Musical Homophobia - or The Homophobia Histories

[scottycelt]

I do think that the argument around the concept of normal got a bit off track, but in this context it's not important enough for me to try to (helpfully) sort it out.

What's semantically important on this thread is this, helpfully set out again by scotty:


The problem with this form of words, as anyone who remembers the infamous Section 28 will know all too well, is that no-one has ever been able to say what it actually meant.

The article I posted provided in response to ahinton tends to share that view, Jean ... and it's a fair point.

I suspect the Russian courts will be extremely busy in the future as with most laws there will almost certainly be 'grey areas' over interpretation and possible misunderstandings of what the new laws are supposed to mean.

However the main thrust of the new legislation seems pretty clear. Homosexuality will not be illegal in Russia. It will simply not be permitted to be put on a par with heterosexuality in schools, libraries and other public places and I assume, therefore, that there will be no Gay Pride marches allowed.

We'll soon find out unless the Russians finally feel forced to drop the new laws due to outside pressure like Western Olympic boycotts and maybe even trade sanctions?

[scottycelt]

They probably don't understand them any better than you do.

Look at the form of words you gave so confidently above:


Can you say what you think this means?

Give an example, perhaps, of specific behaviour which would contravene these laws?

My words were not particularly 'confident' ... I merely reported the result of the reported opinion poll!. Are you saying the figure I gave was wrong? And that 88% of Russians are really as stupid as me? :yikes:

I've given examples of future illegal behaviour in my previous post. I trust that answers your query here, though I suspect there will be the usual members who will now claim I've never given an answer!

[Richard Barrett]

So what do "the Russian people" think about Putin's attack on gay rights?

Firstly it might be relevant to point out that Putin has also brought in numerous other authoritarian laws. Michael Idov writes: "Ever since a wave of mass protests in December 2011 shook the Kremlin, the Russian Duma has passed a staggering number of restrictive laws: new regulations that make it harder for people to congregate freely; a rule that requires all NGOs that receive funding from abroad to label themselves as “foreign agents”; a stultifying ban on US adoptions of Russian children; and a suite of decency and anti-piracy bills that makes it easier to shutter inconvenient websites." So are we to presume that all these measures too have the support of the Russian people? This is the context in which the attack on gays ought to be seen.

According to polls, intolerance towards gays in Russia has been rising in recent years; in 2002, 60% agreed that "homosexuality should not be accepted by society" whereas this year the figure was 74%. Over the same period, the rest of the world seems to have been heading in the opposite direction, not just the "liberal West" but also in China. My own instinct would be to ascribe the Russian situation to the effective use of propaganda to instil conservative and nationalistic "values", since clearly there's nothing inherent in the Russian psyche that makes it fundamentally different from that of other nations.

In this article, Peter Lee adduces numerous pieces of evidence to suggest that Putin's anti-gay stance forms part of a systematic campaign to cultivate and exploit the power and prestige of the Russian Orthodox church (which presumably Putin respected somewhat less during his time at the KGB). Putin persecutes and imprisons his political rivals and changes the structure of the Russian government in order to keep his hands on the reins of power.

State-sponsored homophobia is also to be found in such countries as North Korea, Zimbabwe and Iran, although in fact the Soviet Union under Lenin was one of the first countries in the world to decriminalise homosexuality, in 1922 (although this was reversed ten years later by Stalin). Anti-gay legislation is overwhelmingly the preserve of authoritarian or dictatorial systems.

[jean]

My words were not particularly 'confident' ... I merely reported the result of the reported opinion poll!

The words I'm referring to are the ones I quoted.

I've given examples of future illegal behaviour in my previous post.

You mean where you wrote:

However the main thrust of the new legislation seems pretty clear. Homosexuality will not be illegal in Russia. It will simply not be permitted to be put on a par with heterosexuality in schools, libraries and other public places...

Could you, then, simply give an example of behaviours which might constitute put[ting homosexuality] on a par with heterosexuality in schools or anywhere else?

Because, actually, you didn't give any examples - just a vague circumlocution whose meaning is is as unclear as the promotion of homosexuality was.


.

[amateur51]

Your "point" being that you and a bunch of 15 years olds correctly identified homosexual behaviour amongst Skylarks from some distance when the male and female of the species are virtually identical, even to Bill Oddie.

My point being that I think you have- shall we say- "elaborated" :erm: your story somewhat, to suit your argument.

He's totally fascinated by it all and in denial at the same time, a stage most people pass through at around 16.

Let's get back to repressive treatment of lesbians and gay men Russia shall we?

