On the one hand, nice to hear that he (and I, frankly) underestimated the country.
But ... the Log Cabin Republicans?
When John Amaechi told the world he was gay, he steeled himself for a torrent of negativity that never really materialized, the former pro basketball player told the Republican Party's largest gay organization Saturday. "I underestimated America. I braced myself for the wrath of a nation under God," Amaechi said at the Log Cabin Republicans' annual convention. "I imagined that it would be a firestorm, that it would be some insane number of letters demanding my deportation or my death. And in fact, 95 percent of the correspondence I've had have been overwhelmingly supportive and positive," Amaechi said. "But I will say that the 5 percent that I've had have been unbelievably, viscerally, frighteningly negative."
Amaechi is a psychologist who works with corporations and also with children, "and I worried what America would make of that," he said. "And it is not an issue."
Among the most vitriolic of critics was former NBA All-Star Tim Hardaway, whose anti-gay remarks led to his disassociation with the league.
Amaechi, who was raised in England, played in 301 NBA games over five seasons with stops in Cleveland, Orlando, Utah, Houston and New York. "Probably 30 of my former [NBA] teammates have my e-mail and my telephone contacts and probably 16 or so of those I was in regular touch with and there are probably 10 people who I have [on instant messenger]. And zero -- nobody -- who's active in the NBA has been in touch with me since the day I came out, despite the fact that most of them knew I was gay in the first place."
The 36-year-old former player said that while he's heard from everyone he played with at Penn State, he has yet to hear from a single former NBA teammate since coming out in February. "Probably 30 of my former [NBA] teammates have my e-mail and my telephone contacts and probably 16 or so of those I was in regular touch with and there are probably 10 people who I have [on instant messenger]. And zero -- nobody -- who's active in the NBA has been in touch with me since the day I came out, despite the fact that most of them knew I was gay in the first place," Amaechi said.
He also wondered why nba.com, the league's official Web site, has never mentioned his homosexuality when it was such a huge sports story everywhere else....
You know, not that this is the reason for it ... but saying nothing whatsoever was technically the correct response. After all, a studied indifference should be the correct response of an organization to hearing about someone's sexual orientation; it shouldn't matter in the least. The indifference should be even more studied when, let's face it, the man wasn't particularly notable during his career in the NBA, and hasn't been in the league for a year or two.
That said, allowing that we don't yet live in a world where sexual orientation is allowed not to matter to your work (vide Tim Hardaway), I'm not actually sure what the NBA response should have been. "Congratulations, you're gay!" or "We're so thrilled that you waited until you retired to come out!" Seriously, what on earth could they possibly have said that wouldn't have come off very badly indeed? To be really fair, they did put their money where their mouth was -- or, mpre properly, took it out of Hardaway's mouth -- by firmly dissociating itself from him and removing him from making any contacts in the league's name. Other than that ... what could they have said?
It would be interesting and instructive, if appalling, to know precisely what Amaechi meant by "unbelievably, viscerally, frighteningly negative". Given that it seems to have been even more negative than he was expecting, I'm guessing that it was probably something like the type and level of negativity that Kathy Sierra has been experiencing:
This week's entry in the ongoing Kathy Sierra Wars was a benign effort by the Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, who observed, unsurprisingly, that "Sexual Threats Stifle Some Female Bloggers."
Sierra was a powerhouse blogger who in March shut down her blog, Creating Passionate Users, about the highly gender-charged subject of metacognition and computers. Sierra stopped bloging after anonymous critics posted graphic and sexually threatening material about her, both in the comments section of her Web site and on other blogs. The posters (read them here) somehow confused death threats with debate on the merits of Sierra's views and policies. Some suggested that Sierra deserved to have her throat slit and to be suffocated, sexually violated, and hanged. Among the things Sierra wrote as she folded up her blogging tent: "I have cancelled all speaking engagements. I am afraid to leave my yard. I will never feel the same. I will never be the same." [...]
