Vannormal said:

Why don't you two just hate-fuck each other and get it over with? You'll probably end up being fast friends anyway.

TrivialPursuit said:

LoveGalore said:

TrivialPursuit said:

Why don't you two just hate-fuck each other and get it over with? You'll probably end up being fast friends anyway.

I'm saying, I love an Aussie accent and I have a fresh pair of tightie whities here (since I know he like that real well).

I can't hate on any of that. I once made out with this Aussie named Christopher at a bar. In the middle, he suddenly pulled back and said, "Whoa, you're a wicked kisser."

"Get back in here then."

TrivialPursuit said:

LoveGalore said:

TrivialPursuit said:

I can't hate on any of that. I once made out with this Aussie named Christopher at a bar. In the middle, he suddenly pulled back and said, "Whoa, you're a wicked kisser."

"Get back in here then."

I wonder what tune Ian would dance to. 🤔

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A completely different drumbeat than you.

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Perhaps you pair have found the key feature of gay culture - wishful thinking but ultimately fruitless.

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

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A completely different drumbeat than you.

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Perhaps you pair have found the key feature of gay culture - wishful thinking but ultimately fruitless.

Methinks

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No, you don't

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

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No, you don't

You're going to make other people here jealousy giving me all this attention!

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No one can make other people "jealousy".

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But we can see how you let your wishful thinking mislead you every time - be it in your comments on the topic or your deflection to perhaps I can make the straight man uncomfortabe by pretending to flirt everytime I cannot answer his comments. I can keep this this up, but you have just been flacid throughout - Don't worry it happens to all of us.

LoveGalore said:

Vannormal said:

FYI, I was part of the 'blood sweat and tears' while fighting for our rights over more than 5 decades.

Did you?

My feelings are not facts, and they don't need to be.

After being part of so many LGBTQAI+ groups, I realised (in my stage of life that) I don't need it any more.

Concerning your wrong assumptions of delegitimizing gay culutre;

I still support every group out there who think they need it, I do not seperate myself from these people.

What's your support?

There's just no need for me anymore to be part of any gay culture as a member.

I did my work, it's up to the youngsters now.

I moved on in life and realised that being gay for me is far less important than being human in the first place... is what I explained in full - understand it or don't.

I just don't wave flags anymore, or put being gay up front in my life.

A (short) life (we all have) is just worth so much more than just being gay (for exeample).

Identity is one thing, but loving and caring for each other is what it's all about.

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Besides, it seems like the term "gay culture" is used more by those who are not part of it.

Often just to put some people in a box, set apart from the so-called norm.

But that's a whole other discussion that doesn't matter here.

All due respect, but if you're so clear about your own perspective, how is it then that you've come here to disagree with me and suggest there is no gay culture? It's just a wrong statement and an elder statesmen such as yourself should honestly know better regardless of how much you engaged with the community now or then

Dear youngster?/elder? eloquentness fellow statesman, I never said nor implied (sugested) there is no gay culture instead I said ''Gay Culture'', now what the fuck is that exactly?"

I asked for an explanation to those/most heterosexuals what exactly does 'gay culutre' mean (to them)?

A term they more than often like to use for those they're not even part of, or know exactly what it is... even often want to distance them selves from (but that's a whole another issue).

Within the given context of this thread, so to speak.

-

Or is it because IanRG replyed "this!" on my first post?

Nah, just joking. I don't want to be mean or unfriendly.

I'm outa here, going to live my life in some 'gay culture', far far away from heterosexuals, solely listening to gay friendly Prince tunes. LOL

I'm done.

[Edited 8/29/22 2:11am]

Vannormal said:

LoveGalore said:

Vannormal said: All due respect, but if you're so clear about your own perspective, how is it then that you've come here to disagree with me and suggest there is no gay culture? It's just a wrong statement and an elder statesmen such as yourself should honestly know better regardless of how much you engaged with the community now or then

Dear youngster?/elder? eloquentness fellow statesman, I never said nor implied (sugested) there is no gay culture instead I said ''Gay Culture'', now what the fuck is that exactly?"

I asked for an explanation to those/most heterosexuals what exactly does 'gay culutre' mean (to them)?

A term they more than often like to use for those they're not even part of, or know exactly what it is... even often want to distance them selves from (but that's a whole another issue).

Within the given context of this thread, so to speak.

-

Or is it because IanRG replyed "this!" on my first post?

Nah, just joking. I don't want to be mean or unfriendly.

I'm outa here, going to live my life in some 'gay culture', far far away from heterosexuals, solely listening to gay friendly Prince tunes. LOL

I'm done.

