Posted: May 26, 2012 8:13 pm
Thommo wrote:SeriousCat wrote:Before engaging in any intellectual queries, that is drilling down the different orders of logic of different positions on a topic, one should ask themselves whether the topic is worth discussing. Would having or not having the obviously satirically and adbsurdly named 'gaydar' change your behaviour towards an individual who is perceived as homosexual? If you are respectful of others and of fundamental human rights, the ideal answer would be no. Striving for the operationalisation of that answer in our own lives, it can be said that this topic is completely pointless. Whenever hearing an assertion of fact, there are two basic questions that must be asked: (1) How was this assertion verified; and (2) If the assertion was correct, what would be its significance. The first question you ask should be the one that is easiest to answer, thus potentially saving you from a lot of irrelevant work.
Seems pretty relevant to gay people. It's embarassing to hit on people and be rejected.
Yeah, like I said I can see the point of it from that practical POV.
More generally I don't agree with the principle anyway, there are lots of areas of intellectual discussion, investigation and discovery that are fascinating, discussed and worthy of discussion that have not one shred of potential interaction with behaviour for anyone. What would the behavioural consequences of truth of the continuum hypothesis be?
But what's "fascinating and worthy of discussion" about whether an individual likes having sex with men or women. It seems to me that people only see it that way because they load some kind of great significance onto the fact which it doesn't really deserve.
Suppose we were in a pub, and a guy walked in, and I said "oooh, I bet he likes having sex from underneath, you can just tell he's that kind of guy". And you said, "oh no, he's OBVIOUSLY a missionary-position type!". Apart from the absurdity of categorising everyone in such a black and white fashion (also applicable to the false gay/straight dichotomy), do you really think we'd be interested enough, or see enough significance in it, to still be arguing about three hours later? Or a month later, if we made friends with the guy but still couldn't work out which "side of the fence" he was on?
We wouldn't care. Just like we wouldn't care about whether he likes blondes or brunettes, or about most similar aspects of what he likes. Sure, it might be enough of a topic of conversation to pass the time for a while, but then that would be all and we'd move on. Yet whether someone likes men or women is apparently so much more than that. It's this huge determining factor that puts them in one or the other category that people just NEED to know in order to make sense of other people and their friendships with other people. Why? Isn't this dependent on the completely misguided idea that being gay or straight implies all kinds of other things about a person that reliably cluster together, and that we need to know about in order to befriend them?
When really, all it means is that they prefer dicks or fannies, more than 50% of the time.