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The Splintering of Identity Politics: Gay not gay.

Fishking

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Here were see another example of how identity politics, which is the pillar of the Democrat party, is not founded on any viable grounds or premises. It's also, in my view, not viable. We also see, time and again, the thin facade of their mask of tolerance slipping, exposing that there is even less tolerance found there than with those they hate.

Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking.

Peter Thiel Shows Us There's a Difference Between Gay Sex and Gay | Advocate.com

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who made news this summer for endorsing Donald Trump at the Republican convention, is a man who has sex with other men. But is he gay?

That question might seem narrow, but it is actually raises a broad and crucial distinction we must make in our notions of sexuality, identity, and community.
 
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Here were see another example of how identity politics, which is the pillar of the Democrat party, is not founded on any viable grounds or premises. It's also, in my view, not viable. We also see, time and again, the thin facade of their mask of tolerance slipping, exposing that there is even less tolerance found there than with those they hate.

Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking.

Peter Thiel Shows Us There's a Difference Between Gay Sex and Gay | Advocate.com

Go to prison sometime and see if there's a difference between gay sex and gay...because there's a heck of a lot of prisoners who would otherwise never think about having sex with another guy, but who are just so horny from lack of sex that the crack of dawn - or the crack of don - isn't safe.
 
Go to prison sometime and see if there's a difference between gay sex and gay...because there's a heck of a lot of prisoners who would otherwise never think about having sex with another guy, but who are just so horny from lack of sex that the crack of dawn - or the crack of don - isn't safe.

Yeah, that's not applicable here because this person is obviously not in prison, where there aren't other choices.
 
Go to prison sometime and see if there's a difference between gay sex and gay...because there's a heck of a lot of prisoners who would otherwise never think about having sex with another guy, but who are just so horny from lack of sex that the crack of dawn - or the crack of don - isn't safe.

Gay old place prison ist, old boy. Gay old place, no doubt.
 
Um, yeah, it IS applicable. The question that the OP seemed to ask was, since when is gay sex not gay...and so I provided a solid example.

My thought was of the bisexuals I've known.
 
Um, yeah, it IS applicable. The question that the OP seemed to ask was, since when is gay sex not gay...and so I provided a solid example.

You provided an example in a context that is not-applicable. This guy is gay. He is attracted to men. He's come out as being gay. People are saying that he isn't gay merely because his politics doesn't fall in line with certain narrowly defined criteria. So, for your education:

Gay | Definition of Gay by Merriam-Webster


Definition of gay

: sexually attracted to someone who is the same sex

: of, relating to, or used by homosexuals

: happy and excited : cheerful and lively

You're trying to conflate those who simply have had homosexual intercourse with someone who is attracted to the same sex, which is gay.
 
Here were see another example of how identity politics, which is the pillar of the Democrat party, is not founded on any viable grounds or premises. It's also, in my view, not viable. We also see, time and again, the thin facade of their mask of tolerance slipping, exposing that there is even less tolerance found there than with those they hate.

Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking.

Peter Thiel Shows Us There's a Difference Between Gay Sex and Gay | Advocate.com

I think the article is a bit stupid. Sexual orientation isn't an identity it's a sexual orientation. Some political powers use it that way. But it's really more about who you love than what you are.

The creation of the category of sexual orientation not only classified homosexual sex but it also led to the invention of heterosexuality.
This is absurd to the point i was thinking this was a spoof. Heterosexuality has always been around. Defining homosexuality did not create it. It lead to a term being created. When discussing new ideas you have to create nomenclature. Yes language was invented, no Heterosexuality was not.

In the United States and many parts of Europe, the development of these categories led to the broader cultural understanding that these sexual acts created identities.
Sexual acts do not create identities. Politics does. This part is profoundly stupid.

The understanding that sex had the power to define identity led to the demarcation of homosexual and heterosexual people — as well as the subsequent stigma that those who were marked as homosexual were aberrant, criminally deviant, and socially unacceptable.

Yet the people who began to be identified as homosexual started to disagree with these assertions and found promise in this alternative identity. They established enclaves within the mainstream culture, places like pre-war Greenwich Village in New York City or Berlin in the 1920s, where they lived and socialized.

While these neighborhoods thrived, many people who were attracted to people of the same sex continued to fear the repercussions of being marked as homosexual. And so they denied that identity.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...Bwa ha ha ha ha... The label didn't cause the social stigma. Social stigma dates back to ancient Jewish tribes it was about the act. It still is, it's never been the label. Abstinent homosexuals and homosexuals that behave like heterosexuals are revered.

The significance of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, 1969 — when LGBT people rose up in defiance against a police raid on their bar in New York City — signaled a major turning point in global history. Many LGBT people started refusing to accept the definition of homosexuality as an identity that meant inferior, aberrant, criminal, and, most of all, unequal. When the people in the riot stood up against the police, they embraced a definition of homosexuality that recognized that people who had sex with people of the same gender had a distinct culture, identity, and history that connected them to 1920s Berlin and beyond.