...there are important differences between threats received over the Internet and sexual harassment at work. It starts, obviously, with a total lack of context. Women have accumulated at least some skills in figuring out when face-to-face sexual innuendo or threats are serious, joking, or pathological. True, we are sometimes tragically wrong. But for the most part, we can tell whether Jeff from accounting needs a restraining order or just a stern "no." An anonymous sexual threat on a blog could come from anywhere, and it's virtually impossible to determine whether or not the poster is serious. For the recipient, it's a bit like walking blindfolded through what might be a construction site, a retirement home, or a pick-up basketball game between two teams of recovering rapists...
As a gay man who has just declared that, aside from being somewhat closeted during his career, his gayness made no real difference in being able to play or really in how his teams related to him, he's suddenly become a very visible threat, for people who view masculinity in certain ways. And I'd be willing to bet that if he and Kathy Sierra compared threatening messages, they'd find that they were essentially the same. After all, if you view gay men as not being properly male/masculine, then it makes a sort of twisted sense to use the same threats against them as you would against women.
By Mark Boslet
Mercury News
Article Launched: 05/07/2007 01:34:38 AM PDT
When disagreements flare up, Nick Wilson isn't afraid to hurl insults at his fellow bloggers. "I've been unkind to people for sure," said Wilson, who publishes ClickInfluence from Denmark. If an Internet site is "complete rubbish," responses get highly charged, he said. "It's easy to go just a little bit further than you would if you were face to face."
Wilson has plenty of company. The free-for-all world of the Internet has never been constrained by the conventions of polite speech. Speaking up is part of the culture, and fiery comments won't disappear anytime soon. But in this anything-goes environment, sharp-edged retorts are showing they can easily become threatening and filled with hate.
Such was the experience of Kathy Sierra, a blogger who received death threats, sexually explicit messages - even a threat to slit her throat - earlier this year. She traces the storm to a blog post from April 2006 titled "Angry/Negative People Can Be Bad For Your Brain," which unleashed a slowly gathering snowball of criticism, some of it harsh. Sierra said she believes the outpouring came in part because she was perceived as too optimistic. "I'm still afraid," said Sierra, who spoke to the Mercury News but has commented little publicly since the online attacks. "Someone went to a lot of effort to do it." [...]
[...] A voluntary code of conduct posted by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly on his site last month in the wake of the Sierra affair was so widely condemned that O'Reilly softened it in a revision titled "Lessons Learned So Far." It urged bloggers to encourage appropriate behavior by not permitting anonymous comments on their sites and refraining from saying things online that they wouldn't say face to face, among other measures. It also suggested that sites voluntarily adopting the code display a badge. But the revision decided, among other things, that the sheriff's badge, with its reference to the American West, was a bad idea.
Wilson was one of those speaking up against the code. He said he maintains a firm ethical policy online and never posts comments that are nasty or which rely on personal attacks. But that didn't stop him from putting up two podcasts linked to his blog last month, one of which was titled, "Why The Blogger's Code of Conduct Can Kiss My Arse."
"I don't think I'm under any obligation to be civil on the Internet," said Wilson, adding that at 35 years old he is able to determine the correct way to behave. "I absolutely hate the idea." [...]
I have to admit, I don't entirely understand that point of view. I don't understand why anyone would feel that communicating over the internet requires less civility than communicating in person or over the phone. If anything, it would seem to require more civility, if only because you don't have facial or vocal cues to determine tone, to help you understand how something is meant. (Granted, I'm pretty sure that threats to rape you and yours and kill you are the sort of thing that wouldn't necessarily be improved by hearing them in person.)
I freely admit that my reaction to people who feel that the internet gives license to be rude and obnoxious is something along the lines of: These days, there's a tolerably decent chance that you'll meet someone in real life who can attach your face to comments you have made about them, at them, about or at someone they know, and they will judge you for it in ways that you won't like. saying "But it was just the internet!" won't help." Alternatively, I'd like to shorten that to, Oh, just grow UP!. Or possibly something even more pungent and expletive-laden.
But that would be uncivil of me, wouldn't it?
Posted by iain at May 07, 2007 12:50 PM
