PJMcGee said:

IanRG said:

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We know that he rebuffed all advances from gay men by saying things like "We can friends but ....

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I am not making things up, I am making an interpretation based on the whole of the song and the specific religious analogies Prince wrote - Prince referenced that he has done his time in the wilderness (as did Jesus and John) and that he is willing and able to lay everything on the table (as did Jesus and John) and that unbelievers will fear just how resolved he is to do this (as did those who did not believe as Jesus and John did). You mentioned the Gospel influences. Whilst this is just an interpretation, it matches Prince's openly stated beliefs and not on bits that could show a hidden bi-sexuality that there simply is no evidence of.

[Edited 9/2/22 18:43pm]

We don't know that he rebuffed all advances, any more than we know that he never ate meat. You've really got one line about the wilderness, and from that you've spun John the Baptist and Jesus and his cross. I think my interpretation is less of a stretch. I mean, you conceded that the kings and queens was a reference to his feminine side. How the hell does that fit in with your John and your Jesus? And I think you know I was referring to gospel music, not capital-G Gospel.

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Physician, heal thyself.

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We absolutely know of not one single time he did NOT rebuff an advance by a gay man - and we know many have looked for that smoking gun to no avail.

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No, I do not have just one reference. I have the whole of the words of the song from start to finish without having to restrict this to just a few lines. Hence your interpretation is nothing but an improbable stretch - he acted on his commitment to religion and never (as far as we know) on any bisexuality. The only reference you imagine is that it refers to the king cards and some of the queen cards.

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Yes, I absolutely understand that you meant gospel music - as did I. It was me who reflected that the song is not merely in gospel music style but it also draws on common Gospel themes in gospel music. To expand on this:

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1: The title is "Willing and Able". Following Mary having to first be willing to be the Mother of Jesus, Christians are called to be willing and able to answer God's call. Being open to God's call is a common theme in many gospel songs. Most of the lines of the song is about Prince being willing and able.

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2: The second and third line introduces that the person is ready to put their cards on the table and they have been holding back from doing this for far too long. This can mean many different things but one of these is the belief that Prince shared as a Christian that we are called to turn from being reluctant to fully commit (put all cards on the table) but many cannot - in line with the Gospel parable of the person not willing or able to commit to following Christ. There are many gospel songs that are to encourage and bolster people's commitment to be this strong and complete

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3: The next 6 lines are about how he moved from being lost in the wilderness to not just be willing but strong, able and prepared to reach his destination without resting. This is much more analogous to the common gospel them of a full commitment to the lifelong struggle to be strong, willing and able to answer God's call - to keep the faith and seek to always evangelise and live their faith than any potential coming out as bi.

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4: The next lines are the 4 you limited yourself to. They repeat that he is prepared to put everything on the table as is in Point 2: - to fully commit. It expands on this to all his good aspects, mostly male but it includes him embracing his feminine side and concludes that his commitment knows no bounds. Many Gospel songs sing about people being fully and wholly committed to all that they are to their faith.

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5: The next 3 lines repeat the theme in Point 2: that this is a change from his previous holding back to being fully committed. So again it could mean any number of things but it is very unlikely that he is committing to being bi. It is much more like Christians seeking to be born again.

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6: The next 6 lines reference the results of this is that unbelievers will fear him and he will be doing good with all his cards. This links to concepts of belief, not sexuality or other new commitments. When this is read in the context of the musical style, the reference to the wilderness, the need to fully, willingly and strongly committed to being able to act in accordance with this change, it is to commit to his Christian beliefs and that he will do it is with plenty good and strong cards.

PJMcGee said:

IanRG said:

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The whole song is consecutive - I rely on the whole song, not nonconsecutive bits. Thank you

I gave you some lines that followed consecutively and logically. There's some kings in my deck and a queen or two So you know there ain't nothin', Nothin' that I wouldn't do You said those last two lines were not about the line preceding (which was about his feminine side), but some other stuff he mentioned elsewhere. Yeah, that's unsustainable, bro.

