Is this really an issue for anyone who didn’t participate in this press release/study? I mean, the only thing dumber than this argument is anyone who would take it seriously.

As a gay man, I'm offended by this. I'm actually angry reading that someone's decided that I'm so fragile that you shouldn't put your heterosexual wedding pictures as a background in a Zoom meeting so as to protect my delicate little snowflakey feelings.

If we, as your blog commenters, had a Zoom meeting and one of your male heterosexual regulars had their wedding picture as their background, I might say that their bride is lovely and it's a beautiful wedding picture.

I'm irritated by the very suggestion that I should be offended by images of someone else's heterosexual wedding background. Because doubtless, these grievance mongers speaking on my behalf wouldn't have a problem if I put up pictures of my gay wedding -- hypothetically speaking, since I'm not married and never will be.

This isn't equality; it's a double standard that these sanctimonious assholes are forcing on me.

And I don't want this. I want to attend Zoom meetings and see your heterosexual wedding pictures as a background (if that is your choice to have them) and for you to see my gay wedding pictures as my background.

Then we can gush and ooh and ahh over each other's wedding pictures.

I'll only get offended if you decide to open your bigoted pie hole and insist that your wedding pictures are of a real marriage, but my gay marriage doesn't count because it's a gay marriage.

As as matter of fact, right now, I want to go see if Amy Bonomi is on Twitter, send her a link to this article and let her know that she does not speak for me and that I find her sentiments repulsive.

Wouldn't it be a bit busy as a background? I feel like a plain solid would be ebtter

For example, when the virtual background of a Zoom meeting attendee has pictures of his or her wedding, it unintentionally reinforces the idea that marriage is most fitting between opposite sexes.

It does no such thing - except in the minds of that class of righteous busybodies who believe it to be their duty to speak out on behalf of who they assume to be powerless and voiceless. These folks won't be happy until they force society to dismantle itself in accommodation of those for whom they presume to speak.

These folks don't want to build a tolerant society, they want to tear down the existing society, one in which they feel uncomfortable. So, they use other people's outsider status to validate their own feelings. They want to be martyrs in a political correctness jihad.

Gay men and women are not powerless, nor voiceless, in this day and age. Trump's ambassador to Germany and acting DNI is openly gay. There was an openly gay candidate for president (the former mayor of a small-to-middle-sized Midwestern city). All 50 states have an openly gay person serving in some level of elected political office. The mayors of Chicago and Houston are openly gay.

There is an openly gay character in almost every television show or movie, far out of proportion to the actual percentage of openly gay people in this country.

In addition, gay men and women are no longer outsiders looking in on the wedding industry. They're active participants. Gay marriage is legal; and a multi-billion dollar US industry.

That a picture of a straight wedding could "trigger" a gay person in this day and age is an imagined slight.

Such a picture might affect a single person who wishes he or she was married - gay or straight. By limiting their concern to gay singles, the MSU researchers virtue signal their wokeness.

For example, asking about 'fun family things' prevented several Latinx attendees from sharing their experiences of losing family members to novel coronavirus."

How exactly did it "prevent" people from sharing their experiences? And why mention that the attendees thus shut out were "Latinx?" Is the fact that the folks "prevented" were Latino made it somehow more tragic than if a white person who lost family members had been made to feel uncomfortable by talk of family events?

Good, Conan. We agree on something. I was actually infuriated when I read this article.

I doubt I'll get any kind of response, but I even emailed Mss. Bonomi and Viveiros, which I included as a response to this article.

Here is what I wrote:

To Ms. Bonomi and Ms. Viveiros,

According to an article in "The College Fix," entitled, "Academics say using a wedding or family photo for your Zoom background is offensive," it is your contention that a heterosexual attending a Zoom meeting with images of their heterosexual wedding as their background is a "microaggression" against non-heterosexuals.

Speaking as a middle-aged gay man, I want you to know that I find this stance offensive, and I would prefer that neither one of you presume to speak for me. The reason I object is that implicit in all this is that I, as a gay man, should be encouraged to include images of my same-sex wedding as my background, but heterosexual people should avoid including images of their own wedding, so as to protect my delicate little snowflakey feelings.

