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What happened is that I moved to the Swedish countryside and as such was confronted with hills and unpaved roads. When I lived in the Netherlands I used skates

What happened is that I moved to the Swedish countryside and as such was confronted with hills and unpaved roads. When I lived in the Netherlands I used skates for transport in lieu of a bicycle because they're far easier to take along on public transport. I skated to the station, skated into the train, skated off it after 1.5 hours and 150 km, skated to my job and repeated this on my way home. I was just as fast as if not faster than most cyclists. Every now and then I skated to my parents, an 75km trip which took a while. I never - and I mean never - heard anything about "skating being gay, that might be an American thing? To even consider homophobia (fear of homosexuals?) in this context is completely foreign to me and probably says more about the polarised society in the USA than about anything else. Skates are practical means of transport in flat countries with good infrastructure like the Netherlands. They are not in the part of Sweden where I now live, otherwise I'd still be on them every day. A bicycle works fine here so I reverted to my original means of locomotion.

mkl 5y ago
You spent >3 hours a day just commuting? I can't imagine doing that. What did you do on the train?
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  More likely twice a week: at the start of the weekend when going home to parents (and their washing machine), and at the end of it when going back to uni.
  - the_third_wave 5y ago
    Nope, 5 days a week, left home around 07.00, came home around 21.00. I even had a washing machine all of my own together with a house to put it in. I actually had a washing machine as a student as well, it was old but it worked - until a house mate destroyed it, that is.
    - hamburglar 5y ago
      What did you teach that washing machine? :)
- masklinn 5y ago
  > You spent >3 hours a day just commuting? Sad to say but a lot of people have car commutes in that range. The Bay has tens of thousands of "supercommuters" whose commute is 90mn or above. In Europe train commutes in that range are probably more reasonable: you can sleep in the train (super common for the early HSRs), or it can count as part of your work-day (e.g. handle your mail or whatever, a good train seat often works just as well as an office desk). I've known quite a few people who worked in large cities but wanted to live in the countryside (or at least in smaller cities, way out from even what's usually considered suburbs), they'd take regional or even high-speed train into and out of paris. Not necessarily cheap (especially if you take HSR), but frequent rider and (usually) company contribution made that surprisingly realistic.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  Read, work, speak to people, look out of the window, drink some tea, nothing at all - there are many ways to spend time in a train. The commute would have been just as long (if not longer) by car but that would be time wasted instead of time for myself. Seeing those traffic jams from behind the train window (in the morning, by the time I went home the evening rush was already over) just was the icing on the cake, imagine sitting there in a tin can, waiting for the tin can in front of you to move, with another tin can behind you waiting for you to move...
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    If my commute were 3 hours, regardless of mode, I'd either move or find a new job.
    - the_third_wave 5y ago
      I did, eventually, first by going to Canada and Alaska to paddle the Yukon down to the Bering strait, then to Sweden 'cause I met a Swedish girl. Had I not met her I'd have moved to Canada instead, that was my original plan. But... the job was fun, it paid well, I was single, I bought a house which I sold for twice the price after 6 years (before I moved to Sweden) so in that respect everything worked out as intended. I would not do this at this time and place given that I'm not single, I have children, I live on a farm in the woods and I have gigabit fibre which makes it possible to reach the world at the speed of light...
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  In Germany you can buy a yearly subscription for your daily commute train and that comes with a reserved seat and table and power plug for charging your laptop. From my observations, people are usually finishing powerpoint slides and answering emails during their commute.
  - the_third_wave 5y ago
    I had a Dutch "OV Jaarkaart", a pass which is valid in all forms of public transport in the whole country, at any time. No reserved seats and no power plugs in the 90's of the last century, laptops were not as common as they are now and I got quite a few looks when I hooked up a Sony mobile brick to mine to remotely dial in to my box in the IT cave we called home. I usually wrote articles and proposals, hacked on random stuff or tried to build software I'd found on freshmeat.net or elsewhere.
- sameerds 5y ago
  Not the GP, but I used to commute two hours each way for college in Mumbai (including a switchover and long walks to/from the train stations). Used some of that time to finish assignments if I got a seat!
hjfhjkh 5y ago
Homophobia is the accepted term for this kind of thing in both Dutch and Swedish, so you shouldn't feign surprise that "fear" comes into the terminology. The Netherlands and Sweden are among the most LGBT-tolerant countries in the world. Not having to worry (much) about homophobia is a huge privilege. The way you are talking, it sounds like you are neither gay nor have you ever given much thought to the plight of gay people in the large parts of the world where homosexuality is not tolerated, including the many places where it is still a crime. The "polarized" US is not as gay-friendly as the typical European country, but other places are much worse.
