Is this a gay-safe article?

Jack Yan
Mar 25, 2007 at 10:42 PM
8 comments

[Cross-posted] I would not mind some advice on my latest motoring column for the next Lucire, from those in the gay community. From a racial minority’s point-of-view, I found shows such as Mind Your Language or the Chinaman gag in The Benny Hill Show to be hilarious. The reason is probably because the joke was not on the minorities portrayed, but on the ignorant Englishman. Yet these shows fall foul of the politically correct types—the PC thugs—who see us minorities as so weak that we need their defence.
I have written about the Audi TT, a car which I associate with female buyers. The new one, however, is more butch. The gag is that heterosexual men like me have a degree of homophobia, and we have tended not to buy a TT. All that changes with this new model.
Is the article appropriate? I hate toning things down for political correctness. That’s not the point. The point is to understand where the limits lie. Many gay men read Lucire, and the last thing I want them to feel is that the magazine is prejudiced when it is not. Read it here and then come back and let me know.

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well, i'm not gay but i have always loved the old TT. if that made me look gay then i would not have cared. i personally think the new TT is not as sexy as the last one.

You would be in the ‘secure’ group rather than the ‘insecure’ group had you bought the old one. It was all meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and the opinions of two people only.
It’s interesting that you find the new one less sexy. I wonder if it is in the shape and the surfacing.

Living as I do in an area that can be a bastion of over-the-top political correctness, I'm kind of sensitive to stuff that can cause a knee-jerk reaction. This column didn't for me. I thought it was obviously fun and kind of tongue-in-cheek.

The one thing that made me raise my eyebrows, which you repeat here, but explaining that it's a gag, is saying that most straight dudes have a degree of homophobia. The way it's written in the article, kind of authoritatively, makes me immediately say "says who?" Even though I know logically that you're saying it as a setup for the article it still gave me pause and took me out of what you were saying. I'm sure that I'm a minority though, with that reaction.

Can I tangent? I hate how "politically correct" has become an insult. Of course it's mostly the over the top PC crowd's fault, overreacting to stuff that isn't at all insulting (e.g. in American politics: use of the word "niggardly" has been decried, because people are too dumb to work out what it means; the take-home message being that if it sounds like it could be an insult, then it must be, actual meaning be damned). But in some circles it's been stretched to be that if you genuinely try to stand up for something being equal (usually in my case from a non-sexist standpoint), you get shouted down as being "politically correct" and apparently that concept is too horrifying to concieve.

Sorry. Sore point. Knee-jerk reactions in either direction irk me.

This column was good. Also, I like the new TT.

[這個好]

Gaspode, I wonder if there’s a better term for us: people who believe in equality between sexes, races, and sexual orientation. I do not think of myself as PC, but someone with fair beliefs about equal opportunities. However, I will call a spade a spade, for example: I call an Irish friend of mine ‘Paddy’ (with his permission), so I could not be PC, but it is certainly nothing against the Irish in general, even if the term has been used to denigrate them. In my heart I treat them as any other race, including my own. I also prefer separating male and female versions of a word, simply because they exist in English (e.g. actor, actress).
If niggardly has that reaction in the US, I am going to start using it more instead of stingey.
Thanks for the feedback about the article. I am glad it didn’t have the wrongful reaction, but the set-up point is interesting. I did mention the set-up to a friend who tells me that her boyfriend doesn’t have a homophobic bone in his body, saying he’s very camp around their gay friends. So I guess I would speak from experience rather than authority: I would definitely count myself as having been homophobic, and even today I can’t claim to be 100 per cent free of homophobia (in that I get an unwelcome sensation when I see two men snog). Maybe I should make that clearer in my article.

Hrm. Well, I would say, winking, that the term for us is "right"! Heh.

I do not think of myself as PC

Yeah, see, this is what I'm bemoaning. Everything I read that you're saying is PC, in my opinion. Making jokes with your friends who are Irish isn't anti-PC unless you live on some clueless planet, which, unfortunately, a lot of people do. (I won't say we should "brainstorm" for a better word, in case we offend people with epilepsy... I'm not kidding. Gah). It's equivalent to the demonising of the word "feminist" which is a dirty word nowdays, but which I still call myself, mainly because I hold to the original meaning of the word, so eloquently outlined by Sars in one of her essays at tomatonation.com. (which, damnit I can't link as she's in the process of moving to a new server).

Anyway, the whole knee-jerk PC crowd just needs a good dose of common sense, but I don't think the answer to that is to decry the notion of any PC stuff, just to think about it a bit.

I am a feminist, too, based on that; perhaps like any movement, it is hijacked by those who do not know better. You should see the debates over branding: similar stuff, with the ill-educated outnumbering those of us who have actually worked and studied the area. True, that we should think about it; and we have two choices, I suppose: either to hold on to the original usages of these terms and lead by example, or to go along with the changes and differentiate some other way (which leads to a path of continually having to change what one is called).

You're absolutely right with the two choices, of course. It's just frustrating when things turn into an argument of semantics. Especially when you feel like terminology etc. has been co-opted by other people. (see also, for yet another example, how the word liberal is now a dirty word in American politics)

(I'd be nerdily interested in the debates over branding, actually. I'm very interested in stuff like that.)

Heh. Interesting tangent from your original thread, Jack.

True about liberal. I would think I am liberal, but not the way Fox News describes it. As to branding: most of us at the “high level” regard branding in one of two fashions: (a) as the external audience-targeted element of a full identity programme; (b) a full programme that encompasses vision-setting, research, communications and image, but done with the consumer-targeted resultant image in mind from the start. As a definition, branding is the means through which an organization communicates, symbolizes and differentiates itself to all of its audiences.
That’s the definitive answer. The wrongful one, propagated by most, is that branding is slapping on a logo without regard to the philosophy or raison d’être of an organization. And one of the groups that propagate this is Madison Avenue.

Is this a gay-safe article?

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