[ajross]

He literally suggested saying something not true to make people think he's gay. That's... literally the idea! Make the DOE think he's gay, so he gets the perceived benefits. If that was snide, it wasn't me being snide, it was the upthread commenter.

And that's exactly my point: you KNOW he's not gay (because of his careful phrasing), and you find it "snide" to suggest that anyone think he is, when he's not. You agree with him (and me!) that his identity is important and worth respecting. And... isn't that exactly what diversity policies are intended to encourage?

[Bakary]

The psychological profiling you are attempting here is, in addition to being clunkily shoehorned into fitting the OP's wording, somewhat irritating because it's conceptually equivalent to the idea that homophobic people must be secretly gay, which is detrimental to LGBT people for all sorts of reasons.

[ajross]

For clarity: I don't think the upthread poster is gay. At all. He made it very clear he is not.

I'm drawing attention to that fact, and the fact that the other upthread commenter and you seem to be likening the possibility that someone might think he was[1] as some kind of insult. And that's exactly why identity matters, even among people who claim it doesn't. It matters to you that people not confuse someone for being gay.

And I'm hoping maybe you take that to heart and realize that other people think the same way about their own identities. This seemed like a learning opportunity to me.

[1] Which, again, was the whole idea! He was going to claim he was gay to the DOE!

[Bakary]

You are assigning these ideas to people but that's not at all the takeaway I got from the conversation myself. I won't presume to speak for the other people involved but I'm not getting the vibe there either. I understand the draw of wanting to challenge social norms and make us think about identity and whatnot; it's something I encourage in other contexts and have done myself. The specific argument would in fact work in other contexts. But it does not fit the present situation and the condescension about 'learning opportunities' is not warranted.

[ajross]

You're still arguing against a point I said explicitly was not mine. I won't presume to speak for you or why you're "not getting the vibe", but I can say with authority that it is the wrong vibe and that you have misunderstood.

[Bakary]

I understand the argument, I just disagree with the premise that the OP was specifically anxious about not being seen as gay (though maybe they are in other contexts, I don't know) or that in context being gay is presented as an insult. The premise is projection and/or mind reading in this particular case.

More generally, cynicism about diversity points doesn't automatically mean disagreeing with the validity of LGBT or non-LGBT identity, just the validity of the corporate approach to that identity.

[ajross]

And I think the fact that "prove me wrong" was included the first time, that Velc (making the same misinterpretation you did) thought it was "snide" to insinuate that the OP was gay, and that you jumped in to a thread seven comments down to tell me that you were "irritated" that I was calling the OP "homophobic" puts the lie to that.

No, all three of you are clearly bothered by the idea that someone would be incorrectly identified. Identity matters to all three of you. All I'm asking is that you recognize that it matters to other people too, like for example the DOE grant reviewers.