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January 13, 2005Answers:
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I think there should be a requirement on this website saying "PEOPLE SHOULD BE FAMILIAR WITH A TOPIC BEFORE SUBMITTING THEIR PERSONAL OPINIONS". Frankly, I feel this is a helpful and useful site. But far to often, people are excercising their "freedom of speech" rights, and disguising their opinions as bonifide advice.
What set me off was a question asked by a friend of a gay male teen. A large majority of the answers were hateful diatribes delivered by self-righteous homophobes. From the advice you would of thought that her friend had leaprosy. Life is too short to HATE.
I had a good friend in high school that was the son of a youth pastor. The son, my friend, was gay. He chose to kill himself rather than live a life hating himself because he was gay. I did not know he was gay until after he died. I have so many woulda-coulda-shoulda's. Much of my advice on this website is given to those that are gay or know someone who is gay. To me, this is common sense. How can someone who is not gay, does not associate with anyone who is gay, has never associated with anyone who is gay, HOW CAN THEY give advice on a subject dealing with being GAY. I cannot give advice to someone about what it is like to give birth to a baby!! I cannot even attempt anything as such for I do not understand what mothers go through. Its silly. Now imagine if I was trained by others to believe that giving birth to a baby is disgusting and I hated mothers. This analogy is outlandish, but this is how I feel about the "advice" many people give.
Now throughout this "STATEMENT" I do have a question. What do you think? Help me to understand. Am I judging the judgemental, making me just as bad? Or do I have a point? This is the one time that I'd like to hear the opinions.
I think that you have a point - but not a huge one. Yeah, a lot of the people who give advice have NO CLUE, but I hope that the people asking the questions are sensible enough to not listen to them.
There's a little thing called empathy which I'm 98% you must have heard of. This little thing allows us advice givers to put ourselves in other people's shoes. In my opinion, a true advice giver is not someone who has experienced everything, but one who can help someone who has.
One of my best female friends, Marina, is gay, but I don't feel like that qualifies me to give an answer to a 'OMG my best friend is gay what do I do?' question. I think what qualifies me to give an answer to that question is the fact that I can put myself in the shoes of both the question asker and their friend, without being biased, and see what kind of solution would help both of them.
I think that everyone tends to say, like I have done on several occasions in this post, that so and so IS whatever, or you MUST do whatever because it sounds so more impressive than 'I think you should maybe do this...' - it makes you sound more sure of yourself and knowledgable.
Ack, everyone judges the judgemental :P As long as you don't judge the people you are giving answers to, then you have nothing to worry about.
Blessed Be,
Rach xxx
(Rating: 5) Thank you, I rated you a 5 because you understand. You had great advice. I just needed to rant the other night after reading one hateful opinion after another. I am much better now, thanks to the advice of you and others. Thanks again.