Someone actually wrote this: The Federalist on pornography

In The Federalist, Dustin Murphy writes a screed against pornography that is larded with the usual proofs by assertion. A few passages stand out, though.

According to Murphy, the antisocial effects of pornography include the following:

One of the greatest tragedies of porn’s antisocial effects is that it fuels an anti-child culture. Thinking sex should be open to procreation, or that the two go hand-in-hand, is regarded like VHS tapes: out of style. Some people consider parents with three or more children to be crazy, and children are generally viewed as a burden. Anyone with a large family has probably experienced negative comments in grocery stores or coffee shops.

In addition to the false dichotomy, the cause of the anti-child culture, if such a thing exists, is pornography because Murphy says so.

As for whether one person's use of pornography harms others, Murphy argues,

Recording sex devoid of love violates a couple’s right to share authentic human love and to experience the whole person, not just private parts, during sex.

No, it doesn't. People are still free to do just that. Murphy's argument is just a short stroll from "Freedom is slavery."

He continues that

laws ought to promote the common good, which is to perfect the community.

In addition to being exactly the sort of collectivist reasoning that conservatives at least used to oppose when liberals used it, that argument presupposes that perfecting the community is possible. It is odd that someone who elsewhere expresses a belief in God argues that secular government can perfect the community. Besides, I am not sure that I should want to live in Murphy's perfect community.

Someone actually wrote this: Unbiased samples, how do they work?

This article about chubby chasers provides a perfect example of how not to research one's topic, although I suppose that the author is ahead of the game by actually researching, when so many others in the LGBT media are content simply to speculate. He describes his data set and the conclusion that he draws:

I have to admit, it’s rare to find a gay guy who happens to be a Chubby Chaser. But trust me when I say they exist. During my research, I perused Craigslist, Grindr and other social apps, and believe me, Chubby Chasers are alive and well, but what saddens me most about the whole thing is that they feel a need to hide. They’d rather have casual sex so they can satisfy a part of their fantasy, while ridding themselves an opportunity to start a relationship (which is what they really want) out of fear of being judged.

So he "perused Craigslist, Grindr and other social apps," and the guys he finds would "rather have casual sex"? Gosh oh golly, I wonder what those two things could possibly have to do with each other.

See also:

What are gay men up to? How not to find out

What are gay men up to? How not to find out (2)

What are gay men up to? How not to find out (2)

On Queerty.com, we read this (borderline NSFW):

STUDY: Most Gay Men Prefer Their Guys Naturally Hairy

According to a survey conducted by Manhunt, gay men prefer their partners to leave their body hair alone.

More than 27,000 Manhunt members were asked which body parts they like their partners to manscape and, surprisingly, most wanted everything left the way God made it.

I have read other studies that "show" the exact opposite. You can "prove" whatever you want if you don't worry about silly little things like non-representative data samples and self-selection bias, which many people in the LGBT media evidently do not.

Yes, I do know better than to expect quality journalism from sites like Manhunt. It does not follow that supposedly more serious sites have to go along.

What are gay men up to? How not to find out

From Gay Star News comes this revelation:

[West Hollywood, California,] was crowned the country's most popular place for gay men looking for casual sex after users of dating website SeekingArrangement.com admitted to having 10 or more sexual partners over the past year.

How is that a representative data set? For those of you who don't know, and I'm guessing that most people have no reason to know, SeekingArrangement.com is a "sugar daddy" site, as described in The New York Times here. Also, the answers were from those who had chosen to answer the question. Thus, there are two levels of self-selection bias right there. Besides, who knows how honest the respondents were being?

That raises the question of how to get more reliable data. If more representative polling can be used, we should use that. If not, then why write the article at all? "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Do as we say, not as we do.

Here a lesbian blogged about her sexual exploration. In the comments, someone wrote:

I’m sort of divided on this issue. If we’re going to be consistent, we shouldn’t celebrate the same activity for which lesbians have long (correctly, IMHO) rebuked gay men.

The original blogger responded that she was "all for gay men having the sex," but another commenter responded (emphasis added):

I could care less what dudes do, of course they will mate like rabbits, they are MEN for pete’s sakes!

Who tells lesbians to be “consistent”? hets? We are humans, we eat, we laugh, we love, sometimes if we are fortunate, we get laid every now and then.

I will let that last comment, particularly the bolded part, speak for itself.

The "gay men are racists" meme

The old meme of gay male racism is making the rounds again. According to this meme, the fact that gay men have preferences in terms of sexual or romantic attraction shows the prevalence of racism among gay men. The idea that preferences in sexual or romantic attraction automatically translate into racism seriously begs the question, but let's assume arguendo that it's true. The meme still depends on the standard politically correct "proofs": bald assertions, sweeping generalizations from cherry-picked anecdotal evidence, a pretended ability to read other people's minds, and appeals to one's own emotions.

