The recent Chik-Fil-A controversy has unveiled a disturbing number of gay-haters, many of whom try to disguise their bigotry - even to themselves - with rhetoric and differing arguments. The "pro-" movement has existed for a long time, and is most often utilized by the ignorant in an attempt to positively or negatively charge a debate.
Take some of the most common (and inaccurate) terms: Pro-Life and Pro-Family. Pro-Life is just a blatant lie. If life is sacred, why is it only sacred until birth? After that, Conservatives work to strip healthcare from mothers and children, stating that programs such as welfare and Medicare are only a drain on society, and it's every person's duty to take care of themselves. Of course, this is why Ron Paul, one of the biggest supporters of abolishing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security makes excessive use of all of them for himself and his family. Apparently only those capable of easily supporting themselves deserve handouts, because why should those with the ability to do so actually do so?
People who are Pro-Life also frequently favor the death penalty and leniency in killings with laws like Stand Your Ground, so again life is sacred only until birth, then they don't seem to care if people die or are murdered. Truly, Pro-Life is simply Anti-Abortion trying to make itself appear friendlier.
Pro-Family is another laughable concept, if one actually takes a step back. Those people who claim to be Pro-Family stand behind representatives who are adulterers, who hate their own family members for being different, who divorce their spouses or abandon them to die, and numerous other atrocities against the concept of family.
The entirety of the Pro-Family argument is basically "pro-anything that's not gay." Gay children are shunned, and gay people are hated. Many of homosexuals' detractors say that gays are "anti-family" or "anti-traditional marriage." This implies that they wish to abolish marriage or tear apart families, and where has one advocate for gay rights seriously come out and said that gay marriage should be the only marriage? I'm seriously asking for a single recorded statement, on the record in a press release, saying that this is the goal.
Now for two actual "pros": First is Pro-Choice, which does nothing but acknowledge that it is each woman's, and each family's, choice. If Pro-Life doesn't care that parents torture and violently beat their children, and calls for the deaths of people every day, how can they claim the moral high ground over a movement that just says that a person's body is his or her own?
Next is Pro-Equality, a common term for the gay rights movement. As the name says, the movement is focused on equal rights, not on superiority. Gays only want the same rights as any other Americans, the ability to visit their loved ones in the hospital and to share the precious commodity that is health insurance, among other things.
As an addendum, I truly do not understand the hatred of gays. Homosexuality is not condemned by the Ten Commandments, nor by any sacred covenant between God and His people. How do the religious Conservatives justify permitting violators of the Ten Commandments, the very building blocks of Christianity, to hold rights that they would keep stripped from gays?
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2012
An Outpouring of Rage
I am a writer. No, that's not strong enough. I am a baccalaureate scholar with a degree in English literature. No, that's not good enough either.
I am autistic.
As many of those with autism associate with numbers, so do I with letters. Words are my lifeblood. Still, I suffer from occasional yet thankfully brief bouts of aphasia, which can still almost induce panic attacks. Were I to suffer a stroke or other calamity that stripped me of my ability to use words, I fear that I might die simply due to being separated from that which makes my mind whole.
Due to this, I cannot simply sit back and mock as others do the prevalence of books such as Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey as they top the bestseller list. True, books such as these, abominations that clutter the bargain shelves, are sometimes quite literally a dime a dozen. What sets off those two, however, is that they have sold millions of copies and are lauded as paragons of writing by a significant portion of the English-speaking world.
Twilight is bad enough, but Shades is even worse. It began as Twilight fan-fiction, in an alternate continuity where Edward was a multi-billionaire with an obsession with sadism in place of being a sparkly bloodsucker. It evolved into a three-part series of piss-poor smut with endlessly repeated phrases, bland characters and bullshit. Then again, the characters are once again bland so that the sheltered reader can self-insert and fantasize. Shades capitalizes on the rape fantasy that many women seem to have, the concept of "safe" rape. These women are deeply disturbed. To somehow sexualize an act that is literally built on stripping the humanity from a fellow human being requires a mind that I, thankfully, do not possess.