[amateur51]

Enough ornithology folks

http://i.imgur.com/wc8XYR2.jpg

Brilliant, RT - what a disturbing pic, something not seen in real time with the naked eye.

[Richard Barrett]

One more thing. Let's try and put aside this smokescreen of "the liberal West" versus "the Russian people". The idea that Putin's attack on gay people is "an internal Russian affair" implies that the question of whether people should or shouldn't be persecuted on the basis of their sexuality is a regional cultural phenomenon. And taking this attitude is homophobia, regardless of how one might try to dress it up.

[amateur51]

My words were not particularly 'confident' ... I merely reported the result of the reported opinion poll!. Are you saying the figure I gave was wrong? And that 88% of Russians are really as stupid as me? :yikes:

I've given examples of future illegal behaviour in my previous post. I trust that answers your query here, though I suspect there will be the usual members who will now claim I've never given an answer!

Careful scotty - that should read '88% of Russian surveyed for this poll'.

We'd need to know the size of the sample and the sampling method, before having any confidence in the results, wouldn't we? And who funded it, of course

[Pabmusic]

Interesting post Pabs.
I wonder if you have any thoughts about some of the physical behaviours associated with male sport, EG Intense goals celebrations, pretty close physical contacts, displays of and appreciation of beautiful movement by men for(predominantly) men, even closer than usual physicality in general, (even in the stands), and how this all sits with the inability of the game to accept openly gay players?
I think this is a least tangental to some of your points.

Sorry if this is OT, or inappropriate. Its not meant to be..the original post was about a sports person after all..:smiley:

I owe you an answer, as I promised in post 63, and Ruhevoli has provided a stimulus.

Hello all

I am new here. A fascinating thread. I just wondered what those who, for religious reasons, struggle with the idea of homosexuality in humans, feel when they learn that such behaviour is not exclusively human: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homose...ior_in_animals ?

Where does this then leave religious prohibition of homosexuality, if it is a naturally occurring phenomenon (a genetic one which, Dawkins would argue, must serve a purpose)?

Yours,

Ruhevoll

Hello, Ruhevoli and welcome. I haven’t attempted to answer your question because I’d been thinking of one concerning football, but I hope you find this a little interesting…

The first thing to say is that there are several influences at play here. Pure natural selection undoubtedly explains some of it, but sexual selection has probably had a big role as well. This is selection by one side for traits in the other. It’s often females selecting among males, but not always. Out of it all comes the peacock’s tail – something that probably makes the bearer very vulnerable to predators, but not before he’s mated successfully! Of course, selection among females for long male tails also results in future generations of females who prefer long tails.

Another thing to say is that the reason for there being sexual reproduction (males and females) is not fully understood in the first place. At first sight, it is very expensive – the organism needs to support two forms for a type of reproduction that is less efficient than asexual reproduction at passing on genes (since each half of any union gets to pass on just 50% of its genes). It is not the only natural state of affairs (as I said before in post 56) and it developed later than asexual reproduction (about a billion years ago). Most vertebrates reproduce sexually, although some fish, amphibians and reptiles at least can reproduce asexually (parthenogenisis) as well on occasions – maybe mammals, too, but I can’t find any examples. There must be an evolutionary reason for the success of sexual reproduction, though. The obvious thing it allowed was a rapid expansion of the gene pool, giving a greater likelihood of mutations arising so that natural selection could respond quicker to differing evolutionary pressures. (None of this was planned, of course - it happened because sexual creatures were the type of creatures that had this potential.) This in turn led to a greater variety of species and in particular, a greater complexity of bodies. We probably would never have developed big brains if we just produced clones like stick insects do.

However, natural selection can never create anything from scratch and always adapts existing things. It follows that what we recognise as male and female developed from the same type of organism, with natural selection adapting similar parts for different uses. Consider modern human bodies and how the sexual parts in males have their counterparts in female organs that are clearly different adaptations of the same thing (testes and ovaries most obviously, but all the comparisons are very strong). It can even be argued that the male anatomy is the one that has adapted more, and that therefore - in a very loose sense only - males are adaptations of females.

Now, an important point to make is that our DNA contains reminders of this. When an adaptation makes something redundant, the relevant DNA is not removed from the genome – it is disabled but left in place. We carry huge amounts of unusable DNA. Dogs have huge numbers of olifactory (smell) sensors, but we have the DNA instructions for something similar, but most are inoperable now since our recent ancestors relied more on sight and hearing. (Sometimes it’s not done especially well. We have the instructions in our DNA to make reptilian eggs but it’s not quite all switched off, so that a human embryo grows a yolk sac at a very early stage, but the three genes that would make the yolk are switched off (or rather, one of them is, blocking the pathway). The yolk sac disappears after a few days, never having been filled.)

