Musical Homophobia - or The Homophobia Histories

[MrGongGong]

I merely asked if there was any evidence beyond the anecdotal, which you supplied, for your assertion.

There is not, clearly.

Any chance of getting back on-topic?

2 anecdotes = evidence ?

Sadly the way so many folks form opinions.
I was at a symposium last weekend about sound and image , in one paper presentation the speaker whizzed through the statement that "as we all know, everyone has a mental visual image when they hear a sound"....... when questioned about this it turned out that HE did and he had worked in a prison where he had asked those he was working with whether they had images in their heads when they hear sounds from outside. Which is interesting but NOT what he said.
Lazy thinking (and I will put my hand up to that at times as well )

[ahinton]

The "festival" refers specifically to the RAH event on the Saturday evening, and is so-called because the first part of the evening contains a Parade of Standards, military displays, and increasingly nowadays contributions from civilian artistes. It is, in the first half at least, a celebration of the camaradie and skills of the military, and to that extent "Festival" is a perfectly appropriate description. There are two performances, and both are, without fail, packed to the rafters with ex-Servicemen and women and their families, all of whom, including the Chelsea Pensioners, seem to manage to get in and out of the RAH without too much diffiuclty. The final part of the evening is a service of Remembrance, followed by thousands of poppies falling from the roof, a very solemn and moving few minutes. Nobody, apart from you, it seems, has associated the dignified and respectful events at the Cenotaph on Sunday with a "festival."

Whilst thanking you for the information you have supplied above, I remain astonished at your sheer unbridled virtuosity in missing points! You assert that I seem to have "associated the dignified and respectful events at the Cenotaph on [Remembrance] Sunday with a "festival""; where did I suggest anything of the kind? My very point on this has been and remains that the notion of a "festival" of remembrance of war dead is gravely inappropriate, from which it ought to be possible to deduce that I make no such association as you claim.

The mere fact that you continue to regard the "festival" as referring to the RAH event alone - and, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that you are wrong in that - does not mean that others have not appropriated the term as a descriptor of entire Remembrance events in their entirety; the problem here, however, is that the world according to Mr Pee is often less than willing to absorb what it thinks it doesn't approve of in any other world.

There may not be many surviving veterans of the two world wars remaining- but you only need to watch the parade of veterans that follows the Cenotaph service to see that there are thousands marching by. Because, of course, it is not just veterans of the two World Wars who take part:- it is also their sons, daughters, veterans of the Falklands, Korea, and all the other conflicts that have involved British troops. It also includes those who have served and perhaps not even been to war, but who wish to acknowledge and honour those who did.

Of course all that is true and I have no issues with that, although I did preface my reference to the matter of veterans with the words "leaving aside", which your answer does not do. This, however, was not the point that I was making, which was "why two minutes on a Sunday morning?" and, in more general terms, "why a Sunday in any case?", with both of which I will deal below.

Oh, and like it or not, Sunday is still the traditional day for religious observance. Also you seem to assume that those who attend Remembrance events are too decrepit or infirm to work for a living, and therefore would attend such an event on any day of the week. The vast majority still work and therfore yes, it is easier in most cases for them to put the time aside on a Sunday.

I apparently "seem" to you to do quite a lot that in fact I do not do; making the assumption of whcih you accuse me above is just one of these. Where did I mention decrepitude or infirmity or working whether or not for a living? In any case, whilst many people do indeed work, it is untrue to suggest that "the vast majority" of us do so and, in any case, some of those who do work do so on a part-time basis either out of choice or because that's all the work that they can find; to you, however, at least for the purposes of your specious argument here, children, full-time students, the unemployed, part-time workers, those who work at times chosen by themselves and the retired simply do not count - that is hardly an insignificant number of people, though!

It's not a question of whether or not I "like" the idea of Sunday as a "traditional day for religious observance". What matters here is the fact that it is not so for the Jews, Muslims and certain other non-Christians, agnostics, atheists and others who, as British citizens, have as much right as anyone else to remember those who perished in wars.

