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Menstuff® has compiled information and books on Gay, Bi, and Transgender issues. This section is Robert N. Minor's weekly column featured daily on our homepage. Robert is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org or at E-Mail. 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Why Do Those White
Evangelicals Really Love Trump? (Part One of a Series)
Trump’s “Religious Advisory Council,” made up mostly of leaders of this same demographic, has held firm even while members of other councils abandoned ship. So the question many keep asking is: with Evangelicals’ constant insistence on sexual purity for others and their so-called “family values” trope, why do these Evangelicals cling to Trump when he blatantly embodies almost everything that a person could say and do that flaunts those values? On top of that, he displays a clear ignorance of, and past hostility to, Evangelical beliefs themselves. Those Evangelicals respond with denial and ignorance and remain willing to be used for whatever Trump’s con is. Meanwhile, liberals act astonished at what seems to be the hypocrisy of these Evangelicals for what they usually say about character, sexuality, and ethics when they act with such fidelity to Trump and his Party. More progressive believers read calls for quite different responses to this president and his party in this Bible that Evangelicals flaunt as their authority. It’s as if those Evangelical claims that they’re just following the Bible as it is don’t hold up unless you’re viewing the Bible through a certain, specific lens that Evangelicals use. And that’s a clue to what’s really going on. Different people down through history came to that old book with different assumptions – Martin Luther King Jr., vs. Pat Robertson, for example - and they therefore find in the Bible (as well as “tradition”) what supports those assumptions. No one takes the smorgasbord that is the Bible “literally.” Everyone interprets. They take literally what works for them and employ some interpretive scheme for taking other passages that would disagree (“seemingly”) in other ways. In Evangelical circles there are numerous theories of interpretation even though they’ll insist that they “believe the Bible from cover to cover, and even believe the covers.” Denying that they interpret is part of their use of the Bible in the manner of a religion addiction. It’s not the Bible and any literalism that decides why they support Trump or come out against “sexual impurity” for other people. It’s other deeply ingrained interpretive assumptions that they’ve internalized from the culture in which they’ve grown up. Threats to these internalized assumptions feel like persecution and provocations to battle. They see these assumptions and themselves (as people who’ve built their self-definitions on these assumptions), then, as victims of a changing culture around them and feel cornered like rats who must fight “Culture Wars.” These six assumptions aren’t exclusive to these Evangelicals, but their combination is crucial to their worldview, the lens they use to see reality and their scriptures. These assumptions are the key to understanding what they see in life and the Bible when they claim that they’re righteously following God and the Bible: (1) Nationalism. America is an exceptional nation with a Divine mission. From the words of the earliest Christians in America, this country’s religious leaders characterized it as “a city on a hill.” It was called the New Israel and the location of the New Covenant community. Many leaders and presidents from then on embraced American exceptionalism. But it’s a basic, often quite explicit, unquestionable tenet for these Evangelicals. Many so equate American exceptionalism and Biblical teachings that their churches must have an American flag standing near the pulpit. They’ll worry about saving America from threats both internally and externally. America must always be first and foremost among the nations. Talk of being a “world citizen” is a threat unless it starts with America saving the world. They might struggle creatively to find America in the Bible itself, but, at the very least, nothing in the Bible can be seen to be anti-America as an essential ideal. That means, of course, that their American Christianity is the version that finally gets it right again and is supposed to be uniquely true. Historically, all religions adapt to their cultures and adopt dominant cultural symbols and assumptions. European Christianity is not like American – hence American Evangelicals are convinced that Europe needs American Christian missionaries to help them see the true version. (2) Patriarchy. The Bible must teach “traditional” American gender roles. As American culture began to accept equality for women through women’s suffrage and various waves of feminism, these Evangelicals became convinced that they must protect patriarchy and male privilege. Even conservative churches that had women ministers were criticized. Before the latest waves of feminism scared them even further, a leading Evangelical leader in 1941, John R. Rice, for example, wrote of threats to Biblical Christianity in his Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers: Significant Questions for Honest Christian Women Settled by the Word of God. Again and again, Evangelists and leading right-wing preachers shamed churches for being effeminate. “Muscular Christianity” came to the United States as a movement pushed by popular evangelist Dwight L. Moody as early as the end of the nineteenth century to masculinize the church. The idea of a “biblical chain of command” with the man of the house just below God and in charge of everyone below him swept up Evangelicals in the 1960s with home-school advocate Bill Gothard touring the country. In 1991 the “Promise Keepers” emerged to pack football stadiums by advising Evangelical men to take back the authority they were losing in their own homes. In fact, the threat of LGBTQ equality and the Evangelical fight against marriage equality were premised on how this would destroy the traditional patriarchal (“straight”) gender roles. And “traditional family values” rhetoric was built on the man being in charge of his very White Evangelical family. Next month: Part Two, with two more of the six key
elements of the lens that explains their support for
religious and political leaders even if they’re
hypocrites. Men Behaving Badly and those Nine
Layers of “Getting Laid”
Now one example after another of such conduct at high levels is daily news. And much is being said to analyze the issues in terms of power dynamics right along with attempts to somehow justify, dismiss, or minimize these actions. But none of this has to do with something inherent in males as human beings. Our boys are not born with some impulse to treat anyone this way. These actions spring from what is still mainstream male conditioning about sex and the male sex drive, conditioning that reaches its peak in junior and senior high school. And what that conditioning attempts to install in boys is solidly behind the scenes in their lives at best – boys know it even if they choose not to individually act upon it. Meanwhile our society doesn’t want to discuss, admit, or believe our boys experience it, especially where it needs discussion – in our schools. Any attempts are demeaned by labeling them radical, feminist, extremist, or something else. Frankly, though, by puberty boys are learning what it means to be a real man, which includes how men “get laid.” So, it’s time to revisit the “Nine Layers of Getting Laid” that I fully discussed in Scared Straight, layers that are installed through pressure - peer and otherwise – that’s based in fear of what not accepting them does or does not mean for a man’s “manhood,” machismo, straight-identification, and full admission in the men’s club. The image of the “real manly man” found in media and elsewhere, and justified by some who just accept it, says that getting laid is: (1) Compulsive. There’s something uncontrollable, overwhelming, or inevitable about male sexuality. Sexual activity should come naturally to men and men are in some way obsessed with it. Theories why are popular. (2) Objectifying. It has to do with bodies and body parts. It feeds on all the stereotypes of what makes an object physically attractive and promotes the stuff that can be sold to women to make them look like Miss America walking down a runway in her swimsuit. (3) Impersonal. When it’s first installed it not only doesn’t have to do with the person who is the sexual object, but actually is best if it’s not with a friend. Even sex with a committed partner later might be accompanied by thoughts of something other than what’s going on in that bed. And the more the object is impersonalized, the easier it is to ignore any consequences for the object of the sexual act including any violence involved. (4) Manipulative and Coercive. Real men, the conditioning says, can manipulate any object into sex with them. And if the object objects, it shames the man as not manly enough or means the object needs more manipulation. “No” doesn’t mean “No” but “manipulate me more.” One’s manhood, after all, is on the line here. (5) An Activity. It’s not a process of being with someone but a thing you do to or with someone. It’s a separate activity from all else in life that has a beginning and an end. It is not the foreplay or any after-glow. (6) Goal-Oriented. Cuddling isn’t sex; making out isn’t. Real male sex has a goal – the big O, and it’s his. Even in this enlightened twenty-first century, this lingers on as younger women tell me. (7) Self-Centered. It’s supposed to take place on his agenda. There are words men have for women who are too aggressive and they’re not “Self-Assured” or “Leadership Material.” (8) Manly. Sex proves you’re a man and makes you feel like a man. In a world where men are not conditioned to feel much other than anger and triumph over others, this is the place a man can feel. It might last only a few seconds, and won’t be convincing in any lasting way, but that only means more sex is necessary or that the sexual object is at fault for not making him feel manly enough. So, better look elsewhere. (9) With a Woman. Society has installed this layer in men of all sexual orientations for centuries and it has therefore put down as not really a man anyone who would prefer otherwise. None of this is the male sex drive or heterosexual sexuality. These are layers of distress installed for a lifetime through fear of what will happen to someone who doesn’t go along They are patterned definitions of sex for someone of any orientation who’s been scared into a straight role that’s usually enforced by putting down anyone who doesn’t appear to go along with it all. The demeaning of LGBTQ people has made it possible to use the fear of being thought of as queer to enforce gender roles across the board, and the boy in high school who comes our against this will at least be asked: “Don’t you like girls.” It would be nice to believe that this conditioning is confined to older generations, that our boys today don’t get this from society around them. After all, so much has happened in the last decades to empower women and educate men I want to believe that, but when I present this list to college students, these eighteen to twenty-one year olds (especially women) say it hasn’t changed and then add their own stories. Conditioning is learned behavior, and what is learned can be unlearned. There’s no reason to give up. Both our boys and girls need us to give words to gender
role conditioning around sex and to see it for what it is.
