LAST EDITED ON 11-18-09 AT 06:08 PM (EST)

Hey, good thought. Don’t need Email though.

But you're wrong about your guess. I asked an openly gay coworker to read this. I caught him just as he was trying to get out the door, but he agreed to come to my office and read it. And he couldn't stop laughing at my stuff (well, he smiled, anyway). I asked about Mindy’s post, and since he didn't watch TAR, he really didn't have an opinion on that based on what was blurred, what should be blurred, etc. He watches Survivor though, and reminded me that guys in underwear often get their backside blurred. He wasn’t offended, he thought it was pretty tame.

But I digress.

Iterating, (and this point needs to be emphasized) he thought my post #20 was pretty witty. As a friend he's biased. He did mention that using the phrase "poised to pounce", although perfectly apt and fitting after reading the flurry of protests, wasn't very diplomatic. So, if that’s the offense you mentioned, I can concede a point. Next time I will attempt to get my opinion across with more diplomacy, I don't aim to hurt anybody's feelings.

Continuing with his opinion, he agreed with my thoughts on HD's diatribes (we’re used to them, but he wasn’t), and wondered if you might be overstating your case a bit with what you considered "offensive" in one of your posts. He is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt though, as do I, you have the right to be offended by anything you please.

Now your turn. Get a straight friend to comment. And ask if he can see the wit in my post, that’s the main thing here.

"He is willing to give you
the benefit of the doubt
though, as do I, you
have the right to be
offended by anything you please."

But as per your post - just not allowed to comment about it?

"Now your turn. Get a straight
friend to comment. And ask
if he can see the
wit in my post, that’s
the main thing here.

Cool - My neighbor and her daughter just visited. My neighbor was diplomatic and said she hopes that the poster just didn't choose her words correctly because it came across "pretty bad". Her daughter was more succinct with a two word comment that is best I don't post. Neither found comparing gay men to predators poised to pounce very witty. Sorry.

Dear kingfish,

I was determined to abandon this thread. As Max notes, I have made my point. But then I saw your most recent response which continues to characterize anything I have to say as a "diatribe" and thus lacking any merit at all.

That convinced me to try again to have a conversation with you, but this time I promise to treat you with respect. I realize now that I erred in taking the bait in your post #20 that alluded to other conversations that have taken place here and in other forums, especially OT. It was my fault for allowing you to bait me like that. I take responsibility for it.

In order to have a real conversation, I need to make several observations. Please understand that I intend these as observations only, not as accusations or judgments. I hope that you will at least approach them that way and attempt to understand my point of view (even if you disagree in the end). All I am asking for is a chance to have a respectful exchange of ideas.

I'm going to start with an account of a recent event. I will explain in a moment why this is important. Last week I discovered that one of my students committed plagiarism. When I discussed his paper and the evidence with him, he emphatically stated that he did not purposefully plagiarize. He said that he did not understand how to include citations or to what extent he needed to process the information on his own. Let's assume that he was completely truthful here (and not just attempting to avoid the maximum penalty). That being the case, he committed plagiarism unintentionally. What was I to do? What would you have done? Whether he actually meant to plagiarize or not, in the end he had indeed committed plagiarism. That demanded a response; it was not something that I could simply ignore, no matter how unintentional.

Based on your comments to Wagstaff, I imagine that you might be objecting that a plagiarism case has nothing to do with this conversation, that this is comparing apples to oranges. Please try to understand what I am trying to do by offering this story. I am presenting a situation in which you (as far as I know) have no stake in the outcome because I want you to think about the implications that intentionally doing something has on the consequences. I am hoping that in the case of plagiarism we can agree that the offense outweighed the intention.

I think that the issue of intention is important in this thread. Here's what I think took place. Mindy posted a comment that was offensive, but it was not her intention to actually offend anybody. Instead, she chose her words poorly and, unfortunately, they were connected to larger discourses that have been discussed in this community and in American society in general.

Then some people objected to Mindy's comments, though they did not grapple with whether or not they were intentional. I think that you gave Mindy the benefit of the doubt and assumed that she unintentionally offended some people, though you did not explicitly say anything about intention in your initial response. Instead, you treated her comments in an all-or-nothing fashion. (I think that you are a smart enough guy that you do indeed understand why some of us objected to Mindy's comments, even if you do not like the manner in which we expressed ourselves.) You set up a false dichotomy in which Mindy's comments had to be either (a) offensive and intentional or (b) not offensive at all. Choosing the second option also allowed you to get in some digs at some people (intending to aim them mostly at me, I suspect --- again, this is an observation, not an accusation).

Then you objected to the tone that some of us took in responding to Mindy's explanations of her original comments. I imagine that my post #19 was one of the "diatribes" that you did not appreciate. Admittedly I could have been more pleasant in my response, but I think that another distinction is important here. Whether or not I was all sunshine and cuddles is a very different issue than whether or not I had a legitimate grievance. I think that you are so invested in critiquing my personality that this necessitates denying any merit to the actual content of what I have to say. (Again, I mean this is an observation, not an accusation.)

Let me explain what I was trying to do in my post #19. Mindy expressed her concern that she did not understand why some of us objected to her initial comments. Simply saying, "That was offensive," was not enough to explain why it was offensive. In post #19 I did what people in my field call a "close reading" by taking each item in turn and explaining why it was individually offensive and how it related to a larger discourse that became increasingly offensive by means of accumulation. Could I have been more pleasant in my explanation? Perhaps, but (again) my demeanor does not impact the merit of my views (just the reception of them).

