bit of a different take, I think…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/jun/14/comedy.artsfeatures

We get sold that motherhood is the highest calling. We get it sold ad infinitum that heterosexuality is some magic attribute that makes you special, and then special to someone else.
There are plenty of broke down, can’t get a date…after five marriages why try again op sex relationships.
What does this woman want?
A medal, applause?

I, as an ever hetero am SO not impressed. Anybody that has to even TALK about how great their heterosexual life is…is trying to hard.
Most of us heteros don’t really have to think about it, practice or see arriving at it as a means to an end.

This woman is assuming somebody gives a crap. Wonder who THAT is.

However, I think it’s more likely the case posited by David Roberts: “Endless pontification just muddies the water.” My own experience (always subject to dismissal as “merely anecdotal”) is that there is a passive/agressive technique by which one can disrupt or derail a conversation by endlessly parsing “definitions of terms.” On long comment chains, such disruptors are generalized with the inelegant (yet apt) tag “trolls.”

Trolls lurk beneath bridges, out of the light, deep in the shadows, and sieze the unwary traveller. The area beneath a bridge (the poor having been banned from sleeping there) is usually muddied – it comes with the territory, which may also contain muck and some sod. Some Ould Sods may muddy the waters to a degree sufficient to be called “troll-worthy.”

It’s all about the labels. Post-gay is about not needing labels, but Peter and Randy are so entrenched in them that they turn post-gay into a way to obsess about them rather than “move beyond” them.

Come on XGW, you can do much better then this.

@Peter Ould
Emily seems to be doing just fine. I’ve always found it difficult to get a clear picture of your beliefs on this. From your post linked above:

I’m post-gay because I chose to leave “gay” behind. I chose to no longer accept “gay” as an explanation of who I was and instead to begin a journey away from it. I chose to do so because I was convinced from the Scriptures that “gay” wasn’t a suitable way to describe myself, that it wasn’t a valid way for a Christian to establish identity.

Then there is this video you made on the subject which again, doesn’t help me very much to understand you — quite the opposite. Endless pontification just muddies the water. Of this I am certain, you have taken a term which describes one thing, and re-purposed it on your own to mean another. Again, this is confusing, deceptive even, and people are going to call you on it.

Just because Peter Ould misappropriates existing terms, and gives them his own special meanings, and uses them to dog-whistle doesn’t mean you’re allowed to just come out and say so. That’s what Peter would call an ad hominem attack. Not allowed. So don’t do it you prejudiced, biased, irrational young lady.

Personally I think it’s much more simple.

Randy and Peter don’t often use “post-gay as a label for someone who tries to change their sexual orientation but is unsuccessful”. Only on occassion.

Rather, they better seem to use the term and associated self-referenced clap-trap such as “binary scale” and “vector” and previously “exgay” to discourage any clarity around claims to have changed sexual orientation. It’s all part and parcel of the artful confusion.

Specifically, as some for examples, in Randy’s case to avoid examination as to whether he has changed his sexual orientation? In Peter’s case, to avoid examination as to whether he was ever homosexual to begin with; let alone changed from that? One could almost begin to suspect that manipulating words is the least of their inventiveness. Doubly so given that the happy-clappy side of Christianity has long relied on miraculous claims of What Jesus Did For Me as a marketing tool to outsiders and a status symbol among insiders.

Then again, I didn’t suddenly become gay while watching MTV at age 23, with no prior warning at all, and suddenly become not-gay little more than a year later after merely hearing a brief sentence uttered.

So what would I know?

Well, I know this much… Jackie Clune was, is, and will be bisexual. She can decide to help or hinder aspects of her sexuality, but this says nothing about changing sexual orientation.

(“Leaving Lesbianism” — does that sound like a long-lost E. M. Forster novel to you too?)

Here’s an article she wrote in 2003, for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/jun/14/comedy.artsfeatures