An Enemy of the State
Imagine that you lived in a country where,
Unrelated men and women caught talking to each other, driving in the same car or sharing a meal risk being detained by the religious police.
Yeesh. Fortunately, technology has come to the rescue: “Bluetooth helps Saudis break taboos.”
Minor Annoying Feature of the Article: In a discussion of the ID names of Bluetooth users, it states, “Some are more suggestive, like ‘nice to touch’ and ‘Saudi gay club.'” If anything, “Saudi gay club” is hardly “suggestive” in the way that “nice to touch” is. The sentence is evidence of a little bit of implicit homophobia — not hateful or bigoted, but annoying, nonetheless.
TGP comments:
“In a discussion of the ID names of Bluetooth users, it states, “Some are more suggestive, like ‘nice to touch’ and ‘Saudi gay club.'” If anything, “Saudi gay club” is hardly “suggestive” in the way that “nice to touch” is. The sentence is evidence of a little bit of implicit homophobia — not hateful or bigoted, but annoying, nonetheless.”
Tom, not to be confrontational, but is this a game that only gays can play? If not, perhaps I could ask why this statement is evidence of “implicit homophobia” as opposed to merely evidence of poor writing. We live, I suspect you’d agree, in a society where sloppy writing may be even more common than homophobia…
Treading ever so cautiously,
Ross
Ross makes a good point about precision of language, yet I think what he was touching on was this all too common way of thinking that sexualizes anything remotely gay. The homophobic element in that mistake stems less from the traditional, hate related connotation of “homophobic” and is related more to just plain ignorance.
(I know I’m not Tom, sorry)
I’m assuming the thought here is something akin to the way some parents will be horrified to hear that anyone has acknowledged the existence of gays in the presence of their children because they don’t want their kids “exposed to sex,” as though “Heather Has Two Mommies” were something akin to Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom.”
It’s frustrating how frequently on this board contributors post messages on the unimportant part of the posts rather than the real issue. This entire string adds nothing at all to the issue of new technology giving people greater freedom
Well, I’ll make a nod toward Denton and say that, indeed, my addendum was about a merely minor annoyance, whereas the main point — the one I thought was most interesting and even rather marvelous — was about how technology has helped people to evade being hassled and coerced by the “religious police.”
So I’ll just put in my two cents on the minor annoyance and say no more after that. Sloppy writing may be an explanation, but if so it’s because it rested on a deeper foundation of sloppy thinking, which equated mention of homosexulaity with “suggestivenes.” If one mentions “straight couple” one may think of affection, flirtation, hand-holding and the like. Suggestions of sexual congress are not the first things that come to mind. But if the context is changed from straight to gay it seems that that’s what does come to mind for the CNN writer.
Anyway, as Denton notes, that was a merely minor annoyance. More important was how technology allows people — regardless of the object of their affections — to get around the coercive restrictions of the Saudi state apparatus.
Lest the technology aspect get too far afield, I’d like to mention that this “covert” method of communications isn’t all that covert. Every Bluetooth device has a unique serial number that is published with the user-assigned name. The religious police (or anyone else with access to the records) may and without doubt will eventually be able to participate in this conversation, picking up serial numbers and tracking them back to their owners. Unless everyone agrees to some sort of massive “device swap” to evade the serial number trackers. Though sooner or later, governments will probably outlaw that, too. In any case, this means of communications is far from “safe”. It is merely ahead of where the police are. (This same serial number tracking ability applies to wired and wireless internet connections. Don’t expect, just because your in a Starbucks or a “free” WiFi zone, that what you do on the Internet cannot be traced back to your computer. It can, though I admit it almost certainly will not. But if the technology is used enough, the authorities will create a couple of high-profile cases to make the point and scare many people away.)
Not to mention “undercover” police wandering around with their own bluetooth phones with solicitous names, waiting for some unsuspecting lonely heart to make ‘illegal’ contact.
And on the “homophobia” aspect, I suggest that the writer may not be homophobic, but may merely think the gay angle will raise the article’s profile – which we have demonstrated here to be quite true. Further, compared to the names earlier in the paragraph, the two names in the sentence Tom highlighted are more “descriptive” – or “suggestive [of an attribute of the owner]”. I know Tom is far from “too sensitive”, but I believe he’s made a molehill out of nothing but a wrong word or a missing qualifier by reading “suggestive” as “sexually suggestive”. We have then turned Tom’s minor molehill in to a smallish mountain. Of course, it’s also possible that the author is homophobic, did intend “sexually suggestive”, and is merely providing him or herself plausible deniability.
Richard
Richard’s warning is somewhat chilling. I’ll remember the next time I flirt with someone by bluetooth. And it sounds like Tom made a molehill out of a molehill. He called it a minor annoying feature. Ok. I see his point.