re: #502 karmic_inquisitor

Good point.

For middle America, the Folsom Street Fair pics present a distortion. But if you look at things from the standpoint of generating shock, the pictures are of events that did happen and that are intrinsically shocking. Misleading? To the extend they are intended to represent a whole - absolutely. But as artifacts of what that whole goes along with and has “metabolized” to a degree, I don’t think they are misrepresentations.

I have a real issue with that. Those photos are taken, by some people, to represent the whole community. And there is a valid argument to be made here, like “You can’t control how other people will read or interpret you” — fair enough. But it’s part of a pattern and that’s what disturbs me.
And I do feel bad discussing it when zombie isn’t here because it doesn’t seem fair— but it’s come up before. That’s why the ‘only reporting the facts’ line just doesn’t work for me. Too many other ‘errors’ trend in that exact same direction.

Like the one about citing 30 year old pre-AIDS, SF bathhouse scene stats as if they revealed truth about all gay male behaviour at all places and times. (If you just wanted to claim that gay men have on average more partners than gay women, straight men, and straight women, that can be done with much newer stats— but she went straight for the ones likely to foment the most outrage. Why? She’s smart enough to know better, and 5 seconds on google would have given her better sources. She didn’t do that.)

And other dubious shit too, like claiming that homosexuality isn’t found in the animal kingdom or something wacky like that. I don’t recall the details, but it was when I first got here and the first convo she and I had— she wasn’t happy to get evidence that disconfirmed that, even though she’d posted claiming she wanted that.

like I said— there’s a pattern here. And Z is smart enough to know better, which is why i react as I do to it.