'House' episode offends asexuals

Alan said:
"The only people who don't want it are either sick, dead, or lying."
Those three things were presented as the only causes there. It's not a case of this person being a liar and this person being sick, but of those cases, and death, being presented as the only possible causes.

Also they're really ugly and gay too, apparently.
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And? House is an offensive misanthrope. When he isn't saying something mean and offensive, that's news.
 
What does Fox think they're doing? Creating fictional characters that represent actual viewpoints is outrageous if those viewpoints are not politically correct. House is a role model, he's supposed to represent everything that is fair and decent in our society.

Yucky-yuck. Reality is disgusting and crude. I don't watch TV to see such crude views portrayed by fictional characters. I'll be in seclusion in the west wing.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
If there were curable medical conditions that caused homosexuality, I'd have no problem with House curing someone's medical condition that was causing their homosexuality. I'm pretty sure that's not how reality works, so I think it's a straw man rather than an equivalent case, but if it did I'd have no problem with House doing a story about it.
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Actually, apparently there are medical conditions (although not necessarily curable ones at present) that can cause a straight person to turn gay:

Rugby jock says stroke turned him gay

(CBS) Strokes can have strange consequences. Some stroke victims wind up with different accents, others with different personalities. Chris Birch said he discovered he was gay when he woke up after a stroke.

The 26-year-old Welshman suffered a stroke after breaking his neck while attempting a back flip at a gym, The Daily Mail reported. His then-fiance and family stayed by his side, but when he woke, something had changed.

"It sounds strange, but when I came round I immediately felt different," Birch told the paper. "I wasn't interested in women any more. I was definitely gay. I had never been attracted to a man before - I'd never even had any gay friends."

Before the stroke, Birch was a banker who loved playing rugby, watching sports, and drinking beer with his buds. After the stroke, he found he had little in common with his blokes, quit his job to train as a hairdresser, and started dating a man.
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Babbylonian said:
The problem is that nobody - conservative or liberal - cares one bit about people who choose to be asexual (or are born that way - I don't know the claims or the science), so the organization jumped on this for the chance to whine in public about mistreatment. It's likely to be the first and last time most people will ever hear about them.
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As an actual member of AVEN's forums, I've been keeping tabs on the discussion surrounding this episode and can offer some insight. The problem isn't that a person's asexuality was proven to be medically caused; it's the fact that House's statement - people who don't want sex are either gay or lying - is extremely familiar to asexuals as they hear it all the time; it's the second most common reaction to mentioning one's orientation (behind "you just haven't met the right person yet"); asexuals consider it invalidation at best, bigotry at worst. So House using the line and it being proven right is seen as similar to confirming a prejudicial stereotype on a show watched by millions. Considering that so few ever get to hear the advocate's side of the story, it's seen as damaging to asexuality awareness in a way that will be difficult to recover from.
 
Checkmite said:
Considering that so few ever get to hear the advocate's side of the story, it's seen as damaging to asexuality awareness in a way that will be difficult to recover from.
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I admit to total ignorance of any asexuality movement, if one exists as such, but I have to ask: Does anyone need to have awareness of asexuality? Are they victims of prejudice and I just haven't heard about it?

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but if someone identified themselves to me as being asexual, while I might have a few questions about it (including inquiring about their medical status, if I felt comfortable doing so - there are both primary and secondary hormone deficiencies that can be indicative of serious medical problems), at the end of the day I probably wouldn't give it a lot more thought. I don't consider the idea of someone not having sex, or an interest thereof, to be a problem or anything that requires advocacy.

It's weirder to me that an asexual would get upset about this TV show than being asexual in the first place.
 
Puppycow said:
Sounds to me like they blew it. Why treat asexuality as a medical condition instead of just another sexual orientation?
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Asexuality is a sexual orientation???

Isn't it more like an ..... asexual orientation?

Puppycow said:
OK, you win.

You hit on something that occurred to me after my last post, which is that the prefix of asexual is the same as the prefix for atheism. Atheism is not a religion, but the absence of a religion, just as not collecting stamps is not a hobby, but the absence of a hobby. So, therefore, asexuality is not a sexual orientation, but the absence of a sexual orientation (Not That There's Anything Wrong With ThatTM).
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Ah... I hadn't read this post. So you did realize the irony :D
 
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Babbylonian said:
I admit to total ignorance of any asexuality movement, if one exists as such, but I have to ask: Does anyone need to have awareness of asexuality? Are they victims of prejudice and I just haven't heard about it?
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Yes. They are constantly assaulted by nubile young things who -- despite their total lack of interest -- try to force them to have sex, and...

...er, where do I join?
 
Weird Science said:
Yes. They are constantly assaulted by nubile young things who -- despite their total lack of interest -- try to force them to have sex, and...

...er, where do I join?
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If an asexual person does not rape you, it is asexual rape.
 
Babbylonian said:
I admit to total ignorance of any asexuality movement, if one exists as such, but I have to ask: Does anyone need to have awareness of asexuality? Are they victims of prejudice and I just haven't heard about it?
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I have a friend who identifies as asexual and actually suffered quite a bit of derision from it, mainly in college, he was a generally good looking and likable guy, so got a lot of female attention. When he repeatedly failed to "close the deal" guys would call him faggot, gay, pussy, etc. When he'd 'try' for the sake of peer approval but fail to get hard, then the girls know him as a limp-dick, 'closet-case,' etc.

ETA: In many ways I think it would be worse than homosexuality. Since most people who would discriminate against a homosexual will lump you in with them, you'd get the same derision from that group, but without the support and awareness of the LGBT community.
 
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Loss Leader said:
Because it's a TV show about pretend medical conditions?
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Hold on a moment - you mean it isn't a medical lecture? That it is a fictional - well I never....

I do wonder why people get their knickers tied in a twist about such shows, especially since they will often focus in on one small detail they consider wrong or incorrect which is just one minnow swimming alongside the whales in the ocean of wrongness that is every single TV show!
 
Puppycow said:
If the character had been gay instead, and House found that it was actually a tumor that was causing him to be gay, and his husband/boyfriend was just pretending to be gay, would that be not be offensive?
It's the notion that somewhere inside every asexual or gay person there's really a straight person trying to get out.
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No more offensive than his silly pretend limp is offensive to people with an actual disability that results in them limping.
 
I'd like to add that I don't think House did anything particularly wrong, though it seems like no one is really arguing the opposite at this point. I can see how it would hit home if you were an asexual and you've had to deal with ******** like House in real life, but that's the nature of media and life in general. I'm sure a prison rape joke could wound me pretty badly if I'd been raped in prison. But being offensive isn't a bad thing, per se.
 
An episode of House offended somebody. Film at 11.

Next up: Liquid water is wet.
 
Asexuality is NOT a sexual orientation.

That is just an excuse so they can live their sick, twisted lifestyle.
 
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