Then we’ll all need to imagine what sexual relations
would be without these nine layers. What I’d Like to Say When I Officiate an LGBTQ Wedding I speak for this couple before us to say “Welcome” to every one of you here at this important occasion on this special day. We are here to witness these two people who are not only in love but who have chosen to love one another, as they publicly express, confirm, and formalize their loving commitment among and before us, their friends and family. Make no mistake about it. Their moment of commitment on this day is not only an important event for them, but a special moment in all our lives. There are long histories, not only in our cultures but around this world, where powerful people and institutions have enforced limits on who can publicly and legally commit to the person they love. That’s why most cultures have their own versions of “Romeo and Juliet,” stories of love challenging those accepted boundaries. Those limits were rooted in prejudice and fear. But they’ve been justified again and again by the forces of religious and political institutions as if those prohibitions dropped down from the heavens or were unchallengeable because of hoary traditions. Both justifications really consisted of picking and choosing excuses from historical smorgasbords of possibilities that would justify and cover up prejudice and prevent any challenge to the powers that be. Those very finite, often ignorant, and time-bound notions sounded much better when portrayed as if they’d been sanctioned by something bigger that we were not to question. But here today we say “Yes” not only to this commitment but to the celebration of love wherever and whenever it is. We’re saying that in a world filled with hate, in a society based on fear, we are committed with these two people to the celebration of love even wherever it’s merely just attempted. With them we challenge the idea that those “Romeo and Juliet” stories must end tragically as they did in so much world literature. Why, even the US Supreme Court in 2015 decided that many relationships no longer have to end depressingly. We witness and celebrate the loving commitment of this couple now because we love them and because we choose to celebrate love no matter how inelegantly it’s practiced or how ineloquently it’s expressed. After all, that shouldn’t be difficult, because we all know that in our own bumbling searches for love and acceptance, our process was often inelegant and often ineloquently expressed. Now, we’re wishing that you two will always experience “perfect love.” But that doesn’t mean “perfect love” in the fantastic sense of all the songs, poetry, and Hallmark cards. That picture of “perfect love” is meant to sell us what we think we must have to attain what we don’t or even can’t. The sellers know that, and they’re also afraid that, if we ever could attain that dream, we’d just quit buying their stuff. I know that both of you are making this commitment to each other while you know what I mean. Love in reality is being there “for better or worse” as wedding vows often say. It’s not only the wedding day, but the day you might spend with your partner in the hospital. It’s not only the easy things you like to do together, but the misunderstandings that need clearing up. It’s promising to tell your partner what you really want, hear what they really want, and then negotiate together how you as a couple will work differences out. It’s making mistakes in your relationship and cleaning them up because your relationship is important. In fact, it’s promising right now that if you’ve been the perfect partner you will plan in a mistake every so often to stop that, that you’ll really appreciate each other enough to clean those mistakes up. Our world doesn’t need perfect people; it needs models of people and couples who know how to clean up messes. And besides, we’ll all be happier because your relationship won’t show ours up. Yes, today is a formal, legal commitment of how these two people love each other and choose to become life partners. And that never precludes their love for you - friends, family, and others they choose to love in other ways. Thankfully, love isn’t a limited commodity; when two people love well, their love expands to the world around them. They’re not huddling away from the world but embracing it together. And, finally, when these two men/women/gender-expansive-people stand here and say to the world that they’re lovingly committed to each other, they touch us even deeper. Whether they want to or not, they’re symbols of something that’s more like a spiritual parable. If loving commitment really is something worth sacrificing for, then it’s LGBTQ people who live that parable. Throughout history, few people have shown us as graphically how important love is. Few have lived what so many of the world’s religions teach that’s better than religious people practice. Though this couple just wants to live together and probably isn’t interested in symbolizing anything or making a social statement today, they still remind us that throughout history – and even today – LGBTQ people considered love so important that they sought to love even in the face of being demeaned and ridiculed, tortured and killed, losing their jobs and experiencing rejection by their families, or being condemned to eternal punishment and considered less than human, for it. Whether they like it or not, they are a parable of love we hear because we’re with them today. So here they are, here we are, celebrating love and especially the love of this couple. That love shines through all the negativity that surrounds us. When people find each other, it gives us all hope that so much else in the world can be better than it is on the TV news. And no matter what they’ve been told, it’s also
our hope that these two will always be able to realize what
Henry James once wrote: “It has made me better loving
you ... it has made me wiser, and easier, and
brighter.” (The Portrait of a Lady) The Cliché is Right: We
Really Are All in This Together Have you ever asked why one group that’s been a victim of discrimination doesn’t automatically see how another group is suffering? Have you wondered why people in one group could actually participate in the oppression of another or at least ignore the desires for similar equality by the other group? It doesn’t seem to matter what the basis of a discrimination is – class, race, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, abilities and disabilities, religion, etc. An inability to see discrimination and oppression as a way of approaching life that suits a system’s desire to eliminate threats to the status quo, functions to keep people in competition with each other, even fighting the liberation of an other, so that there’s no combined strength to change the system. There are different ways to look at the struggle to end discrimination and oppression. And their differences help explain why one oppressed group can’t empathize with how another group is similarly affected by a systemic oppression built into a culture. A first is to proceed as if a struggle is just to obtain rights and equality for one’s own group. Interested in one’s own freedom, there’s little interest in changing much else in a society. It’s an “I’ve got mine, good luck getting yours.” It ignores the concept of community, that we’re all in this together, and that what affects one affects all, that is, what’s come to be called the intersectionality of oppressions. That’s understandable given the falsehoods our style of capitalist culture installs in us and we, therefore, spend a lot of energy defending:
As a result, oppressed groups fight over whose oppression is worse. Then they split from a unified front against systemic oppression into groups that resent each other. Imagine how perfect that is for maintaining oppressions. In addition, there’s the hopeful belief that I’ll be happy and fulfilled if I win the legal protections my group is lacking. So, I vote for what’s good for my group alone. Usually this is tied to the acceptance of the classist teaching that getting my liberty and equality is the key to moving up in the system. I’ll enter a higher economic class and my money will protect me even more. So, for example, if white, gay, men just end the oppression of gay people, their barrier to a richer life will be eliminated and they too can rise above other oppressed people with whom they don’t identify. There’s quite a history of that playing out in extreme forms today. As those who thought they had “made it” often attest, however, discrimination will still rear its ugly head. Any woman who thought she had risen about sexism by serving on a corporate board, becoming a professor, or even running for president, knows sexism is lurking in many forms. A result of this limited approach, if it actually worked, could be that we’d end one or more oppressions without improving the conditions that keep oppression going as a strategy. And since oppressions condition the minds of both the dominant and non-dominant groups, the ingrained concepts behind them such as gender issues and homophobia, will dog everyone including the newly liberated. A second approach to ending discrimination is to see ourselves as a part of a community of people where all oppressions are related and therefore all need uprooting. One of the results of the loss of a sense of community in America is an isolationism - which too is promoted by the power structure - that separates out our issues as if they’re unrelated to humanity’s around us. Ours become all-encompassing so they must be brought up in every context where social justice is sought in fear that they will not get addressed at that very moment. All this is understandable psychologically, for we’re thinking about people who’ve really been hurt by current discriminations. And until that is ended there’ll arise cries to