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The nature of Bigotry

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stanskill:
The fact that we recognize abuses of one race, culture or orientation against another, and not repeat the acts, says a lot about our humanity. Personally, I am thankful to be an individual. I know my oppressors are destined for a great fall, but that is a fate of their own making. Theirs is a path I will not follow.

Feral:
I don't know what sort of grasp I have on the body of research -- I notice what trickles into the news (and I try to read the originals where possible). There are a lot of them... mostly attempting (in that plodding scientific way) to reproduce results that have already been produced (and which are common knowledge to any Gay person of an age who's been paying attention.

We surely have many problems as a people, problems that we should take care to address with compassion and certainty. One thing we must at all costs do is to stop whining to the straight people to fix them for us. They can not. If they could, they would not (and would grin while stating the refusal). If chickens are disappearing from your hen house, you do not call for the foxes to guard the yard better. It is plain foolishness.

Athrael:
You have a better grasp on the number and target of the researches done to date. I admit there is a limit to what I know about psychology, sociology and the research being done. I only have a passing interest in such, I'm more of a technical/engineering mindset - I love math problems more than "people problems". However what you did add makes it clearer that there are profound problems here.

I'm all for what I call ghetto-fication. Its a natural process which takes place by itself where people of like minds gather together to form communities.

Feral:

--- Quote ---Although research has uncovered the small fact that homosexuals (males mostly) are at greater risk for self destructive behaviors, suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism and usually do end up in some form of counseling. I'm certain you have come across these, if not offered to demonstrate how destructive hetero-society is on the homosexual, then most likely as a "case study" demonstrating that homosexuals are "sick". These studies have been thrown out by dissenting parties who live by the claim that it is "wrong" to be gay and they use these studies to demonstrate.
--- End quote ---

I've seen abstracts from a great many of these studies, and from many different places in the world. The chief difference I have observed between the genders is the higher rate of 'attempted' suicide in lesbians. This is usually explained by the casual observation that women of any orientation have a higher rate of attempts because men of any orientation tend to succeed more often (and so do not live to try another time). The raw numbers differ somewhat from place to place but generally, no place is a healthy psychic environment for Gay people. The Netherlands is a persistent anomaly in this data. There is some evidence to suggest that the exception of the Netherlands is an error in testing -- on other criteria this country (while a considerably better place for Gays to live than most any other country) does not differ from it's neighbors to such a degree.

This is entirely correct:


--- Quote ---Lets not forget that that is exactly what is going on, survival within a system.
--- End quote ---

The idea that "you'll continue to be deviates and will never be accepted" quite reasonably characterizes the nature of that system. There are those (and there are quite a few of them) who think that the nature of this system ought and can be changed. Usually they are of the view that this is a minor bit of tailoring that needs to be done, rather like hemming up a skirt to suit a new fashion.

It's my view that they are fatally wrong on this point. It's not a minor thing, this failure of the greater heterosexual society to accept any degree of variety amongst them. I question the capacity of straight people to change in this regard and I question the ability of those who would change them to accomplish this miracle. I'm not even sure it's right to wish to change straight people to this degree.

Gays definitely are, as is everyone, a product of their upbringing. In the case of their sexuality, a heterocentric upbringing is quite damaging to gays. I think that if some doctoral candidate in psychology wishes to find something new to write about, then he should go off to the Gay community to look for the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What I predict he will find is an entire subculture which is possessed of at least half of the symptoms for the ailment and a remarkable number of people who probably ought to be receiving treatment for it. Still, in the main, he will find that what he is looking at probably merits its own name. When nearly everyone is possessed of the same "maladaptive response" it becomes 'normal,' not clinical.

Just from the point of view of mental well-being, Gay people do not belong in a purely heterocentric environment. They require their own communities, and they must enter these communities at their earliest possible opportunity. In a material world, this can be much more difficult to do than it is to say, and the Gay people really ought to develop an equally material mechanism for moving people from one context to another. A certain amount of educated guidance would be nice as well. Not that everyone in the Gay community needs therapy (hell -- ALL people would benefit from at least some amount of psychotherapy), but attempting to cope with the straight world alone is how we find ourselves in these straits... getting out of them tends to require a second opinion. This is, in essence, Denneny's Eighth Proposition.


--- Quote ---If society tries to destroy us by first isolating us, it follows that what is necessary to fight back is not only defiance but the acknowledgement of a community and the construction of a world. Individual defiance may lead to heroism -- as we can see in the cases of Quentin Crisp and Jean Genet -- but, while we should honor our heroes, the cost is too high. Few individuals have the integrity or the energy to sustain the violence to the soul and the consequent deformations that heroism entails.

