Inside, Looking In - You, Too?

If you are gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/questioning/asexual or otherwise anything but a conventional, recognizable, committed heterosexual, you are likely to have shared the feeling of being On the Inside, knowing you are part of your family, church, school, playground, employment, and so forth, but realizing you are also a stranger who is Looking In from the perspective of the outsider. The outsider may want to be part of the group, but that depends on being invited. She presses her nose against the glass and looks in on the happy group of which she is not a part, hoping those inside will notice and invite her to become part of the group. 

A specific invitation to be part of the family, to join the club, to play on the team, to be one of the gang, or, in other words, to be accepted, depends on those others reaching out and specifically incliuding you. Those who truly belong, who know in their hearts, minds, viscera, that they are part of the social group, do not have the strong longing for inclusion that the outsider experiences. While exclusion from one clique or group may be trivial, when there are many others that are more-or-less equally satisfactory, that exclusion is not as severe as when the group involved is family, long-lasting friendships, ongoing connections on which so many people rely for their comfort, identity, sense of normalcy, sense of belonging, and more. 

While everyone has (or should have had) at least one powerful experience of being kept outside, excluded, found undesirable by some group of people with whom he wishes he could be a part, the impact of this exclusion is relatively trivial when compared against fundamental components important to the human society in which one finds oneself. 

When the ancient Greeks sent someone into exile, they imposed on that person one of the most horrible, frightening, damaging punishments possible. How could a political entity force one of its number to leave, to be totally and forever cut off from it? Exile leaves a person bereft of the connections built over many, many years, particularly within an inimate polis, city state, neighborhood, clan, tribe, or family. They are all broken by exile. The sorrow of loss of connection belongs not only to the exiled, but to everyone who loses the connection with that person. 

Similarly, every family that disowns a Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans member, punishes not only that member but everyone in the family who loved her or him -- homophobia destroys connections developed in love over time on both sides of the divide imposed by that exclusion. Even in the "worst" of families, where roles are rigid, stereotypes policed carefully, hypocrisy well ingrained, and violence employed, there is the power of connection, of love between parent and child, among siblings, between friends, peers, co-workers, and those who are (in truth as well as in law) married. While we may say to the hyper-homophobic family, "Good riddance!", that masks the fact that there has been some important loss for the one who, once an Insider, is forced to become an Outsider, and for every other family member who cared about the excluded.

Homophobia never accomplishes the goal of punishing the person who is different without also punishing others who have feelings for the person or, if not that, at least others who have enjoyed the value of that person's being part of the group. What value? The value from sharing labor, participating in the group's culture, spending time together, physical contact (if only mother/child), is lost - there is always something for the group to lose when it excludes one of its number. True, people are kicked out of families for many reasons beyond being "Queer," but often those reasons are "good" compared with the "reasons" for excluding the "Queer." The violent, thieving, dishonest, murderous, dangerous member of a community may be found out and forced out as punishment, but the "Queer" who's similarly thrown out, often with greater anathema, force, and hatred expressed, most often has done nothing to harm others, to subvert the fundamental reasons the group exists, except perhaps to express the personality and one's love in a genuine way, not pretending to be someone she or he is not - and cannot be.

We have all had the experience of being excluded. We have all participated in the action of excluding someone. The taste of these things is familiar to everyone. To the "Queer" who's excluded, however, the experience is doubled and redoubled, squared, then amplified to the 100th power and cannot be equated with ordinary, day-to-day exclusions of everyone's experience. The hatred, the evil that accompanies the homophobic response to a group member is so strong that it drives most of us to do everything possible to avoid that breach, to hide, to live outside our truth, to live the double life, or to renounce and fail to be who we are, for most if not all of our lives. 

When it happens, there is no reconciliation possible - the best advice for one who is tossed out of one's family for being "Queer" is simple: "RUN!" 

That they have not killed you yet is a blessing. They have done everything so far to kill that part of you that is "Queer," by repressing, hiding, denying, ignoring, threatening, and so forth - every single method of influence is used to make and keep us heterosexual - every method of influencing us has been used to this end from the moment of birth, and often before! That our resistance to these influences is so fundamental, so powerful, so irresistible should show us not the power of our perversity, the strength of the "Devil's hold" on us, or anything else but the fact that the impetus to be oneself almost always is so strong - coming from Nature as it does - that we struggle against the overwhelming message of our society - coming from human design as it does - despite the dire consequences that await: persecution, extraordinary effort to change us, anger, hatred, and finally, cutting us off completely, whether through exile or death.

How can anyone argue that homosexuality (and its variants) does not come from Nature when, despite being pressed to be heterosexual in every way by the ongoing "24/7" efforts of our families, schools, social groups, mass media, and every other form of influence on us from birth onward, so many of us resist and stand up against those influences and choose to be ourselves, the "Queer" who can be accepted (by those whose humanity is well developed, realistic, and therefore inclusive) or who simply must be excluded, ousted, forgotten, perhaps destroyed? If being Queer is so powerfully evident, how can an attentive, learning society do anything but find its value for everyone and embrace it for the blessing to society that it surely is - or could be?