I have nothing against bondage or S&M kink, but this is none of that. It is bullshit pretending to be kink, allowing housewives to have their cake and eat it too by providing not only safe rape, but a bad boy for them to change. The sheer number of daddy issues in that last sentence alone should make several psychoanalysts spontaneously ejaculate.
It deeply troubles me - no, not strong enough. It terrifies me that the English language as a whole seems to be growing more stupid. This isn't like Shakespeare, where brilliant plays were presented to a bawdy and undereducated audience. This is a series of over two thousand pages, rife with spelling errors and endlessly repeated words. This was clearly published without any oversight or editing, as the author just did a find-replace search to remove Edward and Bella's names. The repetitiveness is understandable from that angle because a bad writer doesn't reread her previous chapters, so each new chapter of the fan fiction, posted as an independent document, would have the same cliches.
Words are my lifeblood, and this is an outpouring of necrosis. Consumers dictate what writers will produce in an attempt to make a living, and I am petrified to think of what may come next with this precedent set. Obviously these books cater to a festering psychological sore in Western women's lives, but if we hold up our damages as badges of honor, turn a detriment into a desirable, then our culture - and our language - will assuredly backslide into a fetid monstrosity.
I am autistic.
As many of those with autism associate with numbers, so do I with letters. Words are my lifeblood. Still, I suffer from occasional yet thankfully brief bouts of aphasia, which can still almost induce panic attacks. Were I to suffer a stroke or other calamity that stripped me of my ability to use words, I fear that I might die simply due to being separated from that which makes my mind whole.
Due to this, I cannot simply sit back and mock as others do the prevalence of books such as Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey as they top the bestseller list. True, books such as these, abominations that clutter the bargain shelves, are sometimes quite literally a dime a dozen. What sets off those two, however, is that they have sold millions of copies and are lauded as paragons of writing by a significant portion of the English-speaking world.
Twilight is bad enough, but Shades is even worse. It began as Twilight fan-fiction, in an alternate continuity where Edward was a multi-billionaire with an obsession with sadism in place of being a sparkly bloodsucker. It evolved into a three-part series of piss-poor smut with endlessly repeated phrases, bland characters and bullshit. Then again, the characters are once again bland so that the sheltered reader can self-insert and fantasize. Shades capitalizes on the rape fantasy that many women seem to have, the concept of "safe" rape. These women are deeply disturbed. To somehow sexualize an act that is literally built on stripping the humanity from a fellow human being requires a mind that I, thankfully, do not possess.
I have nothing against bondage or S&M kink, but this is none of that. It is bullshit pretending to be kink, allowing housewives to have their cake and eat it too by providing not only safe rape, but a bad boy for them to change. The sheer number of daddy issues in that last sentence alone should make several psychoanalysts spontaneously ejaculate.
It deeply troubles me - no, not strong enough. It terrifies me that the English language as a whole seems to be growing more stupid. This isn't like Shakespeare, where brilliant plays were presented to a bawdy and undereducated audience. This is a series of over two thousand pages, rife with spelling errors and endlessly repeated words. This was clearly published without any oversight or editing, as the author just did a find-replace search to remove Edward and Bella's names. The repetitiveness is understandable from that angle because a bad writer doesn't reread her previous chapters, so each new chapter of the fan fiction, posted as an independent document, would have the same cliches.
Words are my lifeblood, and this is an outpouring of necrosis. Consumers dictate what writers will produce in an attempt to make a living, and I am petrified to think of what may come next with this precedent set. Obviously these books cater to a festering psychological sore in Western women's lives, but if we hold up our damages as badges of honor, turn a detriment into a desirable, then our culture - and our language - will assuredly backslide into a fetid monstrosity.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Gotta Start Somewhere
To all who may stumble across this little gem (using that term loosely at the moment), it would likely be best to take a moment to illuminate readers as to what they may expect from this. Quite frankly, this is a place for me to praise, decry or simply expound on any subject I can imagine. It'll get political, it'll get religious, it'll get explicit, it'll piss a ton of people off.