pay attention to and not forget the real struggles and obstacles people have, cries that might derail any discussion. Then, because we’ve all internalized all the oppressions, even those who are in oppressed groups will be limited by the lies of the oppressions. They’ll never be truly mentally free. It will always nag at them in some deep place. Seeing the relationships between multiple oppressions, however, will be crucial to changing a society that wants to thrive on what it prefers to tell us is how people must be – it’s human to need an enemy to look down upon, the trope goes. It will enhance our mental health in the light of the drone of what we’re being told and remind us that the oppression that came down on victims was never their fault. In 1988, Suzanne Pharr wrote her first edition of Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism to show the relationship of those two oppressions. These in turn are tied to our cultural conditioning about gender that’s currently making transgender people lightning rods for societal dysfunctions in the form of transphobia. And, as Jessica Joseph put it in “Homophobia and Racism: Similar Methodologies of Dehumanization:” “Racism, classism, sexism, religious imperialism, homophobia and feral corporatism may look like individual poisonous plants, but if you dig under the surface, the roots are all intertwined. Pull on one, and it is firmly anchored by the root network of another toxic tree. So, to really solve our problems of discrimination and
hatred, the second approach is a necessity. Can We Stand Resolute Against the
Rollback of LGBTQ Equality? Back then I said that it was the must-read of the year. The way forward, he pointed out, was no longer to be wishy-washy liberals who thought that cookies and milk and the singing of Kumbaya would make everyone like us. “In fact,” Signorile wrote, “it’s time for us to be intolerant – intolerant of all forms of homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry against LGBT people. People often use the phrase ‘let’s agree to disagree’ when they respect but do not share the different positions of their friends or colleagues. But it’s time that all of us who support LGBT equality no longer agree to disagree on full civil rights or LGBT people. Anything less than full acceptance and full civil rights must be defined as an expression of bias, whether implicit or explicit. And it has to be called out….” Almost seven months into the Trump presidency and the Republican domination of all federal and most other governmental entities, nothing that we think is in keeping with the American constitution, its amendments, and values is safe especially LGBTQ rights. The Constitution means in practice what the Supreme Court says it means, not that to which our lofty ideals and our rational arguments cling. The appointment of Neal Gorsuch to the Supreme Court moved the Court further to the right than when it was dominated by the late Anthony Scalia. Nothing about Gorsuch’s courtroom activity indicates anything other than the fact that he’d like to turn back the rights of most now-protected groups in favor of the new right-wing trope of “religious liberty.” Instead, even though he was a new appointee, Gorsuch had no hesitation establishing himself as the head of the Courts extreme right-wing. And since it looks as if the Trump administration will be appointing at least one more justice, the odds are that this will secure an anti-LGBTQ Court for the foreseeable future. This all suits the long-term plan of the political-religious-legal right-wing. Even without the new Court appointees, they calculated that they couldn’t get the Court on their side by openly talking of rolling back the rights of a group such as LGBTQ communities. Instead their goal became to chip away at them through a new form of bigotry called “religious liberty laws.” Their strategy – and Gorsuch is crucial to it – is that if they can argue for the freedom of religious institutions and private businesses to discriminate, they’ll get more of the public and the Court on their side. Even Justice Kennedy, who supported marriage equality, might go for the religious liberty argument. States dominated by Republicans afraid of being primaried from the right will then pass draconian laws under the guise of religious liberty that will eventually end up in a Supreme Court that will on that basis declare that the laws uphold the First Amendment’s protection of religion. That’s what we are watching happen right now. The current Court has thus agreed finally to take up Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission to decide whether private parties can refuse to do business with LGBTQ clients based on their religious objections. Even marriage equality is now up for grabs. Our response to all of this must be calculated, forceful, and realistic. And we can’t spend time trying to convince the inconvincible who make up a personality cult of this president who plays on bigotry. First, let’s reflect again on the fact that the loud people who run this country because their supporters show up to the polls and keep the pressure on, are a minority. In terms of marriage equality, for example, the majority of Americans support it. So we are in a majority that for various reasons is not showing up, standing up, and being out in the open wherever it finds itself. Second, as a result, spend your valuable time working with the majority of Americans who don’t psychologically need to be anti-LGBTQ, or anti-women, or anti-immigrant, but will discuss, not argue, and make progress. These are the people who might now think all is well and things will happen without them doing something, who think that it can’t be as bad as you’re painting it, who don’t vote in every election they can, who want to argue among fellow progressives. The fact is, we have not been good about rallying our natural bases, and the opposition knows that doing so is what works for them. Elections are most often lost by the Democratic Party, for example, because they do not spend time rallying their base but trying to move to a postulated, nonexistent center. Speaking to “the choir” is one of the most important things we can do now because all the choir members aren’t actually singing. Third, it is unlikely that you can change a true believer in the personality cult of the current president or those others who are willing to argue obsessively against LGBTQ rights. So, think of what you are doing as more of an intervention and decide how much time and energy you really want to use up trying to get them to just understand you as opposed to rallying those who agree. As an intervention, this means standing firm, not caving, not moving an inch from your position as if it people’s human rights are debatable. A recent defeat of a mean anti-transgender amendment in
the House of Representative is an
example of the bold offensive Signorile argues is
needed, one that draws a line in the sand. “In the face
of the danger of a rollback not just on rights for queer
people but for all minorities under attack in the Trump era,
this showed that standing firm, energizing activists in the
base and resisting - rather than pandering and caving in -
is the way to win.” Why Is the Idea of Privilege So
Controversial? Though the concept of the privilege of the dominant group that’s based on culturally accepting their characteristics as the norm and others as deviants from a norm that’s somehow considered more natural, American, and human has been around for decades, its very mention to a person in those dominant groups often raises the level of a discussion’s heat. People not a part of those dominant groups are regularly, and often silently, aware of what those phrases mean to their daily lives, but the dynamics of our culture’s intersection of the categories we use to divide people complicates the discussion. And when government or other institutions act to mitigate privilege, those actions often evoke complaints of reverse discrimination. We see this in the stereotypical attacks on affirmative action – the often misunderstood but most conservative attempt to correct historical discrimination that the government could come up with – or the mainstream but inaccurate images we’re supposed to carry around about who receives the most “help” from the government. Why is it difficult, then, for people in dominant groups to recognize the privileges their group has just for being the right color, sexual orientation, gender, class, religion, or body-type? Why is it almost a knee-jerk reaction to go into anecdotal-justifying denial? Well, it’s complicated. First, we’d like to believe that we’re self-made people who’ve earned by our actions alone all that’s implied when the concept of privilege is raised. That’s, as historians point out, one of the most pernicious and irrepressible American myths. It’s so ingrained, and so used by American leaders, that to point out all the help we’ve gotten - from the roads we ride on to the tax money others have paid into our education - is often interpreted as evidence of some sort of personal failure. Part of the loss of sense of community is the amnesia that forgets that we’ve benefitted from that community. And it’s a sad self-concept that can only accept one’s value if they’re “self-made” when everyone is a combination of their own achievement and what’s been handed to them. It not only negates one’s own reality, but teaches that any help we give someone is a sign that they’re actually failures. Second, group identity is installed in us emotionally and with the fear that we might be isolated from that very group. We come to need the identity that the group gives us because we rely on it to define who we are. So, when the privilege of that group is pointed out, our reaction is less likely to be a thoughtful consideration of the idea but an emotional response that could include