There are so many other things that I should be working on right now, but I've had a lot of 'stuff' building up over the past few weeks and no time to 'write it out' and its keeping me from sleeping.
I love it when all the classes I'm taking seem to be working together, feeding off one another. Right now my LGBTQ Perspectives class is talking about the isms and phobias, violence and law, and what can we do about it. Human Sexuality has been more focused on histories of relationships in the US and views toward sexuality and relationships, as well as differing sexualities in minority populations. Then I have Intro to Psych, and although the topics haven't been as similar, today's lecture really hit home for me. There is so much to write about. I still don't know how to tie all the ends together, but there is a bigger story that will do that, I just haven't seen it yet. I want to write about how our culture is about binaries in ALL things, how we don't like difference or change. I want to write about whether it actually does get better, or do we just get numb to it, whatever 'it' is? I want to write the story of "what if" in my life. One of my psych professor's statements today was "The purpose of college is to help you find your voice". What if I had found my voice in college the FIRST time? What if I had been following my heart and my desires for 20 years? How many people might I have been able to help? How many things might I have changed? Where would I be? What IF? And perhaps those ideas really can't be woven together into a seamless piece of writing, maybe they will have to be individual essays. That remains to be seen.
There are times when I feel like the Universe is one of those cell phone alarms that gets louder every time you hit snooze. I feel like I'm supposed to be getting some BIG point and every time I ignore it, or get the wrong point, the Universe just tries to communicate a little louder until I actually take a moment to listen, understand, and adapt.
So, I'm listening.
We, as humans, have built a society based on fear, hate, and division. We categorize and classify EVERYTHING, making it neat and tidy in the process. Each of us wants more than anything to be good, to be right, to be OK. But, we see 'flaws' in others because there are differences. In many cases people, groups of people, institutions, etc will point out those differences and remind us all that "those" aren't like us and therefore they must be bad, because WE are good. And two things can't be good at the same time! Difference = Wrong = BAD! And since none of us are identical therefore the possibility exists that ONE of us MIGHT be right (and therefore GOOD) but in the absence of knowing who that person is, we'll just assume it is self. Meaning, you feel your way is right, I feel my way is right, he thinks his way is right, and we all think that everyone else's way is totally WRONG. The labeling and dividing begin the day we are born with a gender marker. You are either M or F. And because of that label there is a code of conduct that you must adhere to or be considered wrong. Wrong must be eliminated. Do you see where this is going? It's how we set the basis for sexism, racism, classism, and all the other fanaticisms that exist. I'm part of this group. We are right. You are different therefore you must be wrong/bad. Eliminate BAD.
Since the male species is generally more physically strong they probably one the first argument against women about which was better, the M or the F. Since that time we've dealt with sexism. Women are stereotyped as weak, dumb, incapable, and as property to be owned and controlled. We watched a film in class the other day and a homophobic man, now in prison for killing Billy Jack Gaither stated 'He disrespected me, He started talking about Homosexual acts' When asked why that was disrespectful he stated 'because he is a man', Would it have been okay for a woman to say the same things to him? "I guess that would have been alright". So, there is part of the code. I'm a guy I like women = good. I'm a guy I like men = BAD. Eliminate BAD. But, what are the larger implications of his statements?
And it gets more complicated because there is not clear binary in ANYTHING. Everything in this world is a spectrum! Everything from Sex/Gender to Race/Color to Sexual Preference/Identity etc. And because we sort of recognize the spectrum we've now started to stack those traits. Lesbian is better than Gay Man. Bisexual is better than Lesbian. Straight Woman is better than Bisexual. Straight Man is better than all. That's just an example, not my opinion. So now we know all of the people we can hate. Anyone under us is an acceptable group to discriminated against. I don't want to even try to rank skin color, race, religious leanings, political party affiliation, etc. I can state with some degree of certainty that if polled the majority of Americans would say that the top of the ladder would be White heterosexual Christian Republican American Males, which scares me. I also find it a little amusing that every white person I know wants to have a tan that looks as good as someone born with browner skin, but then feels that they can discriminate against those that have darker skin. Is it jealousy?