From the 1970s to the present, many people who came out of the closet as gay understood their identity as part of a subculture and a specific community. They may not have known the exact history of how this sexual classification emerged or even understood its cultural vernacular, but they had a very clear recognition that being gay meant more than just having sex with someone of the same gender. They embraced the understanding that their sexual proclivities have defined their identity.
I wouldn't say it means more i would say it means something different. It means the romantic and sexual attraction to the same sex. Further gay people were pigeon holed into communities. It was after they were labeled, them said to be different, lesser, mentally ill, deviants and even dangerous that they were forced into a community of outcasts. Politics did this not a label.
 
Part 2
By the logic of gay liberation, Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but not a gay man. Because he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity.
I don't know who "gay liberation" is, but he is wrong. The man is gay because he is attracted to people of the same sex, that's what it means.

Whoever this "gay liberation" fellow is, i assume he is much the same as a black man that calls another black man an "uncle Tom" or a "coon" for not agreeing with him and that he is black.

This has nothing to do with identity, it has nothing to do with race or social standing, it is the attempt to pressure people into doing what another person wants based on similar aspects of the individual. Basically it's the little kid that didn't get his way on the kickball field taking the ball and going home.

As more and more people stop lying about who they are, less people frown on it and society becomes more accepting. Now that homosexuals are perhaps your naighbor, your child's teacher, bus driver, male man, we've cut through the propaganda that said homos ate child molesting nut cases. That is why being out is important. The identity is no longer that important because the fringe weirdos are becoming more and more the people who want to pigeon hole homosexuals. I think that is a fear among people that justify their bias with religion.
 
Yeah, that's not applicable here because this person is obviously not in prison, where there aren't other choices.

I have been told I'm not really gay. I don't know how anybody else would know better than me. There are poeple that tell me that it's because magical little hobgoblins that don't really exist in any reality have "possessed my soul." I've been told it was because i haven't had sex with the right woman.

I don't know how these people could possibly know what arouses me better than I do, or that these magical beings that cannot be detected are controlling me like some sort of flesh robot. Or that a woman with nothing more than any other woman can magically alter this.

It all seems like busybodydom. I stand by the philosophy that people should not worry themselves with what i do. If you can't handle it we don't need to be acquainted.
 
I have been told I'm not really gay. I don't know how anybody else would know better than me. There are poeple that tell me that it's because magical little hobgoblins that don't really exist in any reality have "possessed my soul." I've been told it was because i haven't had sex with the right woman.

I don't know how these people could possibly know what arouses me better than I do, or that these magical beings that cannot be detected are controlling me like some sort of flesh robot. Or that a woman with nothing more than any other woman can magically alter this.

It all seems like busybodydom. I stand by the philosophy that people should not worry themselves with what i do. If you can't handle it we don't need to be acquainted.

I get that aspect of it, these POVs are coming from those who are in denial about your sexual orientation and are what may be called "anti-gay", yes? This is coming from gays who want to attack other gays for leaving the ideological plantation. It's like being gay also has to mean your ideology is monolithic.

I think, if anything, this example shows progress in public acceptance of homosexuality as people seemingly don't feel like they have to go against their own ideology in other areas just to protect themselves. It looks like progress to me.
 
Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking.
I think you misunderstood the point of the article. It's not an especially good article but the point it's trying to make is fairly clear.

It's basically about the assumption that people who are homosexual automatically will and should follow a very specifically defined political line. When they say Peter Thiel (who I'd never heard of) isn't "gay", they're highlighting that flawed assumptions. If being gay automatically implies a particular politics then someone who doesn't follow those politics can't be "gay".

The basic problem is that too many people make a singular link between homosexual individuals and the political movement commonly associated with them. This mistake is made from both within and without that movement and leads to exactly this kind of confusion, with all of the problems that can lead to.
 
I get that aspect of it, these POVs are coming from those who are in denial about your sexual orientation and are what may be called "anti-gay", yes?
Not really. One of these people is a close friend.
This is coming from gays who want to attack other gays for leaving the ideological plantation. It's like being gay also has to mean your ideology is monolithic.
Yes I get this from gay poeple. I am conservative among other things. (I have been told I'm not conservative by conservatives because of my sexual orientation). This is more about argument than identity.


I think, if anything, this example shows progress in public acceptance of homosexuality as people seemingly don't feel like they have to go against their own ideology in other areas just to protect themselves. It looks like progress to me.
Absolutely. The more the "gay community" is desolved the more gay people belong to the larger community.
 
I think you misunderstood the point of the article. It's not an especially good article but the point it's trying to make is fairly clear.

It's basically about the assumption that people who are homosexual automatically will and should follow a very specifically defined political line. When they say Peter Thiel (who I'd never heard of) isn't "gay", they're highlighting that flawed assumptions. If being gay automatically implies a particular politics then someone who doesn't follow those politics can't be "gay".

The basic problem is that too many people make a singular link between homosexual individuals and the political movement commonly associated with them. This mistake is made from both within and without that movement and leads to exactly this kind of confusion, with all of the problems that can lead to.

