The Ethics of Outing.

[BootmanLA]

8 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

But I wonder if the guy, at some level, ended up feeling bad about having to buy it. Because if he stops to think about it at all  - and if he can comment that the other guy never made him feel bad about it, the thought of feeling bad about it has to have occurred to him on his own - the very fact that he’s had to shell out for it can only underscore the negative feelings that drove them to do it in the first place.

In other words, a guy might say, I hate it that I’m not attractive enough to get a hot guy at the bathhouse, but look - I can buy one! …which…I…wouldn’t have to do if I wasn’t too unattractive to get a hot guy at the bathhouse.

And how do guys who pay avoid thinking, whilst doing it, This hot guy wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the money. He’s not interested in me or my body - he’s fucking my wallet.

I mean, I’m sure there are guys who can enjoy it at the shallowest level possible and give it no more thought than that, but for anyone with even a little introspection, there’s not a lot to build on there.

We all make compromises. For some of us, the realization that we have to pay for sex to get fucked regularly is less of a problem than going without entirely.

In my line of work, I have to deal with a number of people who can make my life much easier, or much harder, even though they are (socially and professionally speaking, NOT ethically or morally speaking) my inferiors. They're not even my subordinates; they're people who work in the building where my office space is leased, people who work in lower level positions in the offices I deal with professionally, and so forth. I not only pay attention, learn their names, and greet them and inquire after them at most opportunities, but I happily bribe them with things (not money, but...) to make their own work lives easier. For instance, one woman runs the receiving office for the building and directs the delivery of all packages and material to offices - anything I can't personally carry in myself (say, a couple of cases of file boxes), I have to drop at her office and she has someone bring it up to me.

I make sure her mini-fridge in her office has water and juice, and every few weeks I drop off a box of individual bags of a kind of chip she likes. Half the time, the stuff I've dropped off beats me to my office while I'm moving my car to my assigned parking spot and walking up to the building.

Would I prefer if she just liked me enough to go out of the way that way anyway? Sure. But I know her crews are busy from start of shift to the end, so being prioritized is a perk, and one I'm happy to pay for. 

I honestly don't see a whole lot of difference between that and sex. I'm paying someone to do something for me that makes me happy and my life is easier and smoother as a result. As I've said: I don't pay for sex (mostly because there aren't a lot of sex workers in my area), but the handful of superhot sex workers I drool over? If one were in my city that AmEx would be in my hand in a millisecond.

[BootmanLA]

7 hours ago, brnbk said:

Which begs the question: Why it is reporting someone as gay/bi  considered — "violent", forceful imposition of values, and violating the right of personal choice, as if sexual orientation where something not as "natural" as ethnicity or the color of ones eyes, where individuals have no choice over it and there being no good or evil to blue eyes vs black eyes or green eyes vs brown eyes. 

Well, I don't make the society's rules, but they exist. They change, but not because any one person demands that they do. For a very long time, being gay wasn't considered (by the general public) as "natural." Scientists started considering it a normal variation decades before public sentiment shifted in that direction; most people considered it a "choice" and most religions considered it a "sinful choice."

Because of that, in fact outing people who were closeted DID in fact often ruin lives. Federal employees with any sort of security clearance lost that clearance, which in most cases meant losing that job (and being barred from most other federal work). Ditto for state and local workers. You may be too young to remember, but Anita Bryant, a former Miss America and spokesmodel for Florida Orange Juice, led a successful public crusade in the 1970's to repeal a local Dade County (Miami) ordinance barring discrimination against gay people - Dade did not reinstate those protections for more than 20 years.

8 hours ago, brnbk said:

As far as professionals life is considered, I believe there are sufficient anti discrimination laws on the book which protects LGBTQ people.

You are ill-informed at best on this issue. We currently have the right to marry recognized in 2015 by the US Supreme Court, but that right is under attack and three of the four justices who voted against mandating recognition of same-sex marriages are still there (Alito, Roberts, Thomas). They have been joined on the right by Gorsuch, who replaced the fourth "no" vote, Scalia), by Amy Coney Barrett (another right-winger, who replaced yes-vote Ginsburg), and Kavanaugh, who is more conservative than Kennedy, who he replaced and who was also a "yes" vote).

So there are now six solidly conservative votes on a Court that has shown little hesitation to overturn decades of precedent (see: Roe v. Wade) if they disagree with the answer. And even when they do not outright overturn the prior opinion, they regularly curtail its reach - so, for instance, they might rule that states have to allow same-sex marriages, but not that they have to provide the same benefits to both gay and straight couples. They might rule that private employers don't have to cover same-sex spouses on health care plans if the employer has a "religious" objection. And so on.

