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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Maybe I'm unusual, or specially tolerant and accepting, or more open hearted than most people, but I don't think so. But I am always surprised by the lack of understanding that we, a persecuted minority, can and do show at times for other people.
Are we so perfect that we can hurl rocks at others?
Back in the mid nineties, when I first had any courage at all to post online, I was abused because I was saying I was gay, but I was married. A few folk hurled rocks at me because their cosy little gay world had been turned upside down by a new paradigm - the married gay man - and they were not man enough to take it. Queerdom was reserved for the pouf back then, it seems. And anything else was a target.
There is a wartime cartoon in Punch with two random Englishmen:
First man: "Look, Bert, there's a stranger!"
Second man: "'Eave 'alf a brick at 'im."
And so we carry on today. Yet we make a great virtue of the fact that black men must no longer be called niggers "because that is derogatory", and we do not like, ourselves to be called poufs, fags, nancy boys, pansies. And still, when we see someone different, we seem to enjoy being seen with the lynch mob and lash out at the difference.
We attack Islam whether we understand it or not. We defend Christianity whether we understand it or not. We despise Israel over Palestine whether we understand it or not. We love to express our opinions, and boy do we have opinions!
And we must be right because one other person agrees with us, so then two are in agreement and they are right, and so a posse is formed. And then we saddle up and ride out to find a tree to hang the different guy on. Which is how Matthew Shepard died. Lynched, alone, and on a wire fence, because he was different.
And, except for fences and security, that is how Michael Jackson would have died, simply because he was odd.
We have opinions, you see. We have prejudices.
What we do not have is facts.
Why do I expect any better?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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Wasn't demonizing the 'different' a main theme in "Lord of the Flies"?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Yes, Timmy, when I worked for the Aled Richards Trust (now Terrence Higgins Trust) some people thought I was a traitor to the gay cause because I am married. There are probably as high a proportion of prejudiced gays as there are of straights - or do we think being persecuted makes people less prejudiced?
But over my lifetime it seems to me that many prejudices in Britain have been greatly reduced (I'm not sure about Northern Ireland!). And the extreme examples such as Matthew Shepard are at least newsworthy and undefended by politicians. What I call the conventional wisdom is quite tolerant and condemns prejudice and violence and lynch mobs and . . .
And you expect better, as I do, because your opinion may sway others to be more tolerant and kinder than they otherwise might be.
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I don't know. I hated the book and refused to read it when instructed to do so in school. It terrified and horrified me as far as I read, which was not far at all.
Demonisation is an excellent rhetorical stratagem prior to eliminating the different. Nazi Germany used it to justify the elimination of Jews, Gypsies, cripples, blacks, lunatics, homosexuals, vagrants and the rest. We use it in the schoolyard to justify not playing with the fat kid. We use it in church to justify why the homosexual people may not have civil rights. We use it to tie a poor defenceless queer kid to a fence to pistol whip him until he dies. And we use it to hang a troubled and deeply strange individual out to dry because he was different.
We demonise everything we do not understand without giving it a second thought. We hate blacks, whites, Jews, Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, Indians, Maoris, Sikhs, atheists, fags, dykes, fat people, skinny people, women, men, anything at all. And we then try to use our intelligence to justify our intransigence. And we make up false facts to support our agenda and state these lies as self evident truths that every good and sane person will agree with.
And in small places, like this board, I and others try to make a difference. We stand against the herd. But I still don't know why I expect any better.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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We can and will expect the better.
(This was a difficult post to read and respond to but I felt compelled to follow my heart. Can't say why the difficulty for sure).
Raymundo
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I have always expected better. Always. I always will expect better. In general, despite resistance, people live up to expectations, or when those are low, live down to them.
Those who expect homosexual men to molest children see the supposed evidence of that with every passing day.
Those who expect high moral standards from everyone, while often disappointed, see the evidence of that with every passing day.
The former group enjoys seeing its prejudices reinforced. The latter group sees increasing hope.
Those of us with any influence in society can pass this message forward by our own actions. That is as true withing a household as within a nation.
But there are days that I wonder why I expect any better.
Do I care, for example, about whether Jackson molested kids? No, I do not. But I do care that he was acquitted in a system of justice that says "innocent until proven guilty".
I care about parents using their child as a tool to extract money from Jackson, too. To me THAT is child abuse.
I care about upholding what is good in society. I care very much that lynch law shoudl never prevail. That, Macky, is what the synopsis of Lord of the Flies is about. I read that yesterday. Fear, power, greed and lynch law.
