Gay Pride at work

Murray TheDemonic TalkingSkull wrote: »

Is this going to be the new good Friday thread?

It's somewhere between Arthur s day and good Friday.

Rory28 wrote: »

In my own opinion a homophobic attack is when someone is assaulted purely for the reason of them being gay. Gay bashings or Pride parades that get attacked by nazis. Along those lines. The scumbags who attacked didn't do it because they were gay they did because they are violent thugs.

Why do you see the need to differentiate and downplay/minimise the homophobia?

Rory28 wrote: »

In my own opinion a homophobic attack is when someone is assaulted purely for the reason of them being gay.

Deleted User wrote: »

In my own opinion a homophobic attack is when someone is assaulted purely for the reason of them being gay

Anecdote is not evidence, but as was pointed out above we are not talking about fact here, but opinion. So I wonder if the value of anecdote increases slightly when it is being used to support an opinion rather than establish a fact.

Anyway I have seen attacks in my own life that were motivated by homophobia and had NOTHING to do with he victim of the attack being gay at all. I would still consider it a homophobic attack. So I am not sure I can agree with your criteria for "homophobic attack" here. Maybe my anecdotes will inspire a minor modification of your definition and leave you guys above slightly less opposed to each other as you are now. We will see below. One can but try

I will preface that however by saying I am also not sure I would go to the other extreme of assuming homophobia purely because homophobic language is used. I agree that language is often used purely because it is seen as derogatory and the person using it is putting ZERO consideration into the etymology or meaning of the term. When we call someone a Bastard for example I doubt we do so while having any knowledge, hunches, theories, concerns or interest in their actual lineage or the marital status of their parents. When using the word Fgot too I do not think everyone using it is considering the sexuality of the target. They just know it to be a derogatory and aggressive word. So they reach for it in the moment. We can of course confront separately the homophobia that led to that word being considered derogatory, which is a useful conversation to have, but I doubt ANY of it is in the mind of the person using it "in the moment". They just know the status a given word has, and it serves a purpose in that moment.

Anyway to the anecdotes.

The first of these involved a situation where a guy.... the victim to be.... was merely walking along the road. A guy in a small group of youths happened to look at him for some extended period of time. His mates started slagging him off for being "into" the victim. So to respond to this the taunted guy attacked the victim. His mates soon joined in.

So in this case the attack was entirely motivated by homophobia, but had nothing to do with the person being assaulted "purely for the reason of them being gay". No one in the scenario for one moment appeared to think the victim was homosexual at all. It was irrelevant. But that this was an attack born of homophobia could not be clearer to me. It was the homophobia of the assailant at the thought of, for one moment, being considered gay himself. So to prove he was not, he attacked the victim. This is not an anecdote that is covered by your definition above.

A similar anecdote occurred for me when I saw a random passer by being attacked by a group of youths in the vicinity of the George. It was abundantly clear to everyone that the victim was not homosexual or in any way connected to the George. They were coming from one end of the road, past it. The youths however showed up, started screaming about fggts and how they should burn and die, and then attacked. Here they were contriving to make an attack on homosexuality, not a homosexual. Who or what the victim was was irrelevant entirely. The LOCATION of the attack was the concern of the youths. They wanted to attack homosexuality, and doing an act of violence THERE was their way to do it seemingly.

Both of these would be homophobic attacks to me. NEITHER of them however fits the definition you have offered. I think defining "homophobic attack" in terms of the victim, rather than in terms of the general motivations of the attackers....... which might have nothing at all to do with the actual chosen victim.......... is likely a much more coherent approach linguistically and functionally. But I repeat, a definition based on what WORDS were used during the attack is similarly dysfunctional to me. So I think I appear to come down in the middle of the two so far expressed sides of this?

Whether this brings you guys a little closer together, or merely makes me an enemy of all of you, remains to be seen Diplomacy is a thankless job

Sweetemotion wrote: »

Hopefully then, those grooming gangs who specifically targeted only white girls have a hate crime conviction coming their way.

You never mentioned age in your little rant, do you also see someone targeted because of their age as a form prejudice and also a hate crime?

I think the users on this site who talk about the grooming gangs in the UK have zero concern for the victims.

Why? Because they only ever seem to raise it in threads about feminism and now in threads about gay people, and try and use it as a stick to bash those who express concern about womens or gays rights.

Frankly it’s bizarre in the extreme to raise these gangs in relation to gay rights.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You seemed to have missed the dozens of threads on Islam in Europe which is where most of the objections to grooming gangs come up. In fact, do a search on grooming gangs and you'll see a huge variety of threads which object to their existence.

Oh yeah I forgot to include threads filled with barely concealed racists

Just curious. Do you think it’s relevant to a thread on gay rights?

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

And much like Orwell, this is a work of complete fiction. I’m sure lots of people have been passed over for promotion for not participating in Pride.