[Edited 8/29/22 2:11am]

Honestly as a hetereosexual guy I don't think 'we' use the term Gay Culture simply because we don't care. I thikn the term Gay Culture is used mostly and more freqeuntly by Gay people to differentiate themselves from the rest just to make it easier in a conversation or whatever.
I still don't think Gay Culture exists because I have no idea what it means (having same sex intrcourse is not a culture I think). But thats OK because I'm not interested in it either, let Gay people be gay (in the old fashion meaning of the word) like any other people.

Vannormal said:

LoveGalore said:

Vannormal said: All due respect, but if you're so clear about your own perspective, how is it then that you've come here to disagree with me and suggest there is no gay culture? It's just a wrong statement and an elder statesmen such as yourself should honestly know better regardless of how much you engaged with the community now or then

Dear youngster?/elder? eloquentness fellow statesman, I never said nor implied (sugested) there is no gay culture instead I said ''Gay Culture'', now what the fuck is that exactly?"

I asked for an explanation to those/most heterosexuals what exactly does 'gay culutre' mean (to them)?

A term they more than often like to use for those they're not even part of, or know exactly what it is... even often want to distance them selves from (but that's a whole another issue).

Within the given context of this thread, so to speak.

-

Or is it because IanRG replyed "this!" on my first post?

Nah, just joking. I don't want to be mean or unfriendly.

I'm outa here, going to live my life in some 'gay culture', far far away from heterosexuals, solely listening to gay friendly Prince tunes. LOL

I'm done.

[Edited 8/29/22 2:11am]

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The problem is that what was missed by LoveGalore was that my main point was that his gay checklist for gay culture simply did not apply to Prince - In the context of the thread Prince did not steal from a gay culture - he borrowed primarily from Glam Rockers, Funkadelic/Parliament, the general androgyny of the fashions in the 1970s, James Brown, Little Richard etc., etc. If there was any influence from how gay men in Minneapolis dressed in 1977-82, it would have been marginal at best. Open gayness then was so very different and dangerous compared to now.

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On gay culture - It is many sub-cultures. As much as you have expressed the desire to live your life in some 'gay culture', as a set of sub-cultures this is not possible because of the fundamental differences between the two:

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A culture is the values, norms, mores, taboos, ideas, and attitudes of people in a particular society. It is passed to children by parents, teachers, religious and societal leaders and influences. It is something that is passed from generation to generation. A sub-culture is a way of life that exists within cultures. They are all the different sub-sets within the culture, hence they are not a separate culture and they do not need to be based on a multi-generational inheritance (that adapts over time). Nor does it need to be taught by parents, teachers etc.

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A society has a culture but it has many sub-cultures. They both can influence each other, indeed the overall culture reflects a weighted amalgam of all the sub-cultures by relative sizes, strengths, influences and levels of acceptance by others in the culture but outside of that sub-culture. A culture includes all the people in that society, whilst a sub-culture will not include all the people in that society. These crucial differences are why you can appropriate/steal from a different culture but it is perfectly natural for every sub-culture within a society to influence the overall culture without any appropriation ever occurring - that today the gay subculture has a much stronger and more open influence on US culture, different European cultures and Australian cultures in 2022 compared to 1980 reflects the broader acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people and their sub-cultures now - not theft.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

LoveGalore said:

RJOrion said:

LoveGalore said:

A great ready, really! Says exactly what I think on the topic.

Yep...also reinforces what i said early in the thread about what people were THINKING about Prince, early in his career...but IanRG wants to pretend it never happened, and it was a all a figment of our salacious imaginations

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People see what they want to see. There is nothing in the article that contradicts what I said. It even states:

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"It’s impossible to determine the precise level of intention with which Prince pursued a queer aesthetic; it is clear, however, that he was drawing from a well of influences similar to those of many openly gay artists. J.M. Ellison, a scholar of queer and transgender history, notes that Prince “rooted himself in the tradition of flamboyant Black male artists, like Sly Stone and James Brown”–a list to which we can also add the “omnisexual” Little Richard and the openly gay Sylvester–“and in the style of Black divas.”

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Read this twice and you will see a number of things - In the opinion of a scholar of queer and trans history, Prince rooted himself in the tradition of the artists we know he liked - Sly Stone, James Brown - neither of whom were gay, and in the style of Black divas who were also not gay. Note Little Richard and Sylvester are added by the author in a 2018 article. Also note that the leading comment to the JM Ellison quote that was not by JM Ellison only talks about Prince drawing from a well of influences SIMILAR to those of many openly gay artists - In other words, he was influenced by the same straight artists that influenced gay artists, not that he was influenced by gay artists. Now go back and read what I said - that he was more influenced by the generally straight artists he saw and the fashion of the times and by women.