But then again, what doesn't piss people off these days? Actually, that's a good starting point for this blog:
Immature Rage
We've all seen it happen: some titanic cocksponge in power has a fit over something minor and creates a nation-wide controversy that will last the entirety of twelve-and-a-half days before Kim Kardashian breaks another chair with her giant ass or some other inane occurrence.
This is what passes for the social climate in America, and like all things, it's difficult to decide where exactly it started, but we'll get back to that.
As I said, this is a repository for my thoughts, and my mind works in some pretty damn mysterious ways, so forgive any tangents I am unable to repress. That said, words. Words have power that nothing else in the world has. The right word in the right place - just one word - can incite riots or calm hearts. All of the greatest wars and achievements have not been won through strength of arms, not really. Sure, the soldiers and the explosions get the glory, but how did those soldiers even get mobilized? Words. Somebody said the right things to get the collective public off their fat, lazy asses and onto the battlefield. We've seen this work for good, as with Churchill and Eisenhower, both Roosevelts, and even Patton in his pre-battle speeches. It has also worked for ill, through Hitler and Stalin, Hussein and Ahmadinejad, and even Bush the Lesser.
Yes, I said it, and not just to stir up controversy. Face it, in the wake of 9/11, the general intent of which was well-known to the DoD and Bush himself since the day the reins were handed over, words like terrorism and patriotism were bandied about like "bitch" and "fuck" are in a gangsta rapper's songs. Plus, the entirety of the "war on terror" has been built on a lie, that lie being that Iraq had anything whatthefucksoever to do with 9/11. Honestly, The Mighty Shrub just wanted to beat up the guy who made his daddy sad.
But this isn't about Bush, not yet. This is about the monster of political correctness, and how the evils of maniacal fantasies have corrupted this nation and continue to do so. I direct you to the following link, http://tinyurl.com/8ys7swm but will gladly sum it up for those of you who don't like to be sucked into other websites: a comedian named Ally Bruener, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, was arrested for using the word "crippled." I'll pause for a moment to let the sheer level of bullshit sink in.
A crippled woman was arrested for using the word "crippled." Isn't that like arresting Jews for not referring to themselves as some made-up PC term like "Moses' Followers"? Or forcing everyone of Hispanic heritage to call themselves Latin on pain of incarceration?
Now, this brings me to several different points, all of which bear analysis, so I'll arrange them in no particular order.
1. Offensiveness
This is a sticky one, since offensiveness is sort of subjective. Up until my late teens, curse words caused a literal reaction of pain in my mind when spoken by people I knew. I chalk this up to autism, as my mind is geared toward words. The intent that comes with these words, when spoken in anger, burned in my mind; at least that's the best I can describe it. Now that I'm older and have really made words my thing, I am for the most part unaffected by the cursing of myself, my friends and family, though words spoken in true hate directly in front of me still generate a visceral response beyond simple revulsion.
Enough about me, let's talk about me some more! Just in a context that's relevant this time: I am a graduate of an HBCU. For those who don't know, that's a monogram for Historically Black College/University. I am essentially the photonegative of a black person, so while I was readily accepted by most people, I was always looked at funny if I used black slang and I didn't dare use "the N-word." I'd have gotten the ever-loving hell beaten out of me.
This is important for several reasons. First, it still shows the power of a word. Even if the general definition has been inverted, non-blacks are still forbidden to say or write it or they are automatically labeled as evil. Second, it proves that the civil rights movement has backslid. I won't say it altogether failed, because I can't judge, but when the same group that fought for equality now fights to remain segregated in its own subculture and lashes out against others, I'd say that the sentiment definitely got lost in the generation gap.
The question I raise, then, is this: how is that word, one that can get sixty to seventy percent of Americans beaten up or killed if uttered in public, not legal taboo, yet in a moderately large city the word "crippled" can lead to the incarceration and fining of a legitimately crippled person? The mind boggles.