guilt, shame, fear, and threatened loss. We can diminish those feelings quickly with anger, offense, denial, and a search for the opinions of others who reject the concept. It’s often the case that the response is to go into one’s own victim talk, reciting how we of the dominant group have been victims of this person or that. We might even claim that the other group has it better – though few would thereby be willing to wake up the next morning with the identity of that non-dominant group. I’ve often challenged people who say that LGBTQ people aren’t really discriminated against to try an experiment – for the next six months tell everyone around you that you’re LGBT or Q. But even assuring them that it’s only an experiment and six months later they can say “Just kidding,” no one who’s denied that there’s discrimination has yet taken me up on it. Third, because our society is an intersection of multiple oppressions that each privilege a certain group, most people experience more than one. So when one privilege is pointed out, they’re often able to respond by how they’re the victims of another privilege as if that other non-privilege negates the original observation. The most pervasive of these are the privileges of economic class. So if someone points out my white privilege, I can respond with examples about how class privilege has treated me and – here’s the misunderstanding – act as if I don’t have any privileges just because people identify me as white. “Well, I’ve had it hard too” is often a response of how much more difficult everything is in our culture if you’ve not come from an economically upper-class family. And one of the functions of many of the other privileges is actually to keep the class system in place by dividing people from each other in terms of these other identities. The American cultural system has a long history of preferring that we keep these arguments going so that the majority – working class people – doesn’t ever unite to bring down the powers that be who make money off of our divisions. So, if I might get personal with a few everyday examples: I’m a white, non-heterosexual, able-bodied, man from a working class background. My white privilege means, for example, that when I walk around a store I don’t have to wonder if someone is following me expecting me to steal something or ever have to think about anything in terms of the pinkish-cream color of my skin. As able-bodied, my privileges include that I never have to determine if a place I visit is accessible. My male privileges include that people often pay attention to me when I say the same thing a woman has just said that listeners had let go or that I don’t have to respond to questions about my objectivity as a man when I write about gender issues. Yet, I don’t have the privilege of never worrying about how someone will respond when I tell them about my partner. And I don’t have the privilege of not worrying about budgeting or falling into debt. And I haven’t even touched on privileges that come
with identifying with the right religion that’s afraid
it’s losing those privileges and claiming they’re
the ones being persecuted. But that’s another
story. It’s the Pride Part of LGBTQ
Pride That Still Drives Them Nuts All these complaints are akin to the recent statement by a Missouri lawmaker who has a long record of opening his mouth to change feet: “When you look at the tenets of religion, of the Bible, of the Quran, of other religions, there is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.” The complaints reflect where anti-LGBTQ people who’ve convinced themselves they’re not are and how those who still raise money off of anti-LGBTQ crusades get the attention of their followers. They’re in sync with anti-LGBTQ claims that the goal of “the militant gays” (you know, like some mafia) is to destroy “traditional” American culture or some part thereof. It’s also another example of what members of dominant groups say about any outsiders. White racism doesn’t mind gouging on it’s version of the food, or usurping the music, of the cultures of people of color, but it wants the individual members to act as White as possible. Any person of color knows how white they have to act to get ahead in our society just as LGBTQ people know how acting as straight as possible is a way to keep their heads down. There are so many pockets of America where the finest compliment any group can get is “they fit in well.” And then the complaints begin about a Black History month, a Women’s History month, or a Gay Pride Month. The complainers go so far as claiming that their group ought to have a special month. But the dysfunction of discrimination in terms of how it separates even the discriminators from their own humanity would make such observances little more than attempts to prove that they’re not like whatever they conceive those others to be. Can you imagine a Straight Pride without picturing it as some display trying to celebrate how they’re not whatever “gay” stereotypes they accept? The dominant group in any discrimination is willing to admit that those other people are around (“I don’t care what they do in private” is often the line they recite even though they’re usually obsessed with it.). They just don’t want anything “those people” do to challenge their privileges, especially their sense that they’re the definition of “normal” human beings. They don’t mind “those gays” around as long as they don’t act as if they love being LGBTQ. If they can see them as sick, scared, lonely, failures, and suicidal, that’s okay. It’s best then that LGBTQ people stay in their closets and come out at night so no one can see them or might think they can be proud of, and happy with, who they are. And the history of outright threats experienced by LGBTQ people is reflected in the fact that so much of their nightlife begins late after dark to hide in the shadows. In particular, then, a celebration of LGBTQ Pride contradicts so much in American straight culture, that it’s a healthy threat to many of the assumptions and limitations of conforming to being straight acting, thinking and posturing. Of course, it scares those who’ve bet their life on all the straightness and don’t see how the straight role they’re performing with all its gender rigidity is limiting and hurting them. Homophobia is a key part of that role. And though it takes many forms, the key culturally conditioned basis for all others is the fear of getting close to one’s own gender. That fear is used to promote America’s warrior culture and turn little boys into men who will cheer culturally approved violence particularly against other men. It’s used to encourage competition among women for the limited number of “good men” straight-acting women are supposed to need to save themselves from hopelessness, emptiness, loneliness, and meaninglessness. So, if two heterosexual male friends walk down almost any street in the U.S. they’ll still possibly become victims of some form of gay oppression. That’s not about who they’re in bed with or in love with; it’s about their acting as if they don’t have to fear getting close to their own gender. Homophobia isn’t natural to human beings. And being heterosexual is not the same as living the straight role that takes decades of fear-based conditioning to install in everyone. But it’s still useful to encourage competition and the fighting spirit that will mean that no man’s masculinity will be questioned if he displays anger and violence. Should he show gentleness and the ability to be in touch with other human emotions, he’s a threat to the straight role. That’s the danger of Pride Fests to this whole system as well as other examples of LGBTQ people out and proud as healthy and happy. They challenge what’s actually a house of cards by saying and showing that human beings don’t have to be afraid of closeness with their own genders. And that means that all friendships can be different and close no matter what the gender of their members. It means that heterosexual coupling doesn’t have to be straight-acting – both partners can choose how they want to express their closeness with each other. It means that we’ll have to come up with new ways of selling our products, motivating people, investing in our future, and doing our patriarchal politics. LGBTQ Pride is a radical notion not because it expresses
some twisted idea of humanity but because it confronts every
human being to question the limitations of the straight role
they’ve been scared into, a role that becomes a
straight jacket. And that’s what anti-LGBTQ communities
fear – all of this means they’ll have to move out
of their comfort zones and learn again what it is to be as
they were born - full, unlimited human beings. Translating Right-Wing Attempts to
