Once again I met the ignorance...

[Bionca]

Originally Posted by TheSkronkDonkey

There are few things I detest more than ignorant judgementalism.

Sadly, it is rampant ... because ignorance is rampant.

Just the other day, I was sifting through a 100+ page discussion of homosexuality on another board. Now, I only read the most recent few pages in any detail, but I saw one person who thought he was being open-minded and was trying to argue that sexuality exists along a spectrum. An agreeable position, perhaps. One problem: he put heterosexuality at one end and homosexuality at the other. To my mind, that's an insidious false dichotomy, where the concept of sexual modality falls between two superficial extremes. On another board, I used the term "pansexuality" and nobody appeared to know what it meant. Just the opposite. Several of them revelled in their ignorance and used their gang mentality to mock me.

Then you have a bisexual person at another board who had always struck me as fair and reasonable, until he said that "flaming queens" disgust him. The best one is a friend of mine's comment just the other week. We were at his house casually flipping TV channels when an advert came on for a programme featuring transsexual models (can't remember specifics). I don't recall what was said in the advert, other than it provoked my friend into making an horrifically bigoted comment: "You can tell it's a man because of the deep voice." Naturally, I was pretty pissed and proceeded to set him right, but he shut me out at the first instant and dryly remarked we weren't going to get into a conversation about transsexuality at ten minutes to midnight. What a lovely way to curtail discussion and avoid facing his gross idiocy. It's kinda pained me to write out that last story, not least because this is a guy I've known half my life.

Then there was the time a uni flatmate rhetorically said, "Isn't it disgusting?" in a flat-out reference to transsexuality and transgenderism. Or the very recent time a girl at work was flipping through a magazine and started laughing at a story about a person who'd just had SRS. I could go on and on, but this shit is seriously depressing. Heck, there was even a more recent time when another girl at work laughed at me for ten minutes straight (arousing a LOT of unwarranted attention, to say the least) because she touched my arm and it was prickly. About a week before, I decided to shave my lower arms because I wanted totally smooth skin. Apparently, this was not only weird, but the comedy highlight of her year. Never mind the fact that women routinely shave their legs, men their faces, more and more people get skin waxes and ... oh, why am I defending myself here?

Prejudice seems rampant in the human animal and only the slightest differences are needed as a pretext for in-out group discrimination. I think John Lennon was onto something with "bagism". I'd like to think the solution is education, which it must be, but that is only part of it. How do you combat the fundamental ills of human nature and stop people discriminating when we respond subjectively to the world and build our aesthetic, moral and intellectual plateaus accordingly?

Donkey -

I agree with your post, but that's not why I'm responding. I want to thank you for having these discussions with friends of yours and showing a kind and good heart.

[TheSkronkDonkey]

Originally Posted by Amy

Indeed, it would be better simplified as a sphere. With one dimension, the circle representing different spots on the sexual preference spectrum - same sex attraction, asexuality, transexual attraction, pansexuality, etc. And another dimension at right angles to it, the full spectrum of genders. Male, female, transmen/women, hemaphrodites, etc. And the third dimension perhaps representing sexual preferences outside of those reliant upon the genitalia of your partner(s).

Hmmm.

I had a hard time visualising this.

I quickly realised the problem was that a circle is already two-dimensional, but you treated it like it was one-dimensional and then added two more. Can anyone imagine more than three dimensions? It's very hard!

But I like your idea and it may just be a case of semantics. Rather than dimensions, I think you can use the example of the Earth. There, we describe things in terms of latitude and longitude. That's two co-ordinates. Then you'd be wanting a third to describe height: altitude.

Unfortunately, even with a model this seemingly benign, there are problems. Because we tend to find unconscious symbolism in everything (millions of years of biological evolution for you), it could be very easy for some to fancy they're at an apex literally and metaphorically, for example.

I don't think there is an obvious explanation to sexual attraction. It will probably forever have some degree of mystery attached to it. If we're stupid, we'll enshrine mystery or ignore it. If we're clever, we'll have a healthy admiration and respect for it, seeing it as something that should both humble us and drive us forward in our desire to understand. I'm very Einsteinian like that.

Originally Posted by Bionca

Donkey -

I agree with your post, but that's not why I'm responding. I want to thank you for having these discussions with friends of yours and showing a kind and good heart.

Awww, Bionca.

You pay me too much credit. The kind and good heart is yours, not mine.

Firstly, to say I have these discussions with friends is something of a misnomer. What I very, very occasionally have are slightly heated exchanges that arise when ignorant statements are made and I feel inclined to counter them. I am not the most assertive or confident of people. I wish I could honestly be less self-conscious and say what I really think and feel more often.

In the other examples I gave, I remained quiet -- even though I detested hearing what I did. The cowardly side of my nature, the dominant side, won, as usual. But whether I say everything or nothing at all, every example gets me really steamed. I was looking on wikipedia recently and wondered if I may have something like BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). I'm not sure I do, but there is definitely something in my nature that takes things personally to the nth degree at times, and, in turn, makes me wonder what my "real" self is and can I ever be secure and happy with it?

I just remembered another example from work. Again, I did nothing. A young woman at work was showing some colleagues, including myself, some pictures of someone she knows in her home country (she's Polish). The pictures were of a female bodybuilder. The young woman was pulling faces and remarked that it was disgusting. That's a fine way to treat someone you knew or know, right? Some of my colleagues were giggling or making comments, and even I kinda satirically said something like, "I think we've found you a girlfriend, [XXX]". I didn't say anything demeaning, per se, but I contributed to that atmosphere and I wondered why I did that afterwards.

Plus, I am not free of prejudice myself. Although I am not keen to admit it, I have a problem with fat people. Not people that are overweight, but people that are medically obese. I have a kind of vague disdain for them in my head. I know two people like that (one is an on-off friend and the other is the girlfriend of my best mate who I wrote about earlier). What these two have in common is that they both claim to exercise, but admit that they love their food. I see this as something of a contradiction and can't help but feel slightly disgusted. Not by them, per se. Just the attitude that they convey. But I wonder if it isn't exactly the same thing. Oddly, though, I went out for a drink with another mate the other week and he was telling me a story (he works in a hospital) about a morbidly obese woman who was having surgery to clamp her stomach (or whatever). He said that that was all well and good, but if they didn't change their ways after that, they didn't deserve more medical treatment. I told him he was being prejudiced and absurd. So I contradict myself to some degree, I guess.

P.S. In retrospect, the name "TheSkronkDonkey" is stupid. I wanted a quirky porn name and that just struck me as amusing, given that I first read the word "skronk" in reference to Prince (or his guitar-playing or somesuch) and it seemed funny in front of the word "donkey" (that I randomly picked from my head). Now, I kinda regret having it because it makes me look like a rabid porn addict (which I am, but that's beside the point ).