Yeah, but you'll have to pay a bit extra for it. ;)

Hmmm.

Let's not forget the Ellen deGeneris Toaster Oven Award....might make any surcharge worthwhile, if a kickback can be arranged. :-)

Sorry Mags...you lost me on that one...Toaster Oven award? Is that like an El Camino? :)

Lemme just crib what I wrote on one of the Pink Pistols lists where one of the straight members didn't get a "toaster oven" joke.

<blockquote>
In 1997, when Ellen deGeneris' character "Ellen Morgan" on the ABC sitcom "Ellen" discovers that she is a lesbian...
<blockquote>
"There's a moment in the first half hour of the show in which Laura Dern's character, Susan, dealing with Ellen in full-blown homosexual panic <i>[ after rejecting the advances of a man on a date, and Susan's making a pass at Ellen, who realizes to her dismay that the idea seems much more appealing to her than the man did --ml ]</i> cracks a joke about her failure to "recruit" Ellen for the lesbian cause. "Damn," she says, as the laugh-track explodes, "just one more and I would have gotten that toaster oven!" "Is that gay humor?" Ellen asks, "`cause I don't get it. That's how un-gay I am." Later in the episode, Ellen tells Susan that she "got the joke" just before she comes out, and the end of the episode features a cameo of Melissa Etheridge signing Ellen up as a lesbian and giving Susan the longed-for toaster oven.
</blockquote>
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/...ds/Torres.html

So that's what the "toaster oven" thing is about. It's a joke about the mistaken idea that every queer person in the world has subscribed to a "homosexual agenda" that includes recruiting as many people to homosexuality as possible, and that this invidious campaign is so organized that there's actually a catalog from which you can select incentive awards.
</blockquote>

Now what's this about an El Camino? I know about Mary Kay and the pink Caddy, but El Camino?

Education
 

I learn so much stuff on this site. :)

Putting Ellen DeGeneres and "Toaster Oven" together made me think of "El Camino," which is a term my friends and I used in referring to a bisexual. (Is it a car? Is it a truck? It's both.) Of course, now that I know what you mean, it sounds silly...but might sound more appropriate if Ellen were substituted with Anne Heche. :)

flames? at the gay games? go figure ...

i dunno about lesbian gay bars, but the male gay bar i was taken to to photograph a drag show alternated between "It's Raining Men" and Abba's greatest hits ...

True, Anne wasn't in the show. :-)

Not quite sure what to say about the "El Camino" rifff, there's something strikes me odd at the core of it; sort of that SNL classic "Shimmer: it's a desert toppping....it's a floor wax".

Maybe it's the thought that the El Camino in trying to be both a car and a truck is somehow compromised in either role. Certainly from the inside, being bi doesn't feel like a compromise at all; it feels more like a gift, like being bilingual or ambidexterous. I don't appreciate men less for being into women, nor does my (admittedly still developing) eye for guys interefere with my attraction to women.

A theory held by many experts in sexuality is that most people have the inherent *potential* to express themselves sexually with either men or women....and that the amount of bimodality in the distribution across the Kinsey orientation scale is a measure of the sexual repressiveness of a society; a more repressive society kind of squeezes folks into two lumps at the extremes of the scale where monosexuality of both kinds is found. Of course, after years of social conditioning in thet environment, the ability to explore that potiential is severely inhibited. (Which doesn't keep it from breaking loose in some folks later in life.)

The theory makes sense to me, and certainly explains some of the bad treatement bi people get not only at the hand of heterosexuals, but also from homosexuals, who you might think would somehow "know better". But you'd be wrong...

Original Posted by MaggieL

"So that's what the "toaster oven" thing is about. It's a joke about the mistaken idea that every queer person in the world has subscribed to a "homosexual agenda" that includes recruiting as many people to homosexuality as possible, and that this invidious campaign is so organized that there's actually a catalog from which you can select incentive awards. "

Well, this idea could not have been helped by the slogans that were (and are still) widely seen at Gay pride events and all over the Gay scene that say "10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!" Think I am lying look it up just type in the quote "10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!" and see the results you get.

Well, the results *I* get are all at anti-gay sites....except one article from the Swarthmore Queer Union entitled "Article Misrepresents Queer Community".

I 'm not saying you're lying, but I would certainly think any queer person would know that "recruiting" is both a silly idea and doesn't work, and would recoginize that anybody chanting such a slogan was joking....just as the Ellen show was.

I've been reisting saying anything about this up till now, but at this point I admit that the more you post, the more skeptical I become about you really being who you say you are.

Anyway...how did *you* get recruited, and why didn't you resist enough, Phil? After all, if people can be "recruited" to being gay--if someone can be "talked into it"-- it must simply be a matter of choice, right?

Recruits
 

Who said that I thought you could be recruited? I said that signs like this have been seen in gay pride parades. I mean gays already have a bad rap when it comes to being child molesters, recruiters and perverted minds. Now granted I do not know of one gay that is a child molester, tried to recruit someone, or has a perverted mind. . . wait take that last one back. :-)

My point is if you have a reputation, even if you got it falsely you would not want to perpetuate it by egging on the accusers. (i.e. if you are the president and you are accused of sleeping with your aides, that would not be the time to take one of your aides on a Caribbean cruise.) Even though you might mean it as a joke the people viewing you are going to say “See I told you!”

Does that make sense? I just don’t think that sarcasm and facetiousness are the ways to achieve tolerance. Maybe it is just me.

Re: Recruits
 

Maybe it *is* just you. I think tolerance is something that can only be achieved by the intolerant themselves. I don't think I should allow them to try make their satisfaction my responsibility. Am I not supposed to joke with my friends for fear some bluenose is going to misconstrue it?

I just don't think there's any amount of being a good nigger that *is* going to satisfy them (with the possible exception of appearing on TV and testifying about how you "got straight again through Jesus"). So why let them call the tune?

I certainly don't intend to look for ways to steer my life based on what the homophobes might think of it. I value my opinions more highly than I do theirs.

I only caught the tail end of this show, but it's on again at 1am ET, and again in late December, on the Discovery Channel: Changing Sexes: Male to Female. It looks rather interesting.

Thanks for the heads-up. This was one I actually hadn't seen before...and it's probably the best show of it's kind on transsexuality that I've seen to date. Their facts were pretty much right on. They even managed to interview Swaab, I think that's a first.

I do have to wonder if they're in sweeps though; it was put on right after a show on dwarfism. :-)