Trigger Liberal Guilt We think that explaining ourselves over and over again and spending a lot of energy to understand the right-wing will help us get along. We’re invested in the idea that showing them we care about their views – even claiming we “respect” irrational views – will win them over. And when these things don’t work, we blame ourselves, our lack of listening skills, our lack of empathy, our neglect to spend enough time, or our failure to articulate clearly what we mean. We treat ourselves as the guilty party in the debates and actually, though we’d never admit it to ourselves, end up looking down on right-wingers and their dupes as if they’re mere victims of ignorance, misinformation or illogic, not as actors who make choices and cling to their prejudices no matter how we argue. No wonder that the right-wing thinks liberals look down on them. There’s still a moveable middle that wants to see unwavering initiatives by progressives who stand clearly, powerfully, and convincingly as real believers in what they say. Wishy-washy - acting uncertain - won’t work with that middle anymore, and certainly it won’t if we’re progressive people working out of some guilt that it’s somehow our fault. The right-wing knows how to respond so that people will feel that their problem is actually their antagonist’s fault. And people’s backgrounds, childhood upbringings, and unhealed issues feed into how much it triggers them to blame themselves. There are certain strategies that the right-wing (and others) will use – words and phrases that say one thing that makes their liberal enemies fall into guilt, into belief that liberals are the problem and need to put more energy into useless arguments. If we’ve not done it by now, then, it’s time to translate what they’re saying into its actual meaning so that we’ll act positively and compassionately out of creative power and not take responsibility for right-wingers’ failure to respond as we think. “You aren’t spending enough time figuring out what we mean and thus should listen forever to our sources.” Baloney. There’s no need to listen more closely to right-wingers (especially members of the Trump cult). You should know what they believe by now; they have nothing new to say. If anyone finds something new and unpredictable, that will be a surprise, but I'll bet we've heard it all before. Garbage in/garbage out. FOX News and right-wing hate radio will only keep you angry and upset (“Look what they’re doing now!”). They know that, and their goal is to do exactly that to you. This means that hardly any new mean, self-centered, hypocritical thing they do should surprise us anymore. Hypocrisy is built into their lifestyle to keep it going. We’ve got to be ready for the hell they’re willing for the rest of us to experience. Their misery loves company – it makes them feel that they’re ultimately right when they’re actually full of doubt about it. “You’re not listening to me.” “You don’t understand me.” They hope this will cause you to try harder because you’ll believe the continued disagreement is your fault. Again: baloney. When right-wingers claim liberals don't listen or don't understand them, they're saying that until you agree with them they’ll not accept that you’re giving them a fair listen or understanding. You must change your opinion to satisfy them. Understanding does not mean agreement. That’s a liberal fantasy - if we just understood each other, we’d all be singing “Kumbaya.” The Israelis and Palestinians do understand each other. I, in fact, disagree vehemently with the right-wing on most issues, because I understand them. So, don't expect more indulgence to change their argument that you don’t get them. What will change it is when you change your position to agree fully with their view. “You liberals talk down to us.” We are if we think the problem is their ignorance of facts that we know. But again: baloney. When they say liberals talk down to them, right-wingers mean that liberals keep using facts and careful, peaceful language. Liberals will be accused of talking down to them until liberals agree completely with them. And, by the way, no one talks down more to those they disagree with than right-wingers – ex. “We patriots.” “We true Americans.” “We Moral Majority.” “We Christians.” You don’t get the logic in our positions.” Baloney. The current right-wing mindset isn’t based on rationality and logic. It's about supporting prejudices by any means possible. The more liberals argue as if cool rationality will work, the more they will be accused of talking down to them. Remember, right-wingers are not caught up in their ideology because they’re stupid or just don't understand something you have to tell them. They’re caught up in something like the comfort of a cult that has teachings that support their prejudices and fears – what George Lakoff calls the conservative frame. As such, right-wingers will lie, reject anyone who points out that they’re lying, and defend their heroes no matter what they do - unless its same-sex relations with children. And right-wing religion supports all of this if it makes them winners in their righteous culture wars. Look at their view of the end times, which includes their salivating about the violent, vengeful destruction of their enemies. The key to right-wing religion is experiencing and seeking the high of righteousness that means winning at all costs. “We’re being persecuted by….” Malarkey. Right-wingers love to play you so that you believe they’re the victims of you and your liberal culture. No matter how they’re in power, they’ll always talk like a persecuted minority. The current office holders, including President Bannon, aren’t dumb or lacking in some understanding of democracy. They know how to use the minds of their devotees and liberals to get their oligarchic agenda across. Don’t fall into their guilt-inducing mind control. It’s them, not you. Realize that when you’re confronting them. What Now? Part Four: Are You
Personally Prepared for This Fight? The President himself has a history of being an egotistic, self-promoting conman and reality TV entertainer, and the real mastermind behind his initiatives, Steve Bannon, came from the leadership of the Breitbart right-wing news-manipulating organization. Thus, the first days of this administration have been marked by immediate bold executive actions that have been paced to hold the media’s attention and make people reel from their rapid-fire timing. They’re meant: (1) to make the President look as if he’s a real take-charge CEO –appearance is what Trump’s all about; (2) to overwhelm his enemies with so much coming at them that they don’t know where to start; (3) to keep movements that stand against his agenda off balance with so much material that they become exhausted and less effective; (4) to divide the various liberal organizations that focus on specific causes by blatantly flogging each one’s own horse; (5) and to distract those opposed to him from focusing on important legislative activities that take place behind his headline-getting hypocrisies, lies, and absurdities. His followers from the religious right-wing are basking in his strong leadership and the prospect that they’ll finally make progress on their anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ agenda. All arguments that his personal life is anything but what Jesus would do or be don’t matter when he promises them that they’ll come out winners. Addictive religion’s need to find a new pusher of their high of righteousness, has placed its faith in what he’s pushing. And none of that “makes sense” in any other terms but their need to feel as if they’re righteous winners against all those evil forces that make fun of them. Religious right-wingers feel more emboldened and are adding to the plethora of initiatives that are appearing to challenge not only Rove v. Wade but marriage equality and other LGBTQ rights. They’re thereby re-triggering all who have not dealt with their rightful bitterness and negative emotional attachment to the religion they claim to have rejected. These are times, then, for action, protests, solidarity, and the ability to see how all of the causes being attacked, from the environment to working people’s issues are related. They are times when the forces working against progressive causes are ensconced in all levels of government and business with tremendous financial resources. But what’s necessary is also the renewal of every activist’s internal journey as well as outward activism. If its goal is to trigger, overwhelm, craze, and exhaust, this is a time when leaders are more susceptible to burnout and destruction. It’s a dangerous time that more than ever requires personal growth and introspection along with outward justice work. And activists, particularly their leaders, are just not good at taking time to put attention on what’s going on within themselves. Activism, in fact, can be used addictively – to not experience what’s going on inside but just doing something and getting caught up in all the work that a manipulative enemy demands to be done so as not to deal with personal issues that challenge our effectiveness. The only way to keep that from happening is to value time to focus on what we are really feeing and give it attention. When the late Molly Ivins reminded activists to “above all have fun,” she was aware of the fact that effective and healthy activism demands what is stifled when we’re triggered by unhealed hurts and pain. And being active, especially in leadership, is guaranteed to bring up hurts around past leaders, family dynamics, effects of past oppression, and reminders of our disappointments. So, promise me that you’ll dedicate some time to do a gut check. (1) Do we know why we’re in a cause or even leading it? Do we see what it will do for our own freedom or are we just doing it for others? (2) Have we really settled our past issues about religion? Do we believe we’ve left a religious organization but are still trying to prove them wrong as if their opinions do still matter to us? (3) Can we be okay without everyone liking us? Can we let their feelings go and stay on the course we’ve set before us? (4) Are we expecting our activism to solve problems that it can’t solve such as a need to be somebody or to be saved from loneliness or meaninglessness? (5) What “triggers” us so that we react out of anger and hurt rather than in a creative, strategic manner? Healthy activism is much more relaxed than we want to admit, less frantic and reactive. If we’re triggered by what others do, that’s our problem. (6) Are we unable to ally with others or afraid that if their cause gets too much attention (or money), that that will be at the expense of our cause? Are we, thereby, reacting out of a model of scarcity rather than cooperation? (7) Are we expecting members of our movement to constitute our support group or have we set up a support network to share frustrations, fears, and moments of hopelessness? Can we name our support network? (8) Do we think that we don’t have time to do this? Do we think that we’re someone above all this? Do we minimize our need for an internal journey along with outward resistance? Are we keeping up a model of activism and leadership that destroys people because it’s based on an old warrior model? We’re in a long-term battle – it’s not a