We currently enjoy job protection only because the Court ruled that Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex, necessarily includes sexual orientation under the category of "sex" (because anti-gay bias is essentially punishing gay people for not acting like some would expect their biological sex to behave). But that's (a) a statutory provision, and if the GOP retakes the Senate and presidency, there's reason to fear they'd pass legislation to redefine "sex" in that law to exclude anti-gay discrimination; and (b) that decision was 6-3, but one of the two "yes" votes (Ginsburg) was replaced by Barrett (probably a "no" if it comes up). All it would take is for there to be some reason to distinguish a later case from this precedent, and we could probably lose Roberts as well - leaving only 4 votes for gay rights.

And the fact that we're still fighting, case by case by case by case - and after a long series of key victories, LOSING as this Court find "religious freedom" trumps almost everything - should tell anyone paying attention we aren't NEARLY done yet.

(And in any event, religious institutions, including churches, church-run universities, church-run hospitals, church-run nursing care facilities, etc. - and there are a LOT of those - are often partly or completely exempt from anti discrimination laws. So a minister who is quietly gay and not out to his congregation will, in many denominations, lose his job immediately if he's outed.)

8 hours ago, brnbk said:

If mainstream US culture does not vilify the man who chose to divorce his wife (and thus leave his family) unlike some cultures where marriages is predominantly for raising children and divorce is a huge [banned word], why should the gay/bi man who chooses to have sex outside of marriage, be such a bad guy and the reporting of it close to a crime.

Well again, I don't make society's rules, and none of us, individually, have the power to change them. Even if all the gays in the country banded together, we don't have the numbers to force society to treat "leaving the wife for another woman" and "leaving the wife for a man" equally. And remember: we're not talking about him voluntarily leaving his wife: we're talking about inserting our ideas of what he and she should do, in their marriage, and forcing them to make a decision colored by society when it's usually NONE OF SOCIETY'S GODDAMNED BUSINESS.

Yeah, in an ideal world, a man could realize he was gay fairly young, come out, face no problems in school or at work, and be just as likely to find a life partner of the same sex as the young man who never has to make that realization or come out because he's straight. Hell, the fact that the "default" is "straight" and thus imposes a burden on the gay person to come out, rather than withholding any thoughts about who someone else might be attracted to until he told us, tells you it's not an ideal world. In the world we actually live in, things are not so rosy.

8 hours ago, brnbk said:

If we allow for such privacy as to frequent gay bathhouses or attend sex parties without it being reported in society, shouldn't we for sake of consistency make space for  Don't Ask Don't Tell in the military.

This, I'm sad to say, is just plain ignorance.

We allow people to CHOOSE privacy about frequenting gay bathhouses or attending sex parties, because the SPECIFICS of one's sex life are personal and in general, none of society's business. But nothing stops Joe or John or Jim from telling anyone and everyone he meets how he gets his rocks off, and where - and while there might be individual repercussions from choosing to tell (like a friend dumping you for being a slut), there were no actual penalties imposed.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was about taking AWAY the gay person's right to serve openly in the military - a gay person could  serve ONLY if he did not acknowledge his sexual orientation, and (officially at least) military superiors were forbidden to ask whether you were or weren't gay. But if you volunteered that information - if you told someone in your chain of command, for instance, that you were gay or bi - you were discharged from the military, and not "honorably". (Any discharge other than "honorable" carries some level of stigma, even though a "general" discharge isn't looked as badly as a "dishonorable" discharge.)

These are nowhere near the same situation and not even parallel concepts. One involves giving people the choice what to reveal about themselves; the other imposes a PENALTY for revealing something about themselves.

[Kayne]

2 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

You're talking about two different situations here, and some history might make this sound less awful.

The Jerry Springer Show started in 1991. Sally Jesse Raphael started even earlier, in 1983 (though only local at the time) and was widely syndicated before the end of the 80's. Oprah's show started in 1986.

In that era, men who had been married for 20 years got married in the 1960's, men married for 30 years got married in the 1950's, and men married for 40 years had been married since the 1940's. NONE of those people came of age when there was any sort of even toleration for gay men, much less welcoming support. Men who failed to marry by their mid-20's were considered suspect, and being suspect meant being closed out of pretty much everything - professionally and socially. Does that make the lying a good thing? Of course not - but it's a hell of a lot more understandable when you consider what a gay man's alternatives were back then.

