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Guest
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I voted for Obama in 2008. At that time, I was just turning 21 years old. AOL Instant Messenger was still a good way to chat with friends, though MySpace was pretty popular; you didn’t have to use your real name to chat on social networking websites; nudes weren’t sent over a phone; and Payless was still a successful company. (In fact, I was working for them around this time!) I was enticed by Obama. He spoke of hope and change and offered a refreshing change from “the politics of the past,” as he called it. Race didn’t factor in my decision either positively or negatively; I felt that he cared for the common person, and so I felt he was most qualified for my vote. I would repeat this vote again four years later in 2012 – right around the time I moved out on my own into my first apartment. I still believed in that hope and I respected his leadership; he was an intelligent, articulate man who ran his office with a steady hand. (And before you accuse me of engaging in microaggressions by complimenting him in this manner, make sure you consider his predecessor and whether those same labels would apply to him.)
A lot happened in the four years after that. Obama clearly defined himself as someone who refused to denounce radical Islam by name. He used executive actions to selectively enforce immigration law – contradicting prior claims he made that he was not a king and could not simply create his own laws. He made a vague remark that Trayvon Martin could be his son shortly after he was killed when the investigation just barely started. When a Muslim American teenager was involved in a controversy for bringing in what was ostensibly a clock merged into a suitcase (which, in the words of Bill Maher, “looks exactly like a f**king bomb”), Obama sided against common sense and took the side of the child in order to virtue signal. Finally, Obama passed a healthcare reform law that didn’t have even one Republican vote – a law that, according to the Speaker of the House, needed to be passed so we could “see what’s in it.” Obama’s famous last words about the reform – “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” – would later cause him to earn a “Pants on Fire!” rating from PolitiFact after trying to backpedal once the law was actually passed.
I didn’t quite understand what was happening. It seemed to me like Obama was becoming a president who was focusing on only specific groups of people without regard to what was actually fair or right for everyone. Before this point, I never paid attention to conservative news outlets or the constant complaining about Obama “apology tours,” but after his behavior, I started to wonder if they were right. Wasn’t trying to score points with a specific group of people politics as usual? I began to associate Obama less and less with hope and change and more with an appeal to a group (or groups) of people I wasn’t a part of. With this, I began to give the other side – conservatives – more weight when considering their opinions and punditry.
Enter Trump in 2016. Trump denounced what he called political correctness; he spoke his mind without fear of losing his livelihood; he not only cared about America but actively showed pride as an American; and he never apologized. Trump even made it a point to wear the little flag pin! Obama apparently stopped doing that because he didn’t want to look imperialistic or whatever. I watched as Trump made statement after statement that would have thrown any other ordinary politician out of the race actually cause him to become stronger. Even when the Access Hollywood tape was released, he survived and carried on. His friends referred to it as “locker room” talk, and of course, you had your perfect little angels on the side who said that they had been in locker rooms plenty of times and never talked like he did. Thus began what would be the beginning of several well-known phenomenons today: virtue signaling, cancel culture, and deplatforming. Trump not only resisted all three, but usually would double down on what he had to say – saying it even louder and more conspicuously than before.
Trump’s behavior was cathartic for me. I had been in situations before growing up (and even in a few as an adult) where I was punished or faced punishment simply for having an unpopular opinion or daring to speak my mind. I’m not talking about anything inappropriate or discriminatory, either; I mean something as simple as criticizing someone else’s behavior, work, or personality. And here Trump was, speaking his mind like there was no tomorrow and not giving two craps about the consequences. I honestly saw part of myself – or rather, someone I wished I was – in him. He acted with courage and confidence. These qualities captured my heart and secured my vote in 2016. In the end, I didn’t vote for Trump because I thought he was a nice person or because I thought his personality was charming; I voted for him because I felt his love of our country was genuine and he was willing to say and do what others were too afraid to say and do.
On the other side, the left was increasing their use of !SHOCKWORDs: words like “racist,” “bigot,” “misogynist,” and “xenophobe” (previously a European term) were all being used until the people chanting them were blue in the face. Like the boy who cried wolf, however, these terms could only be used so many times before they gradually lost their meaning. The more the left used these words to shut down debate and civil discourse, the less it seemed like their opinions had substance and the more it seemed like Trump was exactly the man we needed to elect.
