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What is wrong with all my hallmates??

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11:11 / 02.12.03

Some things they are irrationally scared of: blacks, gays, Jews, womens (even the women are scared of women), Slavs, the French. There are, apparently, all as bad as the Nazis. I'm not really sure what was wrong with the Nazis, by their criteria.

So: am I a Good Person, for coping with these people for sometimes whole weeks at a time, engaging in pleasent, phatic conversation and never letting anyone know? Or should the hitherto unknown queerish half-Pole come out fighting? I know full well that there's a case for being nice to people you don't like, and getting on with people, but really... I genuinly thought "gay" had stopped being an insult about 18 months ago.

I really, really wish people wouldn't challenge my preconceptions...

Tryphena Absent

11:17 / 02.12.03

Ooh ooh, ask them what's wrong with the Nazis and tape it!!

No seriously though just ask yourself how they're going to react if your queerish half-Pole does start to make himself known. Remember that you do have to live with them and you can't really escape and I guess just come to your own conclusions.

Being a queerish half pole myself I'd probably yell and it would probably be a mistake.

11:22 / 02.12.03

I should point out, actually, then I'm not going to do anything at all about this, I'm just wondering if I'm meant to do something about this. As it is, I think I'm just going to go slowly insane as these people twitter on about how all diamond traders are in on it.

I think the problem with the Nazis was that they were a bit gay.

11:26 / 02.12.03

Hey, it's the Queer Half-Poles thread! But remember, darling, that one of the ways people oppress us queer half-slav types is by assuming that it's up to us to educate them out of their ignorance ("But how was I supposed to know homophobia was bad, until the Emergency Queer Consciousness-Raisers told me? And now you're picking on me!" [bursts into tears, waits for other straight people to pat them and say 'there, there, dear, it's not your fault you're an ignorant bigot']). If I know you, you have better things to spend your energy on. Cheering up some other queer half-poles, for example.

Unless and until it is taking you more energy and becoming worse for your mental/psychic health to hide your queer half-polishness, of course. Then you should just cock your sophisticated eyebrow (or eyebrow your sophisticated cock) and say "Really, darling? My boyfriend the wrestler'll be surprised to hear that queers are all soft as shite" and waft out to a fabulous party (to which they are not invited) when they make a generalization about queers.

11:29 / 02.12.03

It doesn't help that I'm white, can't speak Polish and have a girlfriend. Why the fuck aren't they psychic, and how is the nail varnish not giving this away??

How the fuck do we have so many queer half-Poles??

11:55 / 02.12.03

I'm not a queerish half-Pole but I'd like to be.

Tryphena Absent

12:05 / 02.12.03

Can't we change the name of this thread to The Queer Half Poles Forum For Equality In All Things?

You need to start wearing heels and blue bobbly earings. That'll clue them in. You know, people who think the Nazis were soooo gay really should be more in tune with the world. How else can they expect to effectively discriminate??

12:23 / 02.12.03

I'm a half-Pole but not very queerish, unless you ask other people about me.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:24 / 02.12.03

I thought Pin was from the Isle of Wight?

Convince them that they're gay. For some reason that upsets homophobes. If you're not going to convince them they're gay then just act as if you know that they are actually gay. And yes a girlfriend will hinder attempts to be "queerish".

Is there much anti Polish racism amongst undergraduates these days? I never really felt that I was an undergraduate during particulalrly enlightened times (mid 90's) nor did I intend university in a particulalrly liberal town (Hull) but I can't really think of anyone I knew who was anti semetic, nor do I think it would've been tolerated.

I;m assuming you have lots of wonderful friends outside of your Hall.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:25 / 02.12.03

Hipler is correct, I think he's queerish though I doubt his Polish credentials.

12:29 / 02.12.03

Augh, don't call me Hipler, if you please. It was a stupid joke, that went horribly awry and will continue to go horribly awry in slow motion for the next 20 odd days. Call me "prev. Todd."

And Reid, I went to my mother's house last weekend, and she gave me a kielbasa that's in my fridge now, waiting to be cooked. How Pole is that, eh? EH?

(sits backs and waits for the inevitable jokes)

Ex

12:49 / 02.12.03

Mmm, hard. I don't think you have any obligation to be pleasant to them - to the tedious, the half-baked and the socially inept, yes, but not to the absolute hardcore git.

Is there a halfway house between wearing yourself down with politeness and beating them with the big sensible-stick? I achieved much with door posters. Or, for personal pref - wait until you have a crew of delightful chums, forewarn them, and then tour en masse your respective residences being fabulous and talking loudly about queerishness and half-Pole-ism.
But sometimes I think the best one can manage, even with such strategies or large confrontations, is to convey to people that not everyone agrees with them, that you'd rather they weren't enormous twats around you, and that they shouldn't expect you to join in their enormous twattery. This tends to reduce serious subjects to a matter of personal ettiquette, but it's a good first step and slightly easier to pull off. Sometimes you can't find the progressive version of SHAZAM (a charged word which you shout one day in the corridor and which corrects and convert all their twattery to sweetness and light).

