The Rainbow Connection [LGBTS Club]

I'm already doing my best to be my best around him at all times lol. The thing is we kind of have a friends with benefits thing going on but he's much more confident and social than I am so I'm pretty sure that's all he sees it as, and while that's pretty awesome in its own right I want more.

But again, he's been out way longer than I have and he's got a lot more life experience (socially speaking, not sexually... well sexually too probably but that's not what I'm getting at) and a lot more people in his life, so I'm sure to him I'm just one among the crowd.

Andy, your situation sounds exactly like all the 'friends with benefits' stories I've heard, which honestly aren't that many, but still. One isn't interested in romance and the other falls. My friend went through this and it was hard to watch because it's like watching someone with unrequited love only more.

I can't say I've ever found myself in your situation Andy, but I'll have to agree that it's a hard position to be in. All I can suggest it telling him how you feel, and see what happens from there. I know it's easier said than done, but I think it's better than staying where you are. I wish you the best.

So I've been sitting around trying to come up with a topic for my gender politics essay, and my instinct keeps telling me to focus on feminism in the lgbt community, or with transgender folks specifically. I'm thinking of writing about intersectionality, and the problems faced by transfeminists in the larger feminist community. Some of the excerpts from books on the subject have been pretty insulting, like in this Wikipedia article. =/

Though if I write this, I'll most likely be outing myself to my marker, and possibly even my discussion group. I have butterflies regarding both issues, but generally I don't really care. I'm also well aware of the big ol' library of research materials in the lgbt centre at my university....I just haven't outed myself to anyone at school yet, let alone walk through those doors. I'm hoping this'll be a perfect opportunity to do just that, unless of course the butterflies take over and I decide to instead write about women's parties in Nigeria or something. xD

Okay, this is just my own preference, but I think you should totally go with the feminism angle. I know I'd like to see some of those things in the wikipedia article questioned and refuted. I mean, there are so many gaps in the arguments they just ask to be taken on.

@ Nakuzami:
THAT STORY WAS BRILLIANT :D and so funny and I loved the happy ending. Are you a writer? You sound like one. Either that or you've just got an instinctive grasp of all le tricks :)

@ EGKangaroo:

It's the exploration of the self we're talking about, and I deem it worth it to put every last strain of effort into it to make sure that I can create the me that I feel best inside of.

Click to expand...

Nicely put, and I'm in complete agreement with the sentiment. :)

More broadly... you seem to be a damn sight better adjusted than the vast majority of people I know, self included, and a lot more comfortable and confident. I gots nothing but admiration and support for ya. Also, your discussion of facticity was *fascinating*. I've never really delved far into Sartre et al, but after what you said, I might just have to rectify that.

It's the weirdest thing, isn't it? To take your example, 'a man without legs would be the happiest person in the world' if we finally invented robotic prosthetics. So my first thought was that you were arguing that that isn't a negative thing - because the possibility of that happiness would be extinguished had he been born with legs.

Now, the obvious response to that is, 'what, so you're arguing we should all be born minus our limbs, that way we could maximise *potential* happiness?' Which is, of course, about as much use as potential wealth. (Namely jacksh*t.) But, if I'm reading you correctly that's not at all what the existentialist argument is.

It is instead that there are some things we want, but can never have. And further, had we been born in possession of said things, we'd be radically different creatures - perhaps unrecognisable. So we'd gain everything but lose everything at the same time.

I guess the crux of the matter is this. Sex changes are about changing the body to suit the mind - but in so doing, you don't lose anything about you, which is lovely. But species changes would be so much more - you'd end up losing yourself, essentially. You, wonderful, mysterious, complicated creature that you are, you couldn't fit into a kangaroo's mind. So, exactly as you say, 'the facticity wouldn't be there anymore. [You'd] just...well, be a kangaroo, and that kangaroo would be none the wiser.' I might hesitantly add (without meaning to cause any offence at all!) that the kangaroo wouldn't be you, either. So you're genuinely better off being you - in fact, it doesn't even make sense to say 'you' would be better off as a kangaroo, because 'you' could not ever become a kangaroo without losing the essence of 'yourself'.

(Doesn't mean that one day we might not be able to put a human mind into a kangaroo's body! And that would be pretty awesome. But I guess what I'm saying is that you couldn't put a human mind into a kangaroo's brain.)

(Um. Obviously.)

...Reading that back, I've basically just repeated you, argued a point nobody was questioning and come to the triumphant conclusion that kangaroos are not human. Jeez. I've half a mind to delete this... but hell, it's late, and maybe someone will get some use out of it.

(Or maybe not.)

Yeah, you kinda made the exact same point as I did, except you made it sound like a counter-argument to itself, thus not counter-arguing it anymore or...something? Just think of it as a dog eating its own tail; It's simpler that way.

