I posted this in General Discussion (First Openly Gay Woman Competes for Miss California)

[iverglas]

21. is this what we used to call a CALL-OUT?

And nobody alerts. Who would alert if I told you to fuck off, I wonder?

You are making false statements about me for the purpose of holding me up for contempt in public. And you do not get to do that, let alone behind my back.

Someone in the thread claimed that the woman's lips were collagen-enhanced; I was replying to the denial of that claim, in response to another slew of photographs of the woman. Her lips are so obviously collagen-enhanced it hurts ... probably literally.

I don't give a shit how she chooses to mutilate her body. Well, I do, in the broader context of what women are urged and driven to do to their bodies to conform to the female beauty standard du jour; but in this context, it was simply not my concern.

My concern was, and is, the fact that this website, DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND, was hosting what amounted to a cattle show: a woman put on display and then rated on her appearance by a pack of men who thought this was an appropriate thing to do, let alone to do in public, let alone to do at DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND.

I will qualify that. I doubt very much that they thought it was an appropriate thing to do. Any more than men who leer at and comment on/at women in public think it is appropriate. They do it to exclude women from and silence them in the public spaces of their society: the streets and the internet discussion boards, and the schools and workplaces and everywhere else women dare to intrude into.

In the post you linked to, I SAID:

I comment not on her looks, you see, just on the hilarious reaction of the boys' brigade to them.

What, I was lying? Is that what you're saying when you say "Iverglass eventually denigrates this beautiful young woman's appearance"? (I guess there's a reason for misspelling my name.)

Is asserting that someone has undergone cosmetic procedures -- I said "snork - Yeah, no collagen in those lips" (that and the sentence above being the sum total of that post) -- denigrating someone's appearance? If it's denigrating someone's appearance to say they have undergone a cosmetic procedure ... I can't even complete that sentence meaningfully ... I dunno, why would people have such procedures? Don't they have them to look "better"? So surely that would mean commenting on the procedure would mean they look better ...

I was not there to comment on anyone's looks. I was there only because I was asked to serve on a jury to rule on the alert on the post that said:

I give her a 7
out of 10.

You want to say something about that remark, Vanje? I'm sure you can spin it into something lovely; you seem to be good at spinning things into what they aren't.

I thank my stars for the strength of my values and principles.

Otherwise, being betrayed like this by members of the GLBT community might shake my decades-long, outspoken commitment to the absolute, full equality rights of that community (and every other vulnerable, disadvantaged in my society).

Fortunately, I don't demand that all members of such a group speak and act in solidarity with whatever such groups I may belong to - women being the obvious one here - or with other such groups, and withdraw my support for their cause if they don't. If I were such a person, you'd be looking to lose me about now.