From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Too straight looking to be gay
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 02:48:59 GMT


In article <vanyel.715396480@camelot>
vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alan Williams) writes:

>In <1992Sep2.000759.22319@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>
>ry@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (ryerson.schwark) writes:

>>The world is full of people who don't think.

>Yes.  You're one of them, obviously.

What if you were right about that?  What would you have
gained that helps *you* in any meaningful sense?  Would you
be the same person, a better person, a worse person, what?
Would the world be diminished or improved?  

Suppose Ry were dead wrong, suppose I was too.  Would that
establish in your mind (more firmly than it is now, say)
that you are right about these things, that what I've been
calling your prejudices would be entirely sanitized by our
wrongness?

Let's say you could somehow definitively establish that
neither Ry nor I have ever had a useful idea other than
crabby, self-serving, ego-enhancing ones.  Would that make
you right?

In brief, if we're the Devil, are you God?

Because, Alan, you are not hearing the message, distracted
as you are by your reactions to the messenger.  Your
response here is a nonresponse.  It doesn't take up any of
the issues.

Why do you think we're talking to you at all?  Do you
*seriously* believe we're trying to fulfill our ego-needs
(good lord, there are so many much easier ways!)?  Do you
think we're making these arguments for sport (there are
better, more immediately rewarding ones)?  Do you think we
are playing a mind-game (it's way too simple for that)?

>I don't like "nelly" behavior.  Period.

I'm sure they know that in Tibet by now.  You wear it like
a badge.

>I've received nothing on here to suggest that I
>*should*--only flames for not thinking like *you*.

You're missing the message.  Thinking like me (or not) is
not at issue, not at all.  I believe I've given you
suggestions, quite a number of them completely free of
flames, too, that concern pretty serious matters.  So far,
you are rejecting *all* of it, quite arbitrarily, quite out
of hand.  If it's your intention to go on doing that, none
of us, not a soul in the world, can stop you.  There's no
gun to your head, and really you are acting like there was.

>And while you're out getting that mirror, take your
>one-sided my-word-is-law bullshit with you.

I don't doubt for a minute that our-word-is-law is what
you're hearing.  It's entirely on that level that you react.

But it happens not to be what we're saying.  Neither of us
has said anything *at all* like that in this thread.
Therefore, you might at least admit that it's your hearing
that's blocking your mind from taking up the substance of
the ideas we're talking about.  But your mind directs your
hearing, controls it utterly.  

You don't see, then, how your mind has managed to fashion a
way of not letting these ideas exist, even provisionally,
inside itself?  Apparently it can't, because that would
threaten (as in phobia) something it seems to cherish very
highly: that you are *better* than nelly people (as in
homophobia).

That you think it has something to do with Ry or with me or
with others who've commented on this, when obviously it
doesn't, should *at least* tell you *something*.  If
homophobia were not involved, you would be neutral about
nelly people, qua nelly.  Since you're not neutral, not by a
long shot, then I guess there's *something* to be
considered, isn't there?

As for me, this is it for this round.  There are other
things to do.

<> *Want* is a growing giant whom the coat of *have* was
<> never large enough to cover. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson
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