[Updated on: Sat, 27 June 2009 13:31]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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This post made me stop and think. I think it helps me understand you better as a person. I also think that high expectations is a wonderful service that one can do for another. It's like having faith in a person's abilities. Like believing in someone. There's a certain creative power in belief.
I'm glad that you were brave enough to finally read the Lord of the Flies. I was thinking of the character Simon, when I last posted. Simon is a thoughtful kid and sort of a philosopher. He discovers that the "beast" that the boys fear is not real. He goes on to philosophize that the "beast" is really the prejudice and misunderstanding that is in all of us. When he expresses these beliefs to the other boys, they find him weird and different. The dub Simon the beast, and they kill him.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I read the synopsis. I will not read the book. It distresses me. I know in broad terms what it is about, and I know in broad terms the allegory in it.
I have faith in everyone here, those who post and those who read. But, just sometimes, I wonder how justified my faith is. This post is about that.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I think the biggest problem is that we really don’t know how to love our selves properly so how can we possible love others!
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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So how does a gay man come to love himself appropriately? Is there anything we can do to make us more acceptable to us?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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It would be presumptuous of me I think to even suggest a course in that journey, but I think the first step would be to understand the breadth depth and height of the meaning of the word love. For instance we in the western world only use one word to describe love where in many other cultures, for instance the Greek have seven!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqHTZYKwsQQ&feature=channel_page
The last train is nearly due,
The underground is closing soon,
In the dark deserted station,
Restless in anticipation,
A man waits in the shadows.
His restless eyes leap and scratch,
At all that they can touch or catch,
Hidden deep within his pocket,
Safe within its silent socket,
He holds his colored crayon.
Now from the tunnel's stony womb,
The carriage rides to meet the groom,
And opens wide and welcome doors,
But he hesitates, then withdraws
Deeper in the shadows.
And the train is gone suddenly
On wheels clicking silently
Like a gently tapping litany,
And he holds his crayon Rosary
Tighter in his hand.
Now from his pocket quick he flashes,
The crayon on the wall he slashes,
Deep upon the advertising,
A single worded poem comprised
Of four letters.
And his heart is laughing, screaming, pounding,
The poem across the tracks rebounding,
Shadowed by the exit light,
His legs take their ascending flight,
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night.
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
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I don't EXPECT anything and that way when things don't live up to MY expectations I am not harmed OR surprised.
I understand what you are saying TIm but the world isn't ALL bad. Even in the current climate there are still little rays of sunshine. You are a good person and I happen to like you so isn't that a little bit of light? 
Gay people can be as prejudiced as any other "group", I guess we all take ourselves too serious sometimes?
People have a habit of changing your direction through life
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Yes, the behaviour of mobs is nearly always unacceptable (even the mob of MPs at PM's question time). I feel the strong emotions when everyone sings in church or at a football match and I won't go to church or to a football match any more. I avoid crowds as much as I can. The pressure to conform is enormous.
And you are quite right that the lord of the flies is distressing because of its view of human nature and because it makes that view so plausible. But it is very important that people know about mob behaviour and how dreadful it can be so that they can stop it early. For example bullying in schools can and should be stopped. I think in good schools it mostly is, except for homophobic bullying which seems to me to be an exception tolerated by everyone because 'no-one in our school is gay'.
'Gay' is the commonest word of abuse in junior school playgrounds, even in areas where 'nigger' would elicit an instant telling off. We should all support Stonewall's anti-homophobic-bullying initiative.
People on their own or in small groups are mostly reasonable, but a reasonable mob is a contradiction in terms.
Love,
Anthony
[Updated on: Mon, 29 June 2009 10:28] |
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Interesting, Anthony, I hate crowds as well. I won't even go to the local rugby matches, and the crowd there acts in an extremely civilised way (no joke and no sarcasm - it's true).
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Fingolfin
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Likes it here |
Location: Slovakia
Registered: August 2008
Messages: 265
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Hi,
this was one of the most meaningful posts I have ever read. Bravo, Timmy. When something is demonised it is due to lack of will to find out more and understand. It is far easier to state something is "bad" or an "abomination" than to try to learn more about. Xenophobia is the fear of the unknown. To draw a picture: imagine a horror movie. Until the creature (or whatever it was) appeared you had been scared shitless, because you had not seen it and got to know it (even if getting to know would have proven perilous ). After the full picture of that creature you were scared no more, you knew what it was, what it looked like and how it behaved.
Thus, demonisation and statements of hate are nothing more than fear. However, when homosexuality comes to mind, what are they scared of....?
Marek
It is better to switch on a small light than to curse the darkness.