And I am telling you that I would prefer that heterosexuals feel free to have their wedding pictures as their background if they so choose, and I have pictures of my same-sex wedding (hypothetically speaking, since I am not married) as my background if I so choose. Then we can gush and ooh and aah over each other's wedding pictures. Or even if heterosexuals have their wedding pictures as the background and I don't. Or vice-versa. We can all appreciate wedding pictures, even if we aren't married or choose not to show them.

But I will never support a double standard, even one — especially not one — that supposedly works in my favor.

And the two of you have absolutely no idea how hard I'm struggling right now to censor myself. I am absolutely incensed that an academics have decided for me what I should be offended by, then not-too-subtly suggest that I should adopt double standards and impose them on others.

Moreover, I find your presumption in speaking for me to be more than just a little patronizing. I can speak for myself quite well, thank you. I will decide what offends me, not you. And as a rule, I do not concern myself with microaggressions. I prefer to realize that fallible humans unintentionally commit petty slights against one another in our day-to-day existence, and I consider it laudable to overlook and forgive them, not inflict stress on myself — with its emotional and physical consequences — by cultivating imaginary grievances.

But to be absolutely clear, a heterosexual wedding picture in a background during a Zoom meeting isn't a microaggression. It doesn't even rise to the level of a petty slight that I need to overlook. A heterosexual wedding picture in the background is nothing against me as a gay man, or even as an unmarried man. It is simply an aspect of their lives that they choose to share. And if their marriage is a net positive in their lives, then I prefer to be happy for them, not pretend that they're committing some clandestine attack on me because I'm not heterosexual and not married.

Should I now be offended because during the last Zoom meeting I attended, my best friend had a dog sitting on his lap, and I had a cat sitting on mine? If so, I must have missed the offense, because I was simply appreciating the fact that we are both pet owners, giving helpless domestic animals that could not survive in the wild a place to live and be loved. And wouldn't the very suggestion that I be offended imply that dog ownership is the only valid pet ownership, and that a display of dog ownership somehow oppresses us cat owners? By this same standard, a married heterosexual and a married homosexual should recognize what they have in common, not pretend that one marriage automatically carries more validity than the other.

The terribly ironic part is that, because the two of you insist that heterosexual wedding pictures are offensive to gay people, you are the ones who give heterosexual marriages greater validity. It is you are invalidating gay marriage, because you seem to think that heterosexual imagery needs to be squelched in order to place non-heterosexuals on equal footing. What can this suggest other than heterosexuality is valid but other sexual orientations are not? Or, at least, that non-heterosexual relationships are less valid?

Please, for the sake of myself and non-heterosexuals everywhere, let us speak for ourselves. I would thank you for your well-meaning but misguided efforts, but I am not convinced at all that you mean well. It appears more like virtue-signaling, like you're awarding yourselves "social justice gold stars," because you're championing the oppressed.

But you're not. You're presenting us as weak, in need of your advocacy, because we're just too fragile to look at a picture of a heterosexual wedding without lamenting about how stifled and oppressed we are, and that we're utterly incapable of deciding for ourselves what offends us. To say nothing of how you're implying that we're not even competent to speak for ourselves.

And what offends me most is the suggestion that I can't be happy for two heterosexual people who have formed a permanent bond that serves them. Just because I'm an unmarried gay man.

I will simply not permit you to curry favor with the cause of social justice at my expense. I will speak for myself, and I emphatically forbid you to do it for me.

Sincerely,

Patrick J. Colliano

Latinx?

Latinx?

Well said, Patrick.

Latinx?

A made up word to describe people who are descendants of people who speak a latin derived language. Completely misses out on the fact that most - all? I think it's all - such languages have male and female words. Thus "chica" and "chico".

Question: would they consider someone from Romania to be a "latinx"?? why do I think they'd say "no, they're white"??

These folks don't want to build a tolerant society, they want to tear down the existing society, one in which they feel uncomfortable.

As usual, they expect to be at the top of the new order. Everything will be just peachy-keen. Until they wake up one day and find out that protections of the Ancien Régime are gone, and a more harsh reality has been unleashed upon them because someone else came out on top.

Perhaps someone like the Supreme Leader of Iran?

_

Question: would they consider someone from Romania to be a "latinx"?? why do I think they'd say "no, they're white"?? ~ I R A Darth Aggie at May 18, 2020 9:55 AM

I think "Latinx" refers less to speaking Latin-derived languages than it does to Latin American ethnic origin. I don't think the identity politics crowd would consider Romanians, French, Italians, or Spaniards to be Latinx. Likewise white Colombians would probably not make the cut.

"Latinx" was created because "latino" is masculine and therefore a violation of identity politics gender-bleaching guidelines for general identifiers - see their issues with history, human, woman, mankind, manager, etc..

_

Perhaps someone like the Supreme Leader of Iran? ~ I R A Darth Aggie at May 18, 2020 10:07 AM

No doubt. I am re-reading Guests of the Ayatollah and Bowden discusses how the embassy takeover was hijacked by the religious fanatics to provide cover for undermining the Revolution, giving the religious fanatics a pretext to drive out or execute the moderate revolutionaries who leaned toward making Iran a secular democracy. Did nobody learn anything from the Jacobins?

WTH does being "Latinx" have to do with it? Like there is no chance that anyone else of whatever demographic on the Zoom has also lost someone close to them?? "Greetings, fellow Zooming co-workers! Before we get down to business, Lopez, Hernandez, and Torres, why don't you step away for a few minutes and make yourselves another cup of coffee or a breakfast burrito; maybe write some condolence letters. Come back in, say, 15 minutes."
I live in hope that this shitty time and this shitty virus will at least lead to such boredom and disdain for PC that it dies back and becomes relevant only to a small handful of weirdos.

Ironically, "Latinx" is an egregious example of cultural insensitivity that the SJWs claim to oppose.

Since when do SJWs in this country, even those of Hispanic origin, presume to create words for the natives of actual Hispanic nations?

It isn't their language to create words for.

It used to be latino/latina. Which was a replacement for hispanic or mexican. But having gendered words offended the american gender studies types. 99 genders and all that mess. So they intentionally stripped the gendering out. Hence latinx.

Don't worry too hard. Latinx started showing up around 2004. In a few more years they will have a new word for everyone to be confused over.

Conan mentions the Woke objection to "mankind" etc. Funny enough, "man" is from the latin "manu" which means "hand". Manual labor is labor performed by hand. "Manuscript" is hand-written. "Manumission" for freeing slaves literally is "free the hands". Words are not yours,wokies.

I completely spaced out on another aspect of latinx: for those people who have one set of plumbing, but wish to have a different set of plumbing. So, one might be born latino but wish to be latina. So, not having been translated just yet, one might be comfortable as latinx.

It isn't their language to create words for.

Harsh, but fair. Hater. ;-)

Words are not yours,wokies.

Alice in Wonderland wasn't meant to be a how-to:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

These folks don't want to build a tolerant society, they want to tear down the existing society, one in which they feel uncomfortable.

Part right. They may once have felt uncomfortable, but what they really feel is powerful and protected. Powerful enough to tear down an existing society, and assume they will be on top of the new. And protected by hiding behind those they claim to speak for.

Thank you, Jay R. I had a visceral reaction when I read that article, so I figured I would do something constructive with my anger. Like remind these sanctimonious mother-hens that I don't need them to infantilize me so that they and only they can give voice to my objections.

I figure if I commit a microaggression against someone, they're perfectly entitled to microrespond. Maybe stick their tongue out halfway, or raise their middle finger a quarter of an inch.

Latinx. How do you say that? Couldn't they have used one of the other vowels: e, i or u? Instead of... or in front of... the x?

I can understand your anger Patrick. And well done on your push back.

Ken R, the claimed concept is Spanish words end in o for masculine and a for feminine words, x is the common letter to represent the unknown in math, hence they are replacing the masculine and feminine genders with 'the unknown'. So hello latinx. Perfect for those people with 99 genders that change daily (and who also don't speak Spanish).

Bravo, Patrick. You said everything.

Suppose I have a picture of my wedding... All that says anything about is MY wedding. It says zilch about anything else. It doesn't say that I am heterosexual (I could be bisexual). It doesn't say how I identify. All it says is: at a point in time, this stuff in the photo happened.

The analogy is saying having a Star Wars poster is a microagression against Trekkies (assuming I spelled that right). Or moreso, against all people who haven't seen/don't like Star Wars.

What's next, a picture of my dog is an microagression against cat people and undermines their standing in society?

“The report notes that "[w]hile these experiences are valid...”

It was good of the authors to reassure everyone of that. I live in constant fear that one or other of my experiences might not be valid, and I will have to rescind it.