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This wrong. I never said the last two lines were not about the preceding one - I said that in the context of the song that they are a reference to how willing and able he is. Your unsustainable argument is that his full committment was to just play the kings and queens. Just because the selective edits to the song that you made left a small section of the song intact does not mean that your conclusion based on a partial reading of the whole song is more logical than a full reading of the same.

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And your opinion is all based on you wanting to find that Prince was bi - When you know there is no evidence of this.

[Edited 9/3/22 15:42pm]

PJMcGee said:

IanRG said:

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It was not me who came up with a clearly unsustainable interpretation. I have never said my interpretation is the only intepretation or even right. It could have been about anything Prince strongly thought at this stage in his life - so strong he was prepared to do somerthing about it. We know he acted on his religious beliefs, we do not know of any time he acted on an imagined bisexuality.

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To defend your interpretation you called my interpretation illogical (pot v Kettle much) because I considered the whole of the song in context and each section consecutively.

Quote: (1) this is the only logical way to interpret the song. Also quote: (2) I have never said my interpretation is the only intepretation or even right.

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You are confusing a statement about a logical method (1) with a statement about meanings and conclusions (2):

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(1) That was in reference to the only logical way to interpret a song that is not a collection of random songs is to base your interpretation on the whole of the song, not just a few lines out of context. This was a defense against you imagining that your method of only looking at few lines in the song is the logical way to analyse the meaning the song - I stand by my statement that your method is not logical and the only logical method is to analyse the whole of the song.

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(2) This is not inconsistent with the above. That analysing the whole of song may not result in only one conclusive interpretation, or even a right conclusion of the meaning of a song's lyrics is just a fact of life. However, if you choose to only consider a few lines of song for your interpretation of the song, then you are far, far more likely to miss the meaning of the song.

[Edited 9/2/22 21:39pm]

RJOrion said:

Prince could say in a song, "I love 14 inches of hard man meat slamming down into my prostate...", and IanRG would say, "thats not gay or bisexual, Prince was making a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment"...its hilarious that IanRG refuses to believe that Prince was either acting gay for pay, or Prince was an actual gay/bisexual person who never publicly acknowledged it...there are no other choices...he was one or the other. [Edited 9/3/22 5:29am]

I personally believe it was the "acting gay for pay". Gay he definitely wasn't because he was clearly attracted to women, but was he also attracted to men making him bisexual ? Only he would know but then again we would have heard stories. Freddie Mercury, Bowie were openly bisexual and it didn't hurt their image.

RJOrion said:

Prince could say in a song, "I love 14 inches of hard man meat slamming down into my prostate...", and IanRG would say, "thats not gay or bisexual, Prince was making a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment"...its hilarious that IanRG refuses to believe that Prince was either acting gay for pay, or Prince was an actual gay/bisexual person who never publicly acknowledged it...there are no other choices...he was one or the other. [Edited 9/3/22 5:29am]

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Bullshit from start to finish.

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Prince never sang anything like that and if he did, it is completely ridiculous, disengenuous and wrong for you say I would dismiss this. Every song you put up I merely showed that in the words when it was song he sang, the pronoun or name of the other person was exclusively female or for a couple there was no pronoun or name was present for either participant - the only time the length of penis was mentioned was for a song for Vanity6 - it may surprise you but they were female.

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What no one has demonstrated is any evidence that Prince was more influenced by gay men in Minneapolis than by glam rockers, Funkadelic/Parliament, Little Richard, Bowie, the general androgyny in seventies clothing and styles, and in Prince's own words that he did his style because the girls loved it and the boys hated it.

