I am committing the cardinal sin of replying to an OP without reading the entire thread. I did read most of them, but I'll do a penance later. :smile:
From your statement, I could extrapolate that since white men have always been a majority, and are not oppressed in America, that I as a black woman do not have to respect any of them?
I like men a lot. However, when they hit on me, it makes me incredibly uncomfortable, no matter how polite and charming they are about it. I just do not like that kind of attention from men unless I initiate it. So, when men I don't know flirt with me, I immediately feel defensive because I am out of my comfort zone, and on guard. I blow them off in the kindest way I can quickly fathom, and try to remove myself from the situation. A persistent man gets a second polite rejection. A third advance is always met with hostility. Always. I have had men follow me home, causing me to have to wander aimlessly around my neighborhood. So, I learned to nip that shit in the bud. I shut the guy down, and I shut him down hard. That's me when uncomfortable.
What do you do when people make you uncomfortable? Here, in this thread, it seems to me that you call them names, and belittle them. Hey, I do the same things often enough, but I'm pointing it out to you because you seem unaware.
For the record: It's pretty obvious that straight guys feel defensive when they are made uncomfortable by sensing that a large part of their self-identity is being called into question, other men do things like put the word straight in quotation marks, as if they cannot really be as they say, are told their orientation is righteous cause for discrimination, and then belligerently asked, "Aren't you secretly attracted to the people you're not attracted to? Hmm? Aren't you?" Gay men get defensive when treated that way too. In fact, I'm certain defensiveness is a pretty universal response to this kind of unjust treatment.
Additionally, the nature of the responses you got was definitely impacted by your word-choice. At best, you were careless when wording your OP; at worst, you saw your error, and decided to backpedal later in the thread rather than make amends. You caused (let's just call it) confusion when you asked your question, and then paired it with a disparaging remark about respecting a het guy's heterosexuality. In doing this, YOU are the one who linked attraction with sexuality. You have (perhaps accidentally) made it difficult for the reader to glean your "true" meaning. (See how those quote-marks make people feel?) Even though you cleared it up later by stating that you want to know about what further value a straight man might place on another man, you doomed yourself to preclusion from getting useful answers to that end by telling the objects of your curiosity that you had no respect for them as heteros. How do you possibly expect them to feel all warm and fuzzy, and open up to you about the nature of their intimate friendships with their bros?
Few of them will ever feel inspired to share with you on this basis alone. Your opening post instantly polarized the group into "Us" and "them".
