Was unbanning Libertas the correct decision?

[memphis]

Absolutely. The prudes are just jealous that their lives aren't as interesting.

[memphis]

I think Libertas will be fine as long as he doesn't keep acting like the victim of some organised witchhunt. Because... I know of no such hunt. He's clearly trying to taunt people into reacting to him, to enable him to play the victim and the usual suspects have lined up to defend him.

That doesn't sound like Libertas to me. That sounds like the Pruders.

[memphis]

I don't think Gramps is a prude. I don't have much insight into his views in this particular case, but I'm sure he has his reasons. At the same time, it's not hard to tease out why certain other posters abhor the idea of someone suggesting a sexual encounter with a man (and a very unorthodox and submissive one at that) ended without causing extreme mental anguish. It completely demolishes their entire premise that interacting with a man must, by definition, be a terrible, scarring event. Once you knock away their foundation that sex with a man is a supremely traumatic thing, they have nothing at all to stand on. The reasoning is not so much anti-gay as it is anti-man, but for obvious reasons, the impact is the same.

[memphis]

I don't think Gramps is a prude. I don't have much insight into his views in this particular case, but I'm sure he has his reasons. At the same time, it's not hard to tease out why certain other posters abhor the idea of someone suggesting a sexual encounter with a man (and a very unorthodox and submissive one at that) ended without causing extreme mental anguish. It completely demolishes their entire premise that interacting with a man must, by definition, be a terrible, scarring event. Once you knock away their foundation that sex with a man is a supremely traumatic thing, they have nothing at all to stand on. The reasoning is not so much anti-gay as it is anti-man, but for obvious reasons, the impact is the same.

I have been called many disgusting things on this forum before, but libertarian takes the cake. I also don't care much for hats. I'm not a bald.  And, again, with the non-sequitor ad hominems that never address anything I have to say.

[memphis]

Libertas, did the events of your story cause you mental anguish? That was not my interpretation of your narrative.

[memphis]

So it sounds like it was more that all the personal attacks against you here were more hurtful than the actual events you described?

[memphis]

So it sounds like it was more that all the personal attacks against you here were more hurtful than the actual events you described?

[memphis]

Is there any hope for us non-prudes? Or is the forum lost for good?

Snowstalker was a very unlikely conversion. I didn't see that one coming. But it's always darkest just before the dawn. We shall prevail.

[memphis]

Proposal: everybody just f**kin abandon this thread and move on.

Ya I think I'm pretty much sick and tired of defending myself against lame and ridiculous charges of "trolling" or claims that I haven't changed...all of which are coming from people who just don't like me on a personal level.

On the other hand, I would like to start a thread on the tangent of a topic we went off on in this thread with regard to NYC/Times Square in the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps when I get home from work today. I've done quite a bit of reading and studying up on the era, along with enjoying fun, intriguing, or sometimes eerily disturbing videos and pictures, as well as the stories I've heard from my parents and grandparents who lived through it, and it is a fascinating time/place I would like to visit, even if I have to wear a bulletproof vest to survive it.

While Times Square has certainly changed, there is no shortage of seedy urban neighborhoods today. I'm not familiar enough with NYC to name a specific neighborhood (somewhere in the South Bronx, surely?) I guarantee it's out there. Finding it is half the adventure.

[memphis]

I'm not sure that Libertas has expressed well what it is exactly about the old Times Square that he finds so appealing. The usual narrative here in Memphis is largely the opposite. The "old neighborhood" that was once such a safe, clean place in contrast with the mostly abandoned ghetto one finds there now. This pattern has long ago spread far beyond the core city. The largest shopping mall in town (now long ago demolished) was in what used to be a postwar middle class area. Today, on American Way (in a bit of irony too delicious for words, the street the mall was on is actually named American Way) there may as well be signs that say "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."