Saturday, April 04, 2015

Response to Susan's post at On the Edge

I suck cock.

Many women and men do.

I like to be eaten out.

I mean the vagina -- I have an anal hang up -- don't ask, my kids will already be cringing.

Many women do enjoy being eaten out.

Some women enjoy it when men do it, some women enjoy it when women do it, some women enjoy it regardless of the gender performing the activity.

Some women enjoy having their anus eaten out.

By women or by men.

Some men enjoy having their anus eaten out.

By women or by men.

Some like insertion.  That can be a tongue, a finger, a cock, a dildo -- strap on or hand held.

Some men to love to insert.

Some women love to insert.

Some men love to be the object of insertion.

Some women love to the object of insertion.

A female can be the inserter of a woman or a man.

A male can be the inserter of a woman or a man.


We're going over the above not to make my children sick to their stomachs.  Moms are never sexual beings in the eyes of most children who like to believe that all sexual activity stopped with their conception.

And that's fine and I do censor myself here from time to time for that reason.

But the above -- which I did give my kids a heads up to -- is the result of e-mails over a post that many find offensive.

I can understand why they find it offensive and that's why we're not censoring today and my kids (adult children -- so they should recover at some point) will walk around today with a severe case of the heebie jeebies.


The post is Susan's "Another Reason Why Sometimes the Gay Rights Movement is Wrongheaded" (On the Edge).  There's nothing wrong with the stance Susan takes in her headline -- everyone is capable of being wronghead -- me probably more so than anyone.

But the problem is the attitude expressed.

We're not going to delink from Susan.  But we're also not going to pretend that this is true:


The world doesn't revolve around them or their sex lives (which, being honest, is the only thing that differentiates the LGBs from everybody else).
[. . .]
The LGBT crowd constantly invokes the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to make their point, but it is absurd on its face when you realize, as I said above, the ONLY thing distinguishing them from the rest of us is their sex lives, something that can't--or shouldn't, anyway--be seen. It isn't like true physical characteristics of women (the real ones, not men in dresses), older people, or racial minorities.



Their sex lives are no different than anyone else's and to claim that there is a difference in their "sex lives" -- her term used at least twice -- is to sport ignorance in public.

Not just a hostility towards lesbians and gays, but an actual ignorance of what two people (or more) may do when having sex.

The myth of the Kama Sutra aside, there are a limited number of sexual acts two people (or more) can engage in.  The Kama Sutra is like a cookbook for eggs, basically.

You may fry an egg, you may scramble an egg, you may poach one, you may boil an egg, you may cook them in an omlet, but you're still using eggs.

The Kama Sutra offers different positions, for example, but it still revolves around the basics (mouths, vaginas, penises, anuses, fingers, foreign objects, etc.).


So to say that a lesbian or a gay man is different from a straight man or straight woman because of their "sex lives" is sexually ignorant.  Please, refrain from birds and bees talks because you don't know the basics involved.

What Susan calls "sex lives" others might call sexual attraction and sexual identification. (Which would be different only in that one group is attracted to opposite genders while the other is attracted to the same.)

To call sexual attraction and sexual identification  "sex lives" is gross stupidity.

I believe sex ed should be taught in schools.  I didn't wait for my kids to learn it in school.  I was frank with them about what could happen in bed and what could happen after (disease, pregnancy, etc) and why you need to play safe when you feel you're ready to engage in sexual activity.

Words do matter and saying that the "sex lives" of lesbians and gays are different than the sex lives of straight people demonstrates, at this late date, willful ignorance at best.

Words do matter.

Susan's writing about a pizza joint whose owner told local media that he would gladly serve any gay person that walked in but he wouldn't cater a same-sex wedding.

This resulted in protests and Susan's labeled those wrong-headed but let's stay with catering a same-sex wedding.

Because Susan's stupid here too.

Learn to f**king read, people.

I was in the middle of the Iraq snapshot and made the mistake of going into the e-mails where community members expressed their outrage over Susan's post.  I understand the outrage, I agree with it.

I don't understand's Susan's stupidity.

I thought I was going to have to educate on "catering" and how the pizza owner probably meant . . .

No, he didn't probably mean anything.

He said what he meant.

I just went to Susan's linked source -- an idiot at The Atlantic -- who also called it "catering."

It's not catering, you stupid idiots.

I thought the man used "catering" and that he actually meant providing pizzas.

Unlike Susan, with her bigoted image of gays as frou-frou and lah-di-dah, I actually was at a same-sex wedding last year where pizza was "catered."

In this economy, gays, lesbians and straight people are all facing a pinch.

And who the hell are you to insult someone struggling for providing pizza as a meal at a wedding?

Seriously, Susan has blogged repeatedly about her own money problems online and yet she ridicules the idea that some people might be having pizza at the reception after their own weddings?

Anyway, I'm pissed if you can't tell, the man didn't call it catering.


Here's what he said: "If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no….We are a Christian establishment."

[Correction: What she said : "Owner Crystal O'Connor."]