sprint but a marathon - that will take its toll on us if we
don’t take care of ourselves every step along the
way. Men Behaving Badly and those Nine Layers of
“Getting Laid”
Now one example after another of such conduct at high levels is daily news. And much is being said to analyze the issues in terms of power dynamics right along with attempts to somehow justify, dismiss, or minimize these actions. But none of this has to do with something inherent in males as human beings. Our boys are not born with some impulse to treat anyone this way. These actions spring from what is still mainstream male conditioning about sex and the male sex drive, conditioning that reaches its peak in junior and senior high school. And what that conditioning attempts to install in boys is solidly behind the scenes in their lives at best – boys know it even if they choose not to individually act upon it. Meanwhile our society doesn’t want to discuss, admit, or believe our boys experience it, especially where it needs discussion – in our schools. Any attempts are demeaned by labeling them radical, feminist, extremist, or something else. Frankly, though, by puberty boys are learning what it means to be a real man, which includes how men “get laid.” So, it’s time to revisit the “Nine Layers of Getting Laid” that I fully discussed in Scared Straight, layers that are installed through pressure - peer and otherwise – that’s based in fear of what not accepting them does or does not mean for a man’s “manhood,” machismo, straight-identification, and full admission in the men’s club. The image of the “real manly man” found in media and elsewhere, and justified by some who just accept it, says that getting laid is: (1) Compulsive. There’s something uncontrollable, overwhelming, or inevitable about male sexuality. Sexual activity should come naturally to men and men are in some way obsessed with it. Theories why are popular. (2) Objectifying. It has to do with bodies and body parts. It feeds on all the stereotypes of what makes an object physically attractive and promotes the stuff that can be sold to women to make them look like Miss America walking down a runway in her swimsuit. (3) Impersonal. When it’s first installed it not only doesn’t have to do with the person who is the sexual object, but actually is best if it’s not with a friend. Even sex with a committed partner later might be accompanied by thoughts of something other than what’s going on in that bed. And the more the object is impersonalized, the easier it is to ignore any consequences for the object of the sexual act including any violence involved. (4) Manipulative and Coercive. Real men, the conditioning says, can manipulate any object into sex with them. And if the object objects, it shames the man as not manly enough or means the object needs more manipulation. “No” doesn’t mean “No” but “manipulate me more.” One’s manhood, after all, is on the line here. (5) An Activity. It’s not a process of being with someone but a thing you do to or with someone. It’s a separate activity from all else in life that has a beginning and an end. It is not the foreplay or any after-glow. (6) Goal-Oriented. Cuddling isn’t sex; making out isn’t. Real male sex has a goal – the big O, and it’s his. Even in this enlightened twenty-first century, this lingers on as younger women tell me. (7) Self-Centered. It’s supposed to take place on his agenda. There are words men have for women who are too aggressive and they’re not “Self-Assured” or “Leadership Material.” (8) Manly. Sex proves you’re a man and makes you feel like a man. In a world where men are not conditioned to feel much other than anger and triumph over others, this is the place a man can feel. It might last only a few seconds, and won’t be convincing in any lasting way, but that only means more sex is necessary or that the sexual object is at fault for not making him feel manly enough. So, better look elsewhere. (9) With a Woman. Society has installed this layer in men of all sexual orientations for centuries and it has therefore put down as not really a man anyone who would prefer otherwise. None of this is the male sex drive or heterosexual sexuality. These are layers of distress installed for a lifetime through fear of what will happen to someone who doesn’t go along They are patterned definitions of sex for someone of any orientation who’s been scared into a straight role that’s usually enforced by putting down anyone who doesn’t appear to go along with it all. The demeaning of LGBTQ people has made it possible to use the fear of being thought of as queer to enforce gender roles across the board, and the boy in high school who comes our against this will at least be asked: “Don’t you like girls.” It would be nice to believe that this conditioning is confined to older generations, that our boys today don’t get this from society around them. After all, so much has happened in the last decades to empower women and educate men I want to believe that, but when I present this list to college students, these eighteen to twenty-one year olds (especially women) say it hasn’t changed and then add their own stories. Conditioning is learned behavior, and what is learned can be unlearned. There’s no reason to give up. Both our boys and girls need us to give words to gender
role conditioning around sex and to see it for what it is.
Then we’ll all need to imagine what sexual relations
would be without these nine layers. What Now? Part Three: It’s
Not About Reasoning with the Right-Wing If the Trump presidential campaign’s success didn’t convince people, nothing will. Liberal people want to cling to the belief that just rationally explaining something to a right-winger and reciting policy proposals ought to convince them. There’s some undying faith in education as the presentation of information. They really want to believe that if human beings hear the facts, they’ll come around. We think that it’s some misunderstanding or failure of logic that causes people to “vote against their self-interest.” And we’re aghast that people actually accept that we’re in a “post-fact” world. It’s easy, then, to conclude that people who vote for those who use them are just missing something they should know. So, we expect that enlightening them to their lack is the solution. Yes, there’s a moveable middle that will actually listen to such argumentation, a middle that seems to be shrinking because of decades of Republican right-wing consultants’ work to frame the debate about economic and social issues in their language and its assumptions. But, as I’ve argued for years, including a column here back in November 2011 entitled “And We Keep Expecting Them to Be Rational…” - “We could have the smartest President that ever lived on the planet. We could rehearse ad-nauseam and as clearly as possible the facts, the data, the studies, and the logic of it all. We could wish, hope, and believe that people were different. But again and again we will run up against the reality that the responses of the powers and believers in the religious, political, military and economic right-wing are neither moved by rationality nor ‘the facts.’” Religious Studies scholars know that symbols always beat rationality and linguist George Lakoff has been arguing for over fifteen years that “frames” trump facts. Yet so many liberal people are stuck in analyses of human behavior that go back to the Enlightenment. And as I wrote before, the Republican strategy actually assumes liberals won’t get it: “leave the other side in the dust trying to figure out the logic of what you are saying and looking for further arguments about facts and logic that Democrats think work no matter how they’ve failed in the past.” So, the second necessity emphasized in this series is that we must change the frame of the debate and stop expecting success to be the result of beautiful, cogent arguments. This doesn’t mean that our arguments shouldn’t be logical and fact-based. It means that we must present our positions and ourselves as if we are the symbol of the points we’re trying to make: (1) Don’t ever look wishy-washy. Even if you don’t have the facts at hand, stand for something as if you really believe it. Don’t give the right-wing any excuse to believe that you don’t really believe what you say by how you equivocate on an argument, seem to soften your position, or appear too ready to compromise. If you don’t show that you hold your position with conviction, you symbolize that you yourself appear to doubt its truth. If you don’t really believe something, then don’t stand for it. (2) Come out as progressive. You’ve noticed that when you’re with people you just want to get along with and choose not to discuss politics, religion, or social issues to do so, they’ll bring them up because of their psychological compulsion to do so. When that happens, all you need to convince them about is that you disagree. Anything further in the discussion is up to whether you’re willing to put the energy into it – you’re not obligated to solve their problems. You don’t owe anyone explanations or justifications for your position. Remaining silent, however, symbolizes to them that everyone in the room agrees with them. It doesn’t force them to be confronted with the presence of a person (as opposed to their stereotypes of “those people”) who holds an opposing position. (3) Never repeat the language they use even by calling it “so-called” or to negate it. When President Richard Nixon in 1973 famously objected: “I am not a crook,” Americans concluded that he was. Reframe any response and let them object to how you speak of it. Their objections mean