- Vincent Šikula, Slovak writer
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Just as I do, and continue to do so.
I've led a charmed life for having been born into a family that whilst not especially overjoyed with my lifestyle choices, has, and had throughout their own lifetimes, been supportive.
I could add too that I have lived a charmed life for having been born at the right time, and in a country old enough to have established itself in the eyes of the world community, and young enough and dare I say brave enough, to forge ahead with social change the world itself knew was coming, but loathe to accept.
The first, and foremost, of those lifestyle choices have been my choosing, from the earliest of ages, to live "free" as a homosexual man. That is not to say I really had much choice about the "homosexual" part of that equation ... I didn't, and quite frankly having lived as I have for the past 50 odd years I'm not at all certain I would have changed a blessed thing had I been able to.
Living "free" meant that I never had to lie to my parents, or any member of my family, or my closest friends and associates for that matter. If asked where I was going, or who I was going with, I could say truthfully, giving the name of the Club or whatever or friend, the address and telephone number, it always being implied that no-one would ever ask me what kind of place or person that might be, for fear that I might actually enlighten them, but I never, ever, had to lie. I've never have been closeted, I've never suffered the shame, nor humiliation because of my choices, and fortunately for me, I lived and grew up in a country where laws were enacted, in my early teen-aged years, enabling this to be possible for me.
The second choice having been my decision to view my world always through rose-coloured glasses. Not that I don't know what the "real" world is like, nor what it's capable of doing to the likes of me, and others, but that I simply choose to ignore it, and to expect better of those I encounter daily, and ultimately to dismiss behaviour that annoys me.
My father, and his before him, and likely his before him, and (you get my drift here) had four unwritten rules about his home, and the conduct of those who were granted entry. I, like those before me, have lived by these same rules, namely:
1) Those that are welcomed into the home are expected to never, ever, discuss on the otherside of that threshold anything, either seen, or heard this side of it.
2) Anyone entering the home is never to make assumptions about anyone else encountered therein while being entertained by any member of the household, as, likely, 95% of the time their assumptions would be wrong; just as those same assumptions made by others encountering them under similar circumstances would, just a likely. be 95% wrong.
3) Speak only the truth in the home. If you choose to share something with the household, or any individual within the household, either share it all, or remain silent. Give the whole story, or none at all. Whatever lies you may have spoken outside of the home, are never spoken of inside the home. The household cannot deal in untruths, or a-half of the story. Solutions to problems cannot ever be found without factual information, regardless of how damning that information might be.
4) What is the property of the home, remains in the home.
Those entering the household their first time, are made patently clear about these rules, and those that violate any of them, are never, ever, again welcomed into the home.
Our household's only comment to those who may enquire as to why so and so is not welcome, simply being "They violated the household's trust". Nothing more and nothing less. A corollary to this being, my parent's catch-all phrase for gossip-mongers, and their ilk, and now mine own, being, "Thank you very much for sharing that with us, but we're aware of that." Not much they can make of that, and it's a cert for a show-stopper.
People, either as individuals or collectively, will generally respect boundaries, especially if they are made clear at the outset and that those boundaries make perfect sense.
Prejudice and intolerance are both learned behaviour. They can be unlearned. My father and his father were two of the most bigoted and self-righteous son's-of-a-bitch this side of hell; fortunately for me, my father chose to not instill that behaviour in either my brother or myself; he was not as successful with my brother as with myself. At considerable personal cost to himself, my father welcomed all either my brother, or I, may have brought home, regardless of their race, their colour or their creed. To his stead if called upon it, he would simply state that it was his problem and his shame, not theirs, and accordingly they were welcome simply because either my brother or I, numbered them as friends or acquaintances. This, I have to tell you, made for interesting times in my pre- and post-pubescent teen-aged years; but, he was true to his word, and ALL WERE MADE WELCOME subject to the aforementioned rules of the house.
This shift in the paradigm that was my father was not without its' precedent; my grandfather, after all, was the power-that-be that over-ruled his own son when my being "homosexual" was brought home to roost in a very real, and public, and not to be ignored manner, when I brought Jon home because he had be disowned by his own family because of our unholy and carnal relationship.
This from a man whose first name was Sampson (and never called Sam), and whose brothers were named amongst the many, Ezekiel, Erasmus, Obidiah and Jedediah, and whom was indoctrinated in true John Knox and Scottish Presbyterian fashion into finding no joy in anything, especially if it should ever feel good, and right, and just; but, he evidently did love his grand-son, and he appeared to be willing to forgive me any of his church's sins, including that of my homosexuality.