That's how it was at the wedding I attended in October.  The pizza was delivered and family members and guests put them on the table and some helped serve (I was a friend who helped serve).  That's what I assumed the pizza owner meant when he said "catering" but the reality is that he didn't say "catering," he said provide.

Provide is what took place at the wedding I attended.

I had a whole thing here where I was going to explain how catering for one group but not for another is discrimination.  Because it is.

And if you're bigotry can't see that, that's your damn problem.

(If you've noticed, my nice voice has fallen by the way side.  I hate stupidity -- hate it.  And my sympathy for Susan just sailed out on the ocean when it turns out she -- and The Atlantic writer -- are calling it "catering" when the man didn't.)

So catering is not the issue.

What we're talking about now is pizza delivery.


And what the pizza joint decided was that they would serve gays and lesbians who came in but they would not deliver to them.

'To a wedding!'

I don't care what the event is.

If Dominoes advertised "We deliver . . . except to gay men!," the outrage would be instant -- and justified.

Let's do the positives on Susan.  This was going to be a major section -- before I found out that she's another Judith Miller who can't nail down her facts.

(Catering a wedding means I'm not serving.  I'm a guest, I'm not serving.  Catering a wedding means that the pizza parlor sends employees to set out the pizza, to serve the pizza and to clean up the mess after.  Maybe if you're too poor to hire a caterer, you shouldn't write about catering.  Was that bitchy?  Probably.  And I'm in a real bitchy mood because I don't like stupid.  Or having to waste my time on it.)

Susan's pluses include that she's still here.

That's not minor.

Too many women stopped blogging in 2008 and following 2008.  If they do blog, they go after soft topics.

Susan didn't back down from the rank sexism of 2008.

Susan is also a very strong voice.

That's a good thing.  Whether you agree with her post on this or disagree with her post on that, she's a strong voice.

She is not meek.

Nor does she make apologies for having an opinion.

That's very much needed and she deserves tremendous applause for that.

She has covered the education beat better than anyone -- including better than many of the experts on the topic she's linked to.

Susan truly is an expert on the education issues.

She is also wonderful at noting passings.

I think she's a must read for any DVD collector because Susan's got a sense for the great and often forgotten.

Again, before finding out that she's wrong about the catering, this section was going to be very long and singing many of her praises.  I'm too pissed to do that now, sorry.

But as I'd stated earlier, we won't be delinking.  She's an important voice.

On the "t" issue, let's note that for a quick moment.  Susan doesn't use LGBTQ.  She stops it with LGB.

She has problem with "T" -- transsexual and transgender

Gloria Steinem had the same problem decades ago.  She tries to lie about it now.  It's embarrassing.

As one of the feminists who called her out -- to her face -- in real time on that nonsense, I'm embarrassed that she still choose to lie about it today.

She slammed a group of people who were born in male bodies but had surgery to become, on the outside, who they were on the inside.

Gloria was openly hostile to them -- and wasn't just one instance.

What Gloria's real problem -- and this may or may not be true for Susan, I don't know -- was revolved around a group  embracing an extreme version of femininity -- a gender stereotype.  And doing so at a time when gender stereotypes were being exploded.

Gloria's anger was the same anger she'd have at a group of women who were born female and were embracing that gender stereotype.

But, in her rage, she couldn't focus on the gender stereotype and instead made insulting remarks about the women and how they were born with male genitalia.

And that happens.

When we're hurt and angry, we can use words that we don't mean.

We're hurt and we want to lash out (see my remark about those who can't afford to hire caterers . . .) so we go for what we hope will hurt.

While Gloria's still dishonest about her past on this issue, she is genuinely welcoming to the T community today.

But her reaction was really not about the way she attacked them (in the past), it was about the anger she felt as a woman trying to enlarge the roles women had access to and along comes a group who not only embraces a limited vision but insists it is what women are and must be.

Of course, Gloria was going to be angry.

As she would be when women born with female genitals do the same.

But she made comments that she shouldn't have.  (And don't say it was 'a different time.'  I called her out on it in real time.  Nora Ephron, at the same time, was writing "Conundrum" which did not treat the person like a freak because they were born in the wrong body but did hold the woman accountable for embarrassing -- and limiting -- remarks about womanhood.)


It's amazing how smug we can be and quick to define "the other."

I really don't understand the rage over someone deciding to become externally who they are internally.  How is someone else doing that hurting you?  How is it putting you out?  Unless, of course, it's bringing up issues you've buried -- maybe you're unable to admit your own sexual identity? -- why is that a problem for you?


Susan's got some problems.

They include her failure to grasp  that the man was stating he wouldn't deliver pizzas to a gay wedding  and they include calling activists "idiots" for shutting down the pizza joint.

They didn't shut it down.

The family chose to shut down their place of business.

Guess what?  You insult people, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

If you have a direct complaint against a person, make it.

But when you insult a group of people?

That's just stupid.

We've noted that here, Ava and I have noted it at Third.

How so many stupid idiots have destroyed their careers and the careers of others.

I'll be nice to one rock band which did tell me two years ago that they went too far (and since then they have been making strides) (And they rightly pinned their excess on Jackson Browne -- who has set such a bad example for so many in the last 8 years or so.  Yeah, Jackson, I said it. Rock that on the water.)

