Split Thread [Ed] Personal experiences with gays

[Quad4_72]

I haven't read most of this thread, so perhaps what I'm saying will already have been said, but I imagine it bears saying more than once anyway. If your experience of homosexual men is observing who shows up at a club devoted to drag acts, I think you've met only a self-selected subset of gay men, too exclusive to base generalities on. Unless you're very good at spotting, there's a good chance you've omitted a good number of gay men from your sample, because the ones who are not effeminate, or inclined to hang out at drag shows may not be distinguishable as gay.

I understand what you're saying, but in my sample size of the hundreds of men who act masculine, don't you think I would have met at least ONE in all of those people who was gay but acted masculine as well? Like I said, I know them all pretty personally, and there was not a single one who admitted to being gay. I have the margin of error for those that have an elaborate cover, but as everyone is suggesting in this thread, shouldn't I have met a least ONE individual who was openly gay but acted masculine?

Maybe it depends on where you are. There are plenty of gay men "running around" up here in Vermont, where people have pretty much stopped caring who is what as long as they don't do it in the road, and my own anecdotal sampling suggests that in a culture where being gay is rapidly becoming normal and unexceptional, most of the gay people themselves appear normal and unexceptional as well.

I have never been to Vermont, so maybe you are correct for that state and it is a special case.

 

[Rasmus]

As I explained earlier, I know the people from my sample very well, and if any of the males who acted masculine were gay, they were putting on a very elaborate show to cover it up.

Sorry, but you would be incredibly easy to fool.

Your very words here should give you a clue as to why that is: Acting "masculine" isn't difficult for gays because they are men. They don't need to put on an elaborate show to fool you, they just need to not be camp. (and possibly look after a girl every once in a while.

Again: I am often mistakenly thought of as gay. Trust me: I am not and I am not putting any effort in appearing that way, either. If it's possible to "act gay" by accident, how difficult can it be to act straight on purpose - especially if the base assumption is in your favor?

 

[Quad4_72]

Most of them.

A lot of bigotry is based in ignorance. You don't have to know that you are a bigot to be one. Most people who are ... don't.

Your personal conviction that your limited and inaccurate stereotypes must be true, even in the face of concerted dialogue which should at the very least give you pause to reconsider your certainty, is more than enough to earn you the not-so-coveted title.

A lot of the people responding to you here, and disagreeing with you, are well known to you from other discussions, on other topics. In most cases you have good reason to not discount out-of-hand the opinions they offer because of that prior knowledge.

And yet you do, on this particular topic. Why is that? How could your expertise in this one area be so incontrovertible and unassailable? Why are you so reluctant to concede that you might be mistaken?

At some point it may become evident to you that there are reasons people of different sexual orientations might be less than forthcoming with you about that subject in real life. Your side of the discussion in this thread, if you were to peruse it less defensively, might give you some insight into those reasons.

Call me a bigot if you please, but I treat everyone with dignity and respect, no matter what color, race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. It seems to me that some of the other posters experiences may be biased. If you live in a gay community your whole life, or even just in recent times, of course it is gonna look like EVERYONE is gay. But that is just simply a biased sample, and does not apply to my experiences.

For example, tragic monkey said :

Who've spent decades with gays --being their friends, being their lovers, talking to them, hanging out with them. I go to gay bars. I date gay men. I talk to them. Most of my friends are gay men. I'm one myself. In January I attended a social event with nine thousand other gay men

How in the world is that even close to an accurate assessment of how general society is outside of a gay community?

 

[Quad4_72]

Even within recent memory this description would include almost all the men who didn't want people to know that they were gay, which would have been most of them.

When I was growing up being known or even suspected to be gay not only meant someone would have a good chance of being beaten up, it would have meant a near certainty that they would become largely unemployable and generally shunned. No security clearances, thrown out of church, etc., etc.

Your margin of error could very easily be much larger than you imagine. Coming out of the closet is still a pretty big step for many people, even with the progress that has been made in recent decades.