There are of course problems with wanting to become a "full" kangaroo, which'd be impossible if you've already been a human. That kinda comes with the mind-body dilemma, if I am correct. Since the mind by itself is a physical thing, that wouldn't really fit into a "full" version of the creature without that thing not being "full" anymore. The physical mind is the thing where we store our 'true' essence, you could say.

Also, I wasn't particularly arguing that we ought to be born without legs. Some people lose their legs during accidents. When that happens, and they've known what having legs is like and can only live a sincere life when they have those legs back, then we can say, yeah, getting prosthetic limbs is a very positive thing. Let's say that we're all born without legs, we might end up with a whole wide group of people who don't really go through the despair of having lost their legs and not being able to fulfill some condition to live their lives authentically. There are some (usually most of them) people who are just fine with the gender, species, physique, whatever they're born with, so...it's really one of those issues where we just oughta be happy when the veil of despair is finally lifted. Or, well, to better explain it, in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, when Deckard found a bunch of toads he thought to be extinct, which were Mercer's favourite animals, he learns after a while that the toads were actually mechanical, and he spoke the pretty well-known sentence "The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are." The same way, if we were all born without legs for the sake of the potential, we will just end up with a whole bunch of legless people who'd be all like "'kay, cool."

As you said yourself, were we born exactly the way we want to be, we'd be radically different creatures, with a completely different desire of what to be, and we'd be back to square one. And even when you later become what you want, you can't fully become it, as though you've been that for as long as you can remember, because the past needs to be carried with you, otherwise, it's not your essence that is living your dream, it's something else. I think that can be compared to one person with memory loss and a criminal history, and another person without memory loss and that same criminal history. The first one will be able to lead a pretty 'normal' life; though he's not taking that past essence with him, while the other one might say that his past is trapping him in his life of crime. And hell, even with sex changes, part of the thing is that we're perfectly able to transfer a male mind to a female body and vice versa, though with that, we literally have a male mind (though its gender is female and it does have the strongest desire to be female) inside a female body, even in this case, the facticity remains, that essence of a male not feeling at comfort with what he is born as still needs to be taken along with them if they get a sex change operation. Every human mind is fantastically different too. We can't want to be the perfect copy of someone/something else and at the exact same time wish that we're ourselves. I would never want to get rid of that part of myself that found these wishes I have and the solace I've found along with them.

So, yeah, I am probably just bounding (not a kangaroo pun at all, nossir) around from topic to topic to basically say what you said, which is that you repeated what I said as well. So we are just repeating repetitions now, which is always fun to do.

Also, as much as I like the philosophy, I can't stomach Sartre's comparison of science with a type of bad faith and all the silliness of people claiming that analytic and continental philosophy are incompatible with each other. Maybe I'd be cool with Kierkegaard. Or maybe I should just follow whatever I like myself and name it sexistentialism. *nods*

Shining Raichu said:

I'm already doing my best to be my best around him at all times lol. The thing is we kind of have a friends with benefits thing going on but he's much more confident and social than I am so I'm pretty sure that's all he sees it as, and while that's pretty awesome in its own right I want more.

But again, he's been out way longer than I have and he's got a lot more life experience (socially speaking, not sexually... well sexually too probably but that's not what I'm getting at) and a lot more people in his life, so I'm sure to him I'm just one among the crowd.

Click to expand...

Last I heard, you had a boyfriend. I think. Perhaps I should check back here more often. .-.
But . . . I know the feeling.
Still trying to get out of it.
It sucks, although my situation seems . . . backwards compared to yours.
Personally, I would try and voice my feelings before he went off and found someone else.
If that doesn't work . . . then, at least you can say you tried. Dragging something like that out only makes it worse. . . .

Scarf said:

Andy, your situation sounds exactly like all the 'friends with benefits' stories I've heard, which honestly aren't that many, but still. One isn't interested in romance and the other falls. My friend went through this and it was hard to watch because it's like watching someone with unrequited love only more.

Click to expand...

Ahaha, yeah. That kind of feeling sucks. A lot.

Barrels said:

@ Nakuzami:
THAT STORY WAS BRILLIANT :D and so funny and I loved the happy ending. Are you a writer? You sound like one. Either that or you've just got an instinctive grasp of all le tricks :)

Click to expand...

Um, yes, actually, I am. xD Although I wasn't really trying to sound like one with that post, lol.

