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Never Lie About Who You Really Are

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Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#121

Post by philwelch »

rmc wrote: post #114
king_jester wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well yes they do, it's just that they can do it by bringing home the boyfriend/girlfriend to meet the parents or whatever you want to consider normal first steps in expressing your sexuality. No, this isn't coming out. In most places, people are seen as a default of straight. Coming refers to revealing to people you are not straight, so straight people by definition cannot come out.

In most places, people are seen as a default of straight. Yes and that's wrong.

Not wrong, just playing the odds. ~95% of people are sufficiently heterosexual.

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#122

Post by scarmig »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #101
elemenohpee wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice that all the examples he gave were cases where a stranger made an assumption that put him in the position of either telling them he was gay or lying about it. It's interesting that commenters here keep having to invent a scenario where the guy was going around shouting to every passerby that he was gay. Yes, there are no cab drivers anywhere who might be perturbed by someone saying they are gay. Thanks jiggy20…

Outside of maybe very conservative areas or muslim countries I would imagine a cab driver being perturbed by gay people would not be in the business very long. I don't hang around in typically "gay" circles or even know that many people in general but I know enough gay people that homosexuality is not surprising for me at all. For the purposes of casual conversation with strangers, if someone asks about a wife surely…

But what if you are married, to a man?

In this example, straight people don't have to lie about not being married just to shut down small talk. Instead they use short responses, avoid eye contact, and give off the general vibe that they're not in the mood to talk. But why can't gay people do the same?

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#123

Post by brudgers »

jpwagner wrote: post #58
brudgers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is crap. One's day is brief. One's relationships, longer. One's sexuality, tends to approach permanence we age.

That's why I reference politics and religion. Choose your own analogy.

Your argument depends upon conflating politics with sexuality. The ease with which each can be conflated with religion sends us down the slippery slope.

We are often inclined to contain our political views for the sake of civility because they are opinions, and even those of widely differing views generally recognize that. Are disagreements are about the relevance of facts or the validity of their measuring. Generally the arguments are not about what exists in the shared world.

While the distance between religion and politics may be small historically, outside the political realm, the distance between disagreement about politics and about religion can be huge.

Religion asserts as fact a description of each person's position in the world. Thus, religious claims are about me personally, and unlike political claims, the speaker does not acknowledge that their view about me personally is opinion.

As political speech, I may treat it the expression of civic opinion. When it characterizes me personally, it is another matter just like characterizations of my sexuality.

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#124

Post by jspthrowaway2 »

pretoriusB wrote: post #92
brudgers wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Baptist. Or any stripe of Christian. Or Jew. Or some other checkbox on the list of tolerable beliefs. I live in Alabama. There's a price. Impeded relationships. Reduced opportunity. Yet, the emotional harm of lying about who am is significantly greater than what one person can inflict upon another. Because like truth, that harm is permanent. People inclined to fuck up someone because they are different, don…

> Yet, the emotional harm of lying about who am is significantly greater than what one person can inflict upon another. Because like truth, that harm is permanent. What about if there's no harm? What if you ENJOY lying about who you are? Or, in another twist, what if lying about who you are opens a new world to you, and makes you a different person, perhaps even who you lied about being in the first place? (In the se…

If you enjoy lying about anything, that's a serious red flag regarding you as a person.

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#125

Post by latinohere »

typicalrunt wrote: post #120

People have the misconception that a gay person comes out once. It's not true. If you're gay and you're authentic, you're coming out constantly. You're on a business trip, for example. A cab driver asks if you have kids, and you say that you do. Then he asks about your wife. Even though you may be exhausted, you find yourself summoning the energy to have a transformative conversation with a total stranger on whom you…

I'm getting tired of my current HN account so let me trash it.

Fuck Gays.

I'm Jose Gutierres from the Bronx in case you want to beat me up. There, no more walking on egg-shells.

In all seriousness, being too PC is also harmful. I'm not homophobic but really dislike that you cannot have a conversation without somebody getting but hurt.

And to finish it off. Fuck muslims, hindus, christians, mexicans, jews, scientologists, hispanics, etc. If you feel I left you out then fuck you too.