What is the engine that drives homophobia to be so destructive?

(I have a few ideas about this which will come out in subsequent postings.)

--Seattle, Washington, on a sunny Saturday, the 15th of May, 2009

Looking Past the Obvious

How many times have we been asked to name the things we value most? 

Some have a pat answer for such inquisitions. Many times, we are we caught up fishing for an answer. ("Well..., I value my family, my job, and, er, God, and my dog...") 

Generally what's offered are pretty widely shared values: family, health, economic well-being, spirituality, friendships, and more. Some intrepid among us cite sex, eating, or other physical experiences. Some may value the setbacks and challenges of life.

How often do we think about the value of basic elements that enable our lives? What about water? Breathable air? Light? What value do we place on whatever it is that lets us perceive ourselves in the world? 

In fact, we must value it all: every bit of the here-and-now that we have had, have now, or h0pe to have on the planet, with all the ups and downs, agonies to ecstacies, peak experiences and deadly dull routines. These things matter to us because they constitute what our lives are about. To choose favorite "values" over others may be an interesting exercise. Whatever we leave off such lists, we would not choose to live without, for they too are a part of our lives.

To talk about "politics," we also need to go behind the obviously political stuff - voting, holding office, participating in decision-making - to appreciate the whole which constitutes our political condition. When government is formed and acts for the good of the people, political scientists are challenged to show what works for that end and why. When government is acting against the good of the people, everyone is challenged to find out how that distribution of power works in order to find a way to redirect it or dismantle it. There are elements of political life that must exist whether government is good or not. Of these, traffic stands out as one of the most pervasive, taken-for-granted aspects of life. 

 

An Important Question to Bring this Blog Back to Life

What Is the Most Political Thing We Do?

When I ask this question of people, most reply that their political life is when they vote (if they do) in an election. Some think they are being most political when performing that singular duty of citizenship, jury service. Activists see their actions to influence elected officials or the public or to promote or protest regarding the causes with which they identify themselves as their most political activity, that is, political action truly-so-called.

Jury duty certainly stands out for those who have had the experience. One problem with seeing it as our most political action is that not all of us are called to jury duty. Those who are may be eliminated from consideration for actual jury service, or may just not have their numbers come up when they are randomly called. The jury is slightly analogous to the draft: you may know you are eligibile to be called, but you may not be looking forward to it. Military service for draftees is a form of required political action: when political action is compulsory, the individual does not get to choose or to vote on what is to be done.

Politics has been seen as how a people determines "who gets what, where, when, and why" (the title of an introductory book by Harold Laski, not widely in use any longer in beginning political science courses). For those who are caught up in the possessive individualism of American political philosophy, this has its appeal. If the goods of life in society are distributed according to a series of "Zero-Sum Games," then it is important to wield influence in order to ensure one is not on the zero side of that equation. "X items - Y users = 0" is true only when "X=Y." That is, if the good we seek (X item) has enough units to go around, every one of the "Y users" could receive one of the "X items." In reality, there are two factors working against this being actualized: scarcity and acquisition of more than one "X item" by "Y users." That many will take more than one "X item" if they can, may cause, and certainly contributes something to the scarcity. If the "X item" is necessary for living, then it is important to everyone to have it. Most of us find we are struggling over "X items" that are not truly necessary for living, but seem to us as though they are. That is why there can be life or death struggles over items that exist in abundance.

Following the logic of possessive individualism pits each of us against everyone else. (See Thomas Hobbes for the definitive argument for this sort of "war of each against each" as the natural state for humankind.) This is a political stance, but it is not a very attractive one. Even those who have great power live in an environment of scarcity created by the struggle over things, whether necessary to life or not. Some struggle over things that have nothing to do with life, too, as is evident from the many wars over diversity of faith which have soiled human history. Surely, risking the "ultimate sacrifice" on behalf of one's country or cause is "the most political thing" that combatants and civilians might do. This is true for them in that the potential outcome of death is the extreme, ultimate, complete sacrifice. But it is not "the most political" thing we do when we think of frequency and not just magnitude of the activity. Besides, most people are not called on to risk their lives for their cause or country.

What is our most political activity?

It is traffic. 

What is the right to which we give the most thought and which we defend most vigorously?

It is right of way.

I will elaborate on these points in subsequent posts.

(4/5/2009)

I Am Born

March 11, 1945, 10:00 a.m., Union Hospital, Terre Haute, Indiana, (Edna) Paulene Boyll Winters gives birth to me, bundle of joy #2 in the family. I was expected to be a girl, so it took a little time to settle on my name:

Roger - for my uncle, Roger Austin Winters of Terre Haute, my father's brother.

Lee - for my grandmother, Dema Lealta (Denton) Boyll of Terre Haute, my mother's mother

I would be called "Roger Lee" by family members forever, to distinguish me from my uncle. 

NOTE: During the hospital visit to give birth to me, my mother learned there was a tumor in her left knee. After it was later determined to be cancerous and aggressively malignant, the doctors determined that amputation of her leg was necessary to stop it. That attempt failed and she died on March 26, 1947 after a long and very painful illness. She was 27.