The further construction and consolidation of the gay ghetto is am immediate and necessary political objective. The singularity of the gay situation makes this “ghetto” unique, generating perplexities we have barely begun to address and rendering parallels to the experience of other groups dubious at best.
--- End quote ---

(The emphasis is mine.)

The statement was true as true can be back in 1982, and it is truer now, not less so.

There can be no question that the source of internalized homophobia is the constant stream of homophobic messages from heterosexual culture. One can dream of altering that culture to minimize or remove these messages, or one can be sensible and remove the Gay people to a place where those messages are not received and are replaced by completely different messages. This has nothing to do with founding a Gay state (though that would be an ideal solution to this particular problem). It has everything to do with Gay neighborhoods and institutions, even something so simple as Gay networks of friends. There should be more of all of the above, and at once.

Athrael:

--- Quote from: Mogul on Thu, May 10, 2007, 00:52 ---(snip)...There is no "right" or "wrong", "good" or "evil", "true" or "false". He was claiming that these categories are "depending upon the situation", and that one should not have overly lifted ethical expectations towards oneselfe and towards others. Avoiding explicite wording, he basically said that it is entirely justified to act immorally, if one expects some benefits from this (snip)...

--- End quote ---

The man spoke a great truth.

------

Gays are a product of their rearing as well as their sexuality. The two are usually at odds with each other. I note that humans have a small habit of being able to adapt, not only to adapt to a situation but to adapt the situation in part to meet their needs. Its a complex system of compromise and concessions, further a lot of half truths and adjusted truths to make the situation fit the need.

This explains the oddities or seeming oddities in how gays can survive in the hetero-centric world.  Lets not forget that that is exactly what is going on, survival within a system.


--- Quote ---The lowered self-esteem and emotional isolation, risky behaviour etc can be treated by psychologists, and a healthy and affirmative environment of the Gay-majority population will result in quick recovery of newcomers. Loving surrounding will remedy many wrongdoings the person had experienced before.
--- End quote ---

Most often the process is a life long process, usually requiring more time to unlearn the "habit" than it took to learn the habit. There are no "quick" resolutions. Drug addicts, victims of rape/sexual abuse are good cases to look at, once the damage is done it is not "undone" the person can, through a lot of work, overcome some of the trauma, but by and large they will be haunted for the rest of their life and their behaviors will reflect the damage done.

-->Unfortunately not enough case studies on the effects of society on the homosexual (lesbian/bi/transgender) is available, no one up until recently has had an interest in researching and compiling the histories of many patients. I have come across clips and articles where research is being done and initial findings are similar to findings of other abuse related cases.

Although research has uncovered the small fact that homosexuals (males mostly) are at greater risk for self destructive behaviors, suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism and usually do end up in some form of counseling. I'm certain you have come across these, if not offered to demonstrate how destructive hetero-society is on the homosexual, then most likely as a "case study" demonstrating that homosexuals are "sick". These studies have been thrown out by dissenting parties who live by the claim that it is "wrong" to be gay and they use these studies to demonstrate. <---

Although loving environments do go a long way to ease the pain, we will have a society of 'psychotics' and people composed of many "insanities" (I use these terms loosely) . Such is the nature of the world that it is to be expected that mental and emotional health issues will be the nations number one biggest problem. If you want your society to be perfectly healthy then it needs to be mostly inborn - meaning it must breed its future generations and through generations work on the problems that cause these ills.  Unfortunately for us that would mean that in about 3 generations the population would have found its level of percentages and would, in effect be a straight population. The best to hope for is that medical science of the mind and heart will find better methods of treating the ills of these.


--- Quote ---...Quite another thing is the question of ethical rulers when applied to what we do. A deed can be inherently good or evil, and judgement upon behaviour... (snip)
--- End quote ---

Yes, quite, indeed. Although we know this, the majority of humans do not know this, or they may have intellectual understanding but have no framework to place it into practice (This latter thought goes against my understanding of humans, The former is most likely the case). The main traditional Religions are based on moral and ethical "truths" simple black and white "good vs evil" concepts which even in our enlightened time appeals to the masses.

It is possible that humans have an instinctual need for absolute "truths" when it comes to the application of ethics and morals (too different creatures often confused or interchanged). If it isn't so then religious conviction and the popularity of so many "Black and White" religions would not exist. The application of an ethical ruler may be instinctual and may serve as some unknown survival need which like most of our instincts served a purpose long ago but today are at odds with our advanced (technologically speaking) civilization.

I am pressing the outer boundary of my limited understanding of psychology and sociology here; I doubt that we can remove these rulers and leave a person or a society capable of standing without such distinctions. At best is that we can replace the crutches that support humane psyche with better rulers in which to measure "self-worth" (personal worth).

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