2. Presumption and, moreover, missing the fucking point
This is something that both "sides" fall victim to, though in its inception political correctness was more pioneered by liberals yet is now more a weapon of conservatives, but we'll get to that. The presumption is, forbidding something will make it stop. That somehow, by preventing people from using a word, we will stamp out discrimination. I hate to make the reference, because the referred-to material makes my eyeballs bleed from its sheer ineptitude, but even fucking Naruto got this right: forbidding people to tell that the kid had a demon stuck in him didn't make people hate him less; they just found other ways to raise their children to hate the kid.
Originally, political correctness was just a finger-wagging method of trying to force respect, which I suppose is a noble cause and it got the general idea of words' power: by insisting that certain groups be referred to by more respectful terms, the idea is that people will come to be more respectful. This is decent enough in theory, but since you can't control what people think or what they say in private or among likewise bigoted minds, it accomplishes precisely dick. Tacking on a fine to this is a more conservative way of keeping up appearances, Stepford-style. You WILL conform to our delusion that Leave it to Beaver was a documentary and that life can still be like that, or we WILL jail your pinko-Nazi-socialist-fascist-Commie-homo ass.
This draws from what would be a major failing in Conservative thought/rhetoric, except that the American public is so bone-stupid that it works: most Conservatives believe that not talking about something makes it cease to exist. And guess what? Like a Twilight Zone ostrich whose world really does vanish when it sticks its head in the sand, this works more often than not. Who among you remembers Ted Haggard, the figurehead for the entire goddamn Evangelical church who was, in the mid-2000s, finally outed by a guilt-ridden male prostitute who confessed that Haggard had for decades been paying him exorbitant fees for gay sex and copious amounts of drugs. What did Conservatives do? A collective "our bad," then he was swept under the rug and never spoken of again.
Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away, but if the public forgets about it that's what matters to maniacs like Beck and Limbaugh and other less-powerful political figures like senators and congressmen who vehemently fight environmental acts because that would mean admitting that a problem exists, and it's just easier to pretend everything's fine.
This entire concept of Conservative rhetoric will be examined in a later post. I'd do a piece on Liberal rhetoric, but let's face it, Liberals really have no fucking rhetoric, nor do they really have a platform. I'd refer to Liberals as "we," but I like to imagine that, were I attacked by a murderer, I wouldn't help him drive the knife into my throat after a few seconds of struggling and nearly disarming him.
But then again, what doesn't piss people off these days? Actually, that's a good starting point for this blog:
Immature Rage
We've all seen it happen: some titanic cocksponge in power has a fit over something minor and creates a nation-wide controversy that will last the entirety of twelve-and-a-half days before Kim Kardashian breaks another chair with her giant ass or some other inane occurrence.
This is what passes for the social climate in America, and like all things, it's difficult to decide where exactly it started, but we'll get back to that.
As I said, this is a repository for my thoughts, and my mind works in some pretty damn mysterious ways, so forgive any tangents I am unable to repress. That said, words. Words have power that nothing else in the world has. The right word in the right place - just one word - can incite riots or calm hearts. All of the greatest wars and achievements have not been won through strength of arms, not really. Sure, the soldiers and the explosions get the glory, but how did those soldiers even get mobilized? Words. Somebody said the right things to get the collective public off their fat, lazy asses and onto the battlefield. We've seen this work for good, as with Churchill and Eisenhower, both Roosevelts, and even Patton in his pre-battle speeches. It has also worked for ill, through Hitler and Stalin, Hussein and Ahmadinejad, and even Bush the Lesser.
Yes, I said it, and not just to stir up controversy. Face it, in the wake of 9/11, the general intent of which was well-known to the DoD and Bush himself since the day the reins were handed over, words like terrorism and patriotism were bandied about like "bitch" and "fuck" are in a gangsta rapper's songs. Plus, the entirety of the "war on terror" has been built on a lie, that lie being that Iraq had anything whatthefucksoever to do with 9/11. Honestly, