Gay Rights or Wrongs?
When it comes to the use of the word "gay" as a generic, high-school put-down for anything sort of bad or annoying, Jewdar feels a bit like a frosted mini-wheat. The adult in us frowns upon homophobia and considers the word’s use a mark of intellectual laziness, but the kid in us appreciates the mindless utility of a word that can be used in so many situations. For example, the postage rate rose from 41 cents to 42 cents on Monday: "That’s gay."
We pondered some alternatives and then it hit us. NAMBLA. Everybody is familiar with it, and almost everybody recognizes that they are some sick fucks. Indeed, watch the linked clip again, and tell us that you don’t find the narrator who eventually chimes in (ostensibly just to defend NAMBLA’s right to free speech) to be more than a little creepy.
Now we know that some people might object to the jump we took from "gay" to "NAMBLA," to which we’d respond that a) if you have a penis, and you want to have sex with other people with penises, that’s pretty gay regardless of age, and b) we’d be happy to use the name of a nationally known group advocating sex with female minors, but let’s face it, "That’s so FLDS" doesn’t pack quite the same punch. Of course, you are entitled to your opinions, but in Jewdar’s book, anybody who doesn’t adopt this usage is totally NAMBLA.
comments
submit a comment05.14.08 at 8:05 pm
Hmmmph…
05.15.08 at 1:05 am
You’re such a stirrer, Deutsch.
05.15.08 at 1:05 am
This article is totally NAMBLA.
Still jumping from ‘gay’ to ‘paedo’ is no worse than jumping from ‘jew’ to ‘well poisoning baby eater’ I suppose.
05.15.08 at 1:05 am
Sensitivity training this week at your day job, Jewdar?
05.15.08 at 2:05 am
If I weren’t terminally hungover I’d be outraged right now.
But I am…so…meh.
05.15.08 at 8:05 am
If you homophobes want to continue to stigmatize gays by using “gay” as a term of opprobrium, that’s your prerogative, but perhaps Heebmagazine.com is not the right website for you.
05.15.08 at 11:05 am
Wait, you skipped like four stages and went straight to dissmissive indignation, cheater.
Actually, I feel like we all must share some of the responsibility for Jewdar’s post. Obviously our responses to other bloggers posts have been boring him to death these last few days.
Subtlety please, we aren’t dancing bears. lol
05.15.08 at 2:05 pm
......” we all must share some of the responsibility for Jewdar’s post. “
Uh uh. ....... not sharing.
05.15.08 at 6:05 pm
What homophobes? There’s no homophobes here…nobody here but us chickens.
I think our responses to other blogger posts have been both entertaining and informative :P
05.15.08 at 8:05 pm
I resent the strong implicit suggestion that all gays are somehow child molesters. This could definitely be understood from your invidious juxtaposition, and I think that was insensitive. I’m disappointed. And I would point out that this may be do to your own entitled sense of white, straight male hegemony. I feel disenfranchised, and I’m not even gay.
Can we talk about blacks,now?
05.15.08 at 8:05 pm
I also found it offensive, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to rail against these sort of ignorant, narrow-minded stereotypes…I’m assuming Jewdar also has no issue with the people who think we’re all baby killing well poisoning heebs trying to take over the world and controlling all the banks and media etc.
I would’ve thought a fellow Jew would recognise the danger of promoting inaccurate stereotypes, that sort of attitude hasn’t lead to good things for us in the past…whether we’re gay or Jewish…or both.
shrugs
05.15.08 at 8:05 pm
Puck, you’re right. 100% right. We can’t let the Jerry Falwells, the Ron Pauls, and the Jewdars of the world bring us down. It’s best to disengage, and focus on those hearts and minds we can change.
05.15.08 at 9:05 pm
I put this in the same category as the anti-semitic comments that fly my way from time to time, just roll my eyes…ignore it…and find out where they live so I can run them down in my car at a later date.
dances like a bear
05.16.08 at 3:05 am
instead of NAMBLA, jewdar might just as well have juxtaposed
“sick fucks.” The effect of the insidious stereotype would be very much the same.
