04-16-2019, 10:09 AM
I'm having a hard time finding a way to post in this thread in a way that wouldn't be more in the P&R fashion. The big thing to keep in mind with regards to this is that this message board is directly related to American football, specifically the NFL. Like it or not, the sport tends to be a petri dish within which characteristics often labeled within the "toxic masculinity" umbrella flourish. In addition to that, the team this board centers around is not one of the more "citified" types of teams like you would get with Seattle, LA, NY, or the like. What this means is that the fanbase is going to be a little less tuned into this sorts of things that are picked up on by those with a little more sensitivity to the topic.
I'm not on a high horse, here, because I'm guilty of it as well. I'd love to say I've never implied someone was homosexual in a way that implied it threatened their masculinity, but that's not true. I will say I try to do better about such things than I did when I was younger, but deep down I am a hillbilly that grew up around those sorts of things and it's a hard habit to get out of when it is ingrained in your culture. It is a part of toxic masculinity, which I know will be something a lot of people on this board will sneer at, but as someone engaged in the social sciences I am a bit more familiar with it than most. The idea that being gay, which thanks to stereotypes equates to femininity, means someone is weak is the root of the insults. That's what makes this all toxic, the idea that anything feminine is inherently weak.
These insults happen here on the regular. I'm not going to pull examples because I can think back to many exchanges, including those that involve people that would agree with my post here, that include these sorts of implications. I do hesitate, though, to say that this should be something monitored by the Admins and Mods on the boards. On the one hand, they do violate the CoC as they are intended to belittle other members as well as they are bigoted behaviors, on the other there is the situation of free expression as well as prevalence. The number of instances that come about on these boards is large, and unless you are sensitive to this only the most explicit occurrences will be noticed. So how can this effectively be monitored? Then there is also intention. It doesn't make it any less offensive if someone implies someone is homosexual as an insult and they do it jokingly or without any conscious negative thoughts towards the LGBT community, but they aren't being hateful towards the community which is really what the CoC is there to handle.
It's a tough situation to monitor for the staff. The best thing going forward would be for people to try to understand where the OP may be coming from, and keep this conversation in the back of your mind while reading posts on the boards. You will notice a lot more of this behavior if you are looking for it than you may have realized and it may help change your behavior a little bit for the positive.
I'm not on a high horse, here, because I'm guilty of it as well. I'd love to say I've never implied someone was homosexual in a way that implied it threatened their masculinity, but that's not true. I will say I try to do better about such things than I did when I was younger, but deep down I am a hillbilly that grew up around those sorts of things and it's a hard habit to get out of when it is ingrained in your culture. It is a part of toxic masculinity, which I know will be something a lot of people on this board will sneer at, but as someone engaged in the social sciences I am a bit more familiar with it than most. The idea that being gay, which thanks to stereotypes equates to femininity, means someone is weak is the root of the insults. That's what makes this all toxic, the idea that anything feminine is inherently weak.
These insults happen here on the regular. I'm not going to pull examples because I can think back to many exchanges, including those that involve people that would agree with my post here, that include these sorts of implications. I do hesitate, though, to say that this should be something monitored by the Admins and Mods on the boards. On the one hand, they do violate the CoC as they are intended to belittle other members as well as they are bigoted behaviors, on the other there is the situation of free expression as well as prevalence. The number of instances that come about on these boards is large, and unless you are sensitive to this only the most explicit occurrences will be noticed. So how can this effectively be monitored? Then there is also intention. It doesn't make it any less offensive if someone implies someone is homosexual as an insult and they do it jokingly or without any conscious negative thoughts towards the LGBT community, but they aren't being hateful towards the community which is really what the CoC is there to handle.
It's a tough situation to monitor for the staff. The best thing going forward would be for people to try to understand where the OP may be coming from, and keep this conversation in the back of your mind while reading posts on the boards. You will notice a lot more of this behavior if you are looking for it than you may have realized and it may help change your behavior a little bit for the positive.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
