B.C. by Mastroianni and Hart for April 21, 2012

Mandate – Something Obama got from Romney.

when their wives change the channel? Demanding

…in San Francisco

Probably no fight over the remote.

Is that like a “little” pregnant?

“What is more sad is the fact that you are a homophobe! sorta drives you nuts to see 2 guys together huh? you certainly would be uneasy around me because I am a little bit gay.”

You’re projecting. Doc didn’t say anything about being driven nuts, or even being uneasy. He just said that now he wonders, whereas 10 years ago he wouldn’t. His default position has shifted from “I will assume that two guys together aren’t a ‘couple’” to “I wonder if they’re a ‘couple’…” As same-sex couples become more and more free to be as open and visible in their relationships (what the real homophobes call “flaunting it”) as opposite-sex couples, people’s assumptions naturally change.

It’s true that it’s nobody’s business, but that’s never stopped anybody from idly (or not-so-idly) making up life stories for strangers. It’s human nature. We size each other up from the first sighting.

Hee-hee…..looks like this strip hits a little too close to home for some!

kevin78661: “You certainly would be uneasy around me because I am a little bit gay.”

jmo328: “Is that like a ‘little’ pregnant?”

Not at all. The scale Alfred Kinsey devised is a continuum, running from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). It may (or may not) be inaccurate to state “Most males have had at least one homosexual experience in their lives,” but it’s more accurate than saying “If you aren’t 100% straight then you’re 100% gay” (and it’s certainly the case that a great many self-identified “homosexuals” have at least one heterosexual experience under their belts [so to speak] if only out of societal pressure).

Of course, Kinsey based his studies on on sexual behavior rather than sexual inclination (and primarily among American males), but it’s still inaccurate to make it an “either/or” dichotomy. Besides “Bisexuals (proper)” it’s clear from observation that there are “straight-oriented bisexuals” and “gay-oriented bisexuals”; every place along the continuum is occupied by somebody, and I bet a lot of people who self-identify as “Kinsey Zero” or “Kinsey 6” would, if compelled to total honesty, move themselves half a point (or more) towards the opposite extreme. In terms of inclination I’d probably give myself a 1; in terms of behavior I’m not sure what qualifies as a “homosexual experience”, but I’m still pretty sure I’m not a 0.

Dogsniff: “Not a zero? Could you elaborate on that please. Inquiring minds want to know.”

That’s none of your business.

“Two guys watching sports – NOT A DATE”

Maybe it doesn’t start out that way, but let’s give each another six-pack and see how it ends up…

Think “Man Camp” or “Man Cave”.

Regarding the latter: what the hell is wrong with “den”?

An old Rita Rudner joke:“Have you seen how men without women live? They’re like bears with furniture.”That’s a Man Cave.

Exactly. :D

not being into team sports, i find that the extremely close “male bonding” at sports events/sports bars is just nothing plainer than publicly-accepted gay relationships. it gets just downright creepy.

I can understand the uneasiness for us non-gay men. It does depend on how one takes the definition of “date.” The dictionary says, “an appointment to meet at a specified time; especially : a social engagement between two persons that often has a romantic character.” However, it could still be a “date” even if it was not for romantic reasons.

A Man Date, if successful, can lead to a full-fledged Bro-mance, and yet remain entirely non-sexual…

“And, I agree with You that Kinsey erred in basing the #‘s on experience, excluding inclination.”

I didn’t say it was an error, I just suggested it was a limitation. Kinsey was a biologist, not a psychologist, and came to the study of human sexuality from a background in entomology and zoology. His studies (and the reports thereon) were based on measurable quantities. If you ask me what my inclinations are (sexual or otherwise), my answer might vary wildly from day to day or hour to hour, and yet still be totally honest. I may be inclined to tame lions, and I might even have a hat that says “Lion Tamer” on it. But if a “lion tamer” is defined as someone who’s actually tamed one or more lions, then I’m not a lion tamer.

For all of that, in 1948 “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” was both ground-breaking and earth-shaking, Besides, a “bisexual act” can’t really be performed by fewer than three people; an individual datum will usually be a “heterosexual act” or a “homosexual act,” and Kinsey phrased the scale accordingly:0 = Exclusively heterosexual1 = Predominantly hetero-, incidentally homosexual2 = Predominantly hetero, more than incidentally homosexual3 = Equally hetero- and homosexualand so on to 6. “Bisexual” was a word he didn’t use (it may not even have been coined yet). Neither were “Straight” and “Gay”, for that matter…

Good to hear from you again, by the way. Have we ever discussed hockey? Or any sports? The biggest point of dispute that I can recall is on the question of Jazz…

“Society considers anything above 0.00 to be Gay, and I think only 6.0 is Gay.”

The thing about that is, at both ends of the scale “Tried it once, didn’t like it, not gonna try it again” is enough to exclude you from a “perfect score.” That’s if we’re going by behavior, of course. If we’re talking about inclination, then “Thought about doing it, but never did” will similarly keep you from either 0.0 or 6.0…

Is there room in your scale for “Straightish” and “Gayish”?

“Wow; I haven’t heard “Kinsey report” [or Masters and Johnson] in something like around….30 years?!”

It’s been that long since you’ve reread “The Incompleat Pogo”? Miss Sis Boombah first came to the Okefenokee as a researcher for Dr. Whimsey, for his report on the Sectional Habits of U.S. Mail Men.

That’s not a date? Quite right. That’s a Bromance!

Again, a “limitation” and not an “error.” Would you say Alexander Graham Bell erred in not putting a camera in his telephone? If Kinsey’s work has been elaborated upon, expanded, refined, redirected, that doesn’t take away from his status as a pioneer.

The fact that there are statistical outliers (an otherwise-virgin who was raped) doesn’t discredit an entire study, particularly when it comes to behavioral surveys. Were any of Kinsey’s test subjects in that position, I’m sure he would have made an allowance, possibly including it in a footnote but excluding it from his statistics. For all I know, the papameters of his studies may have explicitly excluded non-consensual experiences (what is forced upon you cannot really be considered your “behavior”, after all). And again, if you ask people what their “inclinations” are, I think it would be hard to quantify. And Kinsey’s goal was quantification.

“Unless I’m addled, We discussed the merits of Basketball vs. Foot Hockey.”

I suspect (but cannot prove) that you are addled: I have no idea what “Foot Hockey” is… was I for it or against it? :-)

“Soccer/Foot Hockey. You preferred It over Hoop, so that’s all I need to know about Your view of Sports.”

Ah, that explains it. I don’t actually feel that strongly about Soccer, but I tend to stand up for it when Americans trash it. My general opinion about comparing sports is that there’s no “better” or “worse”, only “different.” When I hear someone say “My favorite sport is GREAT, and your favorite sport SUCKS,” I find myself compelled to argue the contrary…

My last words on the subject of Kinsey will be Kinsey’s own words, with which he introduced the Scale; they seem to me to address some of your concerns, and again before his publication nobody was even TALKING about “orientation” or “inclination”, let alone “bisexuality”; the paradigm was simply “sheep and goats”:

“[Humans] do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. While emphasising the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history… An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life. A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist.”[emphahsis added]

Not my favorite either, but I know that we can disagree with no exchange of ill-will.Ta for now!