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There really is no speculation TODAY on Prince's sexuality except from homophobes who confuse being seen as a sissy or pansie as being gay as in LoveGalour's checklist. We would know TODAY if Prince was gay or bi, but we know of no evidence. We know TODAY he was not gay for pay, his style was in his own words because the girls loved it - given his size and looks he never could pretend to be a jock and the alternative to not taking some of the androgynous aethetic of artists before and around him would be to have a small petite music nerd look and we would not be talking about him here today if he did that.

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Thank you RJOrion for advising on the need for a minor clarifying edit

[Edited 9/3/22 15:49pm]

IanRG said:

RJOrion said:

Prince could say in a song, "I love 14 inches of hard man meat slamming down into my prostate...", and IanRG would say, "thats not gay or bisexual, Prince was making a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment"...its hilarious that IanRG refuses to believe that Prince was either acting gay for pay, or Prince was an actual gay/bisexual person who never publicly acknowledged it...there are no other choices...he was one or the other. [Edited 9/3/22 5:29am]

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Bullshit from start to finish.

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What no one has demonstrated is any evidence that Prince was more influenced by gay men in Minneapolis than by glam rockers, Funkadelic/Parliament, Little Richard, Bowie, the general androgyny in seventies clothing and styles, and in Prince's own words that he did his style because the girls loved it and the boys hated it.

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Some of his fashion for Sign o' the Times movie and pictures were indeed inspired by Parliament Funkadelic.

paisleyparkgirl said:

RJOrion said:

Prince could say in a song, "I love 14 inches of hard man meat slamming down into my prostate...", and IanRG would say, "thats not gay or bisexual, Prince was making a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment"...its hilarious that IanRG refuses to believe that Prince was either acting gay for pay, or Prince was an actual gay/bisexual person who never publicly acknowledged it...there are no other choices...he was one or the other. [Edited 9/3/22 5:29am]

I personally believe it was the "acting gay for pay". Gay he definitely wasn't because he was clearly attracted to women, but was he also attracted to men making him bisexual ? Only he would know but then again we would have heard stories. Freddie Mercury, Bowie were openly bisexual and it didn't hurt their image.

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Yes, gay he definitely was not.

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Yes, there is no smoking gun about him being attracted to a man.

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Freddie was gay (with one special relationship with a woman that most likely platonic).

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Bowie openly stated early in his career that he was gay, not just bi - It was a false statement and ultimately he regretted making it. Apparently even his bisexuality was just a youthful fling and he was otherwise straight.

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The point here is as you say, even with this flip flopping it never hurt Bowie's career. Given how many people here still hang to a perhaps, perhaps wishful thinking or confuse flamboyance or androgyny with gayness, had Prince come out as gay or bi, it would not hurt his image.

RJOrion said:

IanRG Said: There really is no speculation on Prince's sexuality except from homophobes __________________________________ Lol...youre delusional...the man himself had felt the need to address the "speculation" on multiple songs and interviews...im gonna leave you alone because its clear you are not of sound mind nor logic...bless your heart

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I missed out a word. What I meant was "There really is no speculation today on Prince's sexuality except from homophobes".

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Thank you for pointing out my inadvertent error - I will correct it - Something you should consider, given how many more errors you have made.

[Edited 9/3/22 15:49pm]

RJOrion said:

RJOrion said:

And by the way, all those lyrics i posted, was just me purposely mocking your overzealousness to protect and defend Prince's unfailing, unflinching and unbending masculinity despite all of Prince's open and eager feminity and controversial and even "suspect" lyrics throughout most of his public career...the fact that you took it so serious as to feel compelled to explain away in emotional detail, every lyric, and any perceived femininity or maybe even bi or homosexuality displayed by Prince, is pure comedy...but i will concede, youre desire to defend Prince's manhood by any means necessary, gotta count for something, right?

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It is hardly surprising that your intent was only to mock. Mocking normally says far more about the person doing the mocking than the person they are trying to mock.