The only thing that's happened that relates to that story in any way is the fact that we're in the library every class for the paper I mentioned, and it just so happens that one of the two people in my school (in my life, really) that I strongly dislike happens to be there with his class at the same time, every time. I don't hate him (but I hate the only other one of the two with a burning passion . . . for reasons. REASONS.) but I seriously don't like being that close to him for eighty minutes every other day. Granted, I just noticed him last class and he doesn't really come up to me or anything. I noticed him because I had been looking around for a moment for a stapler, and he was sitting back in his chair, facing away from the computer and at me, giving me this . . . annoying look, along with a few of his friends. The look was mainly annoying because it was on his face. xD
(^Random pointless update. Nothing else exciting has occurred, really. Although, word about myself has spread to a few more people, lol. That reminds me . . . )
The other day my friend came up to me and tried to "claim" me as his gay friend, saying that the other girl I hang out with already has enough gay friends. xD Another one of the girls I hang out with also claimed me as her gay friend, saying that I wasn't a . . . uh, annoying like the other gays in the school she knows. x3 It's been rather amusing, actually.

Let's say that we're all born without legs, we might end up with a whole wide group of people who don't really go through the despair of having lost their legs and not being able to fulfill some condition to live their lives authentically.

Click to expand...

Yeah, exactly! It's like the alien example - say there's a species somewhere in the universe that are absolutely identical to we humans, except they have zaks. Now. We don't know what zaks are, we've never encountered them as humans, but what we do know is this: the aliens have them, and we don't.

But should we get upset about not having zaks? Course not. Because there are an infinite number of attributes we or any other object could have, but don't. Some good, some bad, but here's the thang:

Were we born exactly the way we want to be, we'd be radically different creatures, with a completely different desire of what we want to be, and we'd be back to square one.

Click to expand...

We're never happy, we sentient beasties. :P Unless you're born perfect, there'll always be something you wish you could change - but you can't be born perfect, because 'perfection' is an entirely subjective concept which would necessarily change the moment you became it. (Because you, the subject would have changed, so your conception of perfection would have changed, too.) And that's even without questioning whether anyone should, could or does want to be perfect in the first place.

Or maybe I should just follow whatever I like myself and name it sexistentialism. *nods*

Click to expand...

YES. Can I *please* be the second ever sexistentialist? :D (Also, thank you for teaching me all this stuff! Iz awesome, now I know what facticity means! :) My horizons have been all broadened and sh*t. ;))

EDIT: Also, @ Nakusami :)

He probably just really hates staplers. ;) I know that whenever I see an ominously extended metal device with the capacity to fire tiny strips of metal through innocent paper, I get all tense and jumpy. (Though maybe that's just me.)

And haha, those sound like funny reactions. :) Good ones, too! You sound like a pretty awesomely confident person, too :D coming out at 14, that's amazing. I'd doff my cap if I wore one.

I still feel very conflicted about his "coming out" thing...
I want to do it so bad but, I just never can....
I feel like a coward...

FenrirDarkWolf said:

I still feel very conflicted about his "coming out" thing...
I want to do it so bad but, I just never can....
I feel like a coward...

Click to expand...

I know the feeling. I've been thinking more and more about it lately (it was actually one of my or my only New Year's resolutions) and sometimes I get so close and then I just back out again. The one thing I noticed is how many chances I actually get, but maybe that's just because it keeps running through my mind.
So, I also have quite a hard time about 'coming out' to anyone, but just remember that you're not alone in this. Just believe it'll work out and don't get too stuck on it. I find that sometimes you just have to be able to tell yourself that it wasn't meant to be told now and to move on to the next moment (don't really know if this 'advice' counts as I'm still stuck in the closet, but meh, I tried).

I have those moments too many times, where I am thinking that I really should come out in front of my parents, but everytime, it happens at a time that just doesn't feel right, because of something important always having intruded just before I want to tell, and I end up going "No, this isn't the perfect moment, let's wait 'till next week so I can tell it at just the most insuspicious moment I can find." Queue years passing of keeping silent about it.

And it's not like my mother picks the perfect moments to talk about my sex life with me, like at a crowded bus stop. Because it's absolutely not embarrassing to say that you'd be totally cool with it if your son were gay, and you're totally not saying your son is, but just that if he were you'd still love him. "So do you think you might be gay?" "How come you never come home with a girl from school?" "is there someone in your class you feel attracted to?" "*insert inappropriate question here that everybody within a 25 foot proximity can clearly hear*"

Just...why?!

Also, Barrels, you can totally be the next sexistentialist. We'll need to put up our new manifesto soon.

Guys...
I think I may be falling in love...

Oh, really? And who is the lucky one? ;)

EGKangaroo said:

Oh, really? And who is the lucky one? ;)

Click to expand...

Well, it's a friend I met from a random hello.
I've been a bit friend-zoned for now, but, I won't give up hope.

Anyways, guys!
I came out today, to three people!

FenrirDarkWolf said:

Anyways, guys!
I came out today, to three people!

Click to expand...

Hey hey hey! That's not allowed!
You have to tell a story. :3 (Congrats, regardless, lol)

Nakuzami said:

Hey hey hey! That's not allowed!
You have to tell a story. :3 (Congrats, regardless, lol)

Click to expand...