And they're already not getting the best of you; and gradually, as you find sympatico chums and stay out till all hours avoiding them, they won't get the rest of you, oh baby. Which is their loss.

13:35 / 02.12.03

Fuck 'em .pin (not literally). They sound like the bunch of small minded turds who'll still be living together in the final year, and beyond. I was surprised at how conservative and bloody boring lot of students were when I went to college, that illusion of student=radical firebrand (ie. Rick out of the Young Ones) is about 20 years out of date. A frightening propotion of the ones I met were - I dunno, not offensive, but just - normal. Going to get a steady job, no interest in politics, ideas, cullture or their courses for that matter.I'm going to stop their before I start denouncing "norms". Luckily, you have a big ol' student gene pool for meeting potential cool people.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

13:37 / 02.12.03

Todd, you're quite Hiplerish if that's of any help.

I know very littl about Poland except it was nicked by Russia during the 18th century and may even have been partitioned and that the KGB claimed to have run the Solidarity movement. SO sadly I don't know what a Kielbasa is, (I'm assuming it's food as you've put in your fridge, though I suppose it could be a stoor sample or a particular kind of musical instrument that has to be kept refridgerated, perhaps camera film) so I'm afraid I lack the cultural frame of refrence to make jokes about it.

Tryphena Absent

14:02 / 02.12.03

A frightening propotion of the ones I met were - I dunno, not offensive, but just - normal. Going to get a steady job, no interest in politics, ideas, cullture or their courses for that matter

That's so true, mind you it was refreshing to find myself surrounded by Labour voters rather than conservatives. I'm politically disappointed wherever I go.

14:02 / 02.12.03

This is interesting. Not to blow my own horn or anything, but I recently wrote a short story that began with this sentence: "If you ever find yourself in a position to irritate the cook at a beergarten during Oktoberfest in Astoria, Queens, try asking for shish kebob instead of kielbasa."

Kielbasa is a large, greasy Polish sausage, my friend Reidcourchie. Oh yes. I think the plenitude of queer half-Poles in just about any random triple-digit sampling of an international community is due to the inherent queerness of the phrase "half-Pole". I mean, how many queerish half-Scots do you run into? Or queerish half-Danes? Not many. These are people of extremes, I think, but then, I am not an educated man and given to whimsy. I may be a bit queerish myself.

pin, I have consulted with my team and developed an action-based plan for dealing with your paranoid colleages. 1) Cook up a big meal of kielbasa, served with lots of winks and nudges. 2) All the ones who wink back and gobble down their kielbasa can live. The rest die in their sleep. In the interest of transparency, though, I should tell you that there is only one queerish half-Pole on my team and his suggestion was, "Laugh quietly."

(someone have cusm count all the cock jokes, please. I've lost track.)

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:20 / 02.12.03

Originally posted by Qualyn

I mean, how many queerish half-Scots do you run into?

Quite a few but then I'm from Dundee. But you think those of Polish blood are more given to queerishness due to the double meaning of the word pole? Is this like Carry On eugenics?

14:26 / 02.12.03

Oh, I don't know. I was talking shit.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:48 / 02.12.03

Really? And here's me in my best Sunday sense making suit.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

15:26 / 02.12.03

_pin It doesn't help that I'm white, can't speak Polish and have a girlfriend

I would have thought that having a girlfriend would be the perfect excuse to queer them until they beg for mercy. Just don't be all 'the only gay in the village about it'. But it might expand their minds or make their heads explode, so where's the bad?

19:18 / 02.12.03

I'm a queerish half-Prole, _pin, and I suggest you make friends with them. I bet at least one of them's nice.

19:44 / 02.12.03

So: am I a Good Person, for coping with these people for sometimes whole weeks at a time, engaging in pleasent, phatic conversation and never letting anyone know? Or should the hitherto unknown queerish half-Pole come out fighting?

I'd say you're a Good Person because on the day you're outed (or out yourself) they may have grown to like you, and may change their stripes in regards to queerish half-Poles, and perhaps even by extension view the blacks, Jews, womens, etc, in new lights, and you'll have done a whole lot of people a small favor. Perhaps. But maybe I'm optimist.

19:47 / 02.12.03

Probably as Sax says, at least one of them is quietly in the same situation as you (well not the queerish half-Pole bit, but the unsupported minority) and would be nice to know.

I can't think of anyone who really truely misses living in halls, everyone was relieved at the end of the year. It's a good thing because you meet so many people, but not ideal circumstances to work or study.