Maybe instead of blaming men for having to contort their lives to accommodate the colossally shitty way society forced them to behave, it would be more productive to call out the shallowness and idiocy of society at the time. We have no problem calling out racism for what it was (well, at least outside of Florida), but we still don't want to say people - absolutely MOST people - were homophobic. Public approval of homosexuality didn't exceed 50% until the early 2000's. Barely 1/3 approved of gay people EXISTING as late as 1982.

Ditto for a person coming out as trans, except that society STILL hasn't moved nearly as far on that issue. As a youth in the 1970's I knew of exactly three transsexual persons: Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards, and Wendy Carlos. I remember the outrage of a lot of CBS affiliates when a set of "All in the Family" episodes featured a trans person (probably correctly identified as a drag queen, but terms were rather imprecise at the time). The last several years have been brutal, legislatively, for trans people as red state after red states seeks to suppress their rights. I'm not going to fault ANYONE for failing to have come out decades ago as trans - it was positively suicidal in many cases. 

Please don't assume I don't know the history, either of Daytime talk shows, or The Struggle.

American Pendulum has often swung  back and forth from indifferent ambivalence, and Lynching Bonfires. In the 20th Century, while not as visible orout there, Some gays lived openly and proudly, giving zero fucks. Like William Haines. But, surprise, they weren't all stinking rich. The moral panic that began after the 1929 Stock Market q. Internationally, being Gay was celebrated in Much of European those that didn't celebrate it, just didn't care. Things got uglier during Hitler's Reign, but here in the good old US, it was the Lavender Panic and Eisenhower's declaration  "That Queers and Communists didn't exist in the USA "  (paraphrased) that incited the climate you so graciously educated me on.

Even then, even though it was hard, people lived without Involving others in force that ultimately damages everyone.

And Keeping a secret like that during the darkest days of the AIDS Crisis was not only Unethical, but Cruel.

I'm Black, the Fucking "Down-low" has selfishly condemned scores of straight women to early unnecessary deaths. I'm Not sorry, in those circumstances I'm gonna be standing for needs of the many.

In my own opinion, - just my opinion mind you,- Lying and fooling others into making decisions without pertinent facts, that will ultimately put another person in peril is disgusting. The dishonesty in pretending to be something you're not, only adds to "Their" hatred and disapproval 

Don't get me wrong, Privacy is great. I'm all for keeping others out of my private affairs. but, if I had a platform, and me being "Out" could help even one person I'm the guy thats gonna be out there.

But these are my bud dumb jock feelings on the subject 
 

[hntnhole]

13 hours ago, funpozbottom said:

Fulfilling a basic physical need doesn't create a "deficit" in higher needs

Thanks for your well-thought-out response. 

These ethical questions we're discussing seem to wind up in a similar place, that being that our individual ethics, while possibly varying in personal identification, are - in the end - situational decisions all folks need to make/observe as best they can.  

It's good to be able to discuss, engage with our peers on issues like this, and if I had to choose only one reason why I enjoy BZ so much, this discussion would be #1 on my own personal list. 

[hntnhole]

On 9/23/2023 at 11:43 PM, brnbk said:

yet an overwhelming majority voted in the poll for right to maintain privacy and against outing 

You're completely correct in pointing out the original post asked a fairly amorphous question of us, and most of us responded in the same way.  As often happens, this most interesting thread developed legs of it's own.  

As I see it, this is the purpose of these discussions: we get to share our perspectives on many issues, and do it in a safe, non -judgemental fashion.  

As you point out, to the general question of asked about the general question of "outing", a substantial majority responded in the same general way.  When we got down to some of the nitty gritty however, the discussion developed a deeper, richer exchange of ideas.  Other than Breeding Zone, where else in the gay ether do we have the opportunity to do this?

We learn to grow in our human-ness from each other, and that's a really cool thing.  Almost makes me want to forgive whoever it was that invented the internet in the first place - and although he claimed to, I rather doubt it was Al Gore.

[Theo8]

I have no issue with outing people like politicians and preachers.  I have no issue with outing people like MTG for their "sins" either.  That clip showing Bobo giving her date a hand job?  Loved it.  If they're going after us, we need to do more to go after them.  
 

[hntnhole]

18 hours ago, Theo8 said:

That clip showing Bobo giving her date a hand job

Do you mean that some nutcase guy actually let THAT wretched creature touch him ????

Nauseating ......... 

[BootmanLA]

7 hours ago, hntnhole said:

Do you mean that some nutcase guy actually let THAT wretched creature touch him ????

Nauseating ......... 

How have you missed that?

