Not liking a thing is part of life. I am rather stoic to stay focused. Sometimes though things hit you...

When people make jokes on your behalf it sure is not enjoyable. I was picked on for being the nice guy in class. As a half Hindu I was picked on  for my mixed appearance (nor white, nor black); yes the "multicultural" Netherlands can be racist. Sometimes people and groups simply pick on something or someone to feel important or get the attention. Taboo subject score more points...

I have learnt a simple thing through all this. Do not be afraid to speak up and ask why. If you have to kick their asses in self-defence, administer the pain. When you learn to outwit and outsmart people who have something against you, keep that advantage. When confronted with another who provokes or offends for no "seemingly" good reason simply stare that person down and say "I disagree" and you are done.

At the Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam the police evicted the building. Afterwards the police used unnecessary force and covertly targeted people. Two days later a large demonstration went through Amsterdam to protest the university's executive board past behaviour and its decision to allow the police to evict the Maagdenhuis. In response to the unnecessary force used and the arrests of the students the students, faculties and teachers united. The university's executive board now has had to answer to the government in The Hague for what happened. The chair woman of the board resigned under external and internal pressure just before facing scrutiny. The entire executive board is severely warned. The students showed no fear, asked why, disagreed and marched. When the bureaucrats allowed violence against their own students they went too far for many people.

I'm never one of many words. But i'll agree that equal rights precludes special treatment however things are never that black and white, having been bullied my whole life for being different, i think communication is key. Just because you can't imagine someone's suffering doesn't make it less real. I think humor is one of the best ways to get a point across and connect people of a different mindset much like music does.

Agreed. For the people who are simply vicious there are often only two options. Either avoid them or prepare for confrontation.

 

As far as Mike, more than once have I found myself saying something inappropriate w/o meaning to offend. I don't know Mike well, but I feel his intentions were not to hurt anybody.

FWIW, this is almost certainly the case.

Unless someone can prove that Mike Moffat has a documented record of trans-phobic activity. Beyond his engineering work, the only consistent trend I can see in Mike's behavior is that he really, really likes novelty t-shirts.

What pissed me off more than anything wasn't the insensitive joke. Seriously, unless you've lived a pretty sheltered life - one that must also exclude most television as well - you've encountered tons of those. What pissed me off is the fact that in some sectors of the web the ability to address a comment by way of actual interpersonal interaction and direct contact is a completely lost social skill. It's a microcosm of our larger social dysfunction.

Doing what Lachlan did both created a false controversy and at the same time took away Mike's space to say, simply and easily, that his intent was general misanthropy as opposed to targeted smearing. Mike isn't some sort of powerful public figure that needs to be treated like a Twitter celeb. He's a person who posts on enthusiast sites and is easily accessible.

This. I don't give a god damn fcuk about if anyone being a LGBTQ, but I'm royally pissed off by those people whose identity revolves around being a LGBTQ. As if being LGBTQ gives them a privilige to be babied. The annoyence doesn't come from their being LGBTQ; it comes from their sense of being a priviliged group.

The new set of political rhetoric that has developed around "privileged groups" and "special rights" in the past decade is IMHO one of the worst developments in transatlantic English language politics. Without going into it too much because I think it's a distraction, I will say this: the best pair of parents that I know in my broader circle of friends are a lesbian couple that I went to undergrad with. In Michigan, their out-of-state marriage isn't recognized as valid or legally binding. When both of them are able to visit their sick kid in the hospital as family instead of having to put one of them on them visitors list, or when they can both be covered under the same employer-provided spousal benefits, I'll start to bite on the idea that LBGTQ individuals need to stop taking an activist stance towards their personal identity.

The Supreme Court might make that happen pretty soon.

Ann Arbor / Detroit was by far the gayest place I've ever lived in. Had more LGBT friends (yes, plural) there than I ever did in California. Funny how that happens. All of my LGBT friends were ... very normal. A lot of them were in tech so they used PCs. Seemed like the straight people used macs.

When I left Ann Arbor in 2002, there was one gay bar. Most of other the gay bars in the area were in god forsaken places in the Detroit Metro area.

This. And the cop wasn’t wrong about Palmer Park b eing a place where there was a lot of gay prostitution. Menjos on McNichols/6 Mile Road was right down the street from where the cop pulled us over. The old joke was that if you were queer in Michigan you worked in Royal Oak, hung out with friends in Ann Arbor, and then went home to bombed-out part of Detroit because you couldn't afford to live in either of those places.

By-the-by, this thread is an example of why I like the community that surrounds these forums. We don’t always agree about things, but we still talk about them.   

[All the awesome stuff included in this post]
 

+1, great post.

I am of the unpopular opinion that the whole LGBTTQ* push in some cases is causing a problem that didn't exist. I think some people who are merely confused about themselves (in a wtf am I doing with my life way) will wind up thinking that their malaise is due to their gender identity when it's not, and it takes them down the wrong path. I hate that LGBT advocates use "heteronormative environment" like a dirty word. I think some of the more progressive communities that are pushing for LGBT in schools is doing it way too young. It's like trying to teach someone calculus before they can do algebra. Awareness and acceptance is one thing, but the kids are counting apples for crissakes; let them grasp a basic giggling understanding of peepees and woowoos before shoving the half dozen other options down their throats and confusing them.

*here in Canuckland they didn't even bother to try to get them all and used the * to fill in the blanks... http://www.gov.mb.ca/stoptheviolence/lgbttq.html