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From: flaps@utcs.uucp (Alan J Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: FLAMING on Ignorance
Message-ID: <896@utcs.uucp>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 20:51:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcs.896
Posted: Thu Oct  3 20:51:21 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 21:28:52 EDT
References: <578@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: flaps@utcs.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Organization: University of Toronto - General Purpose UNIX
Lines: 26
Summary: 

Not really re Ray's article, but it made me start thinking again about what
people at my work say from time to time.  Someone started talking a couple of
days ago about "There was this man on the subway, and he was SOOOO ugly, and I
was SURE that he was gay," and like that.  It's really odd, she appeared to
make an inference (UGLY X) ==> (GAY X).  I find it really difficult to decide
what to do under such situations.  Or about various sexist or racist things
people say, whenever I confront what they say, I get the hyper-liberal response
like "well not all ugly people are gay & not all gay people are ugly, but some
are" and when I press that there's no relation between ugliness and gayness
they would agree, and when I ask why they have therefore concluded that this
man is gay, they respond like "Well I don't know for sure, but I really think
he was".  It's ultimately frustrating.  And I'm always sitting there having
people around me discuss non-heterosexual people as if they are a million miles
away, and whenever I say anything about my own sexuality I either get responses
along the lines of "why do you need to go around flaunting your sexuality etc"
(as if the way they talk about gay people isn't flaunting theirs much more
obnoxiously than a simple statement), or else the response where they assume
this really curious pose but it's not Nice curiosity where they're trying to
learn, it's Nasty curiosity where they're trying to put what they think is
strange about me into a pigeonhole & seal the lid tight.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

decvax!utzoo!utcs!flaps (UUCP)

And P.S. to Ray, I really like the Jason articles, I tried to mail to you
but couldn't, I don't understand DECNET yet.