Quick Recap: Lauren Boebert and her date - apparently her side piece since, and possibly before, splitting with her husband (he who showed his dick to a group of teen girls in a bowling alley) - were thrown out of an Aurora, Colorado BeetleJuice musical production, both for her vaping and for their combined lewd behavior (him very visibly grabbing and fondling her breasts, her grabbing his cock through his pants and massaging it). In a theater with lots of people surrounding them, including families.

She denied having done any of those things, and was recorded arrogantly flipping off the cameras at the security office of the theater as they were ejected. Until - shocker - security footage from the theater pretty conclusively documented the validity of the accusation.

[BootmanLA]

On 9/25/2023 at 12:01 AM, ErosWired said:

But I wonder if the guy, at some level, ended up feeling bad about having to buy it. Because if he stops to think about it at all  - and if he can comment that the other guy never made him feel bad about it, the thought of feeling bad about it has to have occurred to him on his own - the very fact that he’s had to shell out for it can only underscore the negative feelings that drove them to do it in the first place.

In other words, a guy might say, I hate it that I’m not attractive enough to get a hot guy at the bathhouse, but look - I can buy one! …which…I…wouldn’t have to do if I wasn’t too unattractive to get a hot guy at the bathhouse.

And how do guys who pay avoid thinking, whilst doing it, This hot guy wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the money. He’s not interested in me or my body - he’s fucking my wallet.

I mean, I’m sure there are guys who can enjoy it at the shallowest level possible and give it no more thought than that, but for anyone with even a little introspection, there’s not a lot to build on there.

In other words, anyone who doesn't feel the way you feel about sex is insufficiently introspective? I respect your insights, usually, but this just reeks of navel gazing.

You "wonder" about a guy you've never met, whom I've described, and promptly impute a whole lot of garbage onto his thought process, assuming he must be considering all these things and the only reason he didn't come to the same conclusion as you is he lacks introspection.

And worse, you purport to overrule his judgment that (for him at least) paying is less of a problem than not getting it at all. Sure, we all want validation, whether it's him wanting to be told he's desirable or you wanting to be used like a cum rag. But absent getting the exact validation we want, some of us can adapt to the actual world and seek comfort and pleasure in the things we CAN get. Without the snitty judgment of people who think their preferred hierarchy of needs must be respected by everyone regardless of circumstances.

[ErosWired]

1 hour ago, BootmanLA said:

In other words, anyone who doesn't feel the way you feel about sex is insufficiently introspective? I respect your insights, usually, but this just reeks of navel gazing.

You "wonder" about a guy you've never met, whom I've described, and promptly impute a whole lot of garbage onto his thought process, assuming he must be considering all these things and the only reason he didn't come to the same conclusion as you is he lacks introspection.

And worse, you purport to overrule his judgment that (for him at least) paying is less of a problem than not getting it at all. Sure, we all want validation, whether it's him wanting to be told he's desirable or you wanting to be used like a cum rag. But absent getting the exact validation we want, some of us can adapt to the actual world and seek comfort and pleasure in the things we CAN get. Without the snitty judgment of people who think their preferred hierarchy of needs must be respected by everyone regardless of circumstances.

Um, no, I actually do wonder, as in I don’t assume that I know, and besides, my conjecture was not directed at the given individual being reported on - why would it be, I don’t know him from Adam - but rather extrapolated to a generalized “he” for purposes of the open question.

Of course I’m talking about introspection - any time someone thinks twice about anything, it’s an act of introspection. This is a thread about ethics, and ethical choices generally require some degree of self-searching.

Your use of “snitty” is a masterpiece of irony.

[Theo8]

23 hours ago, hntnhole said:

Do you mean that some nutcase guy actually let THAT wretched creature touch him ????

Nauseating ......... 

yep-she's probably a good lay for trailer trash

[hntnhole]

19 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

How have you missed that?

Welllllllllll ......... I don't know how I missed that.  I must be watching the wrong news channel.  If I ever watched Fix channel, maybe I would have seen it, but I had my tv altered so it would never go to - oh - Fox - unless there was a good game on Sunday.  Yeeeeessss, I like NFL football.  My particular team (locally, here in FL) is doing really well these days, while my "homeboys" The Chicago Bears, have sunk ever deeper into the NFL toilet, but there's an excuse:  George Halas, founded the Bears in 1920, one of two Charter members of the NFL (along with the AZ Cardinals) and when he passed his daughter, Virginia inherited the Bears, and now she's 100 years old, so skinny she could walk through a harp. 

