soc.motss frequently asked questions, release 0

[Stan Brown]

A couple of weeks ago, I rashly volunteered to put together an FAQ list.
Following is the preliminary result. I'm not altogether happy with it,
but I think the best way to improve it is to post it and let the
corrections pour in.

========================================================================

WELCOME TO SOC.MOTSS -- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS -- VERSION 0

This monthly post attempts to answer some questions that are often
asked on soc.motss. You may also be interested in the "motss lexicon"
that is posted periodically. (There is some overlap in subject matter.)

Please send corrections or suggestions to Stan Brown at
br...@ncoast.org. I do read soc.motss regularly but owing to the volume
I may miss posted suggestions for this FAQ list. I will acknowledge
all email, so if you don't get a reply it means I didn't receive your
message.

About this newsgroup
====================

1. Who reads soc.motss?
1991 usage figures show about 40,000 readers worldwide. Typical
traffic is over 100 articles a day. (Hint: learn to use a kill file.)

2. Why isn't the group name something more obvious, like soc.gay?
At least two answers: a. That name excludes some of our
"constituency"; b. Some administrators might choose not to carry a
group with "gay" in its name.

3. When was soc.motss created?
In October 1983, as 'net.motss'. Excerpt from Steve Dyer's
announcement of 7 Oct 83: "Net.motss is a forum for the discussion of
gay-related issues of interest to all members of USENET. Its name is an
acronym for "members of the same sex", coined by contributors to
net.singles as an analogue to MOTOS--"member of the opposite sex." It is
therefore, unfortunately, a euphemism of sorts--an alternative to the
preferred 'net.gay'. Nevertheless, the proponents of the group have
gladly passed on this minor issue so that the group should be swiftly
formed."

4. What subjects are legitimate in soc.motss?
Anything motss-related that's on your mind is fair game, with one
major exception: condemnations or "justifications" of homosexuality do
not belong in soc.motss. They can go in alt.politics.homosexuality or
talk.politics.misc.
According to the original announcement, soc.motss "is designed to
foster discussion on a wide variety of topics, such as health problems,
parenting, relationships, clearances, job security and many others. Gay
members of USENET will find this a supportive environment for the
discussion of issues which have immediate impact on their everyday
lives. Those who aren't gay have an opportunity to be informed by the
discussion, and are encouraged to read the news items and contribute
their own questions and opinions.
"[soc.motss] is emphatically NOT a newsgroup for the discussion of
whether homosexuality is good or bad, natural or unnatural. Not is it a
place where conduct unsuitable for the net will be allowed or condoned.
Rather, like every USENET news group, it is an opportunity for people
all across the world to express their opinions, exchange ideas, and come
to appreciate the diversity within the USENET membership."

5. Can you give any more specific guidelines about posting?
Follow normal netiquette. Some special "hot buttons" for many of us
are any kind of sexist language; statements like "I'm straight, but..."
or "I think what you do is gross"; referring to people with AIDS as
"victims".
The traffic is huge and many of us are supposed to be working, so
please think about using email rather than posting; or if you post a
follow-up, please edit ruthlessly to pare the quoted bits down to the
bare minimum -- but don't scramble the attributions.
If you see something particularly outrageous and homophobic, the
advice many of us will give is "sit on your hands": i.e., ignore it.
The 'phobes typically leave soon quickly UNLESS they have an audience.

6. What will happen to me if I post in soc.motss?
The answer is: in general, nothing. (Lots of people of all
orientations read and write to soc.motss, BUT it might behoove one to
think about coming out to 40,000 people.) You can post anonymously by
sending email to any of the addresses listed in the monthly soc.motss
lexicon.

7. My site has only read access to soc.motss.
You can try sending email to soc-...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu. It
appears that the result is a (non-anonymous) post.

8. What will happen to me if I read soc.motss?
Again, in general nothing. (You may be informed or infuriated, of
course; but that's a standard Usenet hazard.) If you're extremely
concerned, you should be aware that most system software leaves your
'newsrc' file unprotected by default. This means that anyone who wants
to can find out who in the same company reads any given newsgroup, such
as soc.motss.