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#126

Post by brudgers »

pretoriusB wrote: post #92
brudgers wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Baptist. Or any stripe of Christian. Or Jew. Or some other checkbox on the list of tolerable beliefs. I live in Alabama. There's a price. Impeded relationships. Reduced opportunity. Yet, the emotional harm of lying about who am is significantly greater than what one person can inflict upon another. Because like truth, that harm is permanent. People inclined to fuck up someone because they are different, don…

> Yet, the emotional harm of lying about who am is significantly greater than what one person can inflict upon another. Because like truth, that harm is permanent. What about if there's no harm? What if you ENJOY lying about who you are? Or, in another twist, what if lying about who you are opens a new world to you, and makes you a different person, perhaps even who you lied about being in the first place? (In the se…

The author faces a situation where telling the truth causes suffering.

The identity of his situation with that of a person who enjoys lying is premised upon pleasure being nothing more than the absence of suffering.

This reduces the enjoyment of a person who enjoys lying to an absence of suffering. Belief systems which might take this approach to pleasure tend to treat trying to avoid suffering as suffering - i.e. all the way down, turtles suffer.

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#127

Post by baak »

jspthrowaway2 wrote: post #124
pretoriusB wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, the emotional harm of lying about who am is significantly greater than what one person can inflict upon another. Because like truth, that harm is permanent. What about if there's no harm? What if you ENJOY lying about who you are? Or, in another twist, what if lying about who you are opens a new world to you, and makes you a different person, perhaps even who you lied about being in the first place? (In the se…

If you enjoy lying about anything, that's a serious red flag regarding you as a person.

Poker, anyone?

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#128

Post by pavel_lishin »

michaelfeathers wrote: post #10

In the UK I've run into people who use the term `partner' for whomever they are in a non-married exclusive relationship with, regardless of whether they are gay or straight. I don't know how common that is, or how it got started. I wonder whether it will ever catch on in the US?

I prefer "significant other" if the relationship (with any combination of genders and genitals) is more serious than "boyfriend/girlfriend" but not to the level of "husband/wife".

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#129

Post by chernevik »

gizzlon wrote: post #103
chernevik wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone finds for themselves what witness they must bear. If the OP feels an obligation to help transform social views of homosexuality, well that's their duty as they see it. Likewise those evangelicals who feel the need to bear witness to what Jesus has done for them. If they share a cab it could well be an exhausting ride for everybody but this is beside the point of their obligations as they seem them. We must a…

We must all do the right as we see it. [..] Doing what _you_ think wrong is wrong. Hmm.. this seems like a form of relativism. Are you implying the inverse as well: Doing what _you_ think right is right? How do you defend that if "right" for me happens to be walking around nude in public, or more extreme, shooting people that I disagree with?

It does seem so, doesn't it? But I couple it with a duty to always seek a better understanding of the right, and to a humility that appreciates you might be wrong.

Moral principles are absolute and unchanging. But their _application_ is always subject to a context, and that context is often full of many different considerations of various weights. You may be of some Nudist religion but appreciate that your other duties require a prudent respect for the social requirement of clothing when earning the money required to meet those duties.

If you believe something wrong and dangerous I will try to persuade you that you are _wrong_. I will try to persuade you to change your principles to better ones, or at least doubt yours enough to do nothing while you figure things out. But I won't try to persuade you to not live with integrity.

If you believe in shooting people you disagree with, and I think you're actually likely to act on that, then I will act to stop you. Because I have a duty to the just and the innocent to protect them from people who believe stuff that crazy. But just because I oppose you doesn't mean I don't think you mean well, just that you're wrong and must be stopped.

Re: Never Lie About Who You Really Are

#130

Post by elemenohpee »

scarmig wrote: post #122
jiggy2011 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of maybe very conservative areas or muslim countries I would imagine a cab driver being perturbed by gay people would not be in the business very long. I don't hang around in typically "gay" circles or even know that many people in general but I know enough gay people that homosexuality is not surprising for me at all. For the purposes of casual conversation with strangers, if someone asks about a wife surely…

But what if you are married, to a man? In this example, straight people don't have to lie about not being married just to shut down small talk. Instead they use short responses, avoid eye contact, and give off the general vibe that they're not in the mood to talk. But why can't gay people do the same?

The author never said that he wasn't in the mood for small talk. Gay people shouldn't feel any pressure to not engage in this normal human behavior.
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