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I think someone is going to try to assassinate Obama
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On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:55 pm Post subject:

Quote:

In Canada, homosexuality is more accepted in Quebec than in Alberta.

That's true, though, I will read into the record that the last bathhouse raid in Edmonton was in 1982, and resulted in few convictions. Whereas in Toronto, the self-proclaimed bastion of social tolerance, a lesbian bathhose was raided in 2000(in fairness, these charges were thrown out of court).

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:57 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Left and right mean different things in different cultures. I don't know if the Latin American left has accepted tolerance for homosexuals to the extent that has the left in Western Europe and North America.

Off topic, but you will probably find this an interesting read, Mises.

Quote:

The modern case for gay rights is something we owe to thinkers on the Left -- or so the conventional wisdom would have it. But in fact libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservative intellectuals were advancing influential pro-gay arguments through the 1960s and 1970s, as witness the writings of Nobel economic laureate Friedrich Hayek, professor of psychiatry Thomas Szasz, and psychoanalyst Ernest van den Haag.

This places the libertarians ahead of many leftists, including Tommy Douglas, in terms of acceptance of tolerance of sexual preferences.

http://tinyurl.com/6qwmcj

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 1:11 pm Post subject:

Szasz was crucial in having homosexuality delisted from the DSM as a mental disorder.

Tiger Beer

Joined: 07 Feb 2003

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:45 am Post subject:

mises wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRqcfqiXCX0&eurl

How many third worlders reside in the south?

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=KGSio_Ac4Hs&feature=user is the response from the African-American community to this video.

Tiger Beer

Joined: 07 Feb 2003

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:54 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

In any case, Latin Americans, especially in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, where I have lived and interacted with them for extended periods, tend to be openly and violently homophobic. I will give you an example: I once hosted a group of Chilean women, educational administrators, in San Diego for a couple of weeks. They loved it, talked of wanting to live there, sending their children to school there, etc. Took them to a restaurant I like in Hillcrest. We randomly passed two gay men who were holding hands while walking on the street, they looked on silently, and you could feel their silence, Bacasper, prudishly judging these men, and then they turned against San Diego and California just like that. Could not leave fast enough. They bitterly complained about the maricones walking on the street as they pleased, etc.

I taught English in Brazil and traveled extensively throughout almost ALL of South America. My first destination was CHILE...and upon arriving in Santiago, I QUICKLY realized it is the MOST CONSERVATIVE Latin country BY FAR. Stone age conservative, and I will quickly agree and can easily see Chileans reacting exactly how you responded.

But Brazil...I gotta disagree. I was teaching ESL in Sao Paulo and Rio de Jainero, and RIO is quite a bit like San Francisco. Sexuality is just OUT there, and Carnival, well, its fairly open in Brazil with all kinds of sexuality, and no one seems to mind much at all.

Spanish-speaking Latin American countries however, I would agree they are a bit more conservative than people give them credit for.

bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:37 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

In my own experience and impression, no place on Earth excels in violent homophobia and intolerance than Latin America.

Your own experience? Let's hear more about that.

(Be sure to tell it in all its juicy detail, too.)

You imply that I am gay and then would use this as part of your campaign to discredit my views?

No, I am not gay; I am straight. Being gay would not discredit me, however.

Sorry, I should have used the Twisted Evil

. Event though your sexuality has been questioned in the past (someone asked why you had "handsome young men" in an old avatar, and you've referred to NowhereMan as your "wife," not to mention that now you have an avatar of a guy wearing a red bikini), it wouldn't matter if you were gay.

Nevertheless, I have never stooped to such a "low blow" ( Razz

) nor would I. Nor am I on a "campaign to discredit your views" with which I sometimes take issue. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a disagreement is just a disagreement.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:24 am Post subject:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

In my own experience and impression, no place on Earth excels in violent homophobia and intolerance than Latin America.

Your own experience? Let's hear more about that.

(Be sure to tell it in all its juicy detail, too.)

You imply that I am gay and then would use this as part of your campaign to discredit my views?

No, I am not gay; I am straight. Being gay would not discredit me, however.

