squid5580 said:
Agreed. I just find it offensive when one specific demographic tries to claim the "we are the most targeted" award.
I'm sorry, but when the fuck did I, or any other gay rights activist, every say we are
the most targeted? That's something that you and other people like you keep accusing gay rights of claiming and not only is it not true, it's really insulting.
Just because your demographic group is a target in the area where you live don't try and tell me that anothers in another area doesn't matter as much.
How many times do I have to say this? It's not "the area where I live," it's
who I am that puts me at greater risk.
If that is even the case. Just because you have been targeted personally doesn't mean that the problem is happening to everyone of your demographic everywhere.
No, not everyone everywhere. That is a ridiculous and rhetorically useless argument to even attempt. And it's not me targeted personally. If it was actually about me personally, it would be easier to deal with. It is about being a part of an identifiable demographic group that puts me at higher risk than if I were not part of this group.
I got jumped by 4 guys once while walking down the street and as they had me on the ground laying the boots to me they kept calling me a "skid" and telling me to get a haircut (along with alot of other names). So am I to assume that every male with long hair is a target? Should I and my long hair brethren get any special rights or privileges? Should they have gotten charged with a hate crime? Of course not because I am a HWM. How can you not feel the equality?
Of course you aren't to assume anything based on a single instance. Don't be stupid. But if every long-haired guy in your town is getting threatened or glared at, and if guys in your town are being beaten up for having long hair on a regular basis, then yeah. This did happen, too, you know. In the 60's guys with long hair did get beat up all the time. As far as special rights and privileges are concerned, when is the right to walk down the street without being targeted for attack specifically because you have long hair a special right? How is that a privilege?
And if there is a decades long history of men being beaten and killed for wearing long hair, if there is a whole set of slurs and epithets for direct use against them, and if there is an identifiable pattern of violence against men with long hair, then yes, I say one could see about getting long-haired men covered under any existing hate crime law.
I don't give a shit if you are a heterosexual white male. If you are a target of group-specific violence, whether that's based on your hair or your height or your taste in music, then that's a problem, and if you wanted to create some sort of action around that, I will be happy to help you. If you actually care about any of this beyond it being a rhetorical device to try and make people like me shut up.
SO how do we stop this anti gay violence? Or the racial violence? Or the violence against fat people, elderly people, hippies and the lsit goes on and on. Make more commercials exposing these demographics as weak cuz if life has taught me anything it is weakness to bullies is like blood to a shark. They can smell it miles away and it sends them into a frenzy.
What are you talking about, exposing people as weak? How did any commercial show anyone as weak? The commercial you mentioned was someone making a comment that pointed out both how offensive and also how stupid "That is so gay!" is. Saying that you are the target of attacks and you aren't going to put up with it and hide and hope to be left alone (which doesn't work, we tried), that you are going to stand up for yourself and call people on their shit - how is that weak. That's showing the bullies you aren't afraid. Isn't that what you are supposed to do with bullies?
squid5580 said:
Right and no gay person has ever commited an act of violence. How do you know there aren't homosexuals out there doing exactly that?
We are homosexuals, not saints. Don't be stupid, of course gay people are capable of violence. But you don't find gay people jumping straight people outside of straight nightclub and beating them up on their way to their cars.
When the rest of the world becomes pacificistic except for gay bashing then you will have a valid arguement. Until then you are a target just like every other human being on the planet. That is the problem VIOLENCE. Not some demographic targeted violence but violence altogether. Why not try to end that instead of the violence just directed at your group? Oh right because that doesn't affect you. It only affects you when it is directed at your group. That is some of the most selfish bullshit I have ever had the mispleasure of reading here.
OK, now I'm pissed. How dare you tell me that I don't care about violence directed at anyone else. I should kick your ass! <---that's a joke. But I will say this before I leave the rest of this thread to Cheeze_Pavilion's freakish response-stamina. I am a feminist (who believes that sexism fucks over men, too), I have been a gay rights activist, I've worked against race and class discrimination, and I've worked, to the degree I can, towards peace and justice globally. So don't tell me that I don't care about anybody but my own group, don't tell me my movement doesn't care about anybody but our own group, because you don't know us. You don't know our organizations, you don't know our activities, you don't know that we all work on everything we can all the time. But you can't do everything without focus, so that's where these specific groups come in, so you can focus on what are really just parts of one big problem, which is that general violence thing you were lecturing me about earlier. Different people work on different parts, but the goal is still the big picture where it doesn't matter how we dress or what color our skin is or where/if we worship or who we love. If I were in your town, I would stick up for your right to walk down the street without being harassed. Would you stick up for mine? Who's really the self-centered one here?
And since you were lecturing me about how I should work toward the abatement of generalized violence instead of stopping gay-bashing, let me ask you this? What are you doing to solve this big picture problem you insist that I solve? Because if the only thing you are doing in the face of public violence, targeted or not, is to tell me I'm somehow demanding special rights for working on my section of it, then you need to get out of the way. If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Just because you can't be bothered to work on your part of the problem doesn't mean I'm not allowed to work on mine.
EDIT: By the way, I'm not familiar with the term "skid." What does it mean? I'm actually interested in how you are being harassed and why.