But as posters in this thread have suggested, I should have met at least one masculine acting gay guy who was open about being gay. Why have I not met such an individual with all of the people I have known over the years?

 

[Alan]

The US military is an ideal context to observe people expressing their sexuality honestly. It is unlikely that there are any forces that would make people be dishonest about their attractions.

 

[Belz...]

A girly hug is too hard to describe, but it is very distinct.

You don't see a problem with that statement ?

Also, do you have the statistics available from my personal experiences?

There's a reason why anecdotes are the weakest form of evidence, Quad.

Out of those hundreds, not one of them who acts masculine is gay.

How do you know this ?

Now how exactly would you know if the males I have met who act masculine are gay or not?

Our point exactly.

 

[Quad4_72]

Yes.

The reason you come across that way is because your views of how gay people behave and what they are like could have been taken out of a homophobia 101 textbook.

It's all there: Their effeminate behavior, that they influence straight men, that you can tell who's gay from a mile away, that there is a gay "lifestyle", etc. The only one of your soldiers who you think may have been gay : Surprise - he's a problem, he has issues.

Your underlying reasoning is pretty much the same that you could hear from every homophobe, too. They all know how gays are based on the people who's entire being seems to scream "gay" regardless of their actual orientation. They don't know them personally or close, of course. Their social circle always seems suspiciously free from gay people.

No, I don't think you are homophobic - or at least you haven't said anything at all that would suggest that you are. But you'd appear to be homophobic to anyone who's been in this sort of discussion before - and outside of an anonymous Internet forum, a lot of people could never afford to give you the benefit of the doubt.

And the ones who'd meet you are soldiers in an army that to my knowledge still doesn't allow openly gay soldiers to serve, right? Your men cannot *tell* you because they are not allowed to tell. So, yes, it seems entirely reasonably that they would talk about past girlfriends and try to find girls very, very openly.

It works, too. I am not running around hitting on women openly because I am just too shy - and you'd be amazed at the people that conclude I am gay. I know there must be other reasons but I couldn't tell you what they are. Gay people thought I was gay. Heck, I managed to hang out with LGBT groups with both sides being utterly oblivious to the fact that something just went utterly wrong somewhere. (Okay, so I have no eye for that sort of thing at all - it took me a year or so to pick up on the fact that my best friend was gay. She never said anything assuming I knew, and I just never saw her with anyone and - frankly - being unable to give a toss either way never wasted a thought on it.)

The reason I think I have not met any masculine acting gay men in the military is because I think they are very rare in combat arms. And I'm sorry if my personal experiences come off as bigoted. Is there something that I should change about my personal experiences? I do not hate on gays or try to avoid them or anything like that. I just have simply never came across a gay man that acted masculine. I still don't see why that is so hard to believe.

 

[Belz...]

Experience. It's on the cards. Did all of them tell you everything about their private lives?

I expect that Quad simply assumes that the people whose private lives he doesn't know about are straight.

 

[Belz...]

In my personal experience, the picture on the left has been a much more accurate reflection of society as a whole as opposed to the picture on the right. And I disagree completely, in that I think camp VERY closely relates to femininity, and is pretty far away from masculinity.

In other words, your personal experience trumps reality and "la la la la, I can't hear you."

Enjoy your ignorance.

 

[Quad4_72]

So, lets get this straight, you woul fear a hug from a gay dude ? Why, you worried he may try and go for an intimate moment with you?

I don't hug straight men as a greeting (Except the occasional bro hug for a friend I have not seen in a long time) so why would I hug a gay guy as a greeting?

 

[Quad4_72]

Probably because "as any fule kno" gay dudes are just like cats, they can sense that you don't really like them and BAM! they jump on your lap - and cats do more or less the same thing.

I cannot believe that this thread is still going and that Quad4_72 refuses to consider that the reason all the gay people he has spotted exhibit stereotypical behaviour is because he is applying a stereotype to identify them.