Now let us see what the actual evidence says. This article discusses racial and ethnic selectivity among men who have sex with men in San Francisco, and people who know it only from blog posts about it cite it as proof of gay male racism. Yet the discussion section of the article states,

We also wish to point to the quite high level of interracial partnering in our sample. Overall, 46% of partnerships described were interracial. Moreover, the interpretation of racism would be unfair without comparable data from other populations. While population-based data on the race/ethnicity of sexual partners are rare, the US Census estimated around 2% of marriages were interracial from 1970 through 1992 (US Census Bureau 1998). More recent estimates raise this to only 7% (Cary 2007). While same sex marriage is currently illegal in California, therefore precluding truly comparable figures for MSM, these estimates are many-fold lower than the interracial partnering we observed in our study.

When the evidence contradicts the conclusion, it's time to rethink the conclusion.

I am not claiming that no gay men are racists or that preferences never arise from racism; after all. I am saying that if we constantly search for things by which to be offended, we can blind ourselves to what is actually happening.

But you told us that this sort of thing never happened.

In an article in The New York Times on African-American films, we read:

EARLY in Dee Rees’s film “Pariah” it journeys into a Brooklyn strip club where scantily clad young black women gyrate to a sexy, foul-mouthed rap song. Lascivious customers leer, toss money and revel in their own unbridled lust. It is a scene that could have been in any of “the hood movies” that once proliferated or even a Tyler Perry melodrama in which Christian values would be affirmed after this bit of titillation.

But in “Pariah” the gaze of desire doesn’t emanate from predatory males but A.G.’s, that is aggressive lesbians, who, in a safe space where they enjoy the fellowship of peers, can be true to themselves.

But I thought that lesbians' (supposed) lack of interest in such things was part of the evidence for lesbians' (supposed) moral superiority to us mere mortals, especially gay men. What gives?

But it's okay when we do it!

At least as long as I've been out, many lesbians have appointed themselves to be the queer community's Lady Whiteadders and have passed moral judgment on gay men for deviating from the ideal of sex only within long-term, monogamous, more-vanilla-than-Sealtest-ice-milk relationships. Now take a look at this (borderline NSFW: some explicit language). The lesbian liberation described in the second half of the article sounds an awful lot like the things that get gay men labeled as unworthy sinners. There can't possibly be a double standard at work, so there must be some other explanation.

More on New York vs. D.C.

One thing about New Yorkers that visitors from Washington tend to notice right away is a frankness about sexuality that much of the country lacks. A friend who has lived in New York since the seventies tells me that that frankness has been toned down since the seventies, but it is still there. In D.C., by contrast, no matter what happens on the back porch of the leather bar, we observe the polite fiction that we are all asexual and that the goddess has assigned us our sexual orientations solely as a social statement.

My friend also mentioned an aspect of growing up in New York, namely, exposure to viewpoint diversity. Such diversity has traditionally been anathema in D.C., although we see more of it as a more diverse crowd moves into the capital.

I am shocked, shocked!

American officials have reported finding a huge amount of pornography in the computers and storage devices in Osama bin Laden's compound. It seems that yet another puritanical religious fundamentalist preached one thing and practiced another.

The article says,

But the disclosure could fuel accusations of hypocrisy against the founder of Al Qaeda, who was 54 and lived with three wives at the time of his death, and will be welcomed by counterterrorism officials because it could tarnish his legacy and erode the appeal of his brand of religious extremism.

I'd like to think so, but true believers have a way of blocking any reality that interferes with their beliefs, including revelations of sexual sins by their leaders.

My preferences are just preferences; your preferences are evil.

In our search for Mr. Right or Mr. Right Away, gay men — at least
those gay men who are not in politically correct denial about the very
existence of human nature — pay considerable attention to their own
and one another’s preferences for a romantic or sexual partner. In
fact, many gay men pay so much attention to one another’s lives that
they feel called upon to pass moral judgment on those lives and to
declare arbitrary rules about which preferences are acceptable and
which are not.

Some preferences are so prevalent, at least among the more mainstream
segments of the gay male community, that they pretty much go without
saying. Such preferences include muscles, genital size, an age within
an impossibly narrow range, and exactly the amount of body hair that
the media tell us we like this month. Also, it is self-evident, at
least to twinks and their devotees, that everyone hankers for a twink.

Other preferences, seemingly just as innocuous, provoke irate
reactions among many gay men. For instance, telling a gay male advice
columnist that you want someone intelligent is the most effective way
to press that columnist’s berserk button. Never mind the role of
similarity of intelligence on the success of a relationship. Caring
about such things just isn’t P.C., and that’s all that matters.