But Ellen Barkin?

She didn't just destroy her career, she destroyed everyone working on that sitcom's career.

A TV show, to be a hit, needs as many viewers as possible.

But there was Ellen and her Tourettes Twitter forever attacking Republicans.

Elected officials?

No, every Republican in the USA.

Now if I looked like Ellen -- let's be honest, she was never pretty and even all the plastic surgery today hasn't made her pretty -- and I'd already flamed out in films, to the point that I was doing straight to video crap (utter crap like Operation: Endgame), and I got a chance to start over, I'd grab it and run with it.

Not Ellen.

She felt America needed to know how much she hated so much of the country.

If you're trying to sell tickets, if you're trying to get viewers, if you're trying to sell albums, you need to realize that you can't go around insulting groups of people.

Ellen's attacks on all Republicans killed The New Normal.

Michelle Shocked's attacks on gays and lesbians killed her career.

I have no problem with people speaking out.

I certainly don't begrudge anyone speaking out on an issue.

Or attacking certain people.

Call out the pompous politician/actor/official/whatever.

But when you start attacking We The People, then you're an idiot who's so stupid that you're destroying your career.

Michelle Shocked did.

She attacked a group of people.

And let's be honest there, Michelle had nothing but tour dates to support her.  She didn't really sell albums anymore (not even on her own label).  She only had tour dates.  And here was this woman that people embraced because she'd been labeled 'weird' and a 'freak' and subjected to electroshock as a result.  And they thought this woman who survived that was someone who would be welcoming of all -- especially those who had suffered.  Instead, they found out that she was a raging homophobic.

And she can be that.

In America, she can be that.

And she doesn't have to fear being imprisoned for 'hate speech.'

But when she attacks groups of people, she has to grasp that there will be fallout.

And if I own a pizza joint in Santa Monica, I need to grasp I'm there to make money and feed my family and friends.

I need to grasp that I only want to be turning away customers for one reason -- we're overbooked, we have too many customers so some people can't come in to lunch and some delivery orders we can't take because we're backed up.

Instead, he elected to go after a group of people and deem their special day unworthy of a pizza delivery.

That's stupid.

He made his own problem.

No one else did.

That doesn't justify someone saying on Twitter that the place should be bombed.

But he made his problems.

And it wasn't about "catering," it was about delivering pizza.

And, though Susan's misses the point (among many points), it's equally true that those objecting were not just gay men and lesbians.

His position was offensive to many.

His position was also economically stupid.

He then chose to shut the place down.

In other words, he can shoot off his mouth and insult a group of people but when others call him out, he can't take it.

Boo-hoo for the stupid idiot who didn't know how to run a business.

And don't shoot off your mouth if you're a coward.

I've taken positions that were unpopular.  I'm not talking about online.

I've gotten death threats before -- when they really meant something.

I didn't freak out or pull a Jane and hire bodyguards.

As Vanessa Redgrave advised me at one point, "You said it, you deal with it."

And you do.

And things calm down in time.

So the pizza place is closed?  (Is it? That's the impression in Susan's piece.)  Well that's on the owner who had the guts to shoot off his mouth but didn't have the guts to keep his business open.

Susan chose to shoot her mouth off and sport stupidity:

What the LGBT crowd can't get through their heads is they are such a tiny minority depending on the goodwill of something like 98 or 99 percent of the public, that they lose all common sense at times. 



"What Susan can't get through her head is that she's unemployable and that's on her."

How would Susan react to someone having said that to her when she was struggling.

She certainly wanted sympathy for all her hard times.

But she writes something like the above?

That a group depends "on the goodwill"?

LGBTQ Americans are Americans and, as such, are guaranteed the same rights as any other Americans.

I also question her intelligence when it comes to her figures.

Does Susan think only 2% of the US population is gay?

I think the population is much higher than that and that the number's higher than it was 20 years ago and will be higher in 20 more years.

The reason for the increase is not, I believe, due to more people becoming gay but because more people are comfortable admitting who they are.

Susan's stupid on this issue beyond belief.

She should stick to a topic she knows something about.

If she doesn't grasp the suffering that the LGBTQ community has experienced and continues to experience, she needs to stay away from the topic because she's only exposing her own ignorance, intolerance and hatred.


We focus on Iraq here, it's a real issue.

If Susan's got time to focus on her delusion that lesbians and gay men suffer no discrimination, she might try focusing on Iraq as well because it was the issue that made the blogosphere and it became the issue that they all quickly avoided.

But at the very least, she could try reading the actual words of the man she's defending -- the homophobe who would refuse to deliver pizzas to a same-sex wedding.

And, by the way, the idiot at The Atlantic is Conor Friedersdorf.  He's one of those writers who believes business have rights -- and that the rights of business trump the rights of citizens. It's why he's to be taken with a grain of salt when he attempts to write about social issues.

It's why he actually has the pizza owner quoted in his article but Conor's still too stupid to realize what the owner said and instead runs with "catering."






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