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Case in point:

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It is hardly surprising that given your misinterpretation of Prince's lyrics is coupled with you not understanding my position - I was never defending anyone's manhood because I understand that all gay men have masculinity and manhood. You don't loose your manhood or masculinity just because of your sexual preference. Hence, I argued that the gay checklist was a farce throughout this thread. I even said above (contrary to your false claim of me being unfailing, unflinching and unbending) that I can name many gay men who are more macho than me, and that I would not care if it was found that Prince was gay or bi because I am into his music. I did not turn from Queen when it was revealed that 3 of them were not gay, I did not turn from George Michael when it was revealed that he was gay. I did not turn from Bowie in any of his different phases. Just as you have to imagine, contrary to the evidence that perhaps, perhaps Prince could have been gay or bi, you have to imagine contrary to the evidence things about people that disagree with you. All I have done is point out to the evidence that there is no evidence that Prince was anything but what he repeatedly said he was. That he loved and hated controversy and provoking people but ultimately he did what he did to stand out because he learned from a young age that the girls loved it and the boys, especially those who mock people, hated it.

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I mean, after all, you just demonstrated that you did not understand the difference between 'there is' and 'there was' and I had to clarify what I said to 'there is TODAY' to help you understand English, just as I had to point out Vanity6, she, her and Martha etc are women.

LoveGalore said:

RJOrion said:

And by the way, all those lyrics i posted, was just me purposely mocking your overzealousness to protect and defend Prince's unfailing, unflinching and unbending masculinity despite all of Prince's open and eager feminity and controversial and even "suspect" lyrics throughout most of his public career...the fact that you took it so serious as to feel compelled to explain away in emotional detail, every lyric, and any perceived femininity or maybe even bi or homosexuality displayed by Prince, is pure comedy...but i will concede, youre desire to defend Prince's manhood by any means necessary, gotta count for something, right?

Yount!

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So you agree with RJOrion that gay men have no maculinity or manhood? Or only gay men can be open to their feminine side - Or you just enjoy trolling posts to mock people?

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

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So you agree with RJOrion that gay men have no maculinity or manhood? Or only gay men can be open to their feminine side - Or you just enjoy trolling posts to mock people?

It's just fun to see other people vivisect your fragile masculinity.

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Correction: As you are the author of the homophobic gay checklist and I am the one defending men whether they are gay, bi, effeminate, masculine, macho etc. without the need seek to poke fun or mocking, deflecting, or by making stereotype based assumptions, it is not my fragility that was ever triggered.

[Edited 9/3/22 17:28pm]

as far as anyone knows, prince was NOT gay. we dont know of any male lovers, partners. but prince did enjoy acting as if he might be. this idea that just cos a man is effeminate or dresses or talks a certain way it doesnt mean he is gay is right, but in the heterosexual world we live in, most ppl do assume or at least wonder if a man is straight if he exhibits these traits. prince knew that. we all knew that. we still know (ie think) that if we are being honest. and prince def went to pains in later years to stress his conventionality more (eg note how princes stage patter voice on later tours for example is so different to the voice on 80s tours). you cant just draw a clean line between these things and say no one in their right mind would think prince was gay. prince was quite happily inviting it. and then quite happily refuting it. its all part of the game he was playing. he WANTED ppl to think he might be gay or bisexual. eg - "Have you ever wanted to play with someone so much You'd take any one boy or girl?" its hardly a stretch. whether he actually acted on these things, or saw men in that way, who knows. but even if he didnt, he didnt mind appearing as if he might. so maybe he was really just challenging straight-men norms, and nothing else, but in doing that, he was obv drawing on what gay men were doing already.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

you cant just draw a clean line between these things and say no one in their right mind would think prince was gay. prince was quite happily inviting it. and then quite happily refuting it.

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Yes, you can say that no one in their right mind on a prince fan website in 2022 would think that Prince was gay.

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All you need to do is listen to him in the words of his songs and in interviews and in articles by people who spoke to him or the people he worked with, and look at all his partners and proteges. And finally to not just assume that Prince was lying to us all these years when he said why he did what he did.

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Against this what does anyone have after 13 pages - He was comfortable with his feminine side, people can take lyrics out of context and he both enjoyed and hated creating controversy and ambiguities to challenge or provoke his audience.

doubt anyone thinks he was gay, but thinking he might have been bi is more likely.

fwiw, i dont think he was.

but he certainly didnt mind making people wonder about all sorts of things.

you are choosing to look at it in a very literal way, youre trying to be forensic, taking him at his word, when taking prince at his word was not often worth the effort. he wasnt exactly someone who was the clearest, most reliable communicator. he loved sowing 'alternative facts'. no wonder he was so into conspiracy theories.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

doubt anyone thinks he was gay, but thinking he might have been bi is more likely.

fwiw, i dont think he was.

but he certainly didnt mind making people wonder about all sorts of things.

you are choosing to look at it in a very literal way, youre trying to be forensic, taking him at his word, when taking prince at his word was not often worth the effort. he wasnt exactly someone who was the clearest, most reliable communicator. he loved sowing 'alternative facts'. no wonder he was so into conspiracy theories.

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The difference is we know his conspiracies from his own words. We know he never had a problem expressing himself on many, many topics. We know when he addressed this topic it was always without any ambiguity that he was not into men. It is literal because it is based on what was actually said over and over and this matches with all that is known about a life without any contradictory evidence despite very public and intense analysis over decades to find something that has never been found - something looked for by those who hated him and those with the high degree of wishful thinking we still see here.

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We know that there is no known relationship with any man or even a fling, not even a hint. To be actively bi or gay there needs to be such an event - otherwise all people here are doing is fantasising about what could be in another person's mind but never acted upon, spoken about or hinted at. And all based on wishful thinking, mistaking Prince being open to his feminine side, and Prince both enjoying and hating controversy in how he played his audience. It is not just reliant on what he said, it is that this completely matches all that we know about his well studied life.

what you overlook is that prince, well until a certain point in his career, wanted people to project anything and everything onto him. to actually nail him down is the most unprince-like thing you can do. so youre kind of like a killjoy as you keep hammering the point that he never alluded to any physical relations with men lol. i mean, sure he denied it. but he didnt exactly do anything to STOP speculation, well not until many years later.

so sure, he prob never so much as kissed the cheek of a man. he obv didnt really care for gays, really (i mean would he have sung that line about 'a fag' in blanche if he did?), he just liked, or wanted to appear a little sexually ambiguous, which was cool, and daring at the time. so id say that yes, to go back to the original post, he did appropriate a gay sensibility (which had filtered through pop music thanks to bowie, lou reed, etc etc) without paying any dues to actual gays. but it was the 80s. this is what male popstars did. prince took the new envelope you were meant to push in pop music, and took it to some pretty cool places.

so regardless of whether there is proof of him banging guys or not, he didnt want to completely make ppl rule out that speculation either.

and this is important, regardless of whether he shared a bed with any guys or not.

just in case i didnt post this earlier -

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joevogel/2018/05/06/was-princes-androgyny-about-identity-or-branding/?sh=6aa6b906450a

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

what you overlook is that prince, well until a certain point in his career, wanted people to project anything and everything onto him. to actually nail him down is the most unprince-like thing you can do. so youre kind of like a killjoy as you keep hammering the point that he never alluded to any physical relations with men lol. i mean, sure he denied it. but he didnt exactly do anything to STOP speculation, well not until many years later.

so sure, he prob never so much as kissed the cheek of a man. he obv didnt really care for gays, really (i mean would he have sung that line about 'a fag' in blanche if he did?), he just liked, or wanted to appear a little sexually ambiguous, which was cool, and daring at the time. so id say that yes, to go back to the original post, he did appropriate a gay sensibility (which had filtered through pop music thanks to bowie, lou reed, etc etc) without paying any dues to actual gays. but it was the 80s. this is what male popstars did. prince took the new envelope you were meant to push in pop music, and took it to some pretty cool places.

so regardless of whether there is proof of him banging guys or not, he didnt want to completely make ppl rule out that speculation either.

and this is important, regardless of whether he shared a bed with any guys or not.

Back then he also played with the "is he into God or the Devil" angle as well, but that's a different conversation.

Let's just say this shy quiet kid from Minneaopolis knew what he was doing to get people talking and this a big part of his genius.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

what you overlook is that prince, well until a certain point in his career, wanted people to project anything and everything onto him. to actually nail him down is the most unprince-like thing you can do. so youre kind of like a killjoy as you keep hammering the point that he never alluded to any physical relations with men lol. i mean, sure he denied it. but he didnt exactly do anything to STOP speculation, well not until many years later.

so sure, he prob never so much as kissed the cheek of a man. he obv didnt really care for gays, really (i mean would he have sung that line about 'a fag' in blanche if he did?), he just liked, or wanted to appear a little sexually ambiguous, which was cool, and daring at the time. so id say that yes, to go back to the original post, he did appropriate a gay sensibility (which had filtered through pop music thanks to bowie, lou reed, etc etc) without paying any dues to actual gays. but it was the 80s. this is what male popstars did. prince took the new envelope you were meant to push in pop music, and took it to some pretty cool places.

so regardless of whether there is proof of him banging guys or not, he didnt want to completely make ppl rule out that speculation either.

and this is important, regardless of whether he shared a bed with any guys or not.

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No this is simply not true unless that certain point in his career was October 1980 - Long before most people even knew of him.

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Also my response was to your post where you said "doubt anyone thinks he was gay, but thinking he might have been bi is more likely. fwiw, i dont think he was." My response was about there being no actual evidence that he ever acted on being gay or bi because the proof would be the same act (ie sex/relationship with a man because we can be 100% certain he had sex/relationships with women).

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So lets opinion match:

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You don't think he was gay, I don't think he was gay,

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You don't think he was bi, I don't think he was bi,

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You don't think there is a smoking gun, I don't think there is a smoking gun,

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You understand that he took on an androgynous aesthetic popularised through other performing musicians, I understand that he took on an androgynous aesthetic popularised through other performing musicians,

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You understand that he both loved and hated controversy, I understand that he both loved and hated controversy. I just recognise that he showed his hatred of it earlier than you do. That is was in the very early 1980s that he started working on clearing up any speculation on his sexuality to the point that this was reported in Rolling Stone in 1981 - ie Prince was a killjoy right then and there in regard to his sexuality.

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You imagine that this androgynous aesthetic was somehow new in the 1980s yet it started in the late 1960s and Prince was tame compared to many in the 1970s.

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Which leaves two questions: What dues were owned to "actual" gays if he created his own aesthetic from preceding and concurrent musical performers, who for the most part were not gay? Wouldn't Prince's support for all people regardless of race or sexuality and how he encouraged us to be the same in a time when there was far more discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ communities that there is now be enough?

[Edited 9/4/22 14:36pm]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

he obv didnt really care for gays, really (i mean would he have sung that line about 'a fag' in blanche if he did?)

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You need to read the words of the song - It has a unique opening to make sure people knew it was about how Stanley (note: not Prince) was unable to hook up with a girl (Blanche). The "fag" line was to rhyme with snag, jag, nag and was about how her rebuffing or just completely ignoring him made him feel, not anyone else. Prince was poking fun at Stanley's awkwardness and how he did not know how to appeal to women - It could be seen that part of Stanley's failure is emphasised by having him use that word.

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It does not mean it is obvious tht Prince did not really care for LGBTQIA+ people.

LoveGalore said:

Imagine thinking Prince hated controversy.

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Imagine not knowing that Prince had a well known love/hate relationship with controversy and thinking your opinion mattered on a Prince fan site.