– feeds your head
There are some things that I will just never be able to understand. One of these is homophobia. I really and honestly do not understand it. And I am not talking about the various cultural and psychological reasons that are generally used to explain this phenomena, or abomination if we want to be a bit more precise, I get those. I understand what they are trying to get at when religion is brought into the picture and I understand what the whole threat to established gender identities theory is about. What I don’t understand is why anyone even cares in the first place. Why does it matter? How can it be that important what gender people are attracted to? Why on earth does anyone bother to care about that? Why is that particular preference given such a determining value?
I was reading a blog post by a mother whose son dressed up in a woman’s outfit for halloween and how that caused people to express a concern that he might grow up to be gay. Say what?! Apart from the fact that I really can’t see any issue what so ever with someone being gay, why would dressing up in women’s clothing make someone gay? How the hell would that causality work? It’s just beyond stupid. You don’t become gay, you are gay. Just like you are straight. Or bisexual. And gender identity has very little to do with that. A gay man is no less male than a straight man, just like a lesbian is no less female than a straight woman. Your gender or sexuality is not tied to your level of masculinity or femininity. But this line of reasoning does put focus on the problem of gender identity itself. Why is it so important that a boy sticks to the attributes assigned to his male gender? Why does him dressing up as a girl become such an issue? And why is the immediate fear that he’ll grow up to be gay? Why is the transcending of the gender roles perceived such a big threat even when it’s a 5-year-old boy doing it? Read more of this post
There are a lot of puzzling phenomena in this world. One of the more puzzling ones is nationalism: The idea that you can somehow acquire value by-proxy, without actually having to do anything actively. Passive superiority. Just because I happened to be born in this particular country I am intrinsically better than everyone who wasn’t. Seriously, how can anyone be arrogant enough to actually believe that? How pitiful are you? How mind bogglingly stupid? “I am proud to be [insert any of the hundreds of artificially constructed nation concepts here].” Why? What possible reason could you have to be proud over the fact that you happened to be born within a certain artificially constructed geographical area? Exactly how did you contribute to this random event? It’s stupid on so many levels. Not only because of the total randomness of the whole event, but also because of the simple reason that the concept of nations is a pure construction. They are not predetermined. They exist only because we have constructed them through our language and our actions. We have defined their borders and their meaning and it is an ongoing process. Constantly evolving with borders being redefined over and over again. And it’s a process not driven by a desire to better the world, but as a means to ensure the prosperity of one group at the expense of others. Us against them. It’s the tribe blown way out of proportion and taken far beyond the boundaries of the absurd. Taken to the level of idiocy. Read more of this post
jc.tryps 