A challenge to Tom
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- Diversified Sexuality: As we all know, sexuality is not simply a matter of being gay or straight. It is a continuum that ranges from gay to bisexual to straight and all points in between. Accordingly, Tom wanted the full spectrum of sexuality represented on the site to satisfy the diversified interests of the membership. However, GT.ru remains first and foremost a site for the GAY community.
But, dear Tom, if this was the point, where, according to you, was the need of stating rigid semantic divisons?
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What divisions are you talking about agis? If it is category labeling, isn't it obvious?
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Could sound obvious Andy but if the term "homosexuality" was invented in 1869 if we had happened to live in 1868 it seems we wouldn't have had a way to name ourselves even if there was already a term. The term "sodomite" right?
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… and I go on saying "yes", Andy, it should be obvious to you/me/us all that some things are there as "facta" and not as "data" if it didn't happen every now and then we seem to forget it though being back to make us problems for instance on a bi- or a straight sexuality as if those things had to endorse again an ontological statute
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Could sound obvious Andy but if the term "homosexuality" was invented in 1869 if we had happened to live in 1868 it seems we wouldn't have had a way to name ourselves even if there was already a term. The term "sodomite" right?
Language is, by nature, completely arbitrary in nature. The mere non-existence of a specific word has no bearing on whether or not the thing it describes exists or not, furthermore, "sodomite" implies that you have oral or anal sex, irrespective of the gender of the people involved.
I'm quite honestly not sure what you're going on about. People can choose to define themselves as "gay", "bi", "straight" or whatever else they want; the simple fact of the matter is that language only has value when the parties involved can agree on what words mean what– although there is a sexual orientation continuum and some things might have fuzzy definitions of where they end and the other begins, for the sake of clarity, it is not wholly unreasonably to make an arbitrary line of distinction between groups.
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Not sure me too what I'm going on about Jonathan
. After all we could think in this exchange which has started now what depends on you doesn't/shouldn't depend on me and viceversa. But if I now proposed to you a neologism:a farnhamality ^-^
denoting a not so common attitude to interact with the queer philosophical proposals (of the mole Agis) this could of course be deemed as arbitary but not depeding on a "nature". Depending instead exclusively on me or, if you prefer, on "my nature".*
- BTW this term seems to be polysemantic since we could have a "nature" in general and a "nature"of yours/mine/ours/even singuar things. How comes? ???
- BTW this term seems to be polysemantic since we could have a "nature" in general and a "nature"of yours/mine/ours/even singuar things. How comes? ???
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- BTW this term seems to be polysemantic since we could have a "nature" in general and a "nature"of yours/mine/ours/even singuar things. How comes? ???
Corollarium Jonathan: if it happened instead this term was only apparently polysemantic where could you/I/we all all find an operational common denominator between a "nature" given as is and your/my/our "natures"? ^-^
- BTW this term seems to be polysemantic since we could have a "nature" in general and a "nature"of yours/mine/ours/even singuar things. How comes? ???
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If you were to use "farnhamality" as a word, not only could I not prevent you from doing so, I could not stop it from entering the English language at large, no matter what meaning you assign it. That's the beauty of language– words only mean what we believe them to mean. Of course, this is the reason that we don't all speak the same language. A book, libro, livre, 本, 書, 책자, เล่ม etc etc all mean the same thing; but only in their respective languages (some share words, but that is besides the point).
The only way that we can 'bridge the gap' would be for all of us to more strictly define a particular word, or for us to coin a completely new one. That said, it would be pointless for us to do that, because since whichever we did, we would have to explain the new meaning or new word. In the particular case of GTRU's community, the fact that we are an international group, with many members that do not speak English well makes it seem a bit foolish to introduce neologisms, or to use non-standard definitions for already existing words.