An aside about his first name: I've never understood a parent naming a child "Sampson". What if that child should grow up to be only 4-feet, 8-inches tall and only weigh 100-pounds. What torment that child should suffer. In my grandfather's case that never became an issue, as he grew to be 6-feet, 5-inches tall and weighed in his heyday close to, if not more than, 220-pounds.
I blather on here ... I guess, not-with-standing the bits I relate of my family, and my experiences with them, what I'm really trying to say here is good will trump evil ... good will prevail in the end, and you are right to expect that it will, because it usually does; this despite what you or I may know to the contrary, or our perceived certainty of it, and regardless of whether we wear rose-coloured glasses when looking upon our world, or not.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Thu, 09 July 2009 04:58]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Yes, Warren, that is fascinating and really good to hear. And if never having to lie was partly made possible by 'don't ask: don't tell' that's a two way street and as you say was comfortable.
The story of how you brought John home sounds as if it may be as good as any fiction. I would love to know more about that. Where is he now?
I think my experience was similar. I don't think I ever had to lie either. My parents were too embarrassed by anything sexual to talk about it. But I avoided a great many of the problems by developing late and not waking up to sexual attraction until I was 18 or 19. So I had no friends or lovers when I was at school and no problems with my sexuality simply because I wasn't aware of it. And, of course, as the UK is less civilised than Canada, homosexual acts here were illegal until 1967 and I left school in December 1952!
Love,
Anthony
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Interesting. I had never before thought of my being homosexual, and that of my family with regard my never lying about it, as being a "Don't ask, don't tell" paradigm; but, yes I suppose it was.
Jon passed away the morning of July 3, 1978, having suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage crossing the threshold to our then home, having only moments before returned from his morning run. I received the news as I was entering my workplace, and as the say the rest is history. Whilst I've spoken often of Jon, both here at APOS, and elsewhere, and shared some detail from our life together, those brief snippets served a purpose, that generally being to comfort another in their time of distress.
Revelations I make about my family, too, generally speaking, lie within that same realm; made to accentuate a point, or clarify one, to foster an understanding amongst those around me about the who's, the how's, the why's and the wherefore's of an attitude, or a behaviour, or belief that I project.
Neither the circumstances surrounding my life with Jon, nor it's impact on my subsequent life, nor the fabric of my relationship with my family are the substance of a good "read". In truth, my life isn't, and hasn't been, any more remarkable than any other, and I shudder at the prospect of any portion of it, however large or small, becoming this or next week's cause célèbre.
Canada is no more civilized than the United Kingdom, dare I say most other countries as well; yes, younger perhaps, and because of that youth more readily able to embrace change than others; but certainly not more civilized. The past 50-years has seen remarkable change here, notable because of those that chose Canada as their home, many fleeing as they did persecution of one sort or another in the original homelands, and their choice to abandon, and leave behind them, the prejudice and intolerance that brought them to Canada in the first place. The imbalance, to the then prevailing societal and cultural morals of our 1950's society, created by successive and massive waves of largely third-world immigration has made change possible. Had we remained largely a bastion of Christian and White society that largely prevailed until the mid 1960's, change as we now know it likely would not have made possible, and as with our brethren to the south of us, Canadians may very well, in the second millennium, have become no more cultured and civilized and accepting and non-judgmental and tolerant than a goodly many others in the global village. Change as we Canadians have experienced it, and with it the dawning of a more balanced cultural mosaic within our society, is change that will eventually sweep the world. I see it today in a newly emerging, and much more tolerant, society within the United States, and within Australia, and blessedly in India, South Africa, Ireland, and others; that this change has been much slower to come most elsewhere is a testament to those with the power to forge change in Canada, not to the determent of those elsewhere trying to achieve the same ends.
Like the United Kingdom, Canada decriminalized homosexuality in 1967, a change fraught with much hand-wringing, tongue-wagging, and miles, and miles of inked and vidéo-taped proceedings; but, a change made necessary by our hosting the world's fair that year; changes which included age of consent, voting and access to alcohol and tobacco; changes that were necessary to avoid a political quagmire should some foreign visitor get ensnared in some untoward behaviour and provide focus on Montréal and Canada at large least when we wanted it. Fortunately for gays in Canada, once those changes were announced, and then enacted, it became academic whether they ever could again be repealed, and Canadian society changed forever from that time forward.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Fri, 10 July 2009 03:27]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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Warren,
I'd like to join Anthony in urging you to write your biography. The story of such a normal life for a gay person is quite unusual indeed and would be helpful in forming a vision for what life as a gay should be.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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