You don't seem to understand why I worked that closely with Mindy's language. That's fine, but I would like to try to explain. As I said above, I don't know what you do for a living (except that you do it in an office), but I would guess that the types of activities that you engage in on a daily basis are different than mine. (I intentionally used the word different because I intended that statement to be value neutral.) My career requires that I work closely with words, ideas, and theories, using them to construct explanations of how a culture, society, or nation functions. Words and ideas are very important in my profession; they are not treated lightly. I realize that some of the distinction and the stakes might seem strange and even silly to those outside the academy, but they are very important to me and to my colleagues. I hope that you can at least extend to me the respect of acknowledging that.

You think that I am verbose. I work in a field in which our expectations are expressed in the thousands of words. We give lectures that pursue an idea over the course of fifty minutes. When approaching a problem or issue, my colleagues and I are expected to take into consideration a dozen or more books and articles that link to that idea (as well as the extensive historiography that supports it). It is natural for us to draw in lots of information from a variety of sources whenever we engage in conversations, whether in person, in print, or online. We tend to have done more reading on certain subjects than the average person (and, again, this is an observation, not a judgment --- it is simply part of our training and our jobs) and we attempt to incorporate that information into how we view the world. To me, my interactions in this community are indeed concise, even if they do not appear that way to you (with this response being an obvious exception).

My job also requires that I help students to identify patterns or methods of thinking that become discourses that extend across communities of varying sizes. You may think that the way I engaged with Mindy's language in my post #19 was petty, but I believe that the ability to engage in that kind of critical analysis is important for all professionals and all citizens to develop. If one of my students were to go on to, say, the advertising industry or public service, s/he better understand how people are going to react to language and how individual ideas connect to larger discourses that are often loaded with controversy. You seem to think that the attention that I devote to language is excessive. In contrast, I think that it is an important and necessary skill for well-informed and responsible workers and citizens.

I'm not certain that you read my post #27 other than to dismiss it as another "diatribe." Let me try again to make some of those points, but I will do it without intentionally trying to push your buttons this time.

I tried to use a counterexample in that response, hoping that if I expressed a situation in which you indeed had a stake that you might be able to understand the reactions expressed by some people when it was members of their own community who seemed to be the target (whether intentionally or not). I can appreciate that since you are not a gay man that you might not understand exactly what it is like to be a non-heterosexual in a heterosexual world. I've been around these boards long enough though to know that as a Southerner who sometimes expresses conservative views that you and your community have been painted with some pretty broad brushstrokes --- and I understand the frustration, anger, and offense many Southerners, conservatives, and Republicans have experienced in conversations that have taken place in these forums. (Believe it or not, the discussions I have experienced here have caused me to be even more vigilant in the classroom to make sure that multiple points of view are expressed.)

I was hoping that you would ask yourself, "How would I feel if somebody made a comment that played on the stereotypes of my community?" I was hoping that you would do that so that you might understand how and why some us reacted to a statement that played on pernicious stereotypes of gay men (again, whether intentionally or not). You might be able to write off certain comments as just message board chat, but I believe (and I am supported by an abundance of historiography that makes this point) that these sorts of offhand comments are actually indicative of cultural norms in the larger society.

Let's return to the idea of intention. In some ways it was actually worse that my plagiarist did not intentionally commit the offense. It demonstrated that he did not even understand why I was upset with what he did. Mindy's unintentional comment is so imbedded in certain meta-expectations of gay men within our culture that it seemed to go unnoticed by some people. This kind of denigration of gay men is just as harmful (and some would argue more harmful) to being considered equal members of society and the body politic as subtle expressions of racism and sexism that are not addressed yet influence people's lives and ideas.

I think that we see this in other places in this forum and in this thread. I don't know if you saw the post that was deleted in last week's love list before it disappeared, but it was part of a larger discourse that is unfriendly (to say the least) to gay men. Or you might even look at post #48 in this thread. Despite all the discussion in this thread, the author goes out of his/her way to state that the gay men did indeed have erections as they played volleyball. As I said above, I think that you are smart enough that you do realize this is an intentional attempt to be offensive. The author also addresses those who objected to Mindy's comments as "girls," though it is clear that the objections came primarily from gay men. You complain that I pay too much attention to words and that I bring in too many "outside" ideas, so I will leave it to you to consider what the author is trying to communicate by addressing grown gay men as "girls." Whether you think that we are pouncing or not, this is the kind of rhetoric that we face every day, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

This has shaped the way that I react to such comments. I can understand that you do not like the way I interact with people. I can even understand that you may not personally like me at all. That's fine. But I think that you are a decent enough person that you could step aside from our earlier attempts to push one another's buttons and acknowledge that you can see how and why some of us found the original comments offensive (even if unintentionally). My views (if not my delivery) have merit. I hope that you can at least respect that. (You have previously stated that people are free to be offended by whatever they want, but that is very different from saying that you understand why people were offended and that their views do indeed have merit.)

You may react to this response as just another "diatribe" simply because of its length. I hope that you do not. It is because I respect you and want you to understand my point of view that I put the time and effort into trying to explain my perspective. If I were as condescending as you want to believe that I am, then I would not have chosen to attempt to engage you on this point any more.

Thank you, HD, for expressing yourself in this manner. I can't speak for kingfish, but I value your opinions and perspectives (though not as much when delivered in a cross, off-key fashion). I do not encounter many openly gay men in my daily existence, thus comments from you and kidflash are very enlightening and broadening to me, as they offer a different viewpoint, one I don't have many opportunities to consider.

another nifty agman creation