Sorry, I should have used the Twisted Evil

Drop this theme, quickly.

Quote:

But Brazil...I gotta disagree. I was teaching ESL in Sao Paulo and Rio de Jainero, and RIO is quite a bit like San Francisco. Sexuality is just OUT there, and Carnival, well, its fairly open in Brazil with all kinds of sexuality, and no one seems to mind much at all.

Spanish-speaking Latin American countries however, I would agree they are a bit more conservative than people give them credit for.

I've heard this a few times now. Why would the Spanish speaking nations have such a different attitude than the Portuguese speaking nation? Is this just a discussion on the margins, or is there a meaningful difference in aggregate?

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:54 pm Post subject:

Tiger Beer wrote:

Rio and especially Carnival are exceptional things, Tiger Beer. But I take your point and agree that Brazil stands apart from Spanish America in many ways. Although I hope you recognize that in some ways re: sexuality, Brazilian culture seems far more open and tolerant than American culture, in other ways, it seems far more closed and intolerant.

Mises: by concentrating on Brazil's Portuguese cultural influences, you have not considered Brazil's various African cultural influences. Do not forget, Brazil imported ten times the number of African slaves America did, and the African influence in Brazil is immense.

Also, I will give another example from Chile, where I taught high school-level history. One of my freshman classes, the boys, got onto this track about constantly discussing masturbation and bestiality. I ignored it for a time. But it went on and on. "Mr. ___! Andre masturbates in the bathroom during the breaks and he fucks dead dogs." Honestly, one has to supress laughing at such nonsense. But then one realizes he is in a position of influencing these kids, kids who seemed so represed re: sexuality that this was the only way they could discuss it.

One day, I stopped the class in this and said enough was enough. First, there is nothing wrong with masturbation, everyone masturbates, and anyone who tells you they do not is lying to you. Even the priests, they asked? (Most Chilean schools are under the Church.) Yes, the priests, too, I said. But we do not discuss this at school. This is something people discuss at home, in their private lives. Talk to your parents. Understood? (I had, for the first time ever, their rapt attention.)

I did not see the big deal in saying this. But I saw that day how news could travel an entire campus, including to its administrative buildings across the street, in a matter of minutes. Within five minutes of dismissing that class, everyone had heard a version of what I said, and, more importantly, the headmaster, the priest, and the school psychologist asked me to report to them.

Guess who they accused of mental illness and child corruption? Guess who said it was better to let those kids' talks about masturbation and fucking dead dogs go unacknowledged? Not to mention the pornographic drawings they painted all over their desktops -- something that especially amused me during parent-teacher conferences, when parents sat at these desks, pretenting not to notice these drawings at all, as the priests discussed their children's moral educations...

This was in the twenty-first century -- a time when Chileans finally recognized and legalized divorce but continue to criminalize abortion and of course suppress homosexuality.

This is very important when discussing issues we have seen here re: "if the rest of the world could vote." Chile backs B. Obama because of his foreign policy promises and because they, too, hate W. Bush. But please understand that socially, Chileans and many other Latin Americans, including F. Castro, have much more in common with S. Palin than B. Obama.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 1:53 pm Post subject:

Quote:

by concentrating on Brazil's Portuguese cultural influences, you have not considered Brazil's various African cultural influences. Do not forget, Brazil imported ten times the number of African slaves America did, and the African influence in Brazil is immense.

Wouldn't this work against it? I know that Brazil is 50% African, but looking at Africa or the A-Americans, I don't see much sign of progressive ideas re: homosexuals.

Quote:

This is very important when discussing issues we have seen here re: "if the rest of the world could vote." Chile backs B. Obama because of his foreign policy promises and because they, too, hate W. Bush. But please understand that socially, Chileans and many other Latin Americans, including F. Castro, have much more in common with S. Palin than B. Obama.