you’re getting through. And you’re getting them on a new discussion, the need to deny your words – which reinforces your frame. For example, never use the word “therapy” after “conversion” or “reparative” unless you intend to communicate that you believe it really is therapy. Call it the brainwashing or psychological abuse of LGBT people. Don’t repeat the misnomer “tax relief” for attempts to lower taxes. Call taxes the dues or investment we pay for living in civilization. (4) Maintain your composure as much as possible and try to control any unintentional anger. Don’t make it look as if they can trigger you emotionally. That’s a message to them that their position is effective. But if your anger isn't an intentional tactic and they do, step back and ask yourself what it was that they triggered in you that touched your feelings. Don’t give in to guilt or negative messages about it, but let everything be a learning experience. (5) Never hesitate to repeat your position as often as you want. Education requires repetition of ideas at least three times. It’s often more effective to repeat the exact same words than to try to explain yourself, and explanations often give them excuses to get off topic. (6) Don’t let them change the topic. A right-wing strategy when caught in a corner, contradiction, or inability to satisfactorily answer a question is to change the topic. So, you’ll need to point out that they didn’t answer your point or question, and you’ll have to do it over and over again. (7) Don’t feel as if you must have all the answers. You can always say: “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Just stand strong in your values and how you believe they should be expressed. Through all you’ve presented a symbol: yourself. You
embody a position. And in this struggle, your flesh and
blood presence trumps any arguments. What Now? Part Two: It’s Not Either/Or:
Let’s Face Race and Everything They’re really defending themselves – they don’t want to admit that they’d vote for an open racist. They don’t want to accept their personal responsibility for the resulting rise in crimes against Muslims, people of color, and LGBT people that has followed the permission their chosen candidate has thereby given for people to act as open bigots. They’d prefer to deny that they themselves hold enough racism to give someone who appeals to white racism a pass, as if playing on racism, xenophobia, and homophobia isn’t important to them. They don’t want to think of how their votes evidence their lack of empathy for anyone but themselves. Both class and race figured at a basic level in the rise of this president-elect who lost the popular count by over 2.8 million votes. That loss is a point we’ll always need to remember – of the Americans who voted and whose votes were counted, over 50% did not support his campaign. To the majority, he’s a loser and his campaign strategy was offensive and embarrassing. The election post-mortem, however, has included debates about the relative importance of racism and classism in its outcome, as if these don’t support each other. The phrase “identity politics” has been used quite broadly as if whatever it refers to is a negative thing. So how do we work through all this to move beyond this election? When one works from a scarcity model of life – a model that supports the worst elements of capitalism, by the way – it’s easy to fear that attention to another issue will take it away from my issue. It’s a mindset that there’s not enough attention to go around. In addition, this scarcity mindset suppresses the facts that all oppressions are related and that ending all of them is necessary. I cannot isolate my issue from any other. It misses the point that any oppression will not die out until all the others also disappear. Oppression is an approach to life, a way of thinking, a frame that looks for a victim, and a fallback for a failing culture to scapegoat an “other.” The scarcity model also obscures the fact that oppression is more than just prejudice. It’s prejudice plus power: the ability to effectively promote or prevent movement and change. As such, what we’re fighting must be viewed not as just individual prejudice but systemic problems. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc. are promoted by the institutions of our society that need to preserve the status quo and how those institutions play off each other – that’s “the system.” And – here’s something we’d rather deny – because the problem is systemic, every one of us, no matter what demographic we identify with and whether we want to admit it or not, has been taught racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, able-bodyism, and others. When someone says, for example, “I am not a racist,” they miss the deeper point – we all have been taught to be racist; the issue really is: are we working on it in ourselves and society. Because they’re all related, then, and we’re a part of all of it no matter how far we’ve come, the second challenging, hard-to-face necessity emphasized in this series is that we need to reject denial, complaining, and guilt feelings to think in terms of building coalitions. We no longer can afford one-issue movements. We begin by understanding that what initially appears not to be “my issue” is really my issue. It’s not just that we all have one common humanity whose feelings, desires, prayers, and hopes we share (If we think about it, what people pray for around the world no matter what their religion are the same things all people and their families worry about.). We are not fighting a good charitable fight because some other group of pitiful people needs us to save them – that’s patronizing and disempowering for them. Instead, we need to learn how each of the isms hurts us, limits us, and boxes us in. How does white racism separate those who identify as white from their full humanity? Read: Thandeka’s Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America. How does the oppression of LGBT people limit the potential humanity of those who identify as straight? Read: Robert N, Minor, Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human. Racism, LGBT discrimination, able-body-ism, classism, environmental degradation and others must end, I must be convinced, for my own good – and other people will benefit. Next, we take a hard look at our lives, our friends, the circles we move in, who we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with in our chosen justice work, and where our comfortable interactions are. What we will often find is that naturally our circles are those that we’ve felt safe in and thus often they consist of the same demographics as us. Given the nature of the oppressions around us, that’s exactly how the system expects us to live. Coalition building does not mean that an organization does “outreach” to those it has not included. It means building long-term relationships that grow to share trust and understanding. It means all partners over time becoming convinced that the others are there for them when they have a fight for justice on their hands. No one needs to look around at the last minute wondering who’ll be there for them. And it means listening to find out what the needs of
those outside our demographic are, letting them take the
lead in their fights but standing
as allies, believing that what they say about their
experience is true, asking how to be supportive, listening
to their hurts, and not walking away when the going gets
tough. It’s hard, but necessary, stuff. What We Learn from Anti-LGBTQ
History Is That There’s Nothing More to Say Yes, that’s nothing, nothing at all, because they have nothing new to say. If something sounds new to you in your experience, at least recognize that it’s been said before. It’s all been said for at least the last half-century. There are no new arguments that we haven’t heard for generations whether they’re religious, psychological, historical, gender-based, or those that cite “traditional” values or something else “traditional.” Let’s start with religious arguments. New? Nothing? All the Bible passages have been discussed now for multiple generations. And the reality is that each of the passages regurgitated again and again to argue against “homosexuality” (a concept not found in the Bible) have probably at least three to five different interpretations in Biblical scholarship. What’s quite striking is that only one of the multiple interpretations of these verses is anti-LGBTQ people. Why that one is popular among regressive religion reflects the fact that the most popular interpretation of any scripture of any kind in any culture will be the one that supports the culture’s current prejudices. As cultural prejudices change, other interpretations become more acceptable. And that’s been happening for over fifty years in terms of these passages. Take our culture’s changing view on slavery, which the Bible supports and never says should be abolished. It was the rise of the abolitionist movement that began to question traditional pro-slavery interpretations of the Bible, pointing out that there are other ways to understand it. The largest US Protestant denomination emerged in 1847 to protect pro-slavery Biblical interpretations that supported the economic system. 