Gerbil Owners Beware

[javero]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 3:40pm

I can't believe this passes for science these days. The only thing more sensationalist than the subject line is the headline.
Gerbils Implicated in Black Death...Kinda

[HorseTears]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 7:46pm

Whatever happened to Richard Gere?

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:04pm

I think the headline was supposed to be funny. Not fear inducing.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:05pm

I have always found those jokes about the FALSE Richard Gere URBAN LEGEND jokes to be anti-gay.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:21pm

Really, PJ? That seems, if you'll forgive the expression, a bit of a stretch. I was a child when those Gere jokes were at the height of their popularity, so perhaps I'm missing some context? I never got the impression that Gere was frequently the subject of speculation about his orientation - the way, say, Tom Cruise and John Travolta were and are. Rather, just got the impression that he was very famous, very popular, very handsome and well known for a string of films in which sexuality was a major theme - American Gigilo, Breathless, Pretty Woman. That seems like the perfect formula for silly, over-the-top "rumors" about weird, kinky behavior.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:29pm

I remember in the 80's there were rumors of a craze of young people sticking gerbils up their anus for fun. Never understood it.

[darquegk]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:40pm

I had always heard the story as a proposed remedy for erectile dysfunction. Fight coke dick by stimulating the prostate with a gerbil. Never heard any gay implication.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:42pm

Do not know what the gerbils reaction was.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 8:42pm

Updated On: 2/24/15 at 08:42 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 9:00pm

I remember in the 70s there was a craze of a dotty old lady who commented on things without knowing what she was commenting upon. I never understood it myself.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 9:07pm

Don't get excited NAMO

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 9:08pm

How can I not get excited with two Germans up my butt? Oh, "gerbils"? That's very, very different. Never mind.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 9:17pm

" Oh, That's different. Never Mind."

[ArtMan]

Posted: 2/24/15 at 9:21pm

A Big Ole LOL for Namo!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 8:19am

The casual passing along of this story has made me livid since the early 1980s, when I first heard my closeted gynecologist brother-in-law (well, that's another story) say a friend of a friend in an emergency room witnessed it, only to later admit it wasn't true.

The story was used by homophobes throughout the dark days of the AIDS crisis as a reason to justify gay men dying from AIDS. Back then, gay men would repeat the joke, unknowingly participating in their own self-hatred:


==

Over the decades the tale has been told by a range of people to ‘prove’ the inherent callousness and perversion of gay men. And in the early 80’s – when some commentators were already portraying AIDS as the physical manifestation of our intrinsically dark and deviant lifestyle – this was just the ‘scientific evidence’ that was needed to reinforce that case....

In fact, there’s no evidence to support any of these stories. Researchers have screened hospital records across the USA for evidence of such cases and failed to find a single one – even in Salt Lake City. As for ‘someone who knows someone who was there’, this is the very essence of urban myths. They’re always sustained by the claim that it happened to, or was witnessed by, someone on the periphery of the teller’s social circle.

===



GAYINTHE80S.COM: 1984. Gays, gerbils and Richard Gere.

Updated On: 2/25/15 at 08:19 AM

[javero]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 8:28am

Good morning Friends and Frenemies,

My beef with the article is the headline that suggests that gerbils were the culprit for the Black Death. It struck me as very bad journalism. I didn't instantly connect the dots between Richard Gere, urban legends, and other whatnot. That said, not a day goes by that something on this board doesn't get my goat for one reason or another. This too shall pass.

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 12:45pm

It's amusing that whenever speculation is made about who in Hollywood may be gay, it's always handsome leading men types. You never hear those rumors about Woody Allen, Steve Buscemi or Danny Divito because they're not gay fantasies.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 12:50pm

No gay man has ever found any of them sexy?

[HorseTears]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 7:25pm

Thanks for that context, PJ. Had no idea what the origins of the gerbil thing were. I didn't realize that what seemed like a silly and innocuous joke had such, as Salon might say, problematic origins.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 8:17pm

I think PalJoey is absolutely right. The homophobic implication is that gay men are so anally oriented (the "icky" part to many straight people) that we will stick anything up our rectums.

(What I always found particularly ridiculous about the legend was that Gere would have to go to a public hospital, rather than hiring a private doctor to come to Gere's house.)

For the same reason and though I love William Finn, I regret the line about "light bulbs up the ass" in FALSETTOLAND. I'm not saying it never happened (I don't really know), but I think Finn could have picked something else for his doctor's "average" day.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 2/25/15 at 9:50pm

Yes, not having a doctor who made a house call. THAT'S the ridiculous part.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 2/26/15 at 7:36pm

I'm with PJ. I thought I was the only one who thought that way.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/26/15 at 8:25pm

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 3/1/15 at 1:27am

Namo, I'm sure gay men and others find those men sexy. What I said was that you never hear rumors about them being gay.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/1/15 at 4:49pm

Tom Cruise used to clean my building and take out my trash. That's not a metaphor.