I totally agree. I am not one to essentialise the "brown" "other" as having some kind of inherent worldly attitude that us white Anglos need to bow to. I live among South Americans and frankly feel sorry for South American women.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:13 pm Post subject:

African-Americans and Afro-Brazilians are worlds apart in many ways. Go to Salvador in Bahia and soak it in. This gets into a level of complexity I do not think I can address satisfactorily on a mere messageboard. And I should clarify that my "African influences" means to refer to individual tribes from specific subSaharan African cultural groups such as Yoruba speakers, etc. In any case, there is far more to deciphering Brazil's differences from Spanish America than differences we might identify between Portugual and Spain. We need to holistically address the range of different cultural inputs as well as entirely different colonial and independence-era trajectories. As far as what specifically caused, for example, generally more relaxed sexual attitudes, a generally less vicious military dictatorship, and a historical American ally and generally pro-American at least as early as the First World War (and remember that Brazil not only broke relations with the Axis but joined the United States in the Italian campaign with its Smoking Cobras unit -- A. Hitler had dismissed Brazil, taunting that Brazil would only send combat forces into Europe when cobras smoked), it may be too complex to answer.

rusty1983

Joined: 30 Jan 2007

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:46 pm Post subject:

mises wrote:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

In my own experience and impression, no place on Earth excels in violent homophobia and intolerance than Latin America.

Your own experience? Let's hear more about that.

(Be sure to tell it in all its juicy detail, too.)

You imply that I am gay and then would use this as part of your campaign to discredit my views?

No, I am not gay; I am straight. Being gay would not discredit me, however.

Sorry, I should have used the Twisted Evil

Drop this theme, quickly.

Quote:

I think this is because Brazil is much more diverse than the Spanish speaking countries so you have a more tolerant atmosphere.

Also it's a lot bigger than the other countries, it's nearly as big as most of those countries put together. The fruits don't have to worry about wandering into the favelas they can just strut their stuff. There's enough space for everyone to do their own thing in.

ReeseDog

Joined: 05 Apr 2008
Location: Classified

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:58 am Post subject:

blaseblasphemener wrote:

It's bad for people not to want to drink the Kool-Aid and to buy the repeated lies of the worst adminstration in the history of the United States of America?

That would be the Clinton years, then?

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:20 am Post subject:

Quote:

Chile backs B. Obama because of his foreign policy promises and because they, too, hate W. Bush. But please understand that socially, Chileans and many other Latin Americans, including F. Castro, have much more in common with S. Palin than B. Obama.

This is basically the(admittedly off-topic) point that I was trying to make a few pages back about Al Jazeera's audience.

I think almost anyone who has spent time in Korea would observe a similar phenomenon. Many people will be against American foreign policy from a left-wing angle, while opposing American cultural influence from a conservative angle.

What's amusing is when I read western leftists, who evidently have no clue what the rest of the world is like, saying stuff like "thanks to globalization, American sexism and homophobia are going to spread around the world". Meanwhile...

Quote:

The man uses less respectful forms of Korean, while the woman always uses the highest forms. Men in senior positions talk down to almost everyone they come in contact with, but women, regardless of their standing, always use honorifics. They even address villains reverentially when everyone else is allowed to scowl. In short, Korean dubbing of foreign movies is as sexist as ever -- or so says a survey of English-language movies dubbed into Korean and broadcast on MBC, SBS, KBS1 and KBS2 between Sept. 9 and Oct. 29, conducted by Korean Womenlink.

http://tinyurl.com/5qry7j

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:57 am Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Quote:

This is basically the (admittedly off-topic) point that I was trying to make a few pages back about Al Jazeera's audience...

Nice post and apparently we closely agree on this.

What I would point out is that my position has also been that, once, say, Chileans and Al Jazeera's primary audience, pro-Obama/anti-W. Bush/anti-McCain/and generally antiAmerican now, discover B. Obama's position on Israel, things will change.

ReeseDog

Joined: 05 Apr 2008
Location: Classified

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:25 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

What I would point out is that my position has also been that, once, say, Chileans and Al Jazeera's primary audience, pro-Obama/anti-W. Bush/anti-McCain/and generally antiAmerican now, discover B. Obama's position on Israel, things will change.

Just what is his position on Israel, anyway? Or on anything (other than change), for that matter?

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