20230731 Gay art, Body Painting,1st chapter on whether Gays are different, fear of being different. Church in Dallas wants Gays executed
Threads is dying. Meta spaces censor Gays.
Subscriptions are free.
Threads is dying. Twitter doesn’t censor Gay art. Meta social media does.
Twitter is the only place where some moralist scold isn’t censoring Gay art. So if Threads does kill Twitter the social media space where Gay art isn’t censored collapses to zero. Meta is the new corporate name for Facebook.
Artist Jose Gomez – Men and Sport & Gay Love
https://www.josegomezart.com/men-and-sport.html
Some new artists I have found on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ryu_rokuhara
China’s Gay artists persevere as censors’ grip tightens.
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/china-lgbtq-artists/index.html
I think that Guang Ye shown is the same person as the artist showcased in this post.
https://edwardhsebesta.substack.com/p/yanye5159-artist
Artists showcased this week.
https://edwardhsebesta.substack.com/p/quirk-an-artist-of-interest-to-gays
https://edwardhsebesta.substack.com/p/richard-vyse-extraordinary-artist
Struggle against church in Dallas County calling for the execution of Gays continues.
This is keeping me fairly busy.
We had a church firebombed in a suburb north of Dallas.
Also, you should know that I am very pragmatic about supporting Gay interests and I will work across the political spectrum. My Gay activism is for the Gays, and isn’t enlising Gays into some movement. These are some posts I have been doing.
What these groups lacked is someone reporting on what they were doing.
Member of the group spoke to Cedar Hill, Texas (in Dallas County) where Stedfast is located.
Progressive Christian’s letter to the editor about Stedfast really undercuts the Gay community. Called her out on this.
Are we different? – Chapter One
This is something that needs to be discussed before any other topic about being Gay is discussed. One thing is that there is a lot of fear concerning whether Gays are different.
Some Gays worry that being different means we might be treated differently in a bad way.
Some Gays worry that being different means straights might think we are different in a bad way and feel it will be used justified to treat us badly.
Some Gays feel that ideas of Gays being different means they will be pressured to be a certain way or criticized for not being that way. Being different might involve pressure to conform to some idea of what being Gay is.
Some Gays feel that being different means they will be confronted with stereotypes of who Gays are.
The fear of the loss of self enters into it. That a Gay person might find his identity to be false and he is really some alien thing. The fear is that it will be like one of those science fictions where the protagonist finds out that he is really a robot or an alien or a demon.
There is a lot of resentment over stereotypes and fear that some Gays will validate these stereotypes with straight people.
There is also resentment by some Gays that one segment of the Gay community is represented to be the entire Gay community and that the one segment is normative for all Gays.
Further there is resentment by some Gays that to be a valid member of the Gay community you have to have a certain set of beliefs, and not have other beliefs.
Do not worry. This book isn’t going to advocate re-education camps to force you to learn show tunes. You aren’t going to be pressured to put color in your hair or wash it out. Nor will you have to be a member of some social movement to be properly Gay.
However, the discussion of Gay opportunities and issues implies that there are differences, and to go directly to discuss these Gay issues and opportunities might result in alarming readers and stopping consideration of these opportunities and issues.
Further without some idea of who we are, we can’t really discuss what we might do.
Are we innately different?
That is, are there innate differences in character, personality, abilities, likes and dislikes because we are Gay as opposed to being straight. It appears that there aren’t any innate differences or they do exist they are so minor and not significant enough to be definitely determined.
Being homosexual instead of heterosexual is a difference. It wouldn’t be surprising that there might be some associated differences, but whatever they might be, if they do actually exist, they aren’t significant enough to be immediately obvious.
If, for purposes of argument only, a survey was done and it found that Gays had more abilities with color. Is it really that Gays have more abilities with color, or is it that they believe in stereotypes of being more artistic, or they are less inhibited by sex-roles to get engaged in perceiving color, or because in general migrate to urban centers and maybe the culture there is more attentive to color. There could be other factors, in that being in a sub-culture less inhibited by sex-roles, the member of the subculture is going to be meeting other members less inhibited by sex-roles regarding being artistic or considering color and there is a feedback loop. It could be more than one factor or all these factors.