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The rest is just the same as what I said - Prince was unequivocal in saying he was not gay from early on. Yes he courted controversy, but he was absolutely straight with us that he was straight and he did it to attract women.

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To borrow a quote that I never said the rest is just your salacious imagination.

LoveGalore said:

People do indeed see what they want to see, as evidenced by Ian's cherry picking and reimagining of the written word as if this article is not explicitly stating Prince borrowed from queer culture: That Prince’s persona had queer undertones is a truth generally held to be self-evident; for proof, one need only look to the iconically androgynous cover photos for 1980’s Dirty Mind, 1979’s Prince, and even 1978’s For You. Part of this implicit queerness was simply a function of his appearance. Prince’s petite frame and soft features were easily read as effeminate; growing up, he later recalled, other kids would call him “sissy, punk, freak and faggot. See, the girls loved you, but the boys hated you. They called me Princess” (Jones 47). By the time of his first professional photo shoot in 1977, however, he had already learned to lean into his unconventional sex appeal. “Prince was open to taking his shirt off,” photographer Robert Whitman recalled. “I had him blowing bubbles, we put sequins on him” (KSTP 2016).

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You need to more than quote - you need to analyse what was said, when and why.

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It does not matter what a person in 2018 says is self-evident - that is just an opinion 4 decades later.

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The "proof" is an androgynous cover photo in the period where there were many androgynous fashions in the mainstream and in glam rock, funkadelic etc - Prince was a Jonny come lately to this.

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This piss poor proof is whittled down by the author by him saying it was partly because he was petite and effeminate looking and it references Price saying the girls loved him for it but the boys hated him for it.

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Then there is the reference to a photoshoot where he took his shirt off and he used sequins - This is after Iggy Pop basically never wore a shirt and all the face make up and glitter of glam rockers etc - Glam rock for some had already transformed into Glitter rock.

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What this paragraph is more of an indication of is Prince looked like a sissy and played this up for the girls and women who loved it knowing that boys were too homophobic and would see his look as too gay.

LoveGalore said:

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As ever no content, no ability to respond.

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What you have is an magazine article 40 years later that is seeking to express an opinion in a certain way, not a peer reviewed paper seeking to argue the facts. But all it does is confirm what I said whilst poorly couching it as a queer aesthetic (a term for art created later as a result of the AIDS crisis, not a term for man being open to his feminine side because the girls loved it.) .

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It confirms that Prince's influences was not gay men in Minneapolis but from other performers who were, for the most part, straight. It names a historian mentioning James Brown and Sly Stone. The journalist adds others - the obvious Little Richard and the so not obvious Slyvester.

.

It tries to imagine that because Prince had a head shot album cover in 1979 that was somewhat similar to a Donna Summer head shot album cover from two year's prior that Prince was dressing as a black drag queen Donna Summer (Donna Summer is black and Prince was not made up to look like her, nor was he wearing any drag clothes). The connection to drag queens: Prince was apparantly amused when he attended a drag show in Paris TWO years later!

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The article confirms that Prince dressed to please girls and women knowing it confused boys and men - Some boys hated him for it, other boys thought they had a chance with him only to be rebuffed.

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I don't know what you think your thesis is (other than to merely disagree), but the facts in this article confirms what I said - Prince did what he did not to be gay, not to be gay adjacent, but to attract women because, in Prince's own words: "See, the girls loved you" for it. Prince's inspiration was not some drag queen in Paris two years after the event, it was primarily straight performers in his formative years - a period when androgyny was di riguer and many straight male artists across genres dressed in ways that were more daring.

.

Yes Prince had a different look to R&B and pop before him, but that is because he was afterwards and he took in different influences from a wider range of sounds and looks - He never just wanted to the next ..., he wanted to be Prince. Yes, this meant he had his own look because this is what he wanted to have.

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Despite your's and RJOrion's attempts to make his heteronormative songs not about the "she", "her", "Martha" etc. in the lyrics, this does not stand any serious consideration. That another person found an article where the journalist fails to understand a clear reference to a girl who no longer sleeping with her former boyfriend in the song because she is sleeping with another man as if this meant a 3-way also does not stand any serious consideration. That the article adds one you pair missed to imagine a hidden "bi" between "my" and "sexuality" when it is clearly an "uh" - and it is in song that is about childhood sexual abuse by an adult, not a justification for being bi, nor a positive song about sex. The uh is a reference to her using, abusing and abandoning him and how this affected him - not some ambiguity to appeal to the LGBTQIA+ community.

