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kinkyviolet -> RE: Cock sucking (4/17/2008 10:50:18 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster
Yeah, OK, but by that argument, you can't say ANYTHING about another human being, because anything you could put into our finite language would be inherently "limiting."
That was the purpose of the last paragraph. Anything we say about another person can be interpreted or misinterpreted any number of ways. What I was trying to get at is that language is imperfect, but it is the primary method we have of communicating, so we just have to deal with it, hence the "oh well" at the end. However, we can avoid a lot of divisiveness if we refrain from labeling, name-calling, generalizing, and otherwise trying to sort human beings into little compartments.
What you're saying would make some sense if "He's gay" were the only thing there were to be said about a person. And that's clearly how some people seem to feel.
Which was the whole point of my post. In that case, "gay" is a label, rather than part of a description.
But it has nothing to do with how I was using the word.
I didn't say anything about your use of the word. The word "gay" does not even appear in the quote I included in my post. I was merely responding to your inquiry about why this issue is so complicated. I was not directing my criticism at you, but at mankind as a whole. That is why I used "we" and "us" instead of "you."
To me, "gay" means "sexually attracted to members of the same sex." That encompasses millions of human beings and allows for all the diversity in the world. If someone were to go ahead and GENERALIZE about gays, I'd agree with you. But the only thing gays have in common is that they're sexually attracted to members of the same sex.
Yes, that is what gay means to *you*. What it means to other people may include the generalizations that you refer to, which is why people don't want to be labeled and "find it inherently demeaning," as you wrote in the quote I was replying to. Of course, we can assume for the sake of argument that the textbook definition of "gay" is the one that everyone in this thread is using, but that's beside the point. The issue is that some men do not want to be thought of as "gay" for the reasons I have already laid out. Which is why there are so many men (at least here in Texas, from my experience) who, even though they do enjoy sucking cock, insist that they are "straight" in their ads and not gay or even bisexual.
All I'm trying to do here is get people to think about the words they use and the manner in which they use them. It is human nature to attempt to define and quantify and qualify everything we see and experience. But when we do this to other people, it causes conflict. We don't want other people trying to tell us who or what we are. No one can determine that but ourselves.
I know it's quite a bit off topic, but I like talking (or in this case writing) about stuff like this.
quote:
ORIGINAL: kinkyviolet
Just about everyone wants to label everyone else, but no one wants to be labeled.
Labels are limiting. When we assign a label to everyone, we can sort them out into little boxes and fool ourselves into thinking that we understand them all and that we have brought order to chaos.
But the truth is that labels are deceptive. Every human being is unique, has unique desires and a unique way of thinking. To believe that we can define each other with a few words is simply foolish. Labels are easily misinterpreted. Because we all think differently and have different experiences, our interpretations of labels vary greatly.
Labels are offensive because they oversimplify us and rob us of our individuality. Labels place us in large groups of people, some of which we may not like being compared to. Labels are offensive because we feel that those who place them on us are trying to make us into something we are not.
Perhaps we should stop trying to define each other with labels and stick to describing one another. Adjectives are far less inflammatory, and far more accurate, than labels.
In the end, though, language is imperfect and limited, and no matter how many words or how many pages you use, it is simply impossible to contain the entirety of even a single human being in the finite world of human language. That is why we came up with labels in the first place.
Oh well.
Anyway, that's why it's so complicated. It's because we're so complicated. :)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster
I don't quite get why this is so complicated, and, as I said, I believe it's because people find the labels inherently demeaning.
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