The second most effective way to press that berserk button is to say
that you want someone masculine. After all, how dare anyone think
that male homosexuality has anything to do with an attraction to men.
Yet liking muscles is acceptable and even expected; I told you that
the rules are arbitrary. Also, no one seems concerned about those gay
men who want sissy-boys in panties.

The usual justification that I have heard since the eighties for
opposing a preference for masculine men is that it is a reaction to
the supposed cult of “straight-looking and -acting men.” Nonetheless,
since that reaction has been going on since at least the eighties,
perhaps we should give it a rest and move on. How au courant in 2011
is an endless rehashing of an argument that was already stale in 1991?
Others have argued that “straight-acting” is simply an act; however,
that argument is a textbook example of the fallacy of equivocation.

Moreover, if I may return to my point above about twinks, I have heard
devotees of twinks take offense at the idea that any gay man could
want a non-twink guy. More than once, such devotees have even tried
to convert me to the twink cult.

Finally, many gay men accuse one another of religious “bigotry” in
selecting a potential mate having the same beliefs. I do not see the
problem there, even though as an atheist I presumably should. If
someone takes his faith seriously, why should he not want someone who
shares that faith?

I suggest we relax, acknowledge that none of us is the measure of all
things and that therefore none of us has the right to define what
everyone else’s preferences should be, and stop yammering about the
need for diversity long enough to embrace the diversity that already
exists in our community. That would be my preference, anyway.

Limousine liberals, meet Craigslist conservatives.

We all know about limousine liberals (a/k/a champagne socialists, gauche caviar, and most of my classmates in undergrad). Now, thanks to "Craigslist Congressman" Chris Lee (more fap-worthy picture here), we have a similarly snappy and alliterative term for family-values Republican hypocrites.

Growing up gay, then and now

A recent conversation with a friend about substantially younger gay men on Facebook got me thinking about the differences between being a young gay man now and my own experiences with growing up gay.

For one thing, social attitudes have changed dramatically. Today, urging tolerance for LGBT people is de rigueur in many areas of society. While the "liberal" mainstream media can still be conservative on our issues, they have mellowed somewhat, and besides, they have far less influence than they did. By contrast, in the seventies, in the blue-collar neighborhood where I grew up, urging such tolerance was just not done; I was the only one who did, and my point was not exactly well received. When I did officially come out, it was into the world of the politically correct Savonarola clones, who led me out of one closet only to shove me into another.

Moreover, the Internet allows queer youth to form virtual communities with people like them around the world as well as to receive unfiltered information about sexual issues. Such things can be useful to anyone and vital to someone growing up in Baptistville, Texas. Back then, by contrast, not only did we not have social-networking sites or even Usenet newsgroups, but we did not even have the access to unfiltered information about homosexuality that exists today. Instead, we had to rely on rumors or at best those gatekeepers of right thought, the "liberal" mainstream media, which seemed unable to mention gay people without using the word "predatory." Those who criticize technology as isolating and dehumanizing should take note.

Is sexual orientation a choice? Does it matter? Should it matter?

In light of the Proposition 8 decision and of recent media accounts of fluidity of female sexuality, people are discussing the significance of the question of whether people choose their sexual orientation. I will ignore the ignorant conflation of fluidity with choice and will instead give my views on whether it should matter and whether it does matter.

For multiple reasons, it should not matter whether people choose their sexual orientation. It is undeniably true that people can choose to convert to a different religion or to abandon religion altogether, yet no one claims that that freedom to convert makes people having politically unpopular views on religion fair game for discrimination. Also, in libertopia, people would have the freedom to choose their sexual orientation insofar as they could do so, unless in doing so they somehow initiated force or fraud against someone else.

Nonetheless, "should not" does not mean "does not." While libertopia is a long way off, the 14th Amendment is the law now, and immutability of a characteristic has a lot to do with the level of scrutiny that courts will give to discrimination on the basis of that characteristic. We must also consider political reality; if we can use that reality to our advantage without committing intellectual dishonesty, why should we not?

Kinksters: The icky queers of the LGBT community (2)

It's happening again. Someone recently tried to start an argument with me about the scene; despite admitting to having almost no experience in it, he was an "instant expert, just add wild speculation" who was sure that no amount of evidence could stand up to his guesswork. If you know such persons, and I'm sure you do, you know how much good it will do to argue with them, so I did my best to ignore him. I wish that that encounter were an isolated incident, but it is not. It also shows how often vanilla queers' arguments about kink mirror our enemies' arguments about homosexuality.