I had a chance to experience the vitriol and hatred of the left on Grindr during the 2016 election. I had one attractive guy from very far away who seemed interested in getting to know me but said he didn’t think conversation would work once he realized I was a Trump supporter. (Frankly, I’m surprised my body composition wasn’t what did me in first, and he actually was a young, thin, pretty guy – so there was probably something wrong with him anyway.) I explained to him that sometimes he will encounter people with opinions other than his own and that being able to work with people with a contrary opinion is an important part of maturity that he will gain with time. What really got me, though, was when I decided to put #trump2016 in my profile tag. I received messages from closet Trump supporters who were afraid to announce their presence due to the reactions of those who might disagree with them.
At the same time, I would also receive angry, vulgar messages from who didn’t like my political candidate. I even had this one guy who told me that “my god” isn’t real or some religious reference like that even though I’m agnostic. These blanket assumptions and hateful attitudes are strange coming from people who claim to be promoters of equality and diversity. It’s unfortunate that this doesn’t include diversity of thought.
Of course, social media as a whole has been in the toilet for some time now. Since Grindr got bought out by China, they’ve become a lot more inclusive – welcoming actual women as well as people who claim to be women. It’s unfortunate that transgender people are unable to accept themselves (their biological sex) for what they are, so they remedy the situation by declaring they are something they’re not and damage their bodies to try to become something they’re not. Then they express anger at everyone else around them if they fail to accept their new reality. Grindr used to be an app available for actual men to use, but I guess some of them don’t have penises now. It’s too bad because I consider this characteristic a pre-requisite to sexual interaction. I regret being out of alignment with Grindr’s new community standard, which is quick to ban what it considers hate speech but considers openly seeking to obtain or purchase meth (everyone knows what the capital T means) to be a healthy part of an inclusive community. To add hilarity to injury, some of the transgender folks are even seeking “sugar daddies.”
Really? Like, I’m not paying for NO dick. lol…
But, I guess that just shows that we’ve reached new lows as a society when political correctness has become so entrenched that we’re willing to treat sex as something that can be changed at will just to accommodate someone else’s mental shortfalls – and then hold ourselves accountable to making that mental shortfall the new normal. If the bar gets any lower, it’ll probably break from carrying my weight. (Mere reinforced steel alone won’t work, sorry.)
It gets even worse. On Facebook, for example, they censored a meme that said “there are only two genders” with one of those violent content warnings. You actually had to click past a warning that said that the picture might contain violent or disturbing imagery in order to read it. Meanwhile, when I reported a video clip that showed an actual beheading of a woman, Facebook thanked me for reporting content that “I THOUGHT” violated the community standards. The video clip was left up and wasn’t taken down until Facebook changed its mind several days later.
The mainstream news media isn’t much better. Take CNN, for example, which very rarely – if ever – had anything positive to say about Trump. Every time Trump said or did something, it was the end of democracy as we knew it. Whenever a white man or a white police officer wronged a black person, it became front-page news; but when it was the other way around, CNN and the other liberal news media outlets were strangely quiet. This was the same media that referred to riots as “fiery but mostly peaceful” on air as businesses were literally burning in the background. (I am not making this up and this is not a misquote or fabricated meme; search for “fiery but mostly peaceful” on Google.) This was the same media that criticized Trump for acting in a xenophobic and emotional manner when restricting travel from China in the earlier months of the outbreak. This is the same media that clutches its pearls and cries “authoritarian” when Trump criticizes the news media, which is apparently so flawless that it is above criticism. This is the same media that ships the superspreader label on Trump rallies but looks the other way when large groups of rioters gather in the roadways to block traffic.
The worst part of it is that no one in the mainstream news media really cared about cities burning until it became evident that it was bad for Democrats’ election prospects. Don Lemon mused on air to Chris Cuomo how it was starting to affect the polls and how the riots were really starting to stick. Gee, do you think this might be a good time to push forward an agenda of defunding the police? Hmmmm…
Maybe if our police weren’t constantly under siege, they wouldn’t sound so grateful to have armed groups of civilians wandering the streets to counter the riots. Perhaps people wouldn’t feel the need to take a stand and defend communities themselves. And that brings me to the next messed up part of the current state of affairs: Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year-old who shot three people in Kenosha – two of whom were seen ON VIDEO trying to attack him. Despite the fact that Rittenhouse was fleeing, the people chasing him still thought it would be a great idea to try to attack a child armed with a deadly weapon and take said deadly weapon away from him while he was on the ground and afraid for his life with an angry mob surrounding him.