Basically, given the media, stereotypes, the difference social circumstances of Gays, it is impossible to separate out whether something is innate or due to social influences or other environmental factors.
There is the issue of confounding factors with trying to determine whether there are any innate differences.
This is really important to understand so this is going to be explained again.
Supposedly, you were going to be doing a test to develop a cake recipe.
To test which recipe is best you modified the recipes as follows:
Recipe One: Reference recipe. Reference time.
Recipe Two: Add two table spoons of butter, half-cup of sugar, bake 15 minutes longer.
Recipe Three: Add four table spoons of butter, a cup of sugar, bake 30 minutes longer.
Let’s suppose Recipe Three was the best. Was the reason because of more butter, more sugar, or longer baking time? You don’t know. The factors of butter, sugar, and bake time are confounded. Since you varied three variables together.
Additionally, there is the assumption that there is only one origin of homosexual desire or one way a person is homosexual. Gay is a self-reported identity of recognizing homosexual desire in yourself. It could be that one sub-type of Gay person is better at color, but it isn’t applicable to all Gays or even a large fraction of Gays. Even if there was one type of Gay that had some type of attribute, it isn’t pronounced such that it can be definitely ascribed as an inherent attribute and not some other influence.
The attributes or differences commonly that Gays are commonly asserted to have are likely to be often the situation where the Gay person has built their selfhood incorporating a stereotypical belief about Gays into their personality. Commonly these are various versions of being a woman in a man’s body or being an intermediate sex, but can be individual stereotypical beliefs. The incorporation of these stereotypes into the construction of the self by these Gays might be seen by them as self-realization or being authentic to themselves.
Gays who haven’t incorporated stereotypes in their self-construction of themselves and also resent society’s stereotypes of Gays, will often resent Gays who do incorporate society’s stereotypes. That behavior is reinforcing stereotypes. Sometimes this resentment results in hostility to these Gays who are incorporating these stereotypes. This isn’t helpful. It is okay to express an opinion, but it should be a friendly opinion.
A lot of Gays when they finally come out of the closet or come into a situation where they can be Gay, have come from a tight cramped space. They will want to essentially shout. Formerly pressed against the wall, they can now dance. And so, they shout and dance. And what is an immediately available and known to Gays is actions that break sex-roles and the stereotypes of Gays. Finally, a Gay person finds that they can breathe, don’t try to suffocate them. It won’t be appreciated and might elicit a reaction where the person commits themselves to such an identity.
For purposes of discussing being Gay it is reasonable to assume that there are no significant innate differences we need consider. Even if some innate difference does come up, it needs to be asked whether it is significant enough to consider. If it turned out we were 8% better at handling color, is it important? Also, what innate difference that might be found, is likely much less important that our differences resulting from the circumstances of our life. Further these supposed innate differences are distractions from considering our life’s circumstances.
However, if there is some inherent difference does show up, denying reality doesn’t help either.
Differences deriving from circumstances
What differences might be derived from the circumstances Gays find themselves in doesn’t necessarily mean they will be the same differences for all Gays.
Gay circumstances are different, but what the resulting trajectories that Gay lives will take is going to vary with the individual.
For example, Gays tend to have more sex and with more partners than straight men do. One stereotype is that Gay men are promiscuous. Not all Gays have more sex or more partners, but in general Gays are more sexually active.
Is it because Gays are promiscuous by nature, hyper sexual or is it because it is men dating men and not men dating women? With heterosexual professional athletes they are often very sexually active because the opportunities present themselves frequently. Gays aren’t innately different than straight men in their interest in having sex, Gays just have more opportunities to have sex since they are pursuing men. There are less social restraints to keep Gays from having sex. This is a difference that isn’t innate, but deriving from circumstances.
