rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (11/09/84)
At the risk of being boorish, prudish, humorless, hopelessly outdated, I offer my 2 cents: all things considered, I found Jason's posting in poor taste. It was pretty repugnant, no matter how funny much of it was. Job discrimination is no minor matter, nor does homophobia offer only quaint examples of local color among that peculiar ethnic group, the heterosexuals. & lampooning these real & sometimes painful issues via a one-dimensional use of a gay slang (which largely overlaps the tired catalog of homophobic epithets) & sexual referents (appropriated in a half-aware way by punk fashion, & now available for use by younger homophobes: I've heard male 20-year-olds garbed in S&M with every mem- brane pierced by jewelry rant about "fags" & "perverts") is demeaning. (Gasp! I'll be brief!) A really robust use of gay slang, such as say gen-yoo-ine street queens employ, would probably reduce all Usenet nodes to cinders, & get me fired. If I ever apply to DEC for a job, I think I'd prefer interviewing with Ken Arndt than with Jason. That kind of flaming I could stomach. Sorry, Jason, but..... Appalled? Ra-ther! Ron Rizzo P.S. Why doesn't Jason want to receive flames? What is satire, after all?
jsol@bbncca.ARPA (Jon Solomon) (11/11/84)
I found Jason's satire quite amusing. There seems to be a facet of net.motss
submitters who think that gay issues in general are humorous and that other
facets of net.motss submitters need to lighten up. I agree in principle with
this faction, as long as they are not using humor to cloud the issues or
generally not deal with them. Comic relief is welcome (that's my opinion!)
as long as it is not a replacement for the eventual resolution of the issues
involved.
The reason I found it so humorous is that I could imagine several friends of
mine fitting the situation described in the satire quite well. I think it
was done tastefully and with care not to offend anyone. Agreed that job
descrimination is a serious issue, but so is Nuclear War. That does not stop
newspapers from interjecting some humor into the problem. Look at Bloom
County sometime.
Perhaps we need a net.motss.comics and a net.motss.serious?
Cheers,
--
[--JSol--]
JSol@Bbncca (Internet)
{decvax, wjh12, linus}!bbncca!jsolsdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (11/11/84)
>I found Jason's satire quite amusing. There seems to be a facet >of net.motss submitters who think that gay issues in general are >humorous... Yeah, and that's why mod.motss was formed :-) >...and that other facets of net.motss submitters need to >lighten up. I agree in principle with this faction, as long as >they are not using humor to cloud the issues or generally not >deal with them. Comic relief is welcome (that's my opinion!) as >long as it is not a replacement for the eventual resolution of >the issues involved. I am all for "lightening up", but I haven't yet seen many submissions from the faction (or was it facet) you are alluding to. Perhaps a little less talk and more typing? One or two of the observations may have reminded me of people I knew, or of familiar situations, but, taken cumulatively, the article gave the impression of not knowing where "bad taste" begins. Should we embrace a posting like that which deals solely with stereotypes, even as we know that few gay men fulfill all, if any, of its requirements? Given that the readership of net.motss is open to everyone, regardless of sexual preference, it is honorable to publish a document which trades in all of the stereotypes which many gay people are trying to debunk? Let's reverse the situation and imagine that the same essay was submitted by someone clearly identified as being opposed to gay people. Would it engender anything other than universal condemnation? I am not worried about issues of "respectability" here. I don't care much what some straight people might think after reading it. What I do worry about is giving unequivocal assent, either through silence or through unexamined laughter, to the sentiments and presuppositions permeating it. -- /Steve Dyer {decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer sdyer@bbncca.ARPA
jmattson@bbncca.ARPA (Jeff Mattson) (11/13/84)
---------------------------------------- I have to agree with Steve Dyer on this one. A lot of the jokes in that article were funny, but almost all assumed that gays were queens or sluts. The author should have taken into account the variety of people who are gay and included many more jokes based on different types of people. ---------------------------------------- Don't dream it; BE IT! ---------------------------------------- Jeff Mattson JMattson@BBNCCA 24 Westland Ave. #10 Boston, MA 02115
hxe@rayssd.UUCP (11/15/84)
Well, *I* found it offensive because it was poorly written. It
was obvious what effect Jason was after but, as far as I'm con-
cerned, he failed. The "satire" just seemed to be not quite in
tune with the times. Because the satire of his writing failed,
it called more attention than was obviously intended to the ac-
tual subject matter. If this was your first attempt, Jason, keep
it up, but first read a little more Art Buchwald and Dave Barry
(to whom your friend compared your writing) to find out why their
stuff is funny. I will give you the same advice I give myself and
everyone else who is a writer: find an editor. You simply cannot
critique your own writing with an objective eye, and your friends
can't either.
Anyway, I *think* that's why I didn't like it!
--
--Heather Emanuel {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus, ccice5} rayssd!hxe
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I don't think my company *has* an opinion, so the ones in this
article are obviously my own.
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"Such a foolish notion, that war is called devotion,
when the greatest warriors are the ones who stand for peace."