How did the mainstream news media spin this? First, they asked President Trump if they wanted to denounce him as though an investigation had already been completed and the facts and the circumstances were clear. When President Trump pointed out that the reporters saw the same video he did and that the video showed Rittenhouse being violently attacked, PolitiFact had the nerve to put this claim on its website and mark it as “false.” Not “mostly true,” not “half true,” and not even “mostly false,” which would have acknowledged that there was an element of truth to what he said; no, they said it was just “false,” as in there was no accuracy to his statement whatsoever. PolitiFact’s explanation for this was that Trump’s “incendiary statements” left out critical context in that Rittenhouse had shot someone earlier that night – yet again, something that’s under investigation. PolitiFact edited their article after the fact to state that they weren’t making statements about whether or not he acted in self-defense; rather, they were rating the truth behind Trump’s description of events.
Okay, so what would have Trump needed to say in order to get a “true” rating? The video clearly showed that Rittenhouse was fleeing a large group of people. “Get his ass” and “beat him up” could clearly be heard in the video. The video shows one person trying to attack Rittenhouse with a skateboard and take his gun from him after he had tripped and fallen on the ground. It then shows another person raise his hands as though he was surrendering, then suddenly lower his arms as though he was about to rush Rittenhouse. This person was later revealed to have been carrying a firearm. Of course, you won’t hear it described that way from the media or PolitiFact; instead, they’ll just say that he “moved toward” Rittenhouse. Where’s the context on that? Then CNN hosted the alleged victim later on to build sympathy with the audience as though he was the wrong who was wronged. You’re confronting a frightened boy who is on the ground and just shot someone, you acted like you weren’t a threat, then you acted in what most people with a brain stem would consider an aggressive manner. What did you think was going to happen? It would have been great if Biden/Harris had included common sense as part of their platform since it seems to be missing from a lot of people’s minds lately.
Oh well, at least we can be reasonably confident that the people shot were white. After all, had they been black, you would’ve heard the media refer to both Rittenhouse and those shot by race; “white teenager shoots black man” would’ve been a headline the media would have played to the hilt, as though there’s always an element of racism involved whenever the person committing a shooting happens to be a different race than the person shot.
And you know what, I’m ready to have an honest conversation about race as well: I’m totally over it. As far as I’m concerned, the key takeaways from the Black Lives Matter movement are that black lives matter only when it’s white police officers ending them. Many situations in the news lately that involved a black person being shot started because of the actions of that black person. I don’t care if you use a !SHOCKWORD to describe your angst and disgust over this statement; it’s the truth.
George Floyd, who apparently complained that he couldn’t breathe before he was even taken to the ground: resisted arrest. Eric Garner: resisted arrest. Michael Brown: attacked a police officer during a traffic stop. Jacob Blake: resisted arrest, then made a sudden movement to reach into a vehicle later found to have a knife. Sean Monterrosa: fled, then stopped to reach for an unidentified object in his pants that was later revealed to be a hammer. Jamel Floyd: barricaded himself in his cell and damaged jail property. Rayshard Brooks: resisted arrest with violence, stole an officer’s taser, fled, and then turned around and fired the officer’s own taser at the officer while fleeing!
It’s amazing how people want to band together as a group when they seek justice and equality; but, when it comes time to take responsibility for actions and behavior, then they’re all individuals and you’re racist for trying to lump them all together into one group. It doesn’t work both ways. There’s no disputing that racism still exists and that most of us have some degree of bias in how we perceive and interact with other people. As much as they have been mistreated by society, though, I have to ask whether black people are contributing to the problem.
Stereotypes always have an element of truth to them, no matter how biased or slanted they may be. Gay people, for example, were (and sometimes still are) stereotyped as AIDS-riddled degenerates.
Well, guess what kind of porn is trending in the gay community more today than it did ten years ago? Bareback sex. And, more and more profiles on gay dating websites (and apps, like Grindr) have people who indicate that they use condoms “when appropriate” when they aren’t saying they prefer bareback outright. PreP seems to be creating this false sense of security that condoms are a dated safeguard that still belong in the early new millennium. At the same time, “Party ‘n Play” is becoming more and more popular. Bareback habits aside, drug use – especially when it involves needles – can also lend itself to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. So, it’s unfair to stereotype all gay people as (as my British friends would say) “lepers,” yet here they are, going out of their way to desperately prove that there’s truth to the stereotype.