I understood what was being said, I just think that the entire premise was ridiculous. What you wrote is part of the point being made.
 
You provided an example in a context that is not-applicable. This guy is gay. He is attracted to men. He's come out as being gay. People are saying that he isn't gay merely because his politics doesn't fall in line with certain narrowly defined criteria. So, for your education:

Gay | Definition of Gay by Merriam-Webster


Definition of gay

: sexually attracted to someone who is the same sex

: of, relating to, or used by homosexuals

: happy and excited : cheerful and lively

You're trying to conflate those who simply have had homosexual intercourse with someone who is attracted to the same sex, which is gay.

Here's what you said in the OP: "Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking."

You were obviously implying that it's silly to think that a guy can have sex with other guys without being gay...and I provided you a clear example of where it's not at all uncommon. I never said or even implied that Thiel wasn't gay - I was only addressing your clear implication that one can't have gay sex without being gay.
 
Here's what you said in the OP: "Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking."

You were obviously implying that it's silly to think that a guy can have sex with other guys without being gay...and I provided you a clear example of where it's not at all uncommon. I never said or even implied that Thiel wasn't gay - I was only addressing your clear implication that one can't have gay sex without being gay.

Seems you missed the part that I placed in bold from my quote.
 
Seems you missed the part that I placed in bold from my quote.

"Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking."

Seems you missed the rest of the sentences you wrote.
 
We have the same arguments over who gets a "feminist" hat, being too conservative is a sure way to get rejected.

But ya the left is bankrupt, it's Stars Hollow on a Hollywood lot, there is no there there anymore, and there has been none there for some time.
 
They're saying he shouldn't be welcomed in the "gay community" because he aligns with the devil party that has long opposed gay rights at every turn. I'm sure that Thiel stands out more for billionaire than being gay anyway. He has almost nothing in common with 99.99999% of homosexuals

Never mind that Bill Clinton signed "DOMA" and "DADT", two disastrously anti gay and unconstitutional laws, and Obama didn't have the guts to publically support gay marriage practically every democrat voter came around to it

Over the past handful of years and especially today, the republican party IS much worse when it comes to minority rights. But the Clintons and tons and tons of other democrats had their chance to deserve credit for this, and it's too late. A gay or black or hispanic or muslim voter of Trump can be seen as having no dignity and a traitor and all that, but a gay person siding with Hillary is damn sure not impressive to me either
 
I get that aspect of it, these POVs are coming from those who are in denial about your sexual orientation and are what may be called "anti-gay", yes? This is coming from gays who want to attack other gays for leaving the ideological plantation. It's like being gay also has to mean your ideology is monolithic.

I think, if anything, this example shows progress in public acceptance of homosexuality as people seemingly don't feel like they have to go against their own ideology in other areas just to protect themselves. It looks like progress to me.

It's not progress at all to vow allegiance to someone who either hates your guts or wants to deprive you of basic rights. Trump said he'd appoint judges in the vain of Scalia. Well just look at the horrific things Scalia has said in his opinions in gay rights cases. Trump's running mate also signed as governor one of the most oppressive anti gay laws of the past 20 years

It's one thing to say Hillary doesn't deserve any credit for progress, and she doesn't, but it's another to support a party that STILL shamelessly pursues anti gay legislation. The republican party is not at that point yet, period. Maybe in another decade, but i doubt it
 
It's not progress at all to vow allegiance to someone who either hates your guts or wants to deprive you of basic rights. Trump said he'd appoint judges in the vain of Scalia. Well just look at the horrific things Scalia has said in his opinions in gay rights cases. Trump's running mate also signed as governor one of the most oppressive anti gay laws of the past 20 years

It's one thing to say Hillary doesn't deserve any credit for progress, and she doesn't, but it's another to support a party that STILL shamelessly pursues anti gay legislation. The republican party is not at that point yet, period. Maybe in another decade, but i doubt it

But not enough that people don't come out in it anymore, and that is the point you missed.
 
"Here we have a guy that is attracted to, and has sex with men, being told he's not gay. This isn't the only place this mentality can be found. This is close to mental disorder level of thinking."

Seems you missed the rest of the sentences you wrote.

Nope, I didn't miss it one bit. I just pointed out that part you're glossing over to take the statement as a whole. I know taking entire statements is really hard for liberals to do as they can't operate on any level that doesn't cut parts out of what is being said to misconstrue it.
 
They're saying he shouldn't be welcomed in the "gay community" because he aligns with the devil party that has long opposed gay rights at every turn. I'm sure that Thiel stands out more for billionaire than being gay anyway. He has almost nothing in common with 99.99999% of homosexuals

I'm sorry, you must have read a different article than the one I linked. The one I linked stated that he wasn't gay, that being gay is more than just being attracted to the same sex.
 
I understood what was being said, I just think that the entire premise was ridiculous. What you wrote is part of the point being made.
Then why did you make your statement about Peter Thiel “being told he isn’t gay” without any attempt to acknowledge the distinction between “functionally gay” and “politically gay” the article was trying to establish?
 
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