- dochtman 5y ago
  Yes, homophobia is a thing even in NL; what I think the GP post was trying to point out is that there’s been no connection between inline skating and any particular sexual orientation in NL. That rings true to me as another Dutchman who owns inline skates (though only for three years).
  - silverpepsi 5y ago
    Well there's a more fundamental dependency we don't have an answer to - Is it common in either language (or perhaps English is used in this context) to make fun of things that disgust you by calling them gay? Growing up in the Midwest of the US in the early 90s, I knew to call things 'gay' if I wanted to discourage my friends from doing them much earlier than my Christian parents allowed me to find out the secret of males/females having different genitalia. (A much younger neighbor boy finally leaked the secret to me when I was 12.)
    - comprev 5y ago
      There is a surprising amount of homophobia in Friends - possibly one of the most famous TV shows of all time. Like the extensive racism in Fresh Prince, the homophobia in Friends is brushed aside because "it was the 90s"
    - pastage 5y ago
      Yes in Sweden I did it in 1990 even though I grew up in an evironment were being homosexual was normal. Still being gay was not cool in society, and they were gravely mistreated. We still have a long way to go.
foldr 5y ago
‘Homophobia’ is the standard term in English for prejudice against gay people. It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations).
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations). It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual". There are backwards people. The stigma that some may ascribe, is rarely removed. If they are in a position of power, this can hurt you professionally or socially, despite modern moral standards.
  - hamburglar 5y ago
    Fear of being perceived as a homosexual is a type of homophobia, but homophobia is not necessarily a fear of being perceived as a homosexual.
    - Supermancho 5y ago
      I don't think most people are arguing about that. Some post that puts forth "it doesn't mean this it means that" can be charitably added to with additional interpretation rather than "wrong. it's THIS". Dead-end true-scotsman argument.
      - foldr 5y ago
        I think you’ve got slightly the wrong end of the stick. No-one thinks that rollerblading went out of style because people were afraid of gay people. So the OP’s inaccurate (or at best overly narrow) assumption regarding what ‘homophobia’ means is leading them to misunderstand the claim about what happened. These days the term ‘homophobia’ is very rarely used to refer to a literal phobia of gay people. (The OP said ‘fear of homosexuals’, not ‘fear of being perceived as homosexual’.)
      - hamburglar 5y ago
        Except I am literally responding to your very specific claim: > It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual". It doesn’t mean that. It can refer to that, but that is not what homophobia means.
ahartmetz 5y ago
You might have just given me a solution to a problem I thought about this weekend: a place I need to visit for work is >= 1 km from the next public transport stop - the walking is a little tedious. I was using my car for pandemic (currently: train strike) reasons, but I want to stop that again after, and I do own rollerskates... still from the 90s.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  Go for it, wear some wrist protectors and you should arrive in one piece. That is the only protection I use given that it actually work as intended and broken wrists are fairly common in all forms of skating.
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    The first thing hitting the concrete when falling is your palms, so having a glove with plastic protection will help not losing any skin from your palms. Also wear a helmet.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      If you're looking for good gloves for rollerblading I recommend looking at motorbiking gloves. They're a bit expensive but they can be super comfortable and have a ton of protection around the wrist and knuckles.
      - the_third_wave 5y ago
        Motorbike gloves do not include the essential part of wrist protectors, namely the hard plastic backbone which is meant to catch the fall and keep the wrist joint from overextending. If you want to wear them, fine, but make sure to use wrist protectors - with a rigid backbone - as well.
        scrollaway 5y ago
        Not all of them do but as far as I can tell some of them definitely do. I don’t ride motorbikes so I’m not an expert in this but my friend who does showed me her gloves which do include wrist protectors. I’m in Europe if it makes a difference…
emodendroket 5y ago
"Homophobia" also refers to more generally negative attitudes about homosexuality, not just the fear the name suggests.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  To add to this, -phobia suffix is used to express aversion, not just fear. For example, hydrophobicity.
runarberg 5y ago
When I lived in the Mission in San Francisco 10 years ago, I found rollerblades to be the best way of traveling medium distances in the city (e.g. to the Civic Center). I didn’t have a safe place to store a bike, busses are super slow (and if I’m going longer distances, I can take them off and hop on a muni). I never heard of the homophobia angle either.
xyzzy21 5y ago
It's definitely an American thing. The primary cause of hating disco in the 1970s was that it was gays, blacks and latinos who were associated with it. And that and corporatization of music by the very same boomers that's kept disco dead in the US since. And yet the REST of the world kept disco and reincarnated it into several genres of electronica. So I wouldn't be surprised.

