Tim Hardaway: "I hate gay people."

[GuyIncognito]

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We do? I think the proximate cause is that men and women tend to feel uncomfortable with nudity in a co-ed setting. I don't know why it is that we feel uncomfortable, but I'm not sold on its being because we're worried about human weakness and inappropriate behavior. Personally, I'd be uncomfortable mainly because I'm out of shape and embarassed about it.


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I'm certain it is for a lot of people. Foreigners are always telling us how silly it is that we Puritanical Americans automatically equate nudity with sex.

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It's unreasonable because it's not an "assumption" -- as long as there have been showers, gay and straight men have bathed naked together, and it hasn't caused any real problems for straight people. Logic and experience tells us it's a non-issue, yet plenty of people are strongly opposed to the idea because ... why, exactly? I'm racking my brains to come up with a good reason.


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At least one poster in this thread has experienced a violation, although we don't know the offender's orientation or intentions.

Isn't it possible that ignorance is the reason it's a non-issue? I think it used to be that in a lot of settings in America (and certainly among most sports teams), men unconsciously assumed that all their teammates or showermates were straight (I never used communal showers, so unfortunately I'm speaking outside of my experience here). If somebody showed excessive interest in one of your sensitive parts, it felt uncomfortable and you'd tell the guy to stop.

The assumption that everyone else is straight is gone now. Should the guy still assume that any violation is non-sexual in intent, or evaluate sexual and non-sexual intent equally, and thus not feel any more discomfort than he would have before?

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The difference here is not one of managing sexual temptation. The differences are that (1) gays are a distinct minority in society, and that (2) society has a long, sordid history of being hostile to this minority, so that any forced attempt to separate shower facilities would naturally be linked to that history.

Clearly the ideal solution would be to have private shower facilities in every locker room. Absent that, people just deal with it on their own. High school kids nowadays are much more aware of the existence of gay people than they were a couple of decades ago. A lot of them simply shower at home after practice instead of using the communal shower facilities at school, and I don't think that's immature at all.

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I agree.

If someone feels a strong aversion to showering with gays, then the classy thing to do is to shower exclusively alone. OTOH, talking to a reporter (or anyone else) about how gays shouldn't be allowed in showers or locker rooms? Not so classy.

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Ok, glad we agree on that.