9. Are there other motss-related groups I'd be interested in?
sci.med.aids for AIDS issues; alt.politics.homosexuality and
talk.politics.misc tend (IMHO) to a higher level of flamage about LGBO*
issues. Of course, We Are Everywhere (TM), so you will also see LGBO*
viewpoints in many newsgroups.
There are two mailing lists specifically for discussing lesbian
issues: sappho, which is women-only (sappho-...@mc.lcs.mit.edu) and
lisaben, which is mixed (lisaben...@athena.mit.edu).

10. I saw something in another newsgroup that everyone in soc.motss
should read.
No, you probably didn't. It is generally bad manners to crosspost
or duplicate post something from another newsgroup to soc.motss just
because you think soc.motssers should read it. It is _especially_ bad
manners to crosspost condemnations of homosexuality (see previous
answer). It _is_ acceptable to post a brief note on soc.motss only,
saying "In newsgroup a.b.c there's a thread called blah-blah. Check it
out if you're interested."

11. What about crossposting from soc.motss to other groups?
Again, there can't be a hard rule, but it's generally not a good
idea. Say there was a TV show with some motss interest, and you feel
moved to post about it. At first thought it might seem reasonable to
crosspost to soc.motss,rec.arts.tv. But the two groups are separate
because they serve generally separate interests. The thread could
develop in different directions, and it's not really a service to either
group to force its members to read stuff they're not interested in, or
edit their kill files yet again.


Language and Other Symbols
==========================

12. Does "gay" imply "male"?
You'll get different answers from different people. In general it
is safe to assume that a significant number of persons who identify as
lesbians or bisexuals will feel excluded by that term.

13. What's the right term to include everyone?
There is no one right answer. A growing number of people use
"queer", but some others are uncomfortable with that. You will also see
references to "LGBO*", lesbian-gay-bisexual-other. In the context of
this newsgroup, "motsseurs" or "motssers" or even "motsketeers" is often
used.

14. Is "gay" a noun or an adjective?
Some persons, even some gay men, are offended by the use of "gay" as
a noun in sentences like "Bar the door, Martha, the gays are coming."

15. What's the origin of the pink triangle?
In the 1930's and 1940's, the Nazis used various colored geometrical
figures to identify various classes of prisoners in concentration camps.
The pink triangle was used for homosexual men. There was no badge
specifically for lesbians: the Nazis used a black triangle for female
"sex offenders", which (to them) included lesbians, prostitutes, and
women who refused to bear children for the Reich.

16. Does the pink triangle point up or down?
The Nazis made homosexuals wear the triangle with the point facing
down. ACT-UP flipped the symbol and made it their own. Both ways are
correct.

Civil Rights and the Law
========================

17. Which states protect our rights by law?
The states of Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Connecticut have
comprehensive laws on the books to prohibit discrimination on the basis
of sexual orientation. Many cities and counties do also, and some
governors have issued executive orders that affect employees of their
state governments.

18. What's the situation at the Federal level?
The U.S. Civil Service prohibits discrimination, though the
military services do discriminate.

19. What about discrimination by private employers?
Many employers and unions have also established non-discrimination
policies.

20. Where is same-gender sex legal?
Roughly half the states have reformed their laws (by legislative or
judicial action) to remove restrictions on sexual activity between
consenting adults in private.

21. Didn't the Supreme Court say sodomy was a crime even in private?
Not exactly. By a 5-4 decision in the 1986 case of _Bowers v
Hardwick_, the Supremes ruled that a state could pass a law
criminalizing homosexual behavior even in private because the
Constitutional right to privacy did not extend to sexual relations
between members of the same sex. An analysis of why this was a bad
decision (not just for us, but for the Constitution) may be found in
Laurence Tribe, _On Reading the Constitution._

Grab bag
========

22. When is National Coming-Out Day?
October 11, every year starting in 1988.

23. When is the Pride March in <city name>?
Typically these are in the last two weeks of June, but they vary
from city to city. The timing commemorates our movement's "Boston Tea
Party": On June 28(*), 1969, New York City police pulled yet another
raid on the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Sheridan Square. This time, instead
of meekly submitting, the patrons (most of them stereotypically
effeminate drag queens) fought back with pride, and the modern
gay-rights struggle sprang up in cities across the U.S. and in other
nations.
(*) Month and year are right, day is from memory and may not be.