mkl 5y ago

You spent >3 hours a day just commuting? I can't imagine doing that. What did you do on the train?

vanderZwan 5y ago
More likely twice a week: at the start of the weekend when going home to parents (and their washing machine), and at the end of it when going back to uni.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  Nope, 5 days a week, left home around 07.00, came home around 21.00. I even had a washing machine all of my own together with a house to put it in. I actually had a washing machine as a student as well, it was old but it worked - until a house mate destroyed it, that is.
  - hamburglar 5y ago
    What did you teach that washing machine? :)
masklinn 5y ago
> You spent >3 hours a day just commuting? Sad to say but a lot of people have car commutes in that range. The Bay has tens of thousands of "supercommuters" whose commute is 90mn or above. In Europe train commutes in that range are probably more reasonable: you can sleep in the train (super common for the early HSRs), or it can count as part of your work-day (e.g. handle your mail or whatever, a good train seat often works just as well as an office desk). I've known quite a few people who worked in large cities but wanted to live in the countryside (or at least in smaller cities, way out from even what's usually considered suburbs), they'd take regional or even high-speed train into and out of paris. Not necessarily cheap (especially if you take HSR), but frequent rider and (usually) company contribution made that surprisingly realistic.
the_third_wave 5y ago
Read, work, speak to people, look out of the window, drink some tea, nothing at all - there are many ways to spend time in a train. The commute would have been just as long (if not longer) by car but that would be time wasted instead of time for myself. Seeing those traffic jams from behind the train window (in the morning, by the time I went home the evening rush was already over) just was the icing on the cake, imagine sitting there in a tin can, waiting for the tin can in front of you to move, with another tin can behind you waiting for you to move...
- emodendroket 5y ago
  If my commute were 3 hours, regardless of mode, I'd either move or find a new job.
  - the_third_wave 5y ago
    I did, eventually, first by going to Canada and Alaska to paddle the Yukon down to the Bering strait, then to Sweden 'cause I met a Swedish girl. Had I not met her I'd have moved to Canada instead, that was my original plan. But... the job was fun, it paid well, I was single, I bought a house which I sold for twice the price after 6 years (before I moved to Sweden) so in that respect everything worked out as intended. I would not do this at this time and place given that I'm not single, I have children, I live on a farm in the woods and I have gigabit fibre which makes it possible to reach the world at the speed of light...
fxtentacle 5y ago
In Germany you can buy a yearly subscription for your daily commute train and that comes with a reserved seat and table and power plug for charging your laptop. From my observations, people are usually finishing powerpoint slides and answering emails during their commute.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  I had a Dutch "OV Jaarkaart", a pass which is valid in all forms of public transport in the whole country, at any time. No reserved seats and no power plugs in the 90's of the last century, laptops were not as common as they are now and I got quite a few looks when I hooked up a Sony mobile brick to mine to remotely dial in to my box in the IT cave we called home. I usually wrote articles and proposals, hacked on random stuff or tried to build software I'd found on freshmeat.net or elsewhere.
sameerds 5y ago
Not the GP, but I used to commute two hours each way for college in Mumbai (including a switchover and long walks to/from the train stations). Used some of that time to finish assignments if I got a seat!

hjfhjkh 5y ago

Homophobia is the accepted term for this kind of thing in both Dutch and Swedish, so you shouldn't feign surprise that "fear" comes into the terminology. The Netherlands and Sweden are among the most LGBT-tolerant countries in the world. Not having to worry (much) about homophobia is a huge privilege. The way you are talking, it sounds like you are neither gay nor have you ever given much thought to the plight of gay people in the large parts of the world where homosexuality is not tolerated, including the many places where it is still a crime. The "polarized" US is not as gay-friendly as the typical European country, but other places are much worse.