Your last sentence doesn't make sense. The gay people did not exhibit stereotypical behavior simply because I applied a stereotype to identify them.. They acted like that all on their own.

 

[TragicMonkey]

So you are saying that having lived in the gay community and basically been surrounded by gays for decades gives you some sort of better sample for the general population? Actually, all that does is give you a biased sample.

You really don't understand the concept of sampling, do you?

I have a large sample of people known to be gay. In that sample, I observe that more are masculine than feminine. I can thereby use that as evidence for a theory that most gay men are not feminine.

You have a sample of people you don't know the sexuality of. You observe that some of them are feminine. You conclude that the feminine ones are gay, and that therefore most gay men are feminine.

Do you really not see the difference there?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Your last sentence doesn't make sense. The gay people did not exhibit stereotypical behavior simply because I applied a stereotype to identify them.. They acted like that all on their own.

And you are omitting all the gay people who do not fit the stereotype, who outnumber the ones who do.

It's like concluding that all Muslims are terrorists. "That guy's a Muslim, and he's not a terrorist" someone points out. "But he's not carrying a bomb therefore he can't be a Muslim!" isn't the logical conclusion.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I understand what you're saying, but in my sample size of the hundreds of men who act masculine, don't you think I would have met at least ONE in all of those people who was gay but acted masculine as well?

How do you define "masculine"? Most gay people I've met are pretty neutral. You wouldn't guess that they're gay by their behavior, but you're not reallly surprised when you find out they are.

 

[TragicMonkey]

The reason I think I have not met any masculine acting gay men in the military is because I think they are very rare in combat arms. And I'm sorry if my personal experiences come off as bigoted. Is there something that I should change about my personal experiences? I do not hate on gays or try to avoid them or anything like that. I just have simply never came across a gay man that acted masculine. I still don't see why that is so hard to believe.

You don't know if you've encountered masculine gay men because you rely on a stereotype about femininity to even identify who is gay. You omit all the masculine gays automatically because you seem unable to wrap your head around a fact that is eminently observable if you don't select your own sample.

 

[Quad4_72]

Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? Can't they just be different aspects of a single personality?

Here's an analogy. When I am swordfighting with my friends, I act all manly and assertive, proclaiming my prowess even as swords are striking my head. When I go to work, I'm a lot more meek and nerdy. Which is my 'real' personality? Which is covering up for the other? Answer: neither. They're just two aspects of my personality, and I act according to circumstances, and to a certain extent expectations.

Yes I can understand your point of view here. At work, I act very professional because I am an officer and a leader of men. When I get together with my old college buddies, we all act like a bunch of immature, obnoxious chauvinistic alpha males. Point taken.

 

[Alan]

Now now, the US military has a policy still in effect that encourages people to be honest about their sexuality and discourages people from lying to avoid suspicion of homosexuality.

 

[DC]

The reason I think I have not met any masculine acting gay men in the military is because I think they are very rare in combat arms. And I'm sorry if my personal experiences come off as bigoted. Is there something that I should change about my personal experiences? I do not hate on gays or try to avoid them or anything like that. I just have simply never came across a gay man that acted masculine. I still don't see why that is so hard to believe.

one of them is openly gay, which one of the two is it you think?

 

[Quad4_72]

I disagree. If I see a man I haven't seen in a while, for example, whom I consider a good friend, I will hug that man whether he's straight or gay. And I'm not talking about side-hugs here.

It is perfectly normal for men to hug other men. In Europe, men even kiss each other in greeting.

Yes I do the same thing when I run into someone I have not seen in a while. Granted, it is more of a bro hug though. What I was referring to is hugging another guy you see regularly. And you are like the 4th person to bring up another countries culture as if I have no knowledge of other countries cultures. I am well aware of man kissing and greetings in other countries. They just simply do not apply to what we are talking about here.

 

[Quad4_72]

How many men have you personally known who didn't tell you what their sexuality was and you just assumed that they were straight.

Statistically speaking, out of every 10 men you know, one of them is probably gay.

Do you have a link to these statistics you speak of?