Posts by Tom Beard
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Southerly: Gerry Brownlee: “I Like To…, in reply to Russell Brown,
You're just not cool enough to have heard them.
Touché. I've only ever seen their name on posters, though I think it was "Paselode". I always got the impression that they were a bit rock-ish for my tastes.
On the other hand, I'm glad to say that I've never seen a Paslode. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
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Southerly: Gerry Brownlee: “I Like To…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Oh is that what a Paslode is?! I just thought it was the name of a band.
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Emma Hart,
So, hugging. Massages. Non-consequence snogging.
That arrived ... a bit later in my life. I obviously hung out with the wrong people at varsity.
One thing that helped break the ice for me was discovering dance in my early twenties. It was initially a shock to be in physical contact with so many people when there were was no expectation of a romantic engagement. But it didn't take long for the simple joy of touch and movement to kick in, and that holding a lot of peope by the waist or by the hand didn't mean it was leading to an orgy. Although come to think of it...
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to BenWilson,
can't do either one, not for male friends. An overlong handshake is about where it ends. Putting arm around shoulders, sometimes. And any number of jocular male touches - friendly arm punches, pushes, seizing, back patting, high-fiving. Not so much with women.
I was brought up a bit like that, with middle-class English stiff-upper-lip detachment. While my parents have always been liberal and inclusive, we were never a huggy family, and even now giving my father a hug is awkward. Among my geeky cohort at varsity there was not a lot of touching, either, not even among opposite-sex Platonic friends: all that touchy-feely stuff was for the crazy arts students.
All of that changed quite quickly when I moved into a different circle of friends. At first I was ... not wary, exactly, just sceptical, as giving a full-body-hug and an intense "how are you, man?" seemed falsely intimate for someone you've only just met. But by now most of my social circle sees a hug and a cheek kiss as a minimum for a friendly hello, and curling up with close friends doesn't seem odd, even among straight men.
Part of that change is generational, partly because I'm now in an artier and more liberal milieu. I also know a lot of people who live with depression, PTSD or other mental illness, and I think many of my friends are aware of the value of Platonic touch (as Ben, John and B Jones have pointed out) for maintaining self-esteem and human connection. It makes for a much more humane society.
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Megan Wegan,
Well, no, because I don't find it annoying.
Unless you find that "playing into the patriarchal narrative that faux-same-sex-attraction will get a guy to think you are hot" is annoying in itself.
Well, much
Yes, I suppose there are always ... exceptions.
if indeed it is two drunk girls pashing because someone told them to
And that would be annoying, with the blame lying not so much with the girls as with the people who told them to. Though "told" can get a bit blurry: told, encouraged, suggested, guided, dared, implied, expected...
There's also the assumption inherent in the wording "straight girls who kiss each other in bars" that kissing each other isn't something that real straight girls would do for its own sake, so they're faking it. It turns the Kinsey scale into two monoliths labelled "straight" and "gay", with a vast amorphous blob in between labelled "bisexual". As soon as anyone willingly, genuinely does anything more than holding hands, bang! They're no longer "straight".
There are many other phrases that might apply to the "straight girls kissing in bars": heteroflexible, bicurious, bisexual but heteroromantic, bisexual but mostly closeted. Or they may indeed be what most of us would call heterosexual, in that they never experience same-sex attraction, desire or love, but they still enjoy kissing girls in a way that they consider sensual but not sexual, just as an extension of friendship.
Of course, in a sense this finessing of the labels is or should be meaningless. But people will get labelled whether or not they want to, and at the very least the words provide a way to start conversations that can tease out the subtleties of experience and identity.
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Megan Wegan,
There’s a question on (internet dating site) OK Cupid, that asks “straight girls who kiss each other in bars are…”. I’ve never been able to bring myself to look at the possible answers, but imma go ahead and assume that one of them isn’t “often playing into the patriarchal narrative that faux-same-sex-attraction will get a guy to think you are hot.”
One of the answers is something like "profoundly annoying", which might suit you.
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Gee,
As for the binge-drinking -- I thought it was anything over 3 drinks a day, so this 5+ news makes me feel a lot healthier ;)
IIRC, for adult men a "binge" is described as over 7 standard drinks in a sitting: lower for women and young people. But a standard drink is usually > "a drink", and most normal* glasses of wine would contain about 2 standard drinks. It still means that having a bottle of wine with a meal counts as binge drinking, which doesn't seem right to me.
(*my normal my not be your normal)
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Emma Hart,
Yeah, as a friend put it on Twitter yesterday, their 'binge' is our 'dinner'. Which can be hugely problematic as far as drawing meaningful conclusions goes. But when you look at the quotes, the subjects themselves are clearly talking about 'drinking to excess', getting completely trashed.
That's the thing: while you wouldn't know it from the articles, this research isn't trying to establish a statistical correlation between sexuality and "binge drinking" as it's defined by ALAC and the like: there are already studies that do that, and they take that as a starting place. The behaviours and motivations described by the subjects are clearly what even I, a noted proponent of recreational drunkenness, would describe as hugely fucked up.
It's getting to the root of the reasons behind it that's important, so that young people can be helped. And again and again they mention the damage done by prejudice and exclusion that comes from both ends of the Kinsey scale.
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Some of my colleagues were discussing these issues, and with a few exceptions no-one had any idea about voter suppression, voting machine problems and the like. Many had no idea about the Electoral College, and only just twigged as to why the news was going on about "swing states".
The heartening thing about the last point is it seems that there's a new generation for whom the very concept of a non-proportional electoral system is incomprehensible and revolting.
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OnPoint: The Source, in reply to Richard Aston,
Ok Ok what happened next ?
It's a James Bond script adapted by Harold Pinter, then translated into Hungarian and back.