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But you know your friends, you don't have to worry about ambigous signals, like with a girl you like. He knows you're not gay, you know he's not gay, "not that there's anything wrong with that", so what is this fear? It seems paranoid. And somehow, if we recriminalized homosexuality, and then we found ourselves in a situation that resembled homosexuality, so objectively our situation would be more dangerous, that's when we could relax? It's very strange, counter-intuitive reasoning.
People aren't so simple. And who said anything about fear? Doing X would convey signal Y, and I don't want to convey Y. The kind of physical intimacy that was de rigeur a couple of centuries ago (somebody linked this) is not ambiguous these days, that's the point.
I suppose I could sit my friends down and give them a sort of autistic manifesto along the lines of, 'I'm totally straight and I know you're totally straight but I don't think men touch each other enough now so let's cuddle (no homo)', but for the entire 90's we laughed at such behaviour exactly because it was regarded as a classic sign of closeted homosexuality.
It's like selling stocks: if a founder sells a big chunk of their stocks in their successful startup, it signals that they think it's peaked. It doesn't matter what signal they want to send, that's the signal it sends, and everyone including them knows that that's the signal it sends, so they can't sell without sending that signal.
In olden times, homosexuality ('sodomy') was something that was commonly agreed to take place far off and among degenerates like sailors. The average person didn't think about it from week to week. I'm not arguing for recriminalising homosexuality, I'm arguing for vastly reducing its visibility outside select subcultures. In the last 50 years, we made a decision to prioritise visible harm to small minorities over the potential for less visible harm to 95% of the population; that was understandable at the time but I don't think it's aging well.
I'm not accusing you of homophobia or any other phobia, it's just that I don't see more to this theory than correlation: yes, gay pride parades are correlated with a decline in male intimate friendships. Tornado damage also increased.
The mechanism making it a causal relationship doesn't work. why do I care that my friend could think that I'm a closeted homosexual when I'm clearly not ? A closeted homosexual can perfectly provide all the duties of a friend - he would be a bad husband, but that's not the friend's problem.
I don't want to weird out my friend. You could say "No true friend would care if you're a closeted homosexual and why would you want to be friendly to such a person", but the fact of the matter is that many friendships are conditional on one not giving somebody else the ick.
And the need to not signal homosexuality is infinitely stronger when it comes to women, if for different but much more obvious reasons.
The only people who could be confused by this are a very small minority of women and asexual aspies.
Bu the ick is a 5D figment of their imagination in this case; and you’re denying it adamantly. No one is getting kissed or propositioned. Indulging a friend’s false, irrational fear to the point of sacrificing intimate friendships is a massive society-wide overreaction, if that is what is happening. It's silly. What if he thinks I'm a crocodile, so I can't eat in his presence?
Really? It seems weaker. Criminally, lesbianism has always been far less punished, for example. Oh, you mean signaling male homosexuality to women? I can see why that would be worse. But again it's false in this case. Why indulge their unfounded accusations of dishonesty? Fuck'em if they can't take a joke.
"Fuck all y'all" is not a good life philosophy. People who try it tend to end up in unhappy places as their social credit runs out, especially if they move and no longer have the familiarity of many years to draw on. I've seen it happen, it's no joke.
Now, one should be discerning in one's friendships, and not farm one's brain out to the crowd, but that doesn't mean that paying no attention to the opinions of people you need or care about is a good idea.
Li Bai: A Beast or a God? is fun and more-or-less gets at this.
What good is niceness alone on an island? Social credit is scrip, only useful for doing social things. There is value outside of the social sphere. Within it, I fundamentally disagree that you should not tell fat stupid irrational friends that they’re fat stupid and irrational, ie I disagree that lies are necessary to live in society.
Tact and sensitivity are not mealy-mouthed 'niceness' and nor are they lying, although sometimes they can disguise for cowardice.
Humans are social animals - the vast majority of what we achieve and what brings us pleasure is done in the company of others. There are few things more valuable than friends, colleagues and acquaintances who you respect, and to obtain and keep such people, you have to care about their perspective. You do not need to shout out every whim and snap judgement lest you become a creature of lies.
Consider this: if your friends are fat, stupid and irrational, why are they your friends? If they have other, redeeming qualities, why focus on the negative ones? How are they going to react to you telling them that they're fat, stupid and irrational, in those words, whenever you feel like it, because anything else would be lying? Do you really, truly think it'll turn their life around? Or are you really doing it just for yourself, because saying it makes you feel good?
To a degree. To what degree, largely up to us. Like our mating behaviours are somewhere between the lifelong monogamy of some birds and the 50-women harem season of elephant seals.
Lying is acceptable if the liee wants to be lied to, but I don’t think most people agree to be lied to. Do you ? I certainly don’t. They, like me, believe their model of the world is sound, tested, and that the truth flows into it without obstruction. They trust that their belief that they are smart and thin is actually true, instead of being artificially maintained and protected by social lies. Far from getting pleasure from ‘insulting’ them, I think I’m doing them a favour at personal cost, because some will shoot the messenger.
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