NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/talk/bizarre/23870

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-29 | 5.2 KB

Xref: sparky talk.bizarre:23870 soc.culture.british:10918 alt.sex:25418
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From: [e-mail] (MAS Project Development)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,soc.culture.british,alt.sex
Subject: Re: SEX
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Jul 92 22:19:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]>,
    [e-mail] (Richard Steven Walz) writes...

>If you have a reaction to eating bananas then it is a justified
>avoidance. If your reaction is conditioned and could as easily be
>de-conditioned, then you are simply expressing an irrational fear.
>Homophobia is such a fear. I once had it, it *is* conditioned. I don't
>have it anymore. My wife had a conditioned dislike of bananas. She
>couldn't even stand the smell, but she had no adverse health reaction
>to bananas. We had little to eat once. We were very hungry. A friend,
>unknowing brought us a huge bunch of bananas and a few other things.
>My wife finally tried a banana, and then another and another. Now she
>likes bananas! In the first commune I helped to start we had rented a
>store front as a living quarters in a small town. We had no table to
>eat on, the seven of us. I took the door off the bathroom and we
>propped it on saw horses and prepared and had supper. Afterwards,
>people wanted to use the john, which was right behind the bathroom
>door. People said, just go ahead and go, some others said they were
>embarrassed. One woman had a near nervous breakdown about it, but
>finally did use the john. The table became a permanent fixture. The
>next day when I came home from work, I found that same woman taking a
>shit while talking to four other people who were laying butt down in
>the dry old fashioned bathtub with feet. She wasn't embarrassed at
>all. So much for phobias. Now, if you had some kind of physical
>reaction to participating in homosex, I could excuse it as justified.
>Since you don't, I must assume that you have a phobia. It is called
>homophobia. Now there is such a thing as not wishing to participate in
>homosex because it is not interesting to you. Just as some don't think
>bananas taste all that good. But you insist that you have a viceral
>reaction to even seeing or discussing homosexual acts. That is the
>more extreme form of homophobia. You are truly frightened of even the
>concept, or of the act occurring around you even if you needn't
>participate. This is clearly conditioned and represents a genuine fear
>(phobia) on your part. Now what that fear is I cannot say. There have
>been a lot of people who couldn't admit their homosexuality who have
>had this phobia and still do, but I think it can occur without that.

The man has already said he doesn't care what they do, as long as they don't do
it around him.

I have a visceral reaction to seeing people's throats slashed.  Don't discuss
it with me.  It's not that I have a fear of having my own throat slashed--any
more than I have a fear of eating bugs--but don't eat bugs in front of me,
either.

>But you must realize that such a powerful phobia as yours is indeed a
>disruption to others who feel as normal as pie about homosex going on
>around them, even if they decline to try it. They are usually simply
>interested in heterosex and have no feeling one way or the other about
>homosex, as would seem obvious and appropriate. But you continue to
>generate an irrational fear not only of you having it "accepted" by
>you, but also the "practice" of it around you and even "condoning" it
>for others who like it. This is clearly a phobia which interferes with
>others' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Surely
>you aren't such a coward that you cannot even watch homosex
>dispassionately, since, I presume, it elicits no passion in you? Or is
>that really true?.......... Whereas the reaction of a reasonable
>person to homosex might be, "oh, that's interesting", as in watching two
>women if the watcher is hetero; or two men, if the watcher is hetero, it
>might be, "wheee, then there's more pussy for me", instead you present
>us with your dark shit and ask us to tolerate your intolerance.
>Nothing doing.

I think you're *way* out of line, here, Steve.  I don't want to watch a woman
fucking a dead horse, either, and believe me, that elicits *NO* "passion" from
me whatsoever.  But do you want to say I'm an equestrophobe?

"Nothing doing."

If anything, the practice of certain people trying to tell others who have
their own feelings about "homosex" (love the coining of words in today's
society...) that they are somehow "intolerant" because they do not like it is
absurd.

Someone could come out and say, "I don't like the thought of a man and woman
going at it in the bedroom."  I couldn't care less.  If they were out on the
streets, crying out against "the evils of heterosexual relationships," I might
have a case for calling them "intolerant."

Otherwise--"Nothing doing."

>- Steve Walz

                    ---Chet Zeshonski