Wednesday Nibbles: Dr. Phil On Training Your Kids Not To Be Gay, Bartending In A Strip Club, More…

2 pieces of BRILLIANCE put forth by a DARING and DELIGHTFUL reader

Airtoons: crash position suck

  • I’m about to leave for Austin, Texas SXSW Interactive conference for this but will be following the strict Airtoons Safety instructions such as the one shown at right so that I travel safely. (airtoons.com)
  • Interesting read (not sex-positive in tone, yet not awful) about the current state of heterosexual swing culture as seen in Miami, Florida: Report: Miami Swingers (Miami News)
  • The Ford Foundation has taken an exciting and bold step to fund sexuality research in America because it is typically underfunded, making them my HERO: Ford Sexuality Initiatives (Ford Foundation, thanks to everyone who sent this in)
  • I didn’t know that filtering LGBT websites was against Federal law under these conditions – and here’s how to report when you see this happening: ACLU: Illegal LGBT Internet Filtering (secure.aclu.org)
  • Our friend Ms. Naughty wrote a provocative article on extreme porn; a great read for those who are pro-porn but are not okay with – and are concerned about – extreme sex acts and themes: Let’s Talk About Extreme Porn (msnaughty.com)

The items above are mine: There are a LOT more news Nibbles come from TinyNibbles guest blogger Thomas Roche after the jump.

Here are a few items that might be of interest to Tiny Nibbles readers. XOX —Thomas

  • Wicketkeeper Steven Davies just became the first cricket player in history to come out as gay, as reported in the Daily Mail. To be specific, the 24-year-old Davies is the first active professional cricketer to come out;  Alan Hansford came out after he retired. He spoke eloquently to CNN and said he wanted to help other sports personalities concerned about coming out. Jelisa Castrodale wrote in response at NBC Sports that “we are still in the dark ages about gays and sports,” pointing out that Davies and Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas are the only openly gay men in the UK who play a team sport professionally. In the US, the NFL and major-league baseball have had three openly gay players each, and one openly gay NBA player — but none of them came out during their careers. (dailymail.co.uk, telegraph.co.uk, cnn.com, jelisacastrodale.com, nbcsports.msnbc.com)
  • Speaking of great moments in gay cricket history: In September, 2010, another cricketer, Jimmy Anderson, was quoted as saying: “If there are any gay cricketers, they should feel confident enough to come out, because I don’t think there is homophobia in cricket.” The occasion? The married 28-year-old Anderson had just posed nude for gay magazine Attitude. (advocate.com)
  • …And in case a few of you data-mining experts from San Jose (#11) would like to give Foursquare’s assertion some science-based debunking, Foursquare outlines their methodology in the Foursquare engineering blog. (engineering.foursquare.com)
  • The Maryland legislature is very close to legalizing same-sex marriage; now a member of the House of Delegates who’s a Democrat and a former Clinton staffer, and who actively solicited LGBT support in his last campaign, and who pledged to support gay marriage, has suddenly and inexplicably changed his opinion. At Talking Points Memo. (tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com)
  • US Navy Petty Officer Stephen Jones says his buddy (also a Petty Officer) fell asleep on his bed in the barracks while they were watching “The Vampire Diaries” on TV. The sailor’s roommate walked in on them and was disturbed by this incident. Both Petty Officers were clothed at the time; one Petty Officer was under the covers and one atop the covers; there was no intertwining of Petty Officer limbs. Nobody claims anything sexual happened. The Navy is trying to discharge Jones for “unprofessional conduct” after he refused a “Captain’s Mast,” a non-judicial procedure meant to avoid a court martial, over the incident. Jones says this is an attempt to circumvent the suspension of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and to punish him for refusing to “admit” that what was done was inappropriate (even though nobody’s that clear exactly how it was). At CNN. (articles.cnn.com)
  • The Western press and Al Jazeera are reporting a drug called “whoonga” has HIV patients “…being mugged for their pills as they leave the clinic.” The drug is allegedly made up of detergent, rat poison and antiretroviral HIV medication. South African authorities say the media should just calm down; of course whoonga’s got rat poison, but the other components are just garden-variety brown heroin and ammonia, now with added meth. The related term “wonga,” incidentally, is African slang for “money.” (foxnews.com, blogs.aljazeera.net)

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2 Comments - COMMENTARY is DESIRED

  1. Jonathan · Edit

    BRAVA to Sarah Hoffman for shining her light of sanity on one small corner of the vast sea of hypocrisy and mindless hatred that is our heartland. I am convinced that we are one of the most prudish countries of the western world. I have seen shockingly graphic violence in movies rated PG-13, but let the camera linger a second too long on a woman’s breast and it is slapped with an R. I have seen R movies depicting incredibly (delightfully) graphic heterosexual sex, but a theme of male homosexuality, even with little or no nudity, will often bring an NC-17.

    I grew up as what might be described in Ms. Hoffman’s color palette as a purple boy – a little pink, a little blue. Maybe leaning towards the chartreuse. I liked some boy things, like camping out and making fires and shooting my brother’s B-B gun; but I never liked competitive sports, and I liked playing piano and watching modern dance a lot more.

    A few years ago, at an after-work bacchanal when a bunch of co-workers were confessing some pretty explicit sexual experiences, something inspired me to blurt out that I believed that most people are naturally a little bit bi — it’s really just a matter of where one falls on the spectrum. Co-worker #1 gave me a look of complete shock. Co-worker #2 (still a close friend) gave me a warm smile. To this day he still gives me a wet kiss (on the cheek) every time I see him. What matters to me is that he is a friend. I have never been *completely* sure that I would not want to test these waters (my girlfriend thinks it’s pretty cool that I described Javier Bardem as “gorgeous”), although I don’t think so. But this uncertainty doesn’t bother me. I am confident in the belief that some degree of ambiguity is normal — and healthy.

    I have spent some cash on therapy around all this, to be sure; but it was an accepting woman, not a shrink, who made me realize that this isn’t a problem. We are one of the most diverse nations on earth. And one of the last tolerant of differences. Go figure.

  2. Erika · Edit

    Thanks for the link to the Salon opinion piece – it was fantastic and had me nodding my head in agreement. When I was a young girl (elementary school age) I had a young friend who was a boy. I used to go over to his house and play long games of “let’s-pretend” in which we were war correspondents, or jungle explorers, or detective. I loved running hither and yon across the yard or the drainage culvert, exercising my imagination in ways that my girl friends didn’t always understand. One day, he confided in me that in addition to adventure games, he also loved Barbies. He was more than happy to come over to my house and play Barbies with me any time…on the condition I NEVER EVER told anyone else.

    Even back then, it made me sad. There we were, each playing games at the other person’s house that we didn’t have another outlet for – but the difference was, as the article said, that no one turns their nose up at a tomboy, but everyone would have teased or even beaten up my friend for playing Barbies. Kudos to the parents who are brave enough to pave the way for their sons to become the people they really want to be. Barbies or no Barbies.

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