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Of course both the bombastic title of this thread and my "neologism" tried to be playful Jonathan
. At the most a serious aspect could stem from the apparent oddity observation of some disputes like the latest one about the bi/straight sex bit in the other forum where some positional rigidities could seem difficult to understand like if, after having invented the "farnhamality" I went on saying:"How do you dare damned farnhamj07 not being farnhamal when it is absolutely obvious that farnhamality is MY/your/our "natural" thing?" :crazy2: and so on and on and de hoc satis I'd say cause every now and then it could really and solidly seem there are things we could/should learn/name through an obstensive path. For instance-the book, libro, livre, 本, 書, 책자, เล่ม which could seem to send us back to a somewhat precise, perceptible object. But what object do the philosophy whose farnhamality seemed to be only an useless synonym send us back to? ^-^
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Ah, yes, a book is tangible, however, it was just a single example that happens to be so. An example of non-tangible mutual definitions might be "thought", "思想", "idée" etc etc… Although I understand where you were going with that train of thought, it doesn't really hold up. Further, it wasn't really my point that the words are not ambiguous; it was just a simple thing that we can all agree on what is and what isn't a book, and we can all agree on what a thought is as well, even though it is literally impossible to point to one and say "that's a thought!"
As stated, language is wholly subjective. To illustrate my point in a better way, consider the word "bisexual". In common parlance, that word refers to someone who is sexually attracted to people of both genders. Some people who fit the "normal" definition of bisexual choose not to identify themselves as such, however. Are they not bisexual simply because they claim they are not? To the rest of the world, that is not the case-- they meet the standard definition of bisexual and are thus bisexual.
That said, let's pretend that a small group of people claim that science fiction novels are not "books", but instead that they are "agises". All other books retain the name "book". To the people inside that group, no agis is a book. Does it mean that is suddenly true for everyone? Of course, the answer is no. The word "book" only has its meaning because we all agree on what a book is.
Thus, although it's more than possible to assign whatever word we want to whatever object, concept or anything else, when communicating with other people, it is a necessity for the person you are speaking with to actually agree that whatever thing in question is actually what you say it is. To make a long story short, words need to be mutually intelligible for the content to be understood. When talking about things with different meanings to different people, defining them is the only real way to ensure mutual intelligibility is to expressly define the word(s) to include or exclude certain definitions.
For example, a potential ambiguity with "bisexual" would be being attracted to people whose DNA encodes the opposite gender, but they have had sexual reassignment surgery while still maintaining the physical traits of their biological gender. Ie, in simpler terms, a man being attracted to a female who still has breasts and other "feminine" traits but also has a penis because of reassignment surgery. Is the man in that case "bisexual" if he is also to such persons as well as "normal" females, but not "normal" males? The definition of "bisexual" is ambiguous there, and thus on a site like GTRU, if the definition is not clarified by the persons in charge of approving torrents, some people might be displeased to find their torrent rejected, while others might not (and vice-versa).
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OK Jonathan I could follow your line! ^-^ But, every time a new word is proposed as it has happened now, it seems to me there should be an agreement based on a good/thorough explanation (age quod agis
) made by the proposer followed or less by a sufficient acceptance within a social group. Even if you/I/we all gave good explanations as we have done here, this doesn't seem to grant an acceptance in itself though cause words like farnhamality or agis could be rejected for some reasons: the already accepted existence of other words or circumlocutions up to come to the same point or an unavailablity of the group to share the goal/mind operation denoted by the new term for instance. Especially in the case when a word is proposed and accepted without an apparent quid to point to, in any case, a thorough explanation should make possible to understand to everyone what has been made/done and, in principle, to unmake/undo or remake/redo it. So the challenge of Tom - the apparent contradiction/ambiguity of a straight sex in a gay forum - could be fixed specifying the original mind operations and the conditions/reasons of an undo-unmake/redo-remake. Couldn't it? Changing topic I was reading one of those very ancient agises writing about a mole named agis who was the XVI of a series. That blind animal was really dumb go figure! :blink: He couldn't understand why in the human languages both the terms pointing and not pointing to something are denoted with similar sounds and/or writings. Don't ask why they lost their time making such queer questions; I dunno. :afr2: And anyway since that agis was very ancient and incomplete the answer got lost too in the past fogs :cry2:
