From: sara@castle.ed.ac.uk (Swamp Thing)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: whatever . . .
Date: 14 Sep 92 19:05:12 GMT
Organization: News Addicts

nsn@ee.mu.OZ.AU (Nick Nicholas) writes:

>OK, time for me to explain myself. Fortunately I've had time to cool off,
>and a wunnerful 21st birthday party, so I needn't go off the deep end like
>I did before.

Happy birthday!

>I didn't notice Ellen's response to Joe; I first saw it, stripped of context,
>in Eric's posting. I interpreted Eric's posting as Ciaran did. But I also,
>like Moz, was irritated at seeing Ciaran in holier than thou mode. (I'm
>not particularly interested in justifying why I did feel so...) And I saw
>in Ellen's posting as quoted, rejection. In fact, all my current personality 
>defects, from my tendency to act the clown through to my persistent homophobia,
>stem from my fear of rejection. Coupled with that, I've spent the past year 
>punishing myself for being a man. My different-sex attraction is sleazy; I am 
>violent and boorish; lesbians are Uebermenschen, etc etc. 

Fear of rejection is something that anyone, bi, gay or straight has to
put up with.  Why should it be any worse for you than the rest of us? 
You're preaching to the converted here mate; no one here is rejecting
you for being a bi man.

>Well I've had my fill of feeling guilty, and I've had my fill of feeling
>rejected. How the fuck am I supposed to be proud to be bi, if I'm cringing
>at being male? I'll have no more of that shit. I'll be proud to be bi,
>proud to be Greek, proud to be male, and proud to be human. I will be proud,
>period.

God for you!  Go for it.

>And to get there, to attain happiness, I've got to reclaim my feelings.
>I know there was no rational reason for me to feel despondent at what
>Ellen said, and I apologise for taking it personally. But I will no longer
>apologise for or suppress my feelings. If I want to feel offended, however
>irrationally, I will. I am allowed to feel. And my feelings are as valid
>as Ellen's, or Iseult's, or Ciaran's, or Mike's, or anybody's. My feelings
>are valid; it's using them to hurt others that is wrong. If I did manage
>to hurt anyone out there, I unreservedly apologise.

But you took something that was directed at Eric as being directed at
you; you took it personally.  Hey, *you* didn't say that if you were in
the hot tub you would consume the resources! Can you really not see what
was wrong with the rubbish he was (is) talking? Whatever you think of
Ciaran's, or anyone else's response to all this codswallop, disagreeing
with Eric's detractors hardly means you agree with him.  Does it? If you
perceive something anti-male or anti-bi going on here then it's not
myself, Ellen, Iseult, Ciaran or Mike who is perpetrating it.  Really. 

You are allowed to feel your emotions, of course you are, but there may
be circumstances where it is the kind and sensitive and *right* thing to
apologise for your actions (these include your words, especially since
words are the action around here).  Not that I'm asking you to apologise
to anyone now, just not to exclude the possibility from your future
should the need arise. 

>And something else. For the past... oh, ages, I've been lurking here, 
>venerating you lot. Well, I will no longer. It's not fair to you, and it's
>not fair to me. You lot aren't horny gods with semiannual epiphanies in
>hottubs in Britain. You're human. You are not my betters, you are not

Britain???  Good grief, where are we going to get hot tubs around here? 
I can assure you that all the much discussed hot tub activity took place
in California, where the weather is rather more clement.

>my superiors. In fact, you're as fallible as monosexuals (even if friskier :)

And so are you.  We are all fallible.  I've never asked for veneration
(in fact I think I'm rather young to be venerated, why I'm still in my
twenties ...).

>And, while I speed to distance myself from what Eric said subsequently,
>a lot of what he said in his longer response to Ciaran agreed with me.
>The politics of exclusion is wrong - it's wrong for me, anyway. Of course,
>what Ellen said originally was little to do with exclusion. But then, I
>don't think the thread, as distorted through our respective subtexts
>(Eric's, Ciaran's, Mike's, Sara's, mine) was really about hottubs.

Look, I don't have an exclusion policy on the grounds of sex, age, race,
or sexual orientation, but on the grounds of *whether or not I like
somebody*.  Eric got my goat because he said he would consume the
resources.  He attempts to assure us in his near incomprehensible
fashion that he didn't mean that if he were a man sharing a hot tub with
a bunch of women he would gain the attention of all of them, but that is
what it looked like to me, as it did to others.  My comments were
intended purely to indicate that were he really as egotistical as that
post suggested then this is one woman who would be ignoring him. 
Subsequently a few bazillion misinterpretations of what I said, of what
others said, plus a few more carelessly crafted works of nonsense from
the good Mr Eric Fluid Dynamic have flown around the net to confuse the
issue some more.  This hardly seems a reason to assume that there is
some genuine attempt to exclude men from participation in group
activities.

>Um... I hope we can put this thread to rest, I really do. If anyone would
>like to tell me to fuck off or such, please take it to email.

No desire to aim the f word at you in such an aggressive fashion, Nick
...

>Yours both sheepishly and defiantly,

But if you're being defiant then I think that quiet email responses are
a bit much to hope for.  I would say that your post is somewhat akin to
an ateempt to put out the fire with gasoline.  And so the rant thread
continues ... 

Sara
-- 
 >{8-)     Sara Hopkins     (-8}<              _____^__
 Geography Dept.  Edinburgh Uni.  Drummond St. \ OOO/ / The Thing
 Edinburgh,  EH8  9XP,  UK. +44 (0/31) 650 2662 \++/ /   From
 >{8-) sara@geovax.ed.ac.uk (-8}<   ** nice **   \/\/ The Swamp
Newsgroups: soc.bi