It would just be a little more difficult to say around the kiddies.
05.16.08 at 8:05 am
Now before I start let me say I’ve had a few bevvies and a few J’s and am now feeling more ornery than ever…lol…ornery…I fucken love that word.
Frankly I’m disappointed to see this sort of shit on Heeb.com, makes me wonder where they draw the line, perhaps we can look forward to some sexist and racist articles in the future, after all…it’s not like we Jews have anything to fear from bigotry and intolerance.
Fuck you Jewdar, the only sick fuck around here is you, maybe you and Anne Coulter could get together and swap journalism tips you tool.
05.16.08 at 11:05 am
We’ve become a society so obsessed with PC-Ness that it has created a wall around the world o’ sense o’ humor. I believe the piece was meant to be humorous. True humor has no taboo subject and the uproar about this lil’ bit has become majorly NAMBLA retarded. Let me ask you this. If Sarah Silverman had said that in her stand up routine, would you be laughing? I’m 1/16th NAMBLA on my Mother’s side, and I’m not offended at all, nor is my greezy WOP husband Vinnie. You go with your badself, Deutsch.
05.16.08 at 12:05 pm
LOL, shhhh….dont tell ‘em it was a wind-up. (and not a very subtle one either) That takes all the fun out of it.
05.16.08 at 2:05 pm
hey Puck. “ Anne Coulter?? “...............
now that’s being WAY too cruel to Jewdar.
05.16.08 at 4:05 pm
We don’t normally feel compelled to explain our efforts at humor, and certainly not to apologize for them. But this is one of those rare circumstances where Jewdar’s not being upbraided for what we said, but for what some people seem to imagine we’ve said, so we would like to at least be on the same page.
As we understand it, we were looking for a non-homophobic alternative to the use of “gay” as an all purpose term of opprobrium. In other words, precisely because we oppose homophobia, we wanted to eliminate the association of “gay” with “bad.”
The question is what do we replace it with? Sure, we could have done any number of things. We could have gone with “brussel sprouts” or “Hitler’s flatulence” or “The Spice Girls’ Second Album”(becaue we have to admit we liked the first one). All of those are bad, but none of them really work because they are unwieldy, and because there is no connection to the initial term, “gay,” that makes the transfer logical. Otherwise, it’s just completely random. Now, some people may argue that we should have a zero tolerance policy for homophobia. And while ideally, that may be true, we see this as something like the difference between quitting cold turkey and going on methadone. Some people may be able to do the former, but we felt that for many people, they would still want a phrase that in some way relates to the initial term. Homophobia methadone, that’s what we were going for.
Now, we did contemplate alternatives. There was “That’s so Paul Lynde,” but come on, who doesn’t love Paul Lynde? There was “That’s so Gore Vidal,” but who the hell knows or cares who Gore Vidal is? And then it hit us. We don’t think all gays are bad. We don’t think most gays are bad. We don’t even necessarily think that a significant number of gays are bad (at least not more than in the straight population.) But there are some gays that pretty much any normal, thinking human being can agree are bad, and that’s NAMBLA.
Our goal, once again, was not to say that gays=NAMBLA. Indeed, the whole point was to say that “gay” should not be seen as synonymous with “negative.” At no point did we say that all gays were pedophiles, or most gays were pedophiles, or even that significant numbers of gays were pedophiles. It just so happens that this groups of gays—out, loud, and proud, if you will—is made up of pedophiles. Jewdar didn’t decide that they were gay—they did. And Jewdar didn’t decide that they were pedophiles—they did. And Jewdar certainly didn’t say, suggest, or imply that they are representative of the gay community—you did.
So before you all go apeshit on us again, while we freely admit we really, really don’t like Will and Grace, can somebody please explain precisely where exactly is our alleged “homophobia?”
05.16.08 at 6:05 pm
“Jewdar didn’t decide that they were gay—they did.”
