Baseball and Sexuality

No, I believe its a govt requirement, blood banks would love to accept blood from the MSM population

That guy knew how to take a bad break.

No snark, actual amazement at the structural absurdities of the hyoomin bawdee.

In fact, babies ~33% ob babies born to HIV + mothers (untreated) get HIV. That number drops when you add in C-section and it almost never happens when you combine treatment and c-section

Yes. I’m willing to bet my life that I cannot absorb HIV through the skin. It requires blood to infected blood/bodily fluid contact. You conceivably could contract it if you had an open wound/sore on your body, but that’s frankly unlikely. Contact with healthy skin is not a risky behavior.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/transmission.htm

That is very true.

well put

Rec’d

/Nods

Nice synopsis.

Well done.

no you didn’t, I just wanted to make that clear

I don’t think it has to be anymore gradual than it likely would be on its own (I think many people would continue to keep their sexual identity personal).

I think thats a great point, too. I’m really pretty torn on the issue. I know it sounds like a tactic to simply push the integration back but I really would prefer it to be an issue we resolved during peace time when it couldn’t potentially have such immediate negative effects on unit preparedness. The current discussion of the topic itself is already depriving a lot of units of valuable training time.

“Come on, it’s not like Lawrence Taylor murdered that girl.”

First of all, SLN explained it well. My original comment, which I didn’t phrase very well, was about the gay rights struggle being further along today than the black rights struggle was in the 40’s.

But, since this new subject has been brought up:

the phenomenon of discussions about anti-oppressive behavior becoming derailed by people trying to argue that one form of oppression is worse or more valid than others

All forms of oppression are equally invalid. I think I actually made that pretty clear a few comments above, when I wrote “Every struggle for equal rights is different, and they’re all equally worthy”. But, in case it wasn’t clear, it is now.

But no, not all means of oppression are the same. The are all equally invalid, but they are not equally bad. Not hiring a man because he’s black is terrible; lynching a man because he’s black is much, much, much worse. It is not any less valid – because the first is already completely invalid in any way – but it is worse. It’s incomprehensibly worse. No one would argue otherwise.

And if some means of oppression are worse than others, then, unless all forms of oppression are, and always have been, equally common anywhere in the world, regardless of the oppressed group (which would obviously be silly to argue), then some oppressed groups do have it “better off” – or less bad – than others. I don’t understand what’s the problem with saying this.

What if I hadn’t compared different groups, but rather, different time periods -

“Jews in Germany in 1885 faced many expressions of antisemitism, but in general, they were still in much shape than they would be 50 years later”

Or if I had compared different places -

“African-Americans in the 1850’s in the North East faced terrible oppression, though they were definitely doing better than the slaves in the South, at least to some degree.”

And what if the claim is just inarguably true -

While most Jewish people do probably face some forms of discrimination in today’s America, Jews, in general, do not face as much discrimination as homosexuals do.

Would you say any of those statements is wrong, let alone problematic or offensive?

"What is worse – sexism/racism/homophobia/transphobia/ableism?" – that’s not the way to look at it.

Completely different subject.

All types of bigotry are equally bad, definitely in principle, but also in practice – all of them have proven that they can bring out all the terrible things in people: starting with a 12 year old calling his friend some bigoted slur, and ending with mass murder, while stopping at every little stop on the way.

But just because they are all equally bad in principle, and just because they can cause equally terrible means of oppression, it doesn’t mean that that all the means of oppression they cause are equally bad. Some expressions of homophobia are worse than some expressions of racism. Some expressions of racism are worse than other expressions of homophobia. Some are equally as bad, and some are clearly not. Some are similar, and some are very different. Some are common, and some are rare.

To say that gay people, in today’s America, do not face the same level of discrimination and oppression that black people faced in 1940’s America, is not, in any way, based on the assumption that homophobia is better than racism. It is simply based on the differences between the specific expressions of bigotry that were, and are, common in these specific time frames, towards these specific groups, in this specific country.

Hope I’ve made myself clear.

I don’t want to be the language police, but some things really need to be resisted. I would love to see a geometrical demonstration of one thing “centered around” another. Even Escher couldn’t do it.