Rumors have it though, that she only partially passed away years ago, and is buried in a casket deep below Soldier Field.  On game days, they dig her up, administer some more preservative, and she comes to life again.  The Bears have been paying for her formaldehyde transfusions for decades now,

No wonder they can't afford to hire more talented players.  

As to Madame Bobert, she and that Marjorie Trailer Greene (go ahead, fill in the missing word) generally cause me to head to the head whenever they're on tv, disgracing themselves all over again. It appears that theo8 (above) channeled the descriptor before I even had the chance .... 

Edited September 27, 2023 by hntnhole

[viking8x6]

28 minutes ago, hntnhole said:

Rumors have it though, that she only partially passed away years ago, and is buried in a casket deep below Soldier Field.  On game days, they dig her up, administer some more preservative, and she comes to life again.  The Bears have been paying for her formaldehyde transfusions for decades now

Not true! I heard from someone who swore me to secrecy that she ate much too much food with high levels of preservatives and additives, and as a result her body lived longer than she did.

[BootmanLA]

OK, then let me try with less snitty of my own.

On 9/25/2023 at 12:01 AM, ErosWired said:

But I wonder if the guy, at some level, ended up feeling bad about having to buy it. Because if he stops to think about it at all

Right here, you're assuming he hasn't thought about it at all, because if he had, he'd have come to the pre-ordained conclusion YOU already are assigning him.

On 9/25/2023 at 12:01 AM, ErosWired said:

the very fact that he’s had to shell out for it can only underscore the negative feelings that drove them to do it in the first place.

No. In fact, he's made clear to me that the negative feelings of being rejected and passed over were a lot worse than the idea that he was having to pay for it. As he put it, he could easily be so unappealing that he couldn't even get it for cash. But in any event, again, you're saying something "can only" have the effect you have determined it's going to have - no possibility that his experience may be different.

On 9/25/2023 at 12:01 AM, ErosWired said:

In other words, a guy might say, I hate it that I’m not attractive enough to get a hot guy at the bathhouse, but look - I can buy one! …which…I…wouldn’t have to do if I wasn’t too unattractive to get a hot guy at the bathhouse.

Yeah, a guy might say that. And asking "Does your friend ever feel like..." is one thing. Declaring that "if he stops to think about it" (which suggests he's not capable of thinking it through for himself - presumably because his thought process must be messed up as he didn't come to the same conclusion as you), and saying X action "can only" have a particular effect isn't asking a question. It's telling him how he should feel.

On 9/25/2023 at 12:01 AM, ErosWired said:

And how do guys who pay avoid thinking, whilst doing it, This hot guy wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the money. He’s not interested in me or my body - he’s fucking my wallet.

Again, maybe he values the physical contact more than he values whatever "sense of self" you seem to think is more important. And yay! that it's more important for you. Just.... don't assume what's important to you is important to everyone.

On 9/25/2023 at 12:01 AM, ErosWired said:

I mean, I’m sure there are guys who can enjoy it at the shallowest level possible and give it no more thought than that, but for anyone with even a little introspection, there’s not a lot to build on there.

And yet again - because his introspection produced a different result than yours, he's doing it wrong and missing out and should .... do what, actually? Do without and learn to rejoice in his glorious unwantedness for its own sake, rather than at least bypass part of the less desirable result of being (or at least feeling) less than appealing by getting the physical contact he wants?

I don't mean this last part critically as much as I mean it to legitimately inquire. You have discussed, at various times, your life "on the spectrum" (I don't want to put words in your mouth as to where along that spectrum you are). You've described how it's difficult for you to pick up on social cues that (at least some) neurotypical people recognize and navigate with ease. Might it be possible that for someone who isn't neurodivergent, as you are, might not have the same problems deciding that having to pay for sex to get it regularly is still a lot more appealing than not having it at all?

[brnbk]

20 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

 

And worse, you purport to overrule his judgment that (for him at least) paying is less of a problem than not getting it at all. Sure, we all want validation, whether it's him wanting to be told he's desirable or you wanting to be used like a cum rag. But absent getting the exact validation we want, some of us can adapt to the actual world and seek comfort and pleasure in the things we CAN get. Without the snitty judgment of people who think their preferred hierarchy of needs must be respected by everyone regardless of circumstances.

This question of Paid sex is as interesting as the originals question i raised about the ethics of Outing. 

  

On 9/25/2023 at 3:50 PM, hntnhole said:

You're completely correct in pointing out the original post asked a fairly amorphous question of us, and most of us responded in the same way.  As often happens, this most interesting thread developed legs of it's own.  

 

I can't make up my mind if i should join in the discussion here or start a new thread on this very interesting question on the ethics of Paying for sex