mmm, this topic is started as a response to mr. lee’s on gay rights and gay wrongs…reading some, admittedly not all, of the posts…there are far too many to read in one sitting…i feel that i, and i’m sure some others, want to express my own views as a counterpoint…these may have be said before, i maybe reiterating what others have posted, but i want to start a topic that can have and hold a much more enlightened view on the subject…
now for some general observations…
i have a friend, she is 45 years old and was born a hemaphrodite…yes, she was born with one testicle(undescended) and one ovary, she is sterile, her genetic condition was XXY…i.e. two female chromosomes and one male…she has been raised as a girl, and considers herself as a woman, she was married for ten years to a man…
now how is she unnatural?
- i say not…i say she is perfectly natural…by definition in that something exists it is natural…as our efforts and effects are natural too…the distinction between acid and magic mushrooms/so-called-natural-hallucinogens is an example of this arbitrary distinction in the particular…
AW as i will call her is a confusing individual to meet…not least since chemotherapy has robbed her of her looks and hair so she has the outward apparence of a 45 year old man…and from what i gather she has had relationships with both men and women…but prefers men, the women she is attracted to is as she puts it her male side exerting itself…
now she is a close friend of my girlfriend, and i find this threatening at times…because it is easy for me to see her as a man and treat her as such…
but this is wrong, i am forcing her to acccept labels of my own making…i am being lazy and not being prepared to accept a new definition…a new type of person in my worldview…
to meet her AW is a great person…but others find her threatening, mostly to the way they view the world…her very existence challenges accepted worldviews…
no longer can one accept that there are just men and women in the world…individuals who are ‘intersexed’ must also be accepted…
what i think is key to all of this is that it greatly informs our individual and culture-wide understanding of human nature…our commonality is more greatly defined by us, by our acceptance of gay, straight, black, blonde, male, female, old and young individuals…
by looking at these individuals and seeing what we share in common, we understand how all those things that are ‘different’ are ultimately transitory and irrelevant…and how much of what pre-occupies us in our everyday lives is equally transitory and irrelevant…
most fundamental is that these people are human beings whatever you want to say against them…and even if they weren’t why should that be a barrier? but then that is another issue, related but seperate…and as being human they do deserve and have basic rigths and deserve respect
now i as an individual am not by ‘normal’ standards normal i suppose…i occasinally dabble in drugs, i like to wear clothing that society tries to limit as being ‘female’…this is another invisible barrier constructed or rather held through dogmatic ignorance…my parents, father especially, have tried to accuse me of attacking them and their views through my behaviour, through the tattered nail varnish on my fingers through my own views…
i deny and defy them this…their views and the image they construct of themselves in conjunction with this exist in the world…and are both ways to deal with and understand and effect the world, they are essentially tools…now some tools are better at dealling with the world, with the jobs at hand than others…now the world lacks identity with any of the multitude of affirmation you could ascribe to it…just like i lack identity with the label of transvestite or freak or any of those things…i am more and beyond them
for vast swathes of my time i sit in flares and next jumpers watching old firends episodes…or the simpsons…i am very normal really…
but it is not me who confronts and challenges your self made tools…it is life…it is existing in a world and attempting to grasp it…
by our own actions of engaging with the world we make this attempt…we may find ourselves unable to at first…but is that the world’s fault or our own?
i say our own, for it is up to each and every one of us to construct and develop better, faster…mine got go-faster-red-stripe…tools to deal with the world…
i hope people understand what i am saying and where it is coming from…
any and all replies will be answered…although i may use pm’s or e-mail for lengthier or brief correspondences