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Aswad -> RE: Girl Scout troops disband over admittance of transgender child (1/9/2012 5:42:23 PM)
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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Thank you Aswad for such a comprehensive and informative response to my questions. It is far more than I dared hope for.
I've developed a pretty good feel for where I draw the line between the private sphere, the public sphere and the flexible area between. This subject is one I'm not vested in keeping private. My friends and family don't care about orientation or preferences or the like, so if I were to discover something unexpected, it wouldn't be a problem. I had a round of assuring my mother I wasn't into autoerotic asphyxiation (which I'm not) and that the gear was for bondage (which it was) after an uncle in the police helped me move house some years back. That's the only time they've cared one way or the other.
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I was so happy to see you address the issue in terms of honesty and integrity. That's really what it boils down to isn't it? One of the more interesting findings of the research into homophobia and sexual arousal I presented above was the level of denial of their homophobia by homophobic men.
When you're on a path of primarily subtractive self development, integrity is the main imperative. Honesty is a function of integrity, sort of a means to an ends. Integrity is the principle, and honesty is a common manifestation of that principle, not the other way around. Questioning things is a tool in the toolbox, one of many, and it's hard to get good answers from introspection when one cannot strip away barriers to honesty. Without good answers, integrity is harder to accomplish.
There's plenty of reasons why homophobia might be prevalent, beyond the obvious.
For one thing, male self image is usually tied to how one perceives one's masculinity, and there seems to be a misconception among many that homosexuality implies an impaired degree of masculinity. Also, male dominance games analogous to dogs mounting each other are probably instinctive, and certainly culturally reinforced, so the notion of homosexuality may invoke the 'threat' of dominance issues. After all, the male sexuality is frequently tied to power dynamics and conquest.
One of the most interesting datapoints, which I have yet to see good figures for, is how many women have an aversion to sexual contact with other women, as well as physical intimacy more generally, other kinds of intimacy, and lastly how many have an aversion to romance with other women, as opposed to merely being disinterested. Since our culture is more permissive of women in this regard, and a common perception is that more women are open to it than men, that would provide an interesting starting point for analyzing men in this regard. After all, most of the bits are shared, with various mechanisms diverting the development in this direction or that (e.g. olfactory cuing of sexual preferences being different in lesbians vs straight women).
It may be that both genders tend to be more weakly biased in preferences than one might assume. In that case, it comes down to obstacles to dealing with the openness or ambiguity as the source of homophobia, and the figures would then be substantially higher for the various shades of bisexuality in men than are often quoted. On the other hand, if the bias is strong, the mechanism is likely to have a different source, such as heterosexual men having a cultural effect that causes less strongly biased men to adopt compensatory behaviors.
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OTOH, when the issue is confronted honestly then your exp was that most of the change was a "matter of letting things sink in". I'm also glad that you have left us in doubt that your feeling is the outcome of this process has been, for you a very positive outcome.
It's been a neutral outcome. And, as noted, there are answers I don't have yet. Experience is often the final arbiter, and I'm not so well connected as to trivially find suitable people with which to look for those answers via experience. I've done a cursory investigation via porn, finding that gay porn doesn't seem to do it for me. I think it's a fairly safe assumption that I wouldn't find sex with a man rewarding in a meaningful sense. Since men appear to be able to objectify sexual function with greater ease than women, it's not inconceivable that I might find it viable to use a male body for gratification, but I doubt it would extend to the personal level. Like Suzie in another thread, but not going quite so far, I might explore the question with experimentation if there were a person available for that purpose, though, if only to know from experience how I respond, and to what.
So far, the only thing that has seemed distinctly attractive about men is that there are more men willing to throw caution to the winds, as there are activities in which I have an interest that have a high probability of causing minor damages to the body (for an example, the videos recorded by Freton and Chris that went viral on eFukt are illustrative of one such activity). Me being a sick puppy doesn't exactly translate into a good ethical basis, though, given that the commitment isn't present, which limits the potential candidates to approximately zero. It does indicate that there's not much in the way of outright aversion there, though, even if there's no good indicators of actual interest, either.
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For mine your point about exposure and familiarity is an excellent one. This is sometimes called visibilty, when things get a tad more political. But yes, people who work in this specific area tell me that often it can as simple as meeting (say) a sports mad gay man in order to establish some common ground. Once that happens, the stereotype disintegrates and a previously homophobic person is well on their way to recovery.
