hadespussercats wrote:
Fair enough, I suppose. Though being gay is hardly inappropriate for children-- particularly if you're watching mating behaviors en famille anyway.
Honestly, I haven't read the article in the OP-- I was just remarking that homosexual behavior is found throughout the animal kingdom. It's not standard behavior, but it's certainly not unusual. And if Attenborough in fact has never, in the many many documentaries he's made, touched upon that at all as a point of discussion, that does seem strange. Particularly when there are far stranger animal behaviors that get recorded/commented upon all the time, simply because they are unusual.
And to echo Fakuname's earlier sentiments, again, it's worth while for prominent naturalists and documentarians to be encouraged to make plain these matters (namely, the commonplace nature of homosexuality, and related concerns), not only because they are simple truth, but because they counter the all-too-common belief that homosexuality is unnatural, or a crime against nature.
Making a request towards this end is not the same thing as requiring that every documentarian needs must account for any and all variation amongst the subject he's exploring, or face being considered an exclusionary bigot. And yes, I realize there are people who think that way. They're idiots.
Well, I agree. Homosexual behaviour
should be considered an appropriate topic for education purposes of children. However there are many people who think it not, who would, if exposed to it on a T.V. show like that just switch it off, they don't want to be exposed to that and they definitely don't want their children exposed to it. Sure you might think them idiots, I would too, but if we are showing an honest documentary about nature it would be a fucking brutal horrorshow which many other people would switch off and deter their kids from watching. The BBC made something of timeless mass appeal, they made those programmes for the broadest audience, not to shut out the unbelievers and only preach to the converted. I'd say rather that smarter people than Mills know exactly what they are doing and have been doing with those shows over the last 40 years.
Considering the liberal worldview the BBC these days, (I say these days, it's been challenging Establishment and working class homophobia directly since the seventies, which is as far back as I can recall, but I'd not be surprised if longer) I find if difficult to believe that this is an issue for anyone other than Mills. If his point was that society should be less outraged and appalled by homosexuality, perhaps he should fuck off out of media studies and instead focus on social studies.
"What started as a legitimate effort by the townspeople of Salem to identify, capture and kill those who did Satan's bidding quickly deteriorated into a witch hunt" Army Man
