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Open forum to others
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.
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I was looking through my favorite columnists to see which ones were still active when I happened upon this question. Don't know how I missed it origianally!
I agree that the columnists should only answer topics they are familiar with. They get a column and some suddenly feel they know everything! Especially when it comes to sex questions. I honestly think you should be old enough to legally be able to have sex before you can answer questions about it with any amount of authority.
I'm sorry to hear your friend killed himself. That is sad. I have a friend who is gay also. Because she is an xray tech and is in contact with people all the time...as in having to touch them, she feels she has to hide the fact she is gay. It has to be stressful. She says that even today there are those who would complain and get her fired. Very few people know she is gay.
A lot of young teens on here I have noticed consider themselves bi and I think they mean well
but I'm sure they have no clue what they are talking about. I haven't seen a lot of negative
answers towards gay people, but as you said, I feel they often miss the point. Depending on where you live sometimes I think being gay has stressors
we know nothing about.
It would be great if we had some gay people who were columnists. We may have and I am just not aware of them. Now and then their input would be very helpful to some people. My friend has moved away or I would recruit her!
If you ever see anyone giving advice you think is in any way homophobic, please file an abuse report. We will take care of it immediately. :)
I am a L2 moderator by the way which is how I know who you are. You are on my favorites list and hope you continue to give advice. :)
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ad·vice ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-vs)
n.
1. Opinion about what could or should be done about a situation or problem; counsel.
To answer your question you are being both judgemental and you do have a point. Judging the judgers makes you just as bad as they are,but it is not your fault.It HAD to be said!
I feel for your situation but your views of those people who give this dumb advice is terribly slated because your opinion is so closely related to your own personal tragedy. Putting anything on this site leaves you vulnerable to total idiots and thats the risk you take.
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anonymous -
I agree with you for the most part, but to better understand a situation, you must listen to those opinions that differ most from yours. Although you may not accept their views and oppose it with a passion, you learn most from those most different from you.
Like the topic of gays, yes it is frustrating to hear heartless opinions from homophobes, but have you ever thought of why they felt that way? Have you thought of how it's like to be in their shoes? I'm not against gays whatsoever, but those who are feel that way for a reason. If they make asses of themselves for being arrogant and ignorant, then good for them. But who are we to criticize? People are who they are, and we'll be damned if we are able to change the way they think. The only thing we can do is respect their opinion and try to understand where their coming from.
Also, there are a lot of questions asked on advicenators regarding sexual favors by teeny-boppers which I highly disapprove of, but who am I to tell them what they can and cannot do? The way I see it, people find their own ways of realizing things whether it's from insecurity, regret, or otherwise. For those youngins, they'll most likely regret acting upon their raging hormones when they end up pregnant, contracting an std, and vice versa. For homophobes, they are just narrow-minded which is just a part of who they are. As for if they'll learn anything or broaden their views on gays, unfortunately it's not likely to happen because of their hardheadedness. All it is is a matter of misunderstanding.
Sorry if I babbled on, but to conclude my response, yes it's wrong for people to talk about things that they have little knowledge of, but in doing that they make asses of themselves anyways so there isn't any need for us to confront or judge them for what they think. It all evens out, ya know?
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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
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Agreed.
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I agree with you 100%. I have in the past criticised other peoples advice involving fitness and nutrition (which is a subject that I happen to know something about). Very very often the advice is downright harmful, but is presented as though the advice giver is some sort of expert. Frankly, this site has made me quite angry at times for exactly the same reasons you outlined above. So... you do have a very valid point and more people should pay attention to it. Opinions are ok, but they shouldnt be disguised as expert advice, in the very least they could start by saying "I have no clue about this topic, but here is my opinion anyway...".
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Well, I haven't actually observed much anti-gay sentiment here. A little is unavoidable, but I haven't even seen as much as normal here. In one topic, three out of twelve replies indicated that the replee wasn't much in favor of gays, and none of which were over the top. If you'd like to link to the topic to which you refer, that could give me a better idea of what happened.
re: judging the judgemental, that's getting into philosophy... and if an issue has philosopical value, that just means there isn't a straight (ein pun! Mein Gott!) answer. I take the view that there may be some true homophobes (like arachnaphobes, not just people who have been indoctronated against gays), and that the rest are idiots because they feel strongly about an issue about which they are uninformed. I don't have any problems with taking this (judgemental) position because I'm not concerned about hypocracy or moral high ground. Anyway, they judgementalised first, so judging them is about equivalent to hitting someone in self defence.
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I think this was another, "waste of space question". You are not going to change peoples' minds, here you are complaining about people throwing out hateful opinions and you're doing just the same. So what if they give advice for a subject they aren't experiancing! They are just trying to help! If that were a rule, there would be HARDLY any answers. Maybe some people have HEARD of what the problem could be, or know what the right thing to do is. There are million of girls that are 13 and ask "hm how do I give this guy head?" If it weren't for those people who are older, or who didn't experiance it, there would no answers telling them how stupid they are for doing this so young. Thats why everybody gets a chance to answer, because there are people who give lots of different answers to give this person better or more options. Thats great that you want to go and insult the, "homophobes," but they really don't care, and they probably don't want your story. There will lots of people you will meet that are completley different. Whether it be, gay, straight, bi, republican, democrat, homophobes, and people who make fun of overweight people. Just writing a whole paragraph about it wastes your time, its not like they are going to look at it, and say, "man, I better change my ways." I understand you when you get frustrated with this, but life is definetly not short, it is the longest thing anyone will ever experiance. But, this site definetly does not need a statement judging our advisors. I personally find them to be outstanding and helpful, and yes, there are those rude people who just are plain out rude, but when they do this, what they really want is the best of you, and when you give the best of you, you are rating them, they want to be rated, not ignored. Sory to be so harsh, but all you've accomplished is wasting space and created a little chat room of advisor bashing.
-TheTeenGirl
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i'm a guy, 14 m, and i no one gay that i hardly talk to cause i moved and stuff, but the thing is even tho i'm a young man and dont exacty have much interaction, as in talking, to gays, or girls on there periods, and other kids and there problems. like i no a lot bout how stuff works in people and i no wat to say and wat to do. but personally, i've had no true experience in those kind of situations or problems. i might in sum, but i use my current knowledge to answer the needs of those who need help. of course i'm against the idea of bein mean to people fo there sexuality and disabled and stuff. im not against wat you sayin but i do agree wit sum of yur ideas. a lot of the ppl here are just tryin to make fun of the people askin questions, serious or not. if you look threw my column you see that i'm knowledge able in many many areas, even tho i havent exprieneced them all. i hope you understood my view, cause i todally undastand yours.
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