Once again, Jewdar is parroting some very ill-informed far-Right nonsense. The idea that most gays choose to be gay is simply unacceptable. People usually don’t choose to be gay, Jewdar…they just are. It’s not like some Lefty-chic experimenting her sophomore year as an expression of strident, if fleeting, feminism, okay?
05.16.08 at 6:05 pm
Okay, this time we’ll concede that we didn’t express ourselves clearly. What Jewdar meant by “Jewdar didn’t decide that they were gay—they did” was that they chose to identify themselves as being gay (as opposed to, say, simply “having a wide stance”) and part of the gay rights movement, i.e., they didn’t say “Hey, we’re not gay, we’re pedophiles.” To reclarify again before another lecture, Jewdar does not believe that individual NAMBLA or other gays choose to be gay, but that NAMBLA, as an organization, has self-identified with gays and has historically sought to affiliate with the gay rights movement, and has at times been accepted as such by prominent individuals (like Harry Hay) and institutions (like the ILGA) within the movement. To rerererereclarify, we are not saying that all gays approve of NAMBLA, or that all gay rights organizations approve of NAMBLA, or that anyone approves of NAMBLA, just that historically, NAMBLA has seen itself, and has at times been accepted as being part of the larger gay culture, the larger gay culture which is not made up of pedophiles, because most gays are not pedophiles, and most pedophiles are not gay, and anybody who says they are is being totally NAMBLA.
Now, will you please behave and stop pretending that Jewdar is some sort right-wing footsoldier in the culture wars, when you sooooooo know very well that we aren’t? You are totally loving this, mrnghts, which makes you your own very special kind of pervert.
05.16.08 at 8:05 pm
ruffles jewdar’s hair
On the bright side at least we didn’t enact Godwin’s Law yet, it was getting close ;)
Still, was a bit too ‘dog whistle’ for me.
05.16.08 at 8:05 pm
I’m stuck between total hilarity, wishing people would leave Jewdar alone and being glad that it isn’t me who’s getting worked over for a change. lol
05.16.08 at 9:05 pm
LOL
Yeah I keep going to say “Hesed this” “Hesed that” and then I realise you’re an innocent bystander for once ;)
Poor Jewdar, he just needs to express himself with more clarity.
Still, this is a chat forum and he certainly has the prize for most posts for the week ;)
05.17.08 at 9:05 pm
If it makes you feel better, Puck, we got into Godwin’s Law territory in a piece of hate email Heeb received from Australia, which suggested that the shoah should have taught us something, and then made a reference to “the Grand Wizard,” which we presume was a Klan thing and not a Harry Potter reference.
So are we all one big happy dysfunctional family again? Oh, and gut voch.
05.17.08 at 10:05 pm
It does make me feel better. ;)
I still say it was dog whistling (rather than inept journalism), and if you were part of my family you’d probably be one of the ultra-orthodox cousins who spends all their time rabbiting on about how Israel’s problems are all down to their appeasement of ‘the gays’.
Remind me to have you around for dinner with them one night, you guys would get along like a house on fire :P
05.17.08 at 10:05 pm
Well, this whole contretemps has taught Jewdar that we should avoid these sorts of misunderstandings in the future and just stick to Holocaust jokes.
05.17.08 at 10:05 pm
:P
05.19.08 at 2:05 pm
“Holocaust jokes.”
so Jewdar… receive another hate email from the Australia guy yet?
05.19.08 at 4:05 pm
iconic, Jewdar’s comment that he should “just stick to Holocaust jokes” was in reference to a very talented blogger who took Jewdar down as he deserved to be taken down for his fundamentalist position that kosher felafel needs extra careful black-hat supervision when it does not, at least, not for those of us outside Jewdar’s obviously quiescent-fundamentalist heimeshe circle.
Perhaps…just perhaps…those Jews who insist that everyone follow their frummer than thou mentality when it comes to both gays and felafel should not be the same ones who let a pig run around their shabbos best.
Just saying.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=u15IG4VXZzw
05.20.08 at 2:05 am
mrnhghts, you’re just plain evil.