January 18, 2004

  • And Now:  "Us" and "Them"


    warning:  adult content, may be offensive to some 


    So last Friday on the mezzanine we were all tying up the ends of complicated projects for the weekend and there was that a fifteen-minute hiatus between the tying-up and the clock-out when people let loose a bit.  My age and gender sets me apart from the rest of the mezzanine guys, but they know I'm fairly cool.  So they don't censor too much.  This time, their back-and-forth went from the latest spam to sexual practice to "deviance."  Which was when my over-the-partition colleague offered his take::


    "What's the difference between two gay men and two good male friends?  Well, the gay guys have anal sex," he said. 


    After the "ewwww-ickkkkk" giggly hubbub died down around that comment, my colleague stood up and peered over the partition.  "Do you think that's wrong?" he asked.  "That I have a tough time not thinking just about that, when I meet a gay guy?"


    When I first met the man over the partition, I thought he was a person of the straight-and-narrow; an unimproved product of conservative right-wing small-town America incapable of so much as parsing a sentence let alone understanding the intricacies of a failed foreign policy.  And he thought I was a cast-off from the era of unenlightened free-love; a knee-jerk liberal too besotted by the well-heeled indoctrination of the self-styled "elite" to know a hammer from a handsaw -- or the particular purpose of either.


    Eight years later, we find ( still, often, to our mutual shock) that we are in fact more similar than dissimilar in all our beliefs and that we can have reasoned discussions on any given hot topic that results, more often than not, in amicable agreement.  I think we each put high value in the other's ability to judge our most knee-jerk statements with care.  Certainly I have come to view him as something of an arbitor for my own morale compass. 


    So I  tried to treat his question with respect.


    "Maybe if you'd been raised differently you would have ended up with different expectations."


    "What do you mean?"


    "If there hadn't been certain taboos; certain prohibitions you were taught......."


    He snorted. "As far as I remember, anal sex was never discussed in my house as a kid."


    "Okay -- but you learned about it -- or more important, about "being gay" in general -- somewhere for the first time.  And when you did, there was a certain tone of voice, right?  A certain laugh?  And that's when you learned."


    "I guess so."


    "Between consenting adults in private, and all that, you know."


    "I know, I know, I believe that.  But I just can't not think...."


    My colleague is a thoughtful, considerate guy who wants to be fair.  When he ask me to help him be more fair, I try to measure up to the question, but I feel like a fake.  Because of course I fight my own inescapable pre-printed stereotypes. 


    For example:  I was born and raised an unbeliever.  It's highly doubtful I'll ever change my own opinion.  I do most deeply espouse the importance of religious tolerance and freedom of worship and exchanges between differently-minded people.  But there's this:  when I talk to someone I know is a fundamentalist Christian, I am always thinking to myself:  "This person believes in God.  They believe that God has put a certain set of rules in place for people, codified two thousand years ago, and that that set of rules is unchanging.  They believe, furthermore, that if I don't personally accept their premises, I will sink into everlasting damnation when I die.  What is it like to look me in the eyes and know I'm irrevocably damned?"


    For me, this back-thought is about as tough to get around, in circumnavigating the Us/Them divide, as my colleague's hang-up about anal sex.


    I guess all either of us can do is keep on working toward seeing the scintillating flashes of individual color behind the those grey curtains of stereotype and facile assumption.

Comments (23)

  • We can never be entirely shed of all our baggage, I don't believe, but we can recognise it, own it, and work at not letting it mess up our dealings with other people. That's what I strive for, anyway.

  • We have a lot in common you and I. 

  • If any Christian is looking at you and thinking "this person is eternally damned" then they're looking at you the wrong way.  I don't think I've ever looked at anyone that way.  Except maybe my ex-boyfriend.  And trust me, he deserves to be!

  • I remember the night my oldest brother told me the "family secret" and how I cried in anger over not having been formally told earlier and having wondered, in my heart, if he was and, how guilty I felt for wondering all those years.  He said he had been forbidden to tell me because, and I quote, I was the baby and I couldn't handle it.  Pfffft.  I was the only one who handled it.  My dad has become okay with it over the years...mom is still in denial (thinks he'll find a nice girl and settle down some day o_0 )...and our other brother will be forever angry. 

