sebastienne | (no subject)

Current Mood: enraged

(no subject)

Hi Emma,

We did not 'tell any proportion of our readership that it did not exist.'
We reported the opinions of one person. That is what newspapers do. We
also reported the views of someone else who disagreed with him and quoted
George melly as a well-known example of a bisexual - again, hardly a
denial that bisexuals exist. We suspect that our readers have enough
intelligence to make up their own minds on such issues.

regards

Kieran Meeke
Features Editor

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Having read an article published on page 17 of the Monday, July 24, 2006 Metro concerning gay genes and the existence of bisexuality I felt it best to send you an email. In my opinion the article requires serious reworking as it could very easily give readers the wrong idea with regards to the debate and makes use of incredible rules of grammar that I hitherto had not known existed.

The first problem I encountered when reading the article was the lack of evidence. Assumedly these scientists in Ontario have some sort of proof or at least some data to lead us to believe that their theory is viable? I believe the sentence ran:
"They claim that antibodies produced in the womb affect a foetus's developing brain. The mother's body may regard a male foetus as 'foreign' compared with a female one, prompting a chemical reaction in her that gets progressively stronger with each male child. So, the more older brothers you have, the higher the chance you'll be gay."
I am assuming that the science that these scientists were using was statistics. It sounds like they've gleaned some statistical information off of the populace which lead them to believe that "the more older brothers you have, the higher chance you'll be gay." And to explain this they have used a, in my opinion, half-baked idea concerning a mother biologically considering their own child to be a foreign entity depending upon its sex. Logically this makes absolutely no sense. As I see it, the entire point of nature is to make more nature. It would be incredibly idiotic for a creature to chemically alter the way it nurtures its offspring in the womb because it perceives it be foreign. If this were the case then it would lead to a large and rather dramatic flaw in the natural system. I am not saying that this is not the case, as I am not in point of fact a biologist, what I am saying is that for such an immensely important scientific 'breakthrough' it may have proven wiser to offer up some sort of scientific evidence, which the article does, in fact, claim the scientists possess.
It also gives absolutely no explanation for lesbians, which concerns me as lesbians are an important part of the homosexual populace.
If it turns out that these scientists don't really have any evidence, but have a theory, logical or otherwise, would it not be better to say explicitly that it is a theory and has only been proven through statistics which are noteably unreliable, or even better: not include it in the article at all and find some other study with scientific merit and things?

I shall move on as I feel I have laboured the point enough.

[though I shall in fact move on in the next comment as I am too wordy, like]

Dr Qazi Rahman. Why have you used him as an expert? He has written a book on it. This is fine, assumedly he did research before writing it, etc, so I can understand why you would seek him out. He said:
"Sexual orientation is an 'either. or' phenomena for both genders, more so with men."
Would you not, at this point, be doubting the use of him as an expert. If you could find no one else the least you could do is not print this quote. It doesn't make sense. After this gramatical gem you would, obviously, then look over the other things that he had said, namely:
"If you have four of five, you would be straight but have gay traits, ie you'd be more feminine."
Personally, I would assume that if you got an expert on a subject then they would know about said subject. They would know that, in this instance, sexuality is not determined by how feminine you are. Being feminine does not make you gay. If you are gay then you are not automatically feminine. If I was interviewing this man and I had somehow managed to control my rage at such an idiotic statement, I would not print it in the article. Or maybe I would, and use it as an example of how some view homosexuality and bisexuality and how this needs to be changed.
The fact that dear Dr Qazi Rahman does not understand the subject matter and would appear to have come to these conclusions never having spoken to anyone other than heterosexuals should have brought you, as journalists, to the conclusion that he is not the best person to quote in this debate.

Professor Jeffrey Weeks. I am glad that you managed to find someone to argue the opposite side of the argument. The problem is that this expert says that:
"Bisexual people have gay and heterosexual phases."
He followed this up by exemplifying with George Melly having male and female partners at different times in his life. This argument has two rather obvious logical flaws:
1) Just because George Melly at one point had a male partner, and at one point had a female partner does not mean he went through phases. This would suggest that only if you have a male and a female partner at the same time can you be bisexual. I shall come back to this. Taking another logical step, it would also suggest that while George Melly did not have a partner he had no sex drive at all and found neither men nor women attractive. This is lunacy.
2) This point actually argues back on Jeff here, as bisexuality is clearly possible if George had had a relationship involving two people of differing sexes.
Professor Jeffrey Weeks is not a particularly good expert as he contradicts himself and one of his arguments makes no logical sense (although it does make gramatical sense to kudos to him for that).

In short, you have quoted two people who's arguments are logically flawed and claimed to possess scientific evidence that you have not shown us. What is the point in your article?
All you have done is possibly offended a large group of bisexuals who are assumedly convinced that they exist and proven to me that you are unaware of how to write a newspaper article.

In anxious anticipation of an explanation,

Tavaro

ooh, thank you! you are wonderfully articulate :) if you want to send it to the guy who sent me the rude response, and seems to require re-educating, he can be reached at "features@ukmetro.co.uk".

from your location, and friends list, i'm assuming you're a reprobate... which one?

The Craig-shaped one, I do believe.

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