Quite so. It's also one of the reasons I've been vocal about the notion that public play- within the limits of analogy (e.g. kissing feet is analogous to other displays of affection by vanillas, without there being any specific laws violated by that activity)- should not only be tolerated, but to some extent actively pursued. There is no reason our romantic lives should be subject to more stringent conceptual bounds than those of vanillas, and exposure is the only route to eliminating the friction over time, although there is obviously such a thing as going too far and thus having the opposite effect. While it may cause some initial discomfort, there's plenty of things out there that are well tolerated that cause equivalent levels of discomfort (as a person that finds cigarette smoke unpleasant, my favorite example is people smoking at a bus stop in the pouring rain, forcing me to choose between the smoke and the rain, which can incidentally go either way).
To the vast majority of the population, alternative sexuality is a woman with a whip, a catsuit and a name and accent that is either German or Russian. We all know that stereotype is about as accurate as the 'all subs will do all men' stereotype, or the 'gay men will hit on anything with a dick' stereotype, and so forth. It is only when a wider variety of people bring their lives into the public sphere on par with vanillas that we can expect those stereotypes to start to dissolve.
And while I'm all for catsuits, they're not exactly very well suited to everyday wear, and spandex just isn't the same. [:D]
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Obviously this works better for for gay men and lesbians, because of their far higher numbers. The point applies equally to our communities - bdsm and kink/fetish. This is the rationale behind the whole 'coming out' project' which has been so remarkably successful for gays and lesbians.
Yeah, it's been a movement with muslims here in Norway after the 22nd of July massacre.
Muslims around the country are inviting their neighbours over for a cup of tea, which lets the fairly xenophobic populace familiarize themselves with the differences and similarities in a setting that doesn't have anything to do with IEDs and setting fire to women. The attacks served to bring some ethnic unity to the nation, as it answered a question many (in particular the young) immigrants and descendants thereof have been struggling with, namely "am I a Norwegian or an (insert ethnicity here)?" The answer has, for most, been overwhelmingly either "Norwegian" or "both", prompting them to reach out to others to bridge the gaps
It's a paradoxical benefit, in that the question kind of comes down to "was this an attack on me (as a part of the greater "us"), or an attack on them (as seperate from oneself)?" and most have felt that it was indeed something that struck them directly. In a somewhat logically unfounded, but understandable, sentiment about the whole thing, if an attack on Norway is an attack on yourself, then you are a Norwegian. Or, at least, that's how I've interpreted what I've heard and read about it.
Overall, I think it's a positive move, as there has been a sort of self-imposed apartheid on their part so far, and there is a lot of xenophobia in Norway. We don't seem to have a whole lot of blatant racism or the like, probably a function of the culture not embracing that sort of overt negativity, but there's definitely a lot that makes itself felt, often unintended.
It's interesting for me as an outside observer to see the store clerk at the register in a mall making smalltalk with all the white customers, then a Turk or Pakistani comes up and it's all business with no superfluous sentences, and then the next white customer comes up and the smalltalk resumes. Most of the time, it's not intended, and certainly not conscious, but to that one customer, the experience is that of being singled out as apart from the rest. I cannot imagine it is very pleasant or welcoming.
That I don't do this has netted me positive relations to most people I've met that aren't ethnically norse, to the point where stores with ethnic owners will let me pay another day if I forgot my card or the like, and the classic fast food joints will fire up their oven again even when it's past closing time, then offer to drive me home after they lock the place up. Then again, I'm the sort of customer that lends a hand, etc., which probably also plays some part (though it doesn't generally work that way with ethnically norse storeowners).
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We all seem to agree that the specific phobias under scrutiny here - transphobia and its close cousin, homophobia - are socially acquired, that they can be changed and eliminated. Stories such as yours are IMHO an essential and influential part of that process. Men who challenge and overcome the phobias they have been exposed to are better men for it. Thanks[...]
You're welcome, of course.
And, yes, it does seem probable that these phobias are acquired, and has been demonstrated that they can be changed. The human mind is quite flexible, and such categories are fairly high level constructs, far more abstract than what we have basic wiring to represent. As such, it falls squarely in the category of 'programming' that is subject to rewiring. Orientation is tricky to change. Opinions and feelings related to the orientations of others are only as hard to change as the person in question makes it. Which can be quite a lot at times, but that's not exclusive to this subject.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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