Comments on: FDL Late Nite: Who Are You?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 22:29:44 +0000

I have two views on labels: sometimes they can be used for convienance, other times they can be used to limit and control. For example, if someone were to ask me, I’d say I’m gay. Why? It’s easier to explain it that way than to say “I’m almost always gay, but there are a few woman here and there who do it for me.” Then they just get confused and can’t fathom it – especially when I say I don’t identify as bisexual, beause the woman I’ve been attracted to and had intersts in were so few and far betweeen that bisexual, to me, doesn’t seem an accurate discription.

So, as a matter of convienance, I’m gay. But, when people just assume I have no interest in woman, it becomes a tool for limiting and controling who I can’t and can’t like – often from gay aquaintances and friends. And it also means, to some, that I’m girly and effeminate and effeminent – even if I enjoy the NFL as much as I do Johnny Weir dancing in a swan costume with extra sequences.

By: Jesus B. Ochoa

Jesus B. Ochoa — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:33:38 +0000

Frank Probst @
28

Re: Time’s Person of the Year. Is it just me, or was this choice breathtaking in its cowardice? There’s an unpopular war going on in Iraq, the people just tossed out the leadership of both houses of Congress, the Palestinians are on the brink of a civil war of their own, and the monomaniacal president of Iran is running a Holocaust-denial conference. And the best Time could do was “You”?

Not just you. Read Wolcott today.

By: Western Otto

Western Otto — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:30:00 +0000

My identifying labels? I was born in KY, my parents were white Republican Methodists, so that made me a WASP and a hillbilly, bad start. Born slightly before they dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima- does that make me a Boomer? Well, I know it makes me a geriatric. In college I became a drunk , a dropout, a draft-dodger, and a dirty fucking hippy. Marched with Martin Luther King, demonstrated against Vietnam, went to live in a commune in Colorado… you know the drill. I saw Lenny Bruce in NY in ‘63 and became devoted to the idea that intent is everything and that words are only the noises we make to signify it (sometimes not very accurately, unfortunately). Bruce was labeled obscene and sick when in fact he was a great moral force. So, that’s me, in the flesh- a genuine DFH! Proud of it! And fuck ya if ya can’t take a joke!

By: Shrink in SF

Shrink in SF — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:13:49 +0000

Mary McCurnin @
31

Identity is so very fluid. I really don’t know where to start or stop. I know what I am not better than what I am.

This was beautiful Mary, as one Protean shape shifter to another, let’s start a club.

By: Pachacutec

Pachacutec — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:18:32 +0000

Oh. Lucy just dinged me for being “facetious” about my “adoration” of flokati. Flokati finds favor in our home. I’m irrelevant to design choices.

By: Pachacutec

Pachacutec — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:10:06 +0000

I think “bitchy” is also in the tone of voice, the inflection or lilt of meter, which does not come through in typed text. In person, I think people would probably classify my tone, when I get up to it, as something closer to “sardonic” or “ironic.” At home, I play more “Ricky” to my better half’s “Lucy.”

By: becca

becca — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:08:41 +0000

Two quotes I use as a code to live by:

1.”Once you label me, you negate me.” Kierkegaard

2. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” Walt Whitman

By: Pachacutec

Pachacutec — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:01:00 +0000

“You know how I know you’re gay?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ASBjnXZpc

Shreik! Shriek! I’m offended. . .

NOT!

By: Wally

Wally — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:58:51 +0000

Who wouldn’t do Mario Lopez?

By: Phoenix Woman

Phoenix Woman — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:51:11 +0000

One thing I do share with most gay men is a level of comfort with very, shall we say, blue humor, imagery and language.

Yup, and that’s how I knew you were gay.

Now, I have to explain here that while there are many straight guys who like and even practice blue humor, there is a certain sort of “bitchy” verve to what you do that I see only in women and in gay men.

How do I define “bitchy”? That’s hard. All I can really say at this point is that I know it when I see it, and that “bitchy” isn’t necessarily a bad thing to be. But I’ll hack away at a definition anyway:

To me, bitchiness is a sort of extreme (and usually extremely literate and well-informed) causticity, often cloaked in faux (or genuine) passive-aggressive behavior.

This last bit, the passive-aggressiveness (if it’s real and not a sarcastic put-on of fake subservience), is a signifier of when bitchy is bad: It means that you’re trying to avoid full ownership of what you said because you’re afraid of the consequences. So far, I haven’t seen you do that, no matter how loudly people have screeched at you.

So congratulations, P! You are a practitioner of Ethical Bitchiness! Go out there and knock ‘em dead, and always remember to use your powers for good!