-Z-
maria b.
jig burn
Filed under: cool beans, deep thoughts, general jabbering, Interwebz, just saying..., politics!, relationships, religion. ugh., shame shame shame | Tags: Civil Rights, Equal Rights, Feelings, Gay Marriage, relationships, stuff .m. likes
i am a peruser of blogs and a lot of time i read the comments on posts that i find interesting to see what other people’s takes on the issue are. (i’m speaking mostly of jezebel because most other blogs are frequented by morons who comment out of their asses. with horrible spelling, and not just to beat the filters.) but just now i read jezebel’s post on ellen degeneres and portia de rossi who were on oprah to talk about their marriage, and i came across this comment, which i found remarkable for a couple reasons: a) because it is so long, and b) because it is so well thought-out (although at times not so perfectly worded.) regardless, i thought that it was worth putting here, if only for myself, but also because it’s such a funny/poignant counterpoint to -Z-’s moron fifth-grade teacher’s blathering about feminism and gender roles.
“Marriage is considered the ultimate validation of binary gender roles, and the goal of all gender conditioning. The entire belief in the infallibility of those gender roles, which is what allows the Patriarchal/Christian/Capitalist ideology to continue to hold power, rests on straight marriage remaining a cultural institution.
If gay marriage were legal & accepted in our culture, and forms of sexuality outside of heterosexuality were treated as equal (or even acknowledged as valid), all of that would be undermined. If being a lesbian is an accepted way of life, then culture doesn’t tell a little girl she has to wear a dress when she doesn’t want to. A four year old boy who speaks in a feminine voice isn’t chastised until he changes it, if growing up to be gay is considered an option. Classes and sports don’t have to be split along gender, and can’t be, because it is acknowledged that you can’t distinguish who is gay and who is straight or assume heterosexuality. So how do you deal with the locker rooms once you admit that members of the same sex may be attracted to one another? Starting from a young age, gender conditioning would become much more difficult and complex.
And if you can’t program gender and start the inequality gap young, girls will be given the same opportunities in school as boys, and encouraged to succeed in what have been considered “boy” subjects. Neither gender will feel alienated from the other, which means that once they hit puberty, the straight ones among them will be able to pair off with less of the psychological damage that happens now, and less resentment or mischaracterization of the opposite sex.
Essentially, women will be treated as equals, and cease to be kept down by gender roles that condition them to be stupid, weak, insecure, accomodating, and less ambitious than men. Men will feel less pressure to be dominant, aggressive, competitive, and masculine, or to feel entitled or superior to women.
And that sense of the superiority and dominance of the masculine, and the servitude & nurturing nature of the feminine, is what Christianity is based on. God is the ultimate Man, and people are His servants (a feminine role in contrast). Next in line in the microcosm of that dynamic is the Husband, who is the God to his wife. The wife is stuck in the Mother role, having been convinced that it is her “biological nature” to have children & serve her family. Which distracts her and keeps her powerless, or as powerless as possible, socially, religiously, and politically.
Gender roles extend to almost every aspect of our lives in the world as it is now: We could think of our country as being masculine, and the world as being feminine. We control it, and it serves us, while other countries compete for use of it’s life-giving systems and try to claim dominion over it.
In politics, the politicians are masculine, and the voters are feminine. The politicians define the rules and provide the resources, while the voters work within the politician’s system and sustain it through their work, while always maintaining a sense of patriotism and commitment to the country that claims to give them everything that they have.
In our economy, the corporations are the men, and the consumers are the women. The corporations may be created by consumers, but they grow to become a set of entities that control the consumer, setting the standards, upholding and reflecting the cultural values and aesthetic, defining what the consumer’s life experience is made up of, and providing the consumer with things they believe they need, as long as the consumer gives the corporation their time & money.
All of these things are accepted unquestioningly because the intrinsic nature of gender roles are taken for granted and assumed to be natural laws. If we legalized gay marriage, we would be admitting that the phenomenon of “gay” isn’t a psychological illness, a sin, a form of sexual deviance, or a phase. We wouldn’t be able to just deny it, ignore it, and exclude it’s existence from our perception of reality. We would be forced to face sexuality and actually see it. Right now it’s so ingrained in our every action that we’re mostly not even aware of it (and those that are, are probably feminists). Gay marriage would offer a contrast & we would have an opportunity to realize how much of our life is not a universal experience like we assumed, but something specific to us, and something that has a cause, and an alternative.
It would be like seeing someone fly, and realizing that it isn’t that you can’t fly because humans can’t fly and that’s just the way it is, but that you possibly could fly, you’ve just never tried because you had been told so plainly, so many times, that it was impossible, and you never thought to try. Right now, it’s like there are stories of people flying, and most of us know someone who can do it or who has seen it done, but either they’re mistaken, or lying, or those people who can fly are using machines to do it, or there is something morally suspect to them & they can’t be trusted. So that it happens doesn’t seem to matter because it doesn’t have anything to do with us. But if our government suddenly told us that those people really were flying, that it was natural and legitimate, and that they were guaranteed the right to fly just as much as the rest of us are guaranteed the right to walk, then suddenly, it does apply to you. And the entire system is revealed to be built on a lie.
Not only would it fall apart naturally, but once people realized they had been held back, limited, and lied to, and realized the power and freedom they actually had, they’d bepissed off at anyone who tried to control them again. Anti Gay Marriage people know that the lifestyle they live and love is in direct contrast with the fact of homosexuality. They know they’re full of shit, but they’re comfortable that way. They need everyone else to believe that they are illegitimate, powerless, and seperated from society as a whole, “real” society, because their way of life is so delicately balanced on denial and condemnation of anything that challenges their idiology that it would have nothing to stand on if any other way of viewing reality were considered a possibility.
I’m very sorry that this is so long.
But I’ve wondered for a really long time what the fuck these people are thinking, because it never seemed to make ANY logical sense. But I think that this is it, and if we can understand it, we can do something about it, because reason doesn’t work, and most of them will overlook the constitution and basic human decency when it comes to gay rights so there really isn’t hope of an argument that will convince them. The only thing we can do is strike at the vein & try to understand what’s underlying the seemingly absurd things these people say & do to protect their paradigm…”
thoughts?
a handy pie chart for anyone confused about what gay marriage might mean for... anyone.
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