... continued ...
I voted for Obama in 2008. At that time, I was just turning 21 years old. AOL Instant Messenger was still a good way to chat with friends, though MySpace was pretty popular; you didn’t have to use your real name to chat on social networking websites; nudes weren’t sent over a phone; and Payless was still a successful company. (In fact, I was working for them around this time!) I was enticed by Obama. He spoke of hope and change and offered a refreshing change from “the politics of the past,” as he called it. Race didn’t factor in my decision either positively or negatively; I felt that he cared for the common person, and so I felt he was most qualified for my vote. I would repeat this vote again four years later in 2012 – right around the time I moved out on my own into my first apartment. I still believed in that hope and I respected his leadership; he was an intelligent, articulate man who ran his office with a steady hand. (And before you accuse me of engaging in microaggressions by complimenting him in this manner, make sure you consider his predecessor and whether those same labels would apply to him.)
A lot happened in the four years after that. Obama clearly defined himself as someone who refused to denounce radical Islam by name. He used executive actions to selectively enforce immigration law – contradicting prior claims he made that he was not a king and could not simply create his own laws. He made a vague remark that Trayvon Martin could be his son shortly after he was killed when the investigation just barely started. When a Muslim American teenager was involved in a controversy for bringing in what was ostensibly a clock merged into a suitcase (which, in the words of Bill Maher, “looks exactly like a f**king bomb”), Obama sided against common sense and took the side of the child in order to virtue signal. Finally, Obama passed a healthcare reform law that didn’t have even one Republican vote – a law that, according to the Speaker of the House, needed to be passed so we could “see what’s in it.” Obama’s famous last words about the reform – “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” – would later cause him to earn a “Pants on Fire!” rating from PolitiFact after trying to backpedal once the law was actually passed.
I didn’t quite understand what was happening. It seemed to me like Obama was becoming a president who was focusing on only specific groups of people without regard to what was actually fair or right for everyone. Before this point, I never paid attention to conservative news outlets or the constant complaining about Obama “apology tours,” but after his behavior, I started to wonder if they were right. Wasn’t trying to score points with a specific group of people politics as usual? I began to associate Obama less and less with hope and change and more with an appeal to a group (or groups) of people I wasn’t a part of. With this, I began to give the other side – conservatives – more weight when considering their opinions and punditry.
Enter Trump in 2016. Trump denounced what he called political correctness; he spoke his mind without fear of losing his livelihood; he not only cared about America but actively showed pride as an American; and he never apologized. Trump even made it a point to wear the little flag pin! Obama apparently stopped doing that because he didn’t want to look imperialistic or whatever. I watched as Trump made statement after statement that would have thrown any other ordinary politician out of the race actually cause him to become stronger. Even when the Access Hollywood tape was released, he survived and carried on. His friends referred to it as “locker room” talk, and of course, you had your perfect little angels on the side who said that they had been in locker rooms plenty of times and never talked like he did. Thus began what would be the beginning of several well-known phenomenons today: virtue signaling, cancel culture, and deplatforming. Trump not only resisted all three, but usually would double down on what he had to say – saying it even louder and more conspicuously than before.
Trump’s behavior was cathartic for me. I had been in situations before growing up (and even in a few as an adult) where I was punished or faced punishment simply for having an unpopular opinion or daring to speak my mind. I’m not talking about anything inappropriate or discriminatory, either; I mean something as simple as criticizing someone else’s behavior, work, or personality. And here Trump was, speaking his mind like there was no tomorrow and not giving two craps about the consequences. I honestly saw part of myself – or rather, someone I wished I was – in him. He acted with courage and confidence. These qualities captured my heart and secured my vote in 2016. In the end, I didn’t vote for Trump because I thought he was a nice person or because I thought his personality was charming; I voted for him because I felt his love of our country was genuine and he was willing to say and do what others were too afraid to say and do.
On the other side, the left was increasing their use of !SHOCKWORDs: words like “racist,” “bigot,” “misogynist,” and “xenophobe” (previously a European term) were all being used until the people chanting them were blue in the face. Like the boy who cried wolf, however, these terms could only be used so many times before they gradually lost their meaning. The more the left used these words to shut down debate and civil discourse, the less it seemed like their opinions had substance and the more it seemed like Trump was exactly the man we needed to elect.