    The houses we're born into don't always match up to what we're born with.  Does that make sense?  I always questioned everything I was told or heard. Not outloud, mind you...but questioned and formed my own opinions. I inventory my thoughts pretty regularly, too. I am by no means free of the us and them issues but, I tend to be more in tune to recognizing them when they arise.

    And...I think I just babbled.  Gah I do that a lot over here. 

  • I think we each take from our childhood very distinct experiences... I was raised in an overwhelmingly religious household, I was force-fed my parents' version of "the truth", yet I have no religious faith to speak of... I was also taught that homosexuality is the most disgusting, unnatural choice and worthy of nothing but scorn. Yet I fancy myself a bisexual woman, comfortable with countless "divergent" lifestyles.

    I suppose my take on morals and ethics is this:

    In the end, only your opinion matters. Many others might affect that opinion, but at the end of the day, introspection and a good sense of self are the only things that keep me from breaking down under the weight of everyone else's un-met expectations.

  • Hmmm does this co-worker realize that some heteros.. do anal sex too??? Thats what i kept thinking while he was so APALLED at gay men...

    I am a Christian, and i have never thought of other folks w/  various beliefs as being "damned"...I may feel sad because something I love is something they do not... but my belief in peoples salavation is one of .. when their time of death comes.. that is their time, not mine... how do i know what will happen? And where they will end up? 

    You sound like a real cool person.. and very considerate of others.

  • I'm so sorry you were made to believe that about Christians. That exact stereotype will be the downfall of all the goodness inside the loving hearts of millions. After centuries of ungrace, that is the aftermath.

    It's a tough world, baby! The whole jungle ain't rotten...You gotta swing 'em one vine at a time. But you know that, already.

    Hopefully your friend will get through his bias someday. It's truly an unresolved issue w/in, and who is to say the reason?

  • PS I know I have said this before, but I really love your posts. They always make my brain work a little bit.

  • We're all messed from childhood in some ways, but only a few of us notice and try to see life through other eyes. 

  • He's not an "unimproved product of conservative right-wing small-town America"?  I'll have to listen more closely. :)

    Sorting through the "truths" about the way things "are" has been the turmoil of my adult life.  The end result is that I am firmly on the fence when it comes to most important issues of life.  How lame is that!

    I could but won't ramble on about this subject.  I enjoy your writing very much.

  • Oh, how you speak my language.

    I realize now how sheltered I was growing up where I did, surrounded by friends of every ethnicity and sexual proclivity. It left me ill-prepared to respond to the subtle and not-so-subtle bigotry that was considered more "normal" outside of San Francisco. I was dumbfounded. I was confused.

    I couldn't imagine being fixated on somebody else's sex life so totally that who they were as a human being came second.

    And yet, the issue of "blind" faith causes a similar judgement in my supposedly open mind. I catch myself mentally, and sometimes physically, backing away from any person who has begun a universalizing spiel in my presence. I find unkind thoughts running through my head like "c'mon, man...can't you see what a crutch that bible/koran/torah you are thumping is? can't you see how nothing has caused more war and misery in human history than differences in theological interpretation?"

    I'm trying to be more tolerable, though. I really am.

  • Quite thought provoking... it leads me back to chldren learn what they live and as adults we still live what we learned as children although in some instances trying hard to change those beliefs...  Its in knowing a the difference and trying to change ...

    Bright Beautiful Blessings Chel

  • That's all anyone can do.  You're just fortunate to work with someone who does it at all.  "Facile assumption" is the way of humankind, it seems.  Stereotypes, ethnocentrism, and all those other us-and-them manifestations aren't just evil byproducts of civilization.  They're apparently part of our default configuration--something we use to simplify things in a complex world of individuals--arguably an item from the evolutionary psychology catalog.  So when anyone has the wherewithal to overcome what I think is a natural tendency, I call it a bonus.