We are nation that publicly berates others for their differences. Just watch a couple of "paid for by supporters of ...." ads. Most of them are mudslinging. What is mudslinging? Bullying for politics. When I was a HS kid I got called names, taunted for my red hair, braces, the space between my front teeth (before the braces), my complete inability to play sports (I swear I've gotten better at them), and my good grades. I'll be honest, I really don't remember much of it. The majority of the taunts I ignored and eventually they stopped. I was lucky. I was not your typical 'different' kind of teenager. I'm old enough now that I watch news reports about kids in HS and their bullying and its results. Our response is to tell them that "It Gets Better" Does it? I've think I have endured as much or more bullying, discrimination, etc in the 20 years since graduating college than I did in the 21 years I was school age and younger. Maybe its the fact that it isn't an every day sort of thing. I don't have to worry about walking down the hallway in my office building and being called a red-headed freak of nature. Instead, I get to be passed over for promotion to a job that quite literally was created for me and instead given to a white married family man with less education and experience. We still get to see news reports of adult LGBT people being tortured, raped, beaten, and/or Killed. We are still fighting for equality, to have it recognized that we deserve equal protection under the law. i.e. until we have that it technically could be considered OK to eliminate us, the different, the wrong, the bad. So, how can we tell the youth that it gets better? That sure doesn't look like a better world to me.
But, maybe I'm getting it wrong, sort of. It isn't going to just miraculously get better when you get older. And, if you lucky you aren't going to harden to things to the point that you feel nothing. Hopefully, what will happen is that you will change the world. Hopefully, what will happen is that I will change the world some before you get the chance. (and this is where the psych lecture comes in)We've spent years and years and years, since the dawn of man, just trying to survive. We came out of the wilderness to build cities, industries and technological advancements, but for many of us (myself included) we have lived our lives just trying to NOT end up back in the wilderness. We've been living to NOT Fail, which is not the same as living to Succeed. What if we changed the way we think. What if each of us made a conscious effort to live to succeed and be the absolute best that we can possibly be? (it is considered cheating and million point penalty for even considering getting ahead by knocking someone else down! and you are given a million point bonus if you help someone who has fallen to keep going.) What would society change into? What if we quit focusing on our differences and started seeing where we are the same? Would we be able to create a Utopian dream of a world without shame, violence, hatred, war? Sadly, not even I am that optimistic. I think we will always unfortunately try to find a way to separate ourselves from others.
The classic answer to all of this is EDUCATION, but it can't be just textbook learning in a vacuum, that doesn't work. You can't take the worst offender in the office and send him/her to a political correctness educational seminar and think that he/she will come back completely changed. It doesn't work that way. Most of us have it ingrained in our brains by the time we are 8 who we are like and who we aren't. A 5 hour seminar isn't going to change that! It takes brave men, women and children who are willing to exist outside the safety of their closets, risking life and limb, sanity, pride, everything really to just live. Risk it all to just be able to live as though you are part of the world. Those of us who are moderately different will obviously have an easier time of things, its up to us to help protect those a bit more extreme personalities. That may be the only way that we can prove that its our differences that make us amazing individuals and allow those who want only sameness to have the chance to get to know us. Its a little forceful, but this is just my opinion anyway.
I'm sure that some of you are reading this and thinking that I'm crazy and I'm talking about some bizarre combination of Socialism and Anarchy, but I'm not, not really. Its more a be and let be scenario. If what I'm doing isn't physically damaging you without your consent then there should be nothing you can say about it. If you don't want to see a Transman kissing his girlfriend, don't watch, but don't make me stop. There have been many times I've not wanted to see straight people kissing, but I haven't stopped them, so it seems only fair. And as far as laws and such go, I'd like to think we can be smart about them. Murder really doesn't seem like consensual violence and therefore should be punished severely, same with rape, and other violent crimes. But the punishment has to be different too. We can't sensationalize the story and give them fame. We can't write books about them, or make movies, we need to recondition them to respond differently to the stimulus. (Hows that for psych speak!) There needs to be a system of rewards for progress and change in a positive direction. What if....?
I am lucky. I live in one of the most admired nations on the planet, or at least one of the most feared. I have freedom, a modest amount of financial security, a college education, and a dream. But, every day I go to work and see the same people come in to feed their addictions, and leave. There is so little difference between one person and the next sometimes that it is difficult to tell them apart. And to be quite honest, that's the way they like it. Personally I would prefer a world where the people are hand molded and no two are alike, not even the houses we live in would be similar to our neighbor's house. No one is bad, and no one is better. We are all just different, wonderful and amazing in our own unique way. What if we could make it work that way?
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