You also ignore the fact that many people work on Sundays; some of them even do so by providing services in Christian Churches!

You further ignore the fact that there are other ways of remembering those who died during and because of wars besides attending a religious service in a Church or attending the event at the Cenotaph.

You also seem to be take no account of the fact that some Christians attend services in Churches and especially in Cathedrals on days other than Sundays.

In fact, you ignore quite a lot!

Well your chum Am51 begs to differ, which just goes to show that he doesn't get out much, or at least not on November 11th. I was in M&S at 11am on the 11th, and they dimmed the lights and observed a two minute silence. Not a murmur was heard. And yes, many do so on Remembrance Sunday as well.

Am51 is, I believe, disabled, so your remark about how often he might get out is gratuitous; however, the rest of what you write here neatly proves my point that there are other ways of remembering war dead besides doing so in a Christian Church or attending the Cenotaph event on a Sunday.

[amateur51]

It is, in the first half at least, a celebration of the camaradie and skills of the military, and to that extent "Festival" is a perfectly appropriate description. There are two performances, and both are, without fail, packed to the rafters with ex-Servicemen and women and their families, all of whom, including the Chelsea Pensioners, seem to manage to get in and out of the RAH without too much diffiuclty.

You use the word camaradie for camaraderie I believe. It has already been mentioned that there is a higher level of suicide than deaths sustained by enemy action in Afghanistan. This is a fact. Also a fact is the extraordinary levels of homelessness experienced by former solders as the cuts bite.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sacked-soldiers-facing-homelessness-crisis-2341978

Pop down to your local homelessness shelter this Christmas and you'll meet plenty of ex-service personnel who have nowhere else to go and who will be only to glad to have an attentive ear as they tell you how shoddily they have been treated by the Army etc since they left it. This is not a new phenomenon: I was working with ex-soldiers in homelessness hostels in London throughout the 1980s and 1990s too. It is perverse of you to refer to camaraderie when what these former employees experience is willful neglect.

As to the apparent mobility of the audience, that's because there are only a very few spaces for wheel-chair users made available - this is a Victorian building, built when disabled people rarely got out and were largely kept indoors (hidden away) often in institutions. Oddly enough if you keep wheelchair-users out of the building, then they won't appear in the audience.

[amateur51]

Am51 is, I believe, disabled, so your remark about how often he might get out is gratuitous; however, the rest of what you write here neatly proves my point that there are other ways of remembering war dead besides doing so in a Christian Church or attending the Cenotaph event on a Sunday.

Well it clearly ignores the millions of service personnel who might be athiest, agnostic, Hindu, Jew, Sikh, Muslim etc etc.

[ahinton]

Well it clearly ignores the millions of service personnel who might be athiest, agnostic, Hindu, Jew, Sikh, Muslim etc etc.

As indeed I pointed out above.

[ahinton]

You use the word camaradie for camaraderie I believe. It has already been mentioned that there is a higher level of suicide than deaths sustained by enemy action in Afghanistan. This is a fact. Also a fact is the extraordinary levels of homelessness experienced by former solders as the cuts bite.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...crisis-2341978

Thanks you for posting this link. It's a pity about the knee-jerk reference therein to "our heroes", just as we must all be utterly astonished that you quote from a newspaper whose name neither begins with a G nor ends with an n; this really won't do, you know!

Pop down to your local homelessness shelter this Christmas and you'll meet plenty of ex-service personnel who have nowhere else to go and who will be only to glad to have an attentive ear as they tell you how shoddily they have been treated by the Army etc since they left it. This is not a new phenomenon: I was working with ex-soldiers in homelessness hostels in London throughout the 1980s and 1990s too. It is perverse of you to refer to camaraderie when what these former employees experience is willful neglect.

Not quite perverse as such but woefully unbalanced, without doubt. Not all ex-service men and women are treated as badly as the worst cases, but the fact that there are so very many cases of wilful neglect and worse as well as so many suicides among service and ex-service personnel nevertheless speaks for itself and the voices able to speak of it with the authority of personal experience must be heard. It's bad enough sending such people off to fight in illegal wars in countries with whom no actual declaration of war has been made, but to treat those who do this work with such callous disregard both during their tours of duty and afterwards is sufficiently shameful that it ought also to be borne in mind at remembrance events.

One senior ex-army officer of my acquaintance told me that he would never attend any remembrance event, least of all the RAH one, preferring instead to do his remembering in private because he feels better able appropriately to hang his head in shame in private than in public - his view of these exhibitions of camaraderie among his erstwhile professional colleagues is unprintable...

As to the apparent mobility of the audience, that's because there are only a very few spaces for wheel-chair users made available - this is a Victorian building, built when disabled people rarely got out and were largely kept indoors (hidden away) often in institutions. Oddly enough if you keep wheelchair-users out of the building, then they won't appear in the audience.

Well, Mr Pee? Have you done the research?

[Serial_Apologist]

It's bad enough sending such people off to fight in illegal wars in countries with whom no actual declaration of war has been made, but to treat those who do this work with such callous disregard both during their tours of duty and afterwards is sufficiently shameful that it ought also to be borne in mind at remembrance events.

Well said!

[ahinton]

Well said!

Thank you.

I do wonder, though, why all of this is being discussed in a thread suppoesdly about homophobia, "musical" and otherwise; I'm by no means suggesting that there isn't a place for intelligent discussion of the treatment of armed service personnel during and after their time on active service, the legality and otherwise of specific wars or how those who perished in and as a direct consequence of such wars should best be remembered by whom, but it should surely be in a separate thead rather than in this one which is on a different topic altogether.

[Richard Barrett]

any contributor here who does not adhere to the prevailing - on these boards at least - Guardian inspired leftie view of the world is harangued and dismissed as irrelevant.

No: any member whose posts to a discussion consist of trotting out personal anecdotes rather than trying to access some more generalisable facts (and a fact is a fact whatever publication it appears in) may expect their contributions to be questioned. Your attitude seems to be something along the lines of "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge" - well, it isn't. Everyone here, I dare say, has lived long enough to have had powerful and crucial personal experiences which have shaped their opinions. Most, on the other hand, would realise at the same time that any individual's experiences can in themselves only give a partial view of things. Your blanket description of "Guardian-inspired lefties" ignores what is actually quite a wide spectrum of opinion, unified only by not wishing to rely on anecdotes and vague impressions.

[amateur51]

As indeed I pointed out above.

Oops scuse I!

[amateur51]

Thank you.

I do wonder, though, why all of this is being discussed in a thread suppoesdly about homophobia, "musical" and otherwise; I'm by no means suggesting that there isn't a place for intelligent discussion of the treatment of armed service personnel during and after their time on active service, the legality and otherwise of specific wars or how those who perished in and as a direct consequence of such wars should best be remembered by whom, but it should surely be in a separate thead rather than in this one which is on a different topic altogether.

I agree but the soi-disant much put-upon Sage of Chichester will keep diverting this thread for reasons that he will not explain.

[ahinton]

I agree but the soi-disant much put-upon Sage of Chichester will keep diverting this thread for reasons that he will not explain.

...presumably because he has neither reasons nor explanations; give me the Sage of Gateshead any day, rather than that of Chichester who appears by his own admission to have so severely limited knowledge and understanding of sexual orientation groupings that he probably suspects Sussex of being one such...

[Mr Pee]

I agree but the soi-disant much put-upon Sage of Chichester will keep diverting this thread for reasons that he will not explain.

Back to planet earth, matey.

It was you who diverted this thread because you decided to have a pop at my choice of avatar.

[Mr Pee]

...presumably because he has neither reasons nor explanations; give me the Sage of Gateshead any day, rather than that of Chichester who appears by his own admission to have so severely limited knowledge and understanding of sexual orientation groupings that he probably suspects Sussex of being one such...

What on earth are you on about???

[amateur51]

Back to planet earth, matey.

It was you who diverted this thread because you decided to have a pop at my choice of avatar.

Yeah, right.