Now, ally this idea to the point I was making before, that we each occupy a point along a bell curve that represents a spectrum of combinations of basically the same group of genes. We each have about 3 billion base pairs in our DNA, grouped into about 30,000 genes and divided among 23 pairs of chromosomes (of which 22 have nothing to say about sexuality). That gives a huge potential variation, whilst remaining ‘human’ (it’s why we are different from each other, of course).

Along this bell curve are people whose ‘maleness’ and ‘femininity’ occupy different proportions in their makeup. It is utterly wrong to think there are just two genders (though it helps us to think this way for day-to-day living, I agree). There are in fact about 7 billion – one for each person in the world.

Now all this waffle doesn’t address your point, TS. Why the apparently male-male pseudo-sexual behaviour we see after a goal is scored. Against the genetic background I’ve outlined, there is also learning behaviour and uninhibited social behaviour. A social anthropologist could do this much better than I can, but here goes.

Many animals (including humans) demonstrate quasi-gay behaviour when young. Puppies mount each other, regardless of sex and as part of a deeper behaviour involving the practice of important adult skills. It continues beyond childhood. I’ve seen cows mounting each other (shameless hussies!) for instance. So sexual behaviour is innate (of course it is!) from childhood. It is social mores that frown on it beyond a certain age in most societies, but not all. For some animals, non-reproductive sex is an important behaviour. Banobos (formerly pigmy chimpanzees, who are our closest living cousins along with regular chimpanzees) are over-sexed and then some. Any excuse to have sex with another banobo – male, female, child – is readily taken. It’s obviously a form of acceptance, bonding or some other form of communication (like dogs’ sniffing, but taken a step further). Chimpanzees use aggression, banobos use sex.

But for us humans in this society in the 21st century we can’t behave as uninhibitedly, though the desire is nevertheless there – drunken teenagers often indulge in sexual play that they’d probably not do if they weren’t drunk. The football pitch in front of thousands is OK, paradoxically. And the more people that watch, the better. Part of this is learned cultural behaviour – other sports do similar things, copying football, even though it started in football – but no doubt part of it reflects childish, uninhibited quasi-sexual play.

And there’s also the fact that mores change. Reading correspondence between Elgar and Jaeger, you can’t help but stop short the first time you encounter expressions we’d take as camp ‘gay’ talk. Yet there’s never been any suggestion that either was actually gay. It was just a different age. We’re more puritanical now. We assume that if Elgar calls Jaeger ‘ducky’ or ‘deary dear’ (which he does) that he must be gay. We cannot imagine that social mores change. That’s probably what lies behind football’s continued anti-gay stance.

Well, TS, I doubt I can do better. I hope you find it interesting.

[Richard Barrett]

Speculating on the meaning (and the trustworthiness) of polls is interesting enough, but surely asserting the right of people to be treated equally whatever their sexuality is either right or it's wrong, independently of how many Russians might think it's wrong, and, once more, to say otherwise is to hold homophobic views. Going back to my previous example, try substituting "Germany in the 1930s" for "Russia" and "Jews" for "gays" and see how various statements on this thread come out sounding. BTW I used "you" in my earlier post with the frequent colloquial meaning of "one", rather than targeting the person I was quoting in the post in particular, I thought that would be clear but apparently not.

[jayne lee wilson]

Oh my good God....you told us a story about two male Skylarks copping off, which you claim to have witnessed and which somehow contributed to your sexual awakening, which is a slightly weird and disturbing premise in itself.

I suggested that since it is pretty much impossible to tell the the difference between male and female, even close-up, that your little tale was at best mistaken, and quite possibly a load of balderdash. I incline toward the latter.

(Skylarks-Lark Ascending-on a Radio3 messageboard? Funny how it wasn't just a pair of Blackbirds, or house sparrows......) :whistle:

"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest..."

Sorry RT, just little more ornithology - two skylarks, pouring out their streams of song as they soar in display and territorial acclaim, will both be male, and you can follow them both as they float slowly and gracefully to earth. Then your observations may become even more interesting as they "interact"... it was no sexual awakening (THAT had already happened), but it was a delightful, perhaps a validating, surprise. But not very important now given what we all know about nature (or should). Yes, even the animals do it.

