Mitt Romney is being criticized for bullying someone when he was 17. What did you do in high school that disqualifies you from running for public office?

Robopuppy · 13 days

I was a gay republican.

WAS. Please note the past tense.

glowghost · 14 days

In my high school experience as a horny teenager, that cul de sac is pretty much ideal.

georedd · 14 days

Buuuuullshit.

Sorry, but anthropologically, archaeologically, that statement is absolute and total bullshit. Overall, forager populations had a high standard of health, a general abundance of food, and extraordinarily long life expectancy. What you're describing is humanity after the agricultural revolution, not before it.

chris4aker · 14 days

What a coincidence, I'm an Atlanta boy moving to Columbus. I hear I oughtta move to Olde Towne East.

RobIsAlive · 15 days

Fancy pants.

DamienCK · 16 days

What an unprofessional twat. He'd lose my business - for any piercings whatsoever.

Thrasymachus · 17 days

Just starting, actually. Wish me luck.

Thrasymachus · 17 days

PhD student at Ohio State, actually.

Thrasymachus · 17 days

Wait, do you do work on the Human Relations Area Files, or is the HRAF in your name to do with something else?

Thrasymachus · 17 days

No no, the gay youth don't pray blindly - they just ignore it altogether. Prayer is the choice of the older generation, who have an all-too-real idea of what the epidemic means.

And thank you, but I am endeavoring to experience no more personal growth for the next five years. It really gets in the way of good hedonism.

Thrasymachus · 17 days

Pretty similarly, actually.

I figured, first, that he wasn't actually convincing anyone to go off their medications with his treatment. His treatment was meant to be used alongside traditional medicine - so he wasn't doing any harm.

But - basically - this is what it comes to:

HIV is a big fucking deal. Seriously. If you are straight, you do not really have a conception of what a big fucking deal it is. If you are a younger gay man or lesbian, even, you do not have a conception of what a big fucking deal HIV has been for an entire culture, an entire community. We're talking about people seeing their friends and lovers die off in masses. We're talking about an entire generation lost - and a consequent generation gap in the gay community.

If you are a gay man ... most likely, at some point you will come to terms with the idea that at some point in your life, you may contract HIV, and that you will have to take steps to deal with it.

If you are a gay man ... you will come to terms with the fact that there are people you truly love and care for, people your age, people who are your peers, who you will see suffering healthwise, who you will watch die before your time, and there is nothing that you can do about it.

And that is the key. You are helpless in the face of an ongoing epidemic that is killing your community.

So, each generation has different coping strategies. My generation - the young gays just hitting their 20s - essentially ignores it. They ignore the possibility of contracting HIV; they generally do not know many HIV+ people. They rationalize it by pointing out that there are now many drugs to treat HIV, and therefore do not consider it a serious concern.

(which is probably why a lot of young gay men are getting HIV)

The generation before us, they decided that they would pour their energy into education and safer sex. They know how to use condoms and they will teach you, gladly, how to use them. They will pass out condoms. They are often fervently against barebacking. They handle the stress of an epidemic by taking steps to prevent it.

Then there is the generation before - the one that lived through the worst days of the AIDS epidemic.

The hope that kept them going was a pretty simple one: "someday, we will cure this."

It's been thirty years now, and HIV has not been cured. While my generation can ignore it and the one just before mine can keep passing out condoms ... there is nothing that that first generation can do to get a sense of agency in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A few may have the resources and background to go into HIV/AIDS research and work on curing it; the vast majority of them must feel helpless to do anything but twiddle their thumbs and wait.

So? What do they do? Do they give up and despair? No. They learn alternative healing techniques and undertake healing in their spare time, in hopes of curing a deadly disease - so they can alleviate the stress of not being able to do anything, and they can go on productively helping the HIV+ individuals in their community.

tl;dr: sometimes, irrationalism is the only way to respond to massively, monstrously horrible events

Thrasymachus · 17 days

Now ask me how I came to terms with the guy who claimed he was researching how to cure HIV with magnets.

Thrasymachus · 17 days

Basically, he'd had a tough and kinda crappy life up to the present day, and there was a lot of stress associated with it. The easy way to deal with stress of things that he couldn't engage with directly was to perform small rituals that would ease his mind to focus on other things.

I started thinking the same way about prayer. If, say, a relative has cancer - there is virtually nothing you can do about it. You can cook meals and drive them to the hospital and donate to Susan G Komen - but ultimately, you are left feeling helpless in the face of a terrible disease. But when you pray, you can at least feel like you're doing something about it - and that may take the stress of helplessness off you enough that you won't get burnt out.

IntoTheMystic · 17 days

My mother believes David Carradine committed suicide.

Thrasymachus · 17 days

He's in there for a few seconds. But good god, man, it's not hard to see Angel on camera.

balathustrius · 29 days

Yeah, I'd like to point out that homosexuals who were incarcerated by the Nazis were often re-incarcerated after the end of WWII. How's that for fucked up?

LordOfCows · 1 month

Was at a gay bar with some friends (I'm a homo). It was the kind of bar frequented by the shiny pretty barbie doll gay set.

Now, one of my friends - who is kinda awkward, a little older, and not the handsomest guy around - went up to talk to a group of guys. He's married. He just wants friends when he goes to a bar. He wanted to chitchat and be friendly.

And they basically shot him down in the snottiest, bitchiest way possible. Treated him like shit stuck to their shoes.

So I come up. And I'm a small guy, but a stereotypically cute guy. And I start chatting with these boys, starting with:

"Hey, so I'm looking for some cute slutty twinks. I guess I'm in the right place, but where are the cute ones?"

These boys lose their shit at me. But - because they're Southern queers , and therefore basically Southern Belles who think that they're fratboys - they're muscling up like they wanna start a fight. And they're all much bigger than me.

So I hunker down and do my best, "Come at me, bro."

None of them do.

So I start taunting them.

Someone intercedes, tells me not to start a fight. I laugh and tell him that all of these guys are way too pussy to actually throw a punch.

I wait another minute, then they stop posturing and leave.

tl;dr: some bitchy gays mocked a friend of mine, I pick a fight with them, then mock them for not being willing to actually do anything

Disclaimer: yes, I am aware that I am a dick. That I was a massive asshole. But the whiskey was warm in me that night.

TobogganFetish · 1 month

I tell them I'm a Gryffindor.

LonelyFrenchFry · 1 month

Are you really gonna use the 2002 Devdas as an example of good Indian cinema right after you ranted about mass-produced sequels and over-marketed musicals? The 2002 Devdas was a cynically produced piece of junk that was meant to be visually over-stimulating and draw in audiences solely by the fact of its name, by the names of its stars (why the fuck would you cast Shahrukh Khan as Dev, anyway?) ... and that's it.

asshole-teacher · 1 month

Honey, I'mma tell you something: almost all your teachers smoked pot. Seriously.

Bucky_Ohare · 1 month

Oh christ, my buddy still waves farewell to all his poops and says "Bye bye!" when he flushes them. He's 25.

nervousengrish · 1 month

After four years of scholarships, working three jobs, and living like a pauper ... I graduated without any debt at all.

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Thrasymachus

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