I had a chance to experience the vitriol and hatred of the left on Grindr during the 2016 election. I had one attractive guy from very far away who seemed interested in getting to know me but said he didn’t think conversation would work once he realized I was a Trump supporter. (Frankly, I’m surprised my body composition wasn’t what did me in first, and he actually was a young, thin, pretty guy – so there was probably something wrong with him anyway.) I explained to him that sometimes he will encounter people with opinions other than his own and that being able to work with people with a contrary opinion is an important part of maturity that he will gain with time. What really got me, though, was when I decided to put #trump2016 in my profile tag. I received messages from closet Trump supporters who were afraid to announce their presence due to the reactions of those who might disagree with them.
At the same time, I would also receive angry, vulgar messages from who didn’t like my political candidate. I even had this one guy who told me that “my god” isn’t real or some religious reference like that even though I’m agnostic. These blanket assumptions and hateful attitudes are strange coming from people who claim to be promoters of equality and diversity. It’s unfortunate that this doesn’t include diversity of thought.
Of course, social media as a whole has been in the toilet for some time now. Since Grindr got bought out by China, they’ve become a lot more inclusive – welcoming actual women as well as people who claim to be women. It’s unfortunate that transgender people are unable to accept themselves (their biological sex) for what they are, so they remedy the situation by declaring they are something they’re not and damage their bodies to try to become something they’re not. Then they express anger at everyone else around them if they fail to accept their new reality. Grindr used to be an app available for actual men to use, but I guess some of them don’t have penises now. It’s too bad because I consider this characteristic a pre-requisite to sexual interaction. I regret being out of alignment with Grindr’s new community standard, which is quick to ban what it considers hate speech but considers openly seeking to obtain or purchase meth (everyone knows what the capital T means) to be a healthy part of an inclusive community. To add hilarity to injury, some of the transgender folks are even seeking “sugar daddies.”
Really? Like, I’m not paying for NO dick. lol…
But, I guess that just shows that we’ve reached new lows as a society when political correctness has become so entrenched that we’re willing to treat sex as something that can be changed at will just to accommodate someone else’s mental shortfalls – and then hold ourselves accountable to making that mental shortfall the new normal. If the bar gets any lower, it’ll probably break from carrying my weight. (Mere reinforced steel alone won’t work, sorry.)
It gets even worse. On Facebook, for example, they censored a meme that said “there are only two genders” with one of those violent content warnings. You actually had to click past a warning that said that the picture might contain violent or disturbing imagery in order to read it. Meanwhile, when I reported a video clip that showed an actual beheading of a woman, Facebook thanked me for reporting content that “I THOUGHT” violated the community standards. The video clip was left up and wasn’t taken down until Facebook changed its mind several days later.
The mainstream news media isn’t much better. Take CNN, for example, which very rarely – if ever – had anything positive to say about Trump. Every time Trump said or did something, it was the end of democracy as we knew it. Whenever a white man or a white police officer wronged a black person, it became front-page news; but when it was the other way around, CNN and the other liberal news media outlets were strangely quiet. This was the same media that referred to riots as “fiery but mostly peaceful” on air as businesses were literally burning in the background. (I am not making this up and this is not a misquote or fabricated meme; search for “fiery but mostly peaceful” on Google.) This was the same media that criticized Trump for acting in a xenophobic and emotional manner when restricting travel from China in the earlier months of the outbreak. This is the same media that clutches its pearls and cries “authoritarian” when Trump criticizes the news media, which is apparently so flawless that it is above criticism. This is the same media that ships the superspreader label on Trump rallies but looks the other way when large groups of rioters gather in the roadways to block traffic.
The worst part of it is that no one in the mainstream news media really cared about cities burning until it became evident that it was bad for Democrats’ election prospects. Don Lemon mused on air to Chris Cuomo how it was starting to affect the polls and how the riots were really starting to stick. Gee, do you think this might be a good time to push forward an agenda of defunding the police? Hmmmm…
Maybe if our police weren’t constantly under siege, they wouldn’t sound so grateful to have armed groups of civilians wandering the streets to counter the riots. Perhaps people wouldn’t feel the need to take a stand and defend communities themselves. And that brings me to the next messed up part of the current state of affairs: Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year-old who shot three people in Kenosha – two of whom were seen ON VIDEO trying to attack him. Despite the fact that Rittenhouse was fleeing, the people chasing him still thought it would be a great idea to try to attack a child armed with a deadly weapon and take said deadly weapon away from him while he was on the ground and afraid for his life with an angry mob surrounding him.