...Really?

Well, if it's a story you want, it's a story you get. *shrug*
So, anyways, I got to school today, did my regular thing, walked cross-campus, put my bassoon in the band hall for later, and during this time, I'm thinking, Well, now that I've got this weird crush thing... Maybe it's time..., or something to that effect. And my first thought was to tell my two best and longest known friends, Madison and Star. I walk out of the band hall, and I already know where Madison was, but I didn't see Star, and I planned to tell them together. So, anyway, I pull Madison away, and asked her if I was bi, would she care? And she didn't, and, well, I came out to her. She was like, 'Awww!', and all that crap, telling me it was adorable, and I got this thought in my mind that she might like watching/reading man-on-man action like myself. However, I didn't press this.
Afterwards, I go to breakfast, go back outside, and find Star. However, she's on the phone, so I wait, listening to a rather odd conversation. After that, I pulled her over to talk, and I asked her the same question as before, and I get the same answer. And, as Star knows about a metric ****-ton about me than anyone else because she read my rather revealing fanfiction.net profile, and she really wasn't surprised, a little shocked, but not surprised.
So everything goes normal, and then I'm in Spanish 3rd block, and Star's in my class there. I sit down, and Star starts to question me on these things. She actually asks me how long I've felt like this, and, I told her the truth, which was two years. And then she was all like, 'TWO YEARS!? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW TELLING ME?!' I laugh that off, and, she asks me who I like. I told her it was no one from here, and she keeps pressing me, and I break, and tell her that he(the guy I talked about above) lives in Massachusetts(which he does), and she tells me I'm lying. I deny that I am, but she's adamant on saying I'm lying. So I'm like, 'Whatevs.' and class goes about as usual, I steal some of her Cheetos a lot during the class too. :p
Then, at lunch, I find my friend, Courtney. I was hesitant to come out to her, cause I haven't known her as long as the other too, but, I did it anyway. She didn't care, she even told me she had this gay friend before. He was cool, but really weird, and always wanted to play with her hair.
Finally, in band, and I'm putting together my instrument, and I'm sucking on my reed, and Madison walks in, looking a bit pissed, cause she was. So, I try to amuse and entertain her by sensually licking on the reed, cause I can do that in front of her now, and she was just like, 'Jeff, no, just no.' So I stop, tell her I was just trying to make her laugh, and she told be to be myself, which apparently made her laugh.
Somewhere in this, I told Maddie that the pineapple was still in the closet, and it wouldn't share it's crack brownies, and the pineapple is a she! Cause fruits are ovaries, y'know!

Anyway, you wanted a story? You get my day.

EVERYBODY! I'm thread hijacking once again because Prop 8 is finally up before the Supreme Court now. It's entirely possible that we'll see legal same-sex marriage in all of the US soon, or maybe just in California. I don't know how likely that outcome is, but things are moving in the right direction. I'm just excited by the prospect that this stain on my home state might be wiped away once and for all.

Scarf said:

EVERYBODY! I'm thread hijacking once again because Prop 8 is finally up before the Supreme Court now. It's entirely possible that we'll see legal same-sex marriage in all of the US soon, or maybe just in California. I don't know how likely that outcome is, but things are moving in the right direction. I'm just excited by the prospect that this stain on my home state might be wiped away once and for all.

Click to expand...

. . . That ancient thing? Something new is happening with it? . . . oh my.

@FenrirDarkWolf - lolwut? Well, I'm glad it went well for you. d:

And, on a somewhat related but-not-really note:
A little while ago I found out that one of my sisters, who I have never met and didn't remember or perhaps even realized existed until a week or two ago, is a super-religious screwball that's rather quite against gay marriage. I visited her Facebook page, because she doesn't have any privacy settings, apparently (lucky me) and decided to check it out. ERMERGERD. She's one of those incredibly annoying, overzealous religious idiots that you just want to punch in the face. HARD. It's sad, really.

@Nakuzami: Well you wanted a story...

Sorry about your sister... That must suck so bad.

@ Fenrir:

Hahaha, I laughed all through that story! Not in a mean way :) just like an, 'aw, that's so cool/positive/nice and your friends sound really awesome!' So it was less laughing than a big grin. But hey, that's fun too :D

Also, I have just discovered that Bill O'Reilly is apparently in favour of legal same-sex marriage for all. Well, sort of. He's not against it, anyway, and he actually made a cogent point: basically, we're all human, so why the hell are we acting like there's levels of love? Well, I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist. (Actual quote was: 'the compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That's where the compelling argument is: we're Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else. That's a compelling argument. And to deny that, you've got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn't been able to do anything but thump the Bible.')

Anyway. Bill O'Reilly isn't defending this ban. BILL O'REILLY. Surely, surely this is an indication that public opinion is changing for the better.