From personal experience, I found that the ones I didn't want to know didn't really want to know me either. This was fine. Halls is so large it all gets a bit tribal after a while and people really do leave you in peace if you're not part of their social circle.

19:48 / 02.12.03

But Todd, then you're going to be Todd (prev. Hipler) for another twenty days. So then you will have to change your name to Todd again, and then you can be Todd (prev. Todd).

20:58 / 02.12.03

What’s a guy like you doing in halls anyway? Halls is for squares, man. At the very first opportunity, you get out of that place and into the world of private letting. Seriously: a world of squalor awaits you, full of the joys of rising damp, squabbling over utility bills, freezing your arse off in winter, arguing with the landlord to get your deposit back, getting burgled every time you leave the house by the local neighbourhood junkies...okay, it’s not comfortable. But it’s the only way you’ll learn, and that’s what college is for. Everything else is just books.

Leave these suckers to rot in their silly halls, they deserve one another. You are destined for much, much worse. It’s all part of your initiation.

You also get to have house-trashing, sanity-wrecking, life-transforming art parties, if that’s any help.

>>Oh, and Reid, Hull in the 90's huh? Spiders blah blah BlueLamp blah blah Pint of Ridings blah blah Linnet and Lark Blah<<

21:19 / 02.12.03

I dunno, man. I think that ex has it right in saying that being moderately agreeable around the inept and ill informed is probably a good idea. Beyond that, its up to what makes you feel best. Personally, I find a well timed frown accompanied by steady eye contact does wonders. A shake of the head can help too.

But then I've never been too worried about becoming less than popular. Ultimately, though, much of it comes down to what you can live with.

03:38 / 03.12.03

To protect against this sort of thing (see Fig. 1), especially when it's a little queer, you'll need these.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

06:47 / 03.12.03

Bed, you know cuz you bin' there, especially the getting robbed everytime you leave your house. Ah, those where the days.

08:59 / 03.12.03

I used to a be a queerish half-pole.

Until Jesus showed me the light.

Feel the love, people, but not in that way...

09:07 / 03.12.03

I did used to live on the Isle of Wight, ubt I'm not from there, and also my mother is Polish.

Am I coming across only-gay-in-the-village? I'd rather not, if only because I reckon if I could trace both my parents back to the Norman conquest and could spend whole Justin Timberlake videos making a cup of tea or reading, I'd still be ofended by such great remarks as "All lesbians are fat" and "Yeh, but Asian's just don't bother integrating. I don't see why I should bother". I'm moderately fucking intelligent, before anything else.

Also, I am making friends with them, and being nice, and vaguely attemping to play this boring little realpolitik game they have going about who can manurve themselves into which house-group next year (I'm loosing, miserably, it must be said). It's just, you know... more then a week around them and I start twitching.

Everyone on my politics course, if they don't sum up the phrase "I'll vote Conservative, cos that's how my parents vote; is that how voting works?" are me, about four years ago, and thus seem to have gained the sum total of all their political awareness from Rage Against The Machine.

The problem's me, isn't it?

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:11 / 03.12.03

No, it's not. Tolerance is a very over-rated virtue, in this sense.

09:11 / 03.12.03

The problem's me, isn't it?

No way, dude! It's the system what's to blame!

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:14 / 03.12.03

Jinx! Private jinx!

Have you thought about sawing their legs off in their sleep, pin? That'll learn 'em.

09:29 / 03.12.03

It’s none of my business, but...

Pin. Whatever you do, don’t live with your friends next year. Definitely don’t even think of living with your girlfriend. These people are too important to you to be eroded by the continual arguments and politicking that go with sharing a fridge/tv/bills/living room. You’ll soon be using your friends/GFs houses as places to escape to when you hate your house mates. It’s the natural way of things, don’t fight it.

Find the coolest café in town and check the noticeboard for rooms in shared houses, and then interview potential households to see if they deserve you, you star

Tryphena Absent

09:43 / 03.12.03

You're not the problem. Undergraduates just aren't that aware... actually scrap that, they're fucking stupid. I know, I just stopped being one, none of them give a shit about what's going on in the world. They're all too tied up in 1)their work or 2)drinking. God I hated them all so much that I became a mad recluse who spent all her time sleeping. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed drinking and working occasionally but I found it difficult to talk to anyone when Iraq kicked off because they kept trying to tell me it was a good thing and arguing did nothing.

You're worth that whole university. There are very few people in this world it's actually worth speaking too and probably none of them are there. Don't worry, everyone told me university was the best time ever but I'm having way more fun now, betcha you're the same. Just find some people who are passable and like inflatable daffodils and don't vote Tory and aren't really homophobic. I thought my housemate would flip her lid when I told her I was a Queerish Half Pole but she was good with it (and slightly fascinated 'but how do you know?') and life was good to middling for a couple of years.

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