How did the mainstream news media spin this? First, they asked President Trump if they wanted to denounce him as though an investigation had already been completed and the facts and the circumstances were clear. When President Trump pointed out that the reporters saw the same video he did and that the video showed Rittenhouse being violently attacked, PolitiFact had the nerve to put this claim on its website and mark it as “false.” Not “mostly true,” not “half true,” and not even “mostly false,” which would have acknowledged that there was an element of truth to what he said; no, they said it was just “false,” as in there was no accuracy to his statement whatsoever. PolitiFact’s explanation for this was that Trump’s “incendiary statements” left out critical context in that Rittenhouse had shot someone earlier that night – yet again, something that’s under investigation. PolitiFact edited their article after the fact to state that they weren’t making statements about whether or not he acted in self-defense; rather, they were rating the truth behind Trump’s description of events.
Okay, so what would have Trump needed to say in order to get a “true” rating? The video clearly showed that Rittenhouse was fleeing a large group of people. “Get his ass” and “beat him up” could clearly be heard in the video. The video shows one person trying to attack Rittenhouse with a skateboard and take his gun from him after he had tripped and fallen on the ground. It then shows another person raise his hands as though he was surrendering, then suddenly lower his arms as though he was about to rush Rittenhouse. This person was later revealed to have been carrying a firearm. Of course, you won’t hear it described that way from the media or PolitiFact; instead, they’ll just say that he “moved toward” Rittenhouse. Where’s the context on that? Then CNN hosted the alleged victim later on to build sympathy with the audience as though he was the wrong who was wronged. You’re confronting a frightened boy who is on the ground and just shot someone, you acted like you weren’t a threat, then you acted in what most people with a brain stem would consider an aggressive manner. What did you think was going to happen? It would have been great if Biden/Harris had included common sense as part of their platform since it seems to be missing from a lot of people’s minds lately.
Oh well, at least we can be reasonably confident that the people shot were white. After all, had they been black, you would’ve heard the media refer to both Rittenhouse and those shot by race; “white teenager shoots black man” would’ve been a headline the media would have played to the hilt, as though there’s always an element of racism involved whenever the person committing a shooting happens to be a different race than the person shot.
And you know what, I’m ready to have an honest conversation about race as well: I’m totally over it. As far as I’m concerned, the key takeaways from the Black Lives Matter movement are that black lives matter only when it’s white police officers ending them. Many situations in the news lately that involved a black person being shot started because of the actions of that black person. I don’t care if you use a !SHOCKWORD to describe your angst and disgust over this statement; it’s the truth.
George Floyd, who apparently complained that he couldn’t breathe before he was even taken to the ground: resisted arrest. Eric Garner: resisted arrest. Michael Brown: attacked a police officer during a traffic stop. Jacob Blake: resisted arrest, then made a sudden movement to reach into a vehicle later found to have a knife. Sean Monterrosa: fled, then stopped to reach for an unidentified object in his pants that was later revealed to be a hammer. Jamel Floyd: barricaded himself in his cell and damaged jail property. Rayshard Brooks: resisted arrest with violence, stole an officer’s taser, fled, and then turned around and fired the officer’s own taser at the officer while fleeing!
It’s amazing how people want to band together as a group when they seek justice and equality; but, when it comes time to take responsibility for actions and behavior, then they’re all individuals and you’re racist for trying to lump them all together into one group. It doesn’t work both ways. There’s no disputing that racism still exists and that most of us have some degree of bias in how we perceive and interact with other people. As much as they have been mistreated by society, though, I have to ask whether black people are contributing to the problem.
Stereotypes always have an element of truth to them, no matter how biased or slanted they may be. Gay people, for example, were (and sometimes still are) stereotyped as AIDS-riddled degenerates.
Well, guess what kind of porn is trending in the gay community more today than it did ten years ago? Bareback sex. And, more and more profiles on gay dating websites (and apps, like Grindr) have people who indicate that they use condoms “when appropriate” when they aren’t saying they prefer bareback outright. PreP seems to be creating this false sense of security that condoms are a dated safeguard that still belong in the early new millennium. At the same time, “Party ‘n Play” is becoming more and more popular. Bareback habits aside, drug use – especially when it involves needles – can also lend itself to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. So, it’s unfair to stereotype all gay people as (as my British friends would say) “lepers,” yet here they are, going out of their way to desperately prove that there’s truth to the stereotype.
... continued ...