  • really thought provoking. i look back and i am certain i have been brought up to have specific expectations about certain prototypes, too.

    what made me lose them? because i read a lot and i was lucky to meet other people who did not follow the stereotype or knew better.

    ps. i am glad i see your scintillating flashes all the time :)

  • THAT is what I need - an arbiter of my moral compass.  There are WAY too many knee-jerk every-directions in my world.

  • I so enjoy reading your thoughts. You obviously are a free thinker. But, I find myself somewhat in the defensive mode reading your thoughts regarding Christians. Not all Christians think like this. Some of us are also free thinkers and following our inner voice.

    Your phrase, "I will sink into everlasting damnation when I die, and  what is it like to look me in the eyes and know I'm irrevocably damned", left me somewhat unsettled. That is not our job to judge. Any Christian that gives off that judgemental attitude should put a mirror in front of them and see what needs fixing. 

     I have always found that when we are too busy pointing the finger at someonelse, we need to stop and look at how many fingers are pointing at ourselves. We are all here to experience and live life. It is best to focus on our commonalities and not our differences.

  • and it's so unfair. I am a christian, but I don't necessarily think that everyone who doesn't agree with me in going to hell in that hand basket. I just know that hell is a possible for all of us and i'm making my effort to live so that it won't be my destination. 

    knee jerk reactions to anything are programmed. Not fair, but human. It's intellect that gives us the option to consider and shape our own responses. . . .

    how wonderful that you and your co worker can have dialogue. wonderful. good for you.

  • I can't look at it that way.  I don't see you damned to eternal hell because of my faith in a God who is the changer of hearts.  I don't look at you with the thought that you are 'irrevokably damned', I look at you and see that you have been given two great giftx - time and choice. 

    Further, my God isn't a God who damns, he's a God who loves.  Were He a God who damns, I would have no hope, for I was born with a sinful nature, just as everyone else.  It's His mercy that allows me opportunity to escape damnation.

    I look at it this way: God loves you enough to give you a choice - to choose to make Him your master, or to reject Him as a fabrication.  On top of that, He loves you even upon rejection enough to honor your choice (for, being God, He could force us to accept Him).  He loves those who reject Him enough to allow them to have what they want - a Godless (and thus loveless and merciless) eternity. 

    I know this is your current choice, but I don't damn you for it, or even look at you in defeat - as long as I have breath I will continue to pray that He softens your heart and helps you to see that it's not He who condemns, but provides a pardon.  There is hope for you as long as you live, and I cling to that hope tenaciously.

    ((I know this wasn't aimed at me, but being a fundamentalist friend, I wanted you to know that the view given of me (and maybe *only* me, considering my black-sheep status in religious circles) is incorrect.  Had to share the truth of the fact.))

  • I like to delude myself that I have no prejudices but of course I do--we all do.  It's just one of those human frailties we need to work on.  And I stopped wearing a crucifix because of just the kind of assumption you described.  As a very liberal Christian who doesn't believe in hell and isn't sure about the divinity of Jesus (see, I bet some of you didn't even know there was such a thing), I specialize in stereotype-busting, but I got tired of people assuming they knew who I was simply because of that little silver cross.

    Great post!

  • I have never in more than 20 years in the workforce ever had a conversation regarding sex of any kind.  I think I'll keep it that way. 

  • Wow.  If only other people would simply realize that what is done betwen other people, is between them.  I'm glad you see the difference, and even though we all get our own little "giggles" about so and so or such and such a thing.  I get it all of the time ... but then again, that is high school, I guess.  I can't wait to get out of this sheltered world and experience the true me, getting to know the true people, and how they REALLY act, not just because Miss Popular and Mr. Jock thought it was funny so you shouldn't do that ever again.  I'm tired of stereotypes, too, even though I know I contradict myself from before, but they're all around.  Let's admit it.

    Okay, okay.  I'm rambling.  I have to get back to my work, but truly, that was a great post.

  • A true Christian following scripture would not look at you and think you were damned, because in order for him to do that, he would have to judge you.  And there's only one judge to a true Christian.

  • I love your candor and grace. Did you find it interesting that your Christian readers were quick to reassure you that it would be inappropriate to look at an unconvinced person that way?

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment