Split Thread [Ed] Personal experiences with gays

[Quad4_72]

Why?

Is it more likely that you have an unrepresentative sample of male acquaintances (or are just mistaken about the sexual preference of some people you know), or that every other person on the thread has?

For the record, of the people I have known well over the years, I have known one slightly effeminate gay man, one not at all effeminate gay man, one non-effeminate bisexual man, a lesbian (/bisexual?) couple who were not at all masculine/butch and a straight guy who was the campest person I have ever met.

Option one is based on the personal experiences I have put forth in this thread.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Option one is based on the personal experiences I have put forth in this thread.

The other 2 options are completely consistent with your experiences too. It's the unwillingness to consider different explanations for your experiences that I find interesting.

ETA: As you mentioned bias above, thought I'd just say that I'm straight and don't know all that many gay people as I mentioned in my previous post..

 

[zooterkin]

don't feel badly....
i think that i am the only queer man commenting here.

You would be wrong to think that.

 

[Quad4_72]

That's not really the point at issue, nor do I think you can say that the majority of Tragic Monkey's interactions are with gay men (though that might be true). I think you can say that he has more knowing interactions with gay men than you do, and he therefore has a better idea of how gay men behave in general, and in different situations, and also whether any are likely to be in the military, for example. Given also that he is more likely to know if someone is gay, he's likely to have a better handle on what proportion of the general population is gay.

While I respect his experience with gays, I fear that it may be too biased to be utilized in a statistical manner. If you go ask a group of weed smoking hippies their political opinions on weed, and how many people they think smoke weed in the United States, do you think that number is going to be accurate simply because they know a lot about weed?

 

[bikerdruid]

Option one is based on the personal experiences I have put forth in this thread.

based on this you have stated that most queer men are effeminate.....
which is wrong.... i think you have selective gaydar.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

No necessarily. You must also take into account the concentration of gay people across the country. Are they spread out evenly? Or do the flock to similar locations to be closer to people they have more in common with (See San Fransisco).

<snip>

How about this. The distribution of gays across the country is relatively constant except for certain limited areas which are less hostile to openness about sexual orientation.

The 5 or 10% general incidence would be unaffected by a few concentrations.

(What percentage of the population of San Francisco do you believe is gay? How do you think that number affects the general population of the entire United States?)

 

[Quad4_72]

No need to shout .... but....


... you're still not getting it.


You know, your best option at this point would be to simply admit that your experience of gay men - that you can legitimately identify as such - is particularly limited, and that it may just be possible that you were mistaken to say that the stereotype of gay men affecting effeminate mannerisms is true.

But why would I say I am mistaken when the confidence levels in my samples are so high?

 

[Rasmus]

Judging off of the results of my samples and the low amount of gays living in America, in general I would be able to determine if they are straight or gay with a pretty high level of accuracy. If I were to randomly go around meeting people, and trying to figure out if they were gay or not just by meeting them, what do you think my success rate would be?

What is a high level of accuracy?

If you *always* guessed everyone was straight, you'd be right between maybe 90 and 95% of the time. But your method would clearly be useless!

The more interesting question would be: If one of the people you randomly met were gay, how likely would you be to get that right? And how often would you wrongly identify a straight person as being gay?

With the hundreds of people you know and nearly nobody being gay at all: You'd get the first wrong quite a lot of the time, the second - hardly ever.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

The man standing just along the bar is getting a lot of attention, and he's only been in here a couple of minutes. His appearance may be something to do with it; the hair colour and the skin colour, for that matter, make quite a statement. But he's not the only one in here with bleached hair or a tan that owes little to natural sunlight.

It's not just the look. He's also very camp. Very camp indeed. Indulge your most extreme stereotype of the effeminate gay man, and you won't be far off.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that there seem to be fewer of these very feminine types around these days. Most of the gay men I know or see around me aren't camp at all: you wouldn't pick them out as gay at work, in the supermarket, or even at the hairdressers. A small city like mine, where the gay scene amounts to one bar and a men-only ballroom dancing class, is perhaps not the place for flamboyancy to flourish. But this is fairly typical middle England, the sort of place where millions live, and it has become pretty much a camp-free zone.

[snip]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/30/the-end-of-camp-straight-acting-gay

 

[quadraginta]

You are missing the results of both samples. In my sample of masculine behaving men, I have came across zero that were gay. However, in my sample of all of the gay people I have met, all of them have had feminine characteristics. You are looking at the wrong sample.

Maybe you're not looking at enough.

Using your definition to select your sample can do that.

 

[bikerdruid]

You would be wrong to think that.

thanks....so i'm told.
this makes quad's arguing even more laughable.

 

[Quad4_72]

I think you haven't been following what he's been saying very carefully.

He is clearly making the assertion that because all of the gays he has met that he knows are gay have femme mannerisms then only people who have femme mannerisms can be gays.

Wrong. Never made that assertion. See my previous posts in the beginning of the thread about how my brother has some feminine tendencies but is not gay.

 

[Quad4_72]

don't feel badly....
i think that i am the only queer man commenting here.
he is ignoring my comments too.

From what I could tell, you made one previous comment in the thread, and it was not of intelligent nature, so I did not respond to it.

 

[bikerdruid]

Quad4_72.......can you hear me?
why do you feel that you know more about queer men than queer men do?

 

[Quad4_72]

There are tons of gay people.
I have met tons of gay people.
For there to not be tons of gay people, I would have had to hallucinate quite a lot over a number of years.

Do I think there are almost as many gay people as straight people? No.
Did I say anything like that? No.
Did anyone else? No.
In fact, the highest number that I've seen discussed was 10%.#
Personally, I really don't know and wouldn't be surprised if the number was a good bit smaller.

Are gays "rare"? Well, it depends on what you consider "rare". I know more gay people than I know bankers and I know more gay people than I know police officers. Do I think bankers and police officers are rare? No. (Come to think of it, this excludes the bankers and police officers I've dealt with in their professional functions.)

As I said, what do you think the possibility is that gay people are spread completely evenly across the country? Do you think it's possible they generally reside in larger numbers in a few locations around the country, such as San Francisco?

 

[Quad4_72]

So only your personal experiences count when it comes to form a logical hypothesis about this matter?

You can't expect to take only your personal experiences into account when making an argument about all the gay men in the world.

Direct me to a single post where I have made an argument about all gay men in the world. In fact, I specifically indicated that I was NOT talking about gay men outside of the United States.

According to your logic, if you haven't experienced it, then it doesn't exist. Never mind the fact that other people other than yourself have experienced directly meeting gay men who are not effeminate. No, scratch that. That doesn't count because it's not YOUR experience, which is the one that speaks for everyone.

I acknowledged their experiences, but I think some of their experiences may be biased, just as they think mine are.

I ask once again the Million Dollar question which you deliberately and consciously refuse to answer, and which is showing your hypocrisy:

You say all gay men are effeminate. No exceptions: What about Ian McKellen?

I in fact do not say this, and have not said this anywhere in the thread. I have actually acknowledged that there are indeed masculine gay men, they are just not anywhere near the majority. Please read my arguments closer before putting words in my mouth.

 

[bikerdruid]

As I said, what do you think the possibility is that gay people are spread completely evenly across the country? Do you think it's possible they generally reside in larger numbers in a few locations around the country, such as San Francisco?

we live everywhere.......
one in ten to one in twenty men are queer.....

 

[Quad4_72]

Quad4_72.......can you hear me?
why do you feel that you know more about queer men than queer men do?

Settle down. I am going in order of the time people posted. There are many posts before yours. Patience.

 

[quadraginta]

And I propose that there may be a large amount of bias in this thread, especially with the high number of gay individuals posting.

This is interesting.

You seem to be suggesting that because some of the respondents are gay themselves then either their own perceptions are more skewed than your own, or that this would give them some motive to consciously try and deceive you.

In the first case why would their gayness mean anything beyond the simple fact that they have a larger data set to draw their conclusions from than you do?

In the second, why would they bother to try and deceive you?

You have a fair amount of prior interaction with most of them in these fora. What reasons have they given in the past for you to doubt their forthrightness? Why would they want to deceive you about this one thing?

 

[Quad4_72]

quad4-72??....... are you ignoring me?
another 5 pages of your nonsense since last i checked in.
i am queer.
are you saying that your experience trumps mine?

No, I am not saying that my experience trumps yours. We all have our individual experiences. You need to form some rational, calm and collected questions though if you want a response from me.