[Edited 8/29/22 21:01pm]

LoveGalore said:

Again, I promise I'm not reading all that. I'm unmoved and unbothered by your assertions and don't really care about the opinions of a sheltered Australian. Next!

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And yet you keep on coming back showing that you care.

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The question you need to ask yourself is why are you so easily swayed by a clearly biased article? Is it just because you only want to hear things that match your beliefs? Is it comfy in your shelter where you can avoid considering alternative views based on facts?

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

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And yet you keep on coming back showing that you care.

.

The question you need to ask yourself is why are you so easily swayed by a clearly biased article? Is it just because you only want to hear things that match your beliefs? Is it comfy in your shelter where you can avoid considering alternative views based on facts?

You can turn that mirror right back at yourself and ask the same counter questions. You can pretend that Prince's queer aesthetic wasn't queer and that gay culture doesn't exist or whatever and it still doesn't change history or the future. So what else is going on?

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Easy:

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Counter Question 1: Why am I not so easily swayed by a clearly biased article?

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Because it is clearly biased and flawed in the ways I explained above, but these explanations had too many words for you to manage.

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Counter Question 2: Is it just because I only want to hear things that match my beliefs?

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No. My beliefs about Prince are that he is first and foremost the musician that I most love because of his music. No matter what he wore, no matter how silly he could be about things like contrails, no matter what his sexuality is, I love his music. I love Freddy Mercury's music, and the rest of Queen's music - even after the other three were found to be not gay. I love George Michael's music - even after he was found to be not straight etc. etc. etc. My belief is secure regardless of the artist's sexuality because my belief is only in my appreciation of their music.

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Counter Question 3: Is it comfy outside of a shelter where I can avoid considering alternative views based on facts?

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Yes. I welcome you actually responding to my points without the false flirting, misrepresentations and fabrications so we can learn from each other.

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I agree that the journalist should not have tried to change history by using the term "Queer aesthetic" because this is a term that refers to a 1980s art movement that sprung up as a result of the AIDS crisis.

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I have not said gay culture does not exist - I initially said

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Prince appropriated nothing and everything, just like everybody - Not just artists, everybody.

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Whilst there are genuine highly inappropriate and disrespectful cultural appropriations, most of the time when people accuse others of it, it is the accuser making shit up. Outside of the genuine accusations, it is the accusers who are at fault.

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You cannot appropriate a separate culture if there is no separate and unified culture. There are myriad LGTQIA+ communities within cultures worldwide all very different because they "appropriate" different things from the culture they are part of. You cannot stereotype people and assume an artist has stolen your stereotype.

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I subsequently explained the difference between a society's culture and the many sub-cultures or communities within a society. Further that the various LGBTQIA+ subcultures in 2022 have far more influence on US, Australian and the different European cultures than they did in 1977 to 82. This is important to the topic because the nature and contribution of the LGBTQIA+ subcultures are not driven by a Gay checklist of things that boys hated about Prince, ie being too sissy etc. It is not driven by driving divisions between people. It is driven by the positive contribution and acceptance of people from all sexualities within an overall culture/society regardless of which sub-culture they are from so as to make the place better than the one we grew up in.

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I have no idea why you think this has anything to do with the future.

[Edited 8/29/22 23:43pm]

if i may respond in general terms, just cos someone borrows from straight male artists and straight female artists, that does not mean that those artists are not embraced by, and therefore part of - to some extent - gay culture. kinda like how james brown was no rap artist, neither was gil scot heron, but both were key to hip hop culture.

gay aesthetics, imagery, iconography, mannerisms, behaviour, shouldnt be isolated to a small list of typical essentials, but to deny that there IS a certain gay aesthetic (or idk, a pop-gay aesthetic, if you arent happy with gay culture being defined by effeminate behaviour), and that prince embodied it quite often, though obv not wholly, is a bit disengenuous. i mean, that flouncing dance he does in the rapsberry beret video for example, was effeminate AF. does being effeminate = gay? well, no. but its certainly a big part of being 'gay'. its def fair to say that a lot of straight ppl had a narrow definition of what gay men were like, but its clear that enough gay dudes saw prince and saw something of themselves in his act. and im pretty sure, that prince knew that. he knew what the impact of acting gay, even as a stage act, was, and its currency for both provocation (of straight ppl) and inclusion (for those that werent).