dochtman 5y ago
Yes, homophobia is a thing even in NL; what I think the GP post was trying to point out is that there’s been no connection between inline skating and any particular sexual orientation in NL. That rings true to me as another Dutchman who owns inline skates (though only for three years).
- silverpepsi 5y ago
  Well there's a more fundamental dependency we don't have an answer to - Is it common in either language (or perhaps English is used in this context) to make fun of things that disgust you by calling them gay? Growing up in the Midwest of the US in the early 90s, I knew to call things 'gay' if I wanted to discourage my friends from doing them much earlier than my Christian parents allowed me to find out the secret of males/females having different genitalia. (A much younger neighbor boy finally leaked the secret to me when I was 12.)
  - comprev 5y ago
    There is a surprising amount of homophobia in Friends - possibly one of the most famous TV shows of all time. Like the extensive racism in Fresh Prince, the homophobia in Friends is brushed aside because "it was the 90s"
  - pastage 5y ago
    Yes in Sweden I did it in 1990 even though I grew up in an evironment were being homosexual was normal. Still being gay was not cool in society, and they were gravely mistreated. We still have a long way to go.

foldr 5y ago

‘Homophobia’ is the standard term in English for prejudice against gay people. It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations).

Supermancho 5y ago
> It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations). It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual". There are backwards people. The stigma that some may ascribe, is rarely removed. If they are in a position of power, this can hurt you professionally or socially, despite modern moral standards.
- hamburglar 5y ago
  Fear of being perceived as a homosexual is a type of homophobia, but homophobia is not necessarily a fear of being perceived as a homosexual.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    I don't think most people are arguing about that. Some post that puts forth "it doesn't mean this it means that" can be charitably added to with additional interpretation rather than "wrong. it's THIS". Dead-end true-scotsman argument.
    - foldr 5y ago
      I think you’ve got slightly the wrong end of the stick. No-one thinks that rollerblading went out of style because people were afraid of gay people. So the OP’s inaccurate (or at best overly narrow) assumption regarding what ‘homophobia’ means is leading them to misunderstand the claim about what happened. These days the term ‘homophobia’ is very rarely used to refer to a literal phobia of gay people. (The OP said ‘fear of homosexuals’, not ‘fear of being perceived as homosexual’.)
    - hamburglar 5y ago
      Except I am literally responding to your very specific claim: > It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual". It doesn’t mean that. It can refer to that, but that is not what homophobia means.

ahartmetz 5y ago

You might have just given me a solution to a problem I thought about this weekend: a place I need to visit for work is >= 1 km from the next public transport stop - the walking is a little tedious. I was using my car for pandemic (currently: train strike) reasons, but I want to stop that again after, and I do own rollerskates... still from the 90s.

the_third_wave 5y ago
Go for it, wear some wrist protectors and you should arrive in one piece. That is the only protection I use given that it actually work as intended and broken wrists are fairly common in all forms of skating.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  The first thing hitting the concrete when falling is your palms, so having a glove with plastic protection will help not losing any skin from your palms. Also wear a helmet.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    If you're looking for good gloves for rollerblading I recommend looking at motorbiking gloves. They're a bit expensive but they can be super comfortable and have a ton of protection around the wrist and knuckles.
    - the_third_wave 5y ago
      Motorbike gloves do not include the essential part of wrist protectors, namely the hard plastic backbone which is meant to catch the fall and keep the wrist joint from overextending. If you want to wear them, fine, but make sure to use wrist protectors - with a rigid backbone - as well.
      - scrollaway 5y ago
        Not all of them do but as far as I can tell some of them definitely do. I don’t ride motorbikes so I’m not an expert in this but my friend who does showed me her gloves which do include wrist protectors. I’m in Europe if it makes a difference…

emodendroket 5y ago

"Homophobia" also refers to more generally negative attitudes about homosexuality, not just the fear the name suggests.

smnrchrds 5y ago
To add to this, -phobia suffix is used to express aversion, not just fear. For example, hydrophobicity.

runarberg 5y ago

When I lived in the Mission in San Francisco 10 years ago, I found rollerblades to be the best way of traveling medium distances in the city (e.g. to the Civic Center). I didn’t have a safe place to store a bike, busses are super slow (and if I’m going longer distances, I can take them off and hop on a muni). I never heard of the homophobia angle either.

xyzzy21 5y ago

It's definitely an American thing. The primary cause of hating disco in the 1970s was that it was gays, blacks and latinos who were associated with it. And that and corporatization of music by the very same boomers that's kept disco dead in the US since. And yet the REST of the world kept disco and reincarnated it into several genres of electronica. So I wouldn't be surprised.