150 years later, they apologized. If religious people really want to study and understand these passages rather than just use the Bible to confirm their prejudices, all the information has been available for over fifty years. And this applies to all religious traditions and all of their scriptures and histories. The historical fact is that in every one of the “isms” we identify as religions today (Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc.), there have been times in their histories when they’ve accepted LGBTQ people and times when they haven’t. All claims that one of the religions has always been or taught something are ahistorical. The varieties of so many of the beliefs and practices on any subject in each of these isms are great and dependent upon cultural influences. So there’s very little all members of each one have agreed upon. That means that choosing a position and saying that it’s what a religion or scripture teaches about LGBTQ people is a decision based upon one’s previous biases and assumptions. It arbitrarily ignores or declares heretical the vast history of alternatives to one’s preferred view of the “ism.” That also means that any claim that something is “traditional” either religiously, nationalistically, or otherwise is merely the picking and choosing of a viewpoint by ignoring all the historical alternatives to how one just wants things to be. And, remember, historians for generations now have already traced the history of the varieties within all these “isms.” New arguments from psychology? None. All debunked. Back in the 1970s the mainstream professional psychological associations rejected the view that homosexuality was an illness to be treated. Since then their stands have not only strengthened, but they’ve rejected as unprofessional and harmful any attempts that right-wingers make - fortified mostly again by religious interpretations - to do what they call therapy to change the sexual orientation of anyone. Since then, more professional organizations in the fields of medicine and education have agreed. So, to call these abusive attempts at the brainwashing of LGBTQ people “therapy” is worse than a joke – it’s enabling damage. As a result, stuck anti-LGBTQ people have had to form their own little groups to push their long debunked, outdated, prejudicial views. They can sound, thereby, scientific in their claims about LGBTQ people rather than just admitting that their position is only rooted in their personal unfounded beliefs and prejudices. Back in 1999, eleven of the major professional organizations worked together to issue a joint statement expressing their concerns about the harassment of LGBTQ youth, and condemning all the brainwashing techniques falsely called “therapies” with words like “conversion” and “reparative” in front of them as harmful and ineffective. New arguments from the other natural or social sciences? Nope. All the fields have rejected anti-LGBTQ claims and moved on. For more than the last fifty years, anthropologists and sociologists have noted that the wide varieties of acceptance and rejection of LGBTQ people vary across time and cultures. Homophobia and anti-LGBTQ views are not universal, inborn, or necessary for a society’s successful functioning. The actual long histories of the acceptance of same-sex activity, for example, in many cultures have been suppressed by buying into prejudices spread in the colonialism of European conquerors. The acceptance of gender-variant and other forms of transgender people - including, in many cultures, the fact that those who did not conform to male/female gender binaries were viewed as holding a higher, even sacred status – has been fully documented. And the claim that “traditional marriage” is the coupling of one man and one woman is historically just false, even laughable. Polygamy of various forms was more “traditionally” common, as evident, for example, even in Biblical texts. Observations of animal behavior have shown us examples in numerous species of the scientifically naturalness of same-sex behavior and coupling. It’s one of the variations of animal life. None of this means that we’ll hear the end of the regurgitation of all these old debunked arguments soon. They’re all just too conveniently useful as ways to cover up the underlying prejudices, sexual orientation and gender confusions and fears, and other motives of those who use them. But none of them, remember, not one of them, holds
water. Collateral Damage is Just the
Price of Making America Macho Again Calling it “toxic masculinity” makes it sound as if it’s something other than what it actually is: the full living out of a generations-old American male gender role that many thought was waning. It’s none other than our culture’s dominant definition of masculinity out in full force. There are many elements of this role such as the putting down of anything judged feminine or just not masculine enough while promoting a female role that makes women trophies and support personnel for the macho ego. Those elements have been called sexist and misogynist for they invoke the stereotypes of frat boy references to women as sexual objects and body parts. Look at those men and women who laugh at Trump and company’s “boys will be boys” stuff as if it’s a joke to be humored and dismissed. They excuse, and even adore, it as if we shouldn’t expect better. Look at how the solution to international problems is blowing something up or showing off American muscles (“Feel my guns.”). Nuance and extensive negotiations with world leaders that treat them as equals go out the window when every international disagreement feels like a man-on-man bar fight to prove that this president (and country) is the king of the hill (the effective meaning of: “Make America Great Again”). Look at how the way to deal with issues involves blasting one’s strength whether through tweets or military displays. Look how the President courts those leaders in the Pentagon who represent the military’s embodiment of “real” manhood where teamwork is a group of men working together to beat, defeat, or kill other men while there’s the “collateral damage” of others that masculinity says is just the way it must be. But behind getting the country to bet on this conditioned version of masculinity and the belief that it’s how real manliness should express itself, is the central tenet that we’ve got to take our little boys and rid them of any emotions that would keep them from being victorious Captain America type warriors. Since boys are born, like girls, with their full humanity intact, the relentless conditioning process that’s still in place today must get them out of touch with an array of human emotions. For some it starts earlier than others, but most boys can recall the ridicule, rejection, threats, and even violence that include calling a boy “cry baby,” “sissy,” “wuss,” or “gay” and those playground penalties for just coming across as weak. When an elementary school boy is bullied with gay slurs, it’s really about him not performing this male gender role well enough. A boy soon learns that real men don’t hurt, show fear, or admit to confusion. He also learns that his manhood will never be questioned if he substitutes for these “feminine” emotions by hiding in cold reason, intimidation, bullying, anger, and violence. And the more he accepts this, the more unconsciously he’ll just flip into “manly” responses. A boy learns not to pay attention to his hurts – in fact, he should “play hurt.” That will eventually keep men from going to the doctor, much less a counselor, soon enough to prevent them from dying earlier than women. And when someone is out of touch with their own hurting, it becomes more difficult to recognize that they’re hurting others. They might even counter complaints with: “That doesn’t hurt” or “It’s your own fault.” But literal violence is usually not the way conditioned masculinity’s suppression of feelings plays out. Take our newest Supreme Court justice who was nominated by President Macho-Image and approved by his most conditioned political followers. He’s a prime example of going with a principle and his worked-out rational mental system rather than recognizing that, as a result, a human being will die. Senator Franken called it “absurdity,” but it was conditioned manhood and its inability to see that it’s hurting another human being on display in its more genteel, privileged, aloof, sophisticated, and, therefore, more dangerous, way. In a court case under discussion, Judge Neil Gorsuch opted for his self-understanding of cold hard law while the other two judges on his 10th US Circuit Court panel found a clause that would prevent the death of a freezing truck driver. The infamous case was TransAm Trucking v. Administrative Review Board, popularly known as the “Frozen Trucker Case.” In sum, when a trucker in extremely below zero temperatures found his brakes frozen on an interstate highway and the truck’s cabin heat broken, could no longer feel his feet, and had no help for 30 minutes after he called in, the trucker unhitched his trailer and drove to safety. The trucker was fired and the case eventually came to Gorsuch’s court. His one-man dissent effectively concluded that the trucker should have just frozen to death because that is in keeping with the consistent way that Gorsuch sees jurisprudence. After all, we can’t set a bad precedent here or make an exception just because someone is going to die! The trucker is just the collateral damage of enforcing the law in this manner. In this he is the spitting image of his predecessor, Justice Antonin Scalia. If he were still alive, Scalia would still be using his religious and legal justifications (he hid behind the trope that he was just a consistent originalist) to justify discrimination against LGBT people and other minorities while golfing with rich buddies who shared his justifications. It’s not that they couldn’t be appropriately emotional people when it came to their friends and family. It’s that their public presentation in their profession must be rational rather than personal. So just buck up, buddy. It’s merely more collateral damage from conditioned masculinity. © 2017 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources
Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, is author of When Religion Is an Addiction; Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human; and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society. Contact him at www.FairnessProject.org
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