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

if i may respond in general terms, just cos someone borrows from straight male artists and straight female artists, that does not mean that those artists are not embraced by, and therefore part of - to some extent - gay culture. kinda like how james brown was no rap artist, neither was gil scot heron, but both were key to hip hop culture.

gay aesthetics, imagery, iconography, mannerisms, behaviour, shouldnt be isolated to a small list of typical essentials, but to deny that there IS a certain gay aesthetic (or idk, a pop-gay aesthetic, if you arent happy with gay culture being defined by effeminate behaviour), and that prince embodied it quite often, though obv not wholly, is a bit disengenuous. i mean, that flouncing dance he does in the rapsberry beret video for example, was effeminate AF. does being effeminate = gay? well, no. but its certainly a big part of being 'gay'. its def fair to say that a lot of straight ppl had a narrow definition of what gay men were like, but its clear that enough gay dudes saw prince and saw something of themselves in his act. and im pretty sure, that prince knew that. he knew what the impact of acting gay, even as a stage act, was, and its currency for both provocation (of straight ppl) and inclusion (for those that werent).

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And this is why there is only a gay subculture.

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That is it absolutely exists, but as part of that society's culture wherein all the subcultures and communities exist together side-by-side and they all influence each other to different degrees all the time. Hence, for the purposes of the thread's question, there is no appropriation because is this the theft and inappropriate misuse of a separate culture, not a reflection of different aspects within a culture. The concluding statement made by the OP was "It seems like he got away with a lot in the '80s." and this is wrong. As you say if within a society some people in a community embrace aspects of another community within that society, this can to some extent be of that first community. However, it does not become exclusive to either community and so no one has stolen or got away with anything - they have just shared. To say Prince borrowed from straight performers who borrowed from gay performers or gay audiences embraced these same straight performers, therefore Prince borrowed from gay people can never mean Prince got away with theft from gay culture.

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In the second paragraph, you defeat your own accusation that anyone who does not agree that merely being effeminate means you are being gay is being disingenuous by admitting that being effeminate does not mean you are being gay. It reminds me of a Jewellery store near where I grew up. It was run by two men, one was as effeminate AF, the other was the complete opposite. The common homophobic response to these business partners was that the effeminate one was gay. This could have been more wrong. It is a gross stereotype because he was the straight married one with kids and it was the normal guy who was the gay one. We know that Prince was not gay and we know why he dressed as he did: The girls loved it and the guys who teased him as a sissy hated it - Raspberry beret is a perfect reflction of this - He had all the girls in the audience dressed like him and dancing like him in a way that I would not call flouncy - It was one of the many, many times he emphasised that the girls loved him for it. We know that he knew his act attracted gay men and we know that he actively rebuffed them everytime. We know that Prince was unequivocal in stating repeatedly that he was not gay. There is nothing disengenous in saying this. What we saw in this thread was a gay checklist that focused on a small list of things that the author saw as gay that were also things Prince did. Your conclusion misses an important distinction - Prince did not act the way he did to provoke all staight people - He did it to attract straight girls that loved it (hence he was acting straight for them) knowing that it provoked the types of boys who teased him as a child. It is a gross and wrong stereotype to imagine that all Prince's fans were the people who were not straight because he deliberately provoked straight ppl.

[Edited 8/31/22 14:31pm]

IanRG said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

if i may respond in general terms, just cos someone borrows from straight male artists and straight female artists, that does not mean that those artists are not embraced by, and therefore part of - to some extent - gay culture. kinda like how james brown was no rap artist, neither was gil scot heron, but both were key to hip hop culture.

gay aesthetics, imagery, iconography, mannerisms, behaviour, shouldnt be isolated to a small list of typical essentials, but to deny that there IS a certain gay aesthetic (or idk, a pop-gay aesthetic, if you arent happy with gay culture being defined by effeminate behaviour), and that prince embodied it quite often, though obv not wholly, is a bit disengenuous. i mean, that flouncing dance he does in the rapsberry beret video for example, was effeminate AF. does being effeminate = gay? well, no. but its certainly a big part of being 'gay'. its def fair to say that a lot of straight ppl had a narrow definition of what gay men were like, but its clear that enough gay dudes saw prince and saw something of themselves in his act. and im pretty sure, that prince knew that. he knew what the impact of acting gay, even as a stage act, was, and its currency for both provocation (of straight ppl) and inclusion (for those that werent).

I heard that he only allowed ladies at his concerts in Paisley Park at one point. Can anyone confirm ?

paisleyparkgirl said: