, even
> though "Jew" isn't a bad word when referring to Jewish people (except
> when people mean it that way).
> 
> 	When you use the term for a group of people as an insult to something,
> you are insulting those people. If people called some things "christian"
> as an insult, for example, the way people have called things "gay" as an
> insult for a long time, then "that thing is christian beyond words"
> would insult not just the thing, but christians, too.

You're going way off the deep end here, buddy.  First, *I* never used the
word.  I'm simply saying that calling Alex a bigot for using it in the way
he did is totally going overboard.  I'm simply defending Alex on this
because I don't think it was the end of civilization like you seem to be
indicating now.

You sound absolutely ridiculous.  Go back and read what you just wrote.
You're implying that calling an inanimate object "gay" is as bad as making
Black people sit on the back of the bus in the 1950's.  You're being
totally irrational.

Because I defended Alex's benign comment, you now called me a bigot and a
racist (where did racism come into this?  Is being gay now it's own race?)
and "people like [me]" are the reason there's oppression in the world and
why life is so horrible in this country.  You're obviously liberal
politically from your statements below... aren't liberals supposed to
DEFEND free speech and the first amendment?  Or maybe you only defend YOUR
right to free speech?  Anyone who disagrees with you is a bigot or a
racist.  Classic lines from the MoveOn.org playbook for arguments.

I suppose anytime you don't agree with someone, you just "gang up
on them" and beat them into submission until they succumb to your point
of view?  Doesn't that make YOU the oppressive one here?  

If calling something "gay" is such a bigoted slur, then why don't I see
any outrage from the community at all the thousands of times I've seen it
used on TV or in movies in the past 10 years alone?

REAL slurs, like the N-word, don't get used on broadcast television
anymore and haven't for years.  Yet I've often heard actors on broadcast
television saying something is "gay" or "so gay".

If it's such a horrible thing to say, where's the outrage over it's common
use in everyday life?  Don't tell me this mailing list is the first time
you've ever seen someone use that word that way in recent history.

Or what about all the times in TV or movies where there's a situation in
which someone questions whether another man is gay or not, and they
flinch, give a horrified facial expresion, and say "God No!"... that's not
more insulting to gay people than Alex calling an inanimate object "gay"
on a mailing list with a tiny fraction of the viewers of any TV network?
You think what Alex did was worse?  Yet the other thing is clearly
acceptable in today's society.

I guess Hollywood (which is full of gay people too) didn't get your memo.

Any other common words or phrases we have to stop using on here so as to
not offend you or oppress you?


> 	This is a basic point of elementary manners. Ask yourself if you would
> feel safe in a gay bar full of gay bikers, asked if you like the new
> version of Windows, and you replied that you didn't, LOUDLY, saying
> "THAT IS SO GAY". Would you feel safe? Would your rationalizations
> protect you?
> 
> 	You're one of those people who thinks you've carved out a whole zone of
> bad behavior because you call rules against it "politically" correct, as
> if the behavior is actually correct, but there's some arbitrary rule
> against it. "Politically correct" refers to all kinds of correct
> behavior that had to be forced on bigots by oppressed groups, because
> bigots, usually in the majority, could be stopped only by a "political"
> process, like long appeals like this one to people's sense of decency
> buried under their convenient traditional bigotry.
>
> 	People like you have long insisted from your conveniently protected
> roles in society that all kinds of ethnic slurs are OK. But their common
> use is a reminder to people they insult that the insults are accepted,
> will not be opposed, that the insulter has power to offend that the
> insulted does not have power to stop. The reality is referred to by the
> insult. To remind everyone that the target is an acceptable victim,
> which perpetuates the abuse. Including physical and political abuse. Gay
> people, even in America, are often second class citizens, with all kinds
> of rights and privileges denied them. And your calling something "gay"
> as an arbitrary insult to it is helping keep it that way. If you don't
> understand that, it's because you understand nothing about politics or
> how large groups of people operate. And now you're defending your
> ignorance, just because it's convenient to you.

Geez, Just call me Hitler so I can invoke Godwin's Law already.  You're
almost there with the above statements anyway. :-)

 
> 	I didn't say that making that slur was the sole action keeping everyone
> down. But it is part of it. And people failing to confront those little,
> everyday abuses is the essential part of it. Every time a White person
> in Alabama let a bus driver direct a Black person to the back of the
> bus, or any other of the little acceptable codes of racism was indulged
> rather than confronted, the racism was kept propped up by the person
> going along as much as by the person enforcing it.
> 
> 	I also didn't say anything about "Christmas". But your bringing it up
> refers to you acting like there's some kind of "war on Christmas", the
> idiotic culture war that lets privileged people like you act like
> victims, when you're not. A sad perversion of what Christmas is supposed
> to stand for: the birth of someone who brought compassion for everyone,
> no matter their station, regardless of how socially acceptable it was to
> treat some people like animals or objects.

Well based on that statement, I now know you're a far-left liberal nut and
there's no way I can win this argument with you, so I'm not even going to
try.  Go ahead and claim victory... tell me "you're giving up because you
know you're wrong" or whatever canned phrase liberals are using this week.

You've proven you're irrational, and I don't have time to waste arguing
with an irrational person.

If someone else, who isn't irrational, wants to discuss this with me
privately, I'll be happy to continue off-list.  

 
> 	Bigotry is *real*. It ruins lives. Just because you're privileged

Yes...  calling an inanimate object "gay" is ruining lives.  The body
count must be in the thousands.  Got to be George Bush's fault!  Just like
Katrina!

> 	BTW, ending your excuses with an insult and a smiley doesn't make it
> OK. And your saying that your bigotry is no big deal, just because *you*
> are so casual about it, doesn't mean it really is like that.

It wasn't an insult.  Again, you see something where it doesn't exist.

My God, I still cannot believe that you went this ape over Alex's comment.
I'm literally shaking my head in disbelief as I type this.

-- Nick