But the main POINT - just to drag it finally out and s-p-e-l-l it, was the kids' almost hysterical reaction (they had all assumed they were male larks)... it wouldn't even have mattered if they weren't actually male skylarks for that to tell me "something important"...

What AM I doing here at 11:35 after three hours sleep...?! Builders, plumbers and aerial contractors....yes, all at once to attend to this old house. Years since I saw or heard a lark here though. Coffee-time!

[ahinton]

Careful scotty - that should read '88% of Russian surveyed for this poll'.

We'd need to know the size of the sample and the sampling method, before having any confidence in the results, wouldn't we? And who funded it, of course

Precisely! We've now moved from "all" or "almost all" Russians to just 88% of the adult Russian population (assuming that the poll was conducted among adults only); as the total population of Russia is estimated at around 143m, it might be reasonable to assume that the adult population there is at least 90m and, if so, the poll to which scotty now refers might appear to seek to claim that at least 79,200,000 adults in Russia favour the new legislation, which still leaves a whole lot of Russians who would seem to be against it - but, as you rightly ask, how many were polled, how were the contributors selected and who paid for it? - not to mention where it was conducted? (Russia not exactly a small country, after all) and hs it been conducted and the results collected, analysed and published accurately? So, for the time being and for the foreseeable future, statistics emerging from the conduct of this poll tell us nothing meaningful about the externt of support for this legislation.

More importantly, though, even if a significant number of Russians do support it, does that make it right? Homosexuals are homosexuals the world over, whether they're Russian or not so, as Richard Barrett stated earlier, this is not an issue confined to Russia to the extent that, even though the legislation would be passed in that country, Russia is not a wholly closed society. What messages would the passage and policing of such legislation send out to other countries, especially those who themselves neither have nor would support the passage of such legislation? What about Russia's non-Russian population? (by which I mean not only the c.19% of the total population of Russia that belong to ethnic groups other than Russian but also all immigrants to Russia and those who are visiting Russia and are subject to Russian law while there).

Britain once had legislation that exerted an adverse influence upon homosexuals and their rights but has since reformed it considerably; it is not alone in having done so. Does that not demonstrate that legislation such as that being discussed here would represent a grave backward step in the world's largest (albeit not most populous) country?

[scottycelt]

The words I'm referring to are the ones I quoted.


You mean where you wrote:


Could you, then, simply give an example of behaviours which might constitute put[ting homosexuality] on a par with heterosexuality in schools or anywhere else?

Because, actually, you didn't give any examples - just a vague circumlocution whose meaning is is as unclear as the promotion of homosexuality was.


.

Would you have any particular difficulty in identifying, say, the teaching of religion in schools? In some countries that is illegal.

What is so difficult about understanding the banning of homosexual literature in schools and libraries in Russia ? And teachers not including homosexuality alongside heterosexuality in any sex instruction to children in schools?

You may not agree with it but I can't see any problem with anyone in Russia failing to identify such obvious breaches of the proposed laws!

As I posted earlier there are bound to be 'grey areas' which will inevitably crop up. That applies to many rules and regulations and does not mean the huge majority of Russians are so stupid they cannot understand the new laws as you appeared to suggest?

[scottycelt]

Ahinton ... would you kindly provide a link to my alleged post where I supposedly said 'all' Russians supported the new laws?

It would be most helpful as you keep repeating that I did when I have absolutely no recollection of ever having done so!

[ahinton]

Would you have any particular difficulty in identifying, say, the teaching of religion in schools? In some countries that is illegal.

It is indeed but, once again and likewise, does that make it right?

What is so difficult about understanding the banning of homosexual literature in schools and libraries in Russia ? And teachers not including homosexuality alongside heterosexuality in any sex instruction to children in schools?

Just about everything, I'd say. To start with, education is supposed to be unrestrictive in principle but also in this case the denial of the existence of homosexual literature and of homosexuality in such teaching is not merely immoral but wholly unrealistic. How do you suppose that exclusively heterosexual-oriented sex instructionin schools would affect gay students who receive it or gay teachers who are obliged by law to provide it?

You may not agree with it but I can't see any problem with anyone in Russia failing to identify such obvious breaches of the proposed laws!

Perhaps not but, once again, does that alone justify their passing or support for them?

As I posted earlier there are bound to be 'grey areas' which will inevitably crop up. That applies to many rules and regulations and does not mean the huge majority of Russians are so stupid they cannot understand the new laws as you appeared to suggest?

Precisely what this "huge majority of Russians" is capable of understanding is probably no clearer to you than is what that majority actually think about this proposed legislation and how it may affect them, those that they know and the international reputation of Russia itself.