24. What is the Kinsey scale?
In the 1948 book _Sexual Behavior in the Human Male_, the Kinsey
researchers made the (then) startling assertion that homosexual behavior
was not restricted to identified homosexuals. (The book was based on
ain-depth survey of thousands of men.) The authors said that it made
more sense to look at a person's behavior as being at some point on a
spectrum or scale, running from 0 (exclusively heterosexual behavior
over the last three years) to 6 (exclusively homosexual behavior over
that period). This has since been called the "Kinsey scale". If you
are a "Kinsey 3" it means that in the past three years you have had as
many sexual experiences with males as with females.

25. What is the origin of the "10% gay" figure?
In the same book (see previous answer), Kinsey published survey
results that 4% of the men were Kinsey 6's (exclusively homosexual
experiences) and 6% were Kinsey 5's (predominantly homosexual). 4% + 6%
= 10%. The parallel statistic for women in the same studies is 3 to 8%
(scale 4 to 6). The works don't really match exactly in what they were
measuring. Like any sociological study, Kinsey's has been challenged on
a number of grounds. More recent studies have generated statistics far
above or below these numbers (especially for women), but nothing more
authoritative has been published.

26. Is HIV the same as AIDS?
In a word, no. HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is almost
universally believed to be the cause of AIDS. However, a person is
exposed to HIV may or may not become infected. A person who is infected
will still test negative in "HIV tests" (so-called "AIDS tests") for a
period of time. The test doesn't detect the presence or absence of HIV
in the bloodstream. Rather, it looks for antibodies created by the body
in response to the HIV infection.
To be "HIV positive" means that the antibodies have been found in
the blood. A person may be "asymptomatic" (having no symptoms, feeling
perfectly well) for months or years while HIV positive. AIDS is
diagnosed in a person who is HIV positive _and_ has specific diseases
(often but not always Pneumocystis Carinii pneumonia or Kaposi's sarcoma).
If you have specific questions, your best bet is to check
sci.med.aids or contact your local AIDS service organization. Oh yes--
a person diagnosed with AIDS is not an "AIDS victim" but a "person with
AIDS" or "PWA".

Pictures (from a post by Steve Dyer)
========

The soc.motss picture archive contains digitized images in GIF form.
GIF is a popular format for the distribution of color and gray scale
images of up to 8 bits in depth.
There are many public domain programs to view GIF images on DOS and
Macintosh machines, as well as on workstations under Sunview and X11
window systems. Sun and X11 programs to view the images can be found on
ursa-major.spdcc.com under the directory /pub/progs. (If you know where
GIF viewers are available for other operating systems, please email
br...@ncoast.org and they'll be added to this list.)
To obtain photos of motsseurs over the Internet, do the following:

% ftp ursa-major.spdcc.com -OR- ftp 140.186.80.3
Connected to ursa-major.spdcc.com.
220 ursa-major.spdcc.com FTP server (Version 4.172 Sun Dec 4 17:20:50 EST 1988) ready.
Name (your.hostand.domain:yourname): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd /pub/motss.pix
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> dir
[long directory listing of all GIF photos follows]
ftp> bin(this is ESSENTIAL)
200 Type set to I.
ftp> get kurisuto.gif
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for kurisuto.gif (97477 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: kurisuto.gif remote: kurisuto.gif
97477 bytes received in 1.1 seconds (84 Kbytes/s)
ftp> get another.gif
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for another.gif (65535 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: another.gif remote: another.gif
65535 bytes received in 1.0 seconds (66 Kbytes/s)
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.

The archive is also found on a West Coast machine, gatekeeper.dec.com,
under the directory /pub/graphics/data/soc.motss. I have no information
about obtaining any of these files by means other than through the
Internet (i.e., BITNET or UUCP-only sites need to find a friendly
Internet neighbor.)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio, USA +1 216 371 0043
email: br...@ncoast.org -or- ap...@cleveland.freenet.edu
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is the
first duty of intelligent men." -- George Orwell, quoted in Wall St. Journal