Not all Gays are going to be more sexually active. The fact that there are opportunities for Gays to have more sex, doesn’t mean all Gays will want these opportunities or as much as other Gays.
The difference is that Gays have more opportunities to have sex, not that an individual Gay person will necessarily chose to use these opportunities to have sex as much as the general Gay community or at all.
Again, there will be differences of circumstance, but the resulting life trajectories may differ widely.
Some circumstances are going to be result from being Gay, but might not apply to all Gays, or some Gays will have different circumstances since they are Gay that are different from most other Gays.
For example, most Gays don’t have children, so they have more time and resources to pursue interests. However, some Gays have children that they are raising and they have different issues with their children having two fathers or two mothers in dealing with straight society. Others had children from before they came out and have different issues. In all cases Gays have differing circumstances and there will be resulting differences in their life trajectories they aren’t the same Gay differences though.
This book will focus on the great majority of Gays circumstances for two reasons. One, it would be impossible to consider every variant Gay circumstance. Two, the circumstances and possibilities and issues of the great majority of Gays is unexamined and it will be a great task to do so.
Islam is a problem for Gay people. How we deal with it will be complex.
A music festival was shutdown in Malaysia because a British singer kissed another man on stage. See link at end of this article.
Ignoring this issue isn’t going to help us.
I have known a lot of Muslim co-workers in the semiconductor industry. They aren’t all fanatics or anti-Gay. Like in most cases, people are a certain religion since their parents were members. Also, in medieval times, the good place to be Gay was in Muslim nations and not in Christian nations. The radical anti-Gay development in Islam is modern.
I don’t have any simple answers for this, but I would say there are two things that we need to recognize.
1. A lot of Muslims are radically anti-Gay due to their religion.
2. A lot of Muslims are not. We should be careful not to get on some anti-Muslim agenda.
I don’t know exactly how to approach this. However, we can stop sweeping this issue under the rug for fear of being called Islamophobic. Yes, there are Islamophobes, but there are real issues we need to consider. As is always the case, we need to be somewhat connected to reality.
Body Painting
YouTube is censored, I put some Twitter links to people who do uncensored body painting and post it on Twitter.
I am hoping to have both tattoo artists and body painters in a showcase at some point.
https://twitter.com/TheCharlyZine With Charly, for the first time I wondered whether body paint was edible.
https://twitter.com/paintpenis
Weight loss
Ridiculing people
It is totally unacceptable to ridicule people over their weight. People end up being heavy for a variety of reasons, often their parents had no nutritional sense.
Once you are overweight there are factors making it difficult to lose weight.
Also, your weight is your personal choice. I am going to be providing information to watch your weight and manage it, but it still is your choice to make.
If you are attracted to heavy men, there isn’t much you can do about it, and I believe that Gays shouldn’t be lectured about their desires. I am against people being pushed out of the Gay movement by moralists.
I am concerned with health and being 71 I do see a lot of impacts of people who were really heavy and now it is having its really negative impacts later in life.
If the weight loss section annoys you, by all means skip it.
Supermarkets
Though this might seem an unwarranted view, the supermarket needs to be considered a hazard zone. There is a lot of good food there, and it isn’t like a lot of the food is junk either, though some is sort of junky. A lot of the food choices are high in calories.
The hazard is that there are many tasty things, but you have to restrict yourself in what you purchase. Maybe I should have called a supermarket a temptation zone.
In general. though, if you regard the supermarket as being a temptation zone or hazard zone, likely your shopping cart at checkout will have better selections.
Plotting your weight and you don’t seem to be making progress.
As you plot your weight, often it isn’t going to go down in a steady fashion. You will go for says, and not seem to be making progress, and then your morning weight drops a lot and then you have more days where you don’t make progress.
Your weight loss might be a sort of stair step loss. Lots of functions go on in our body and so the morning weighing isn’t going to go down in a steady fashion.
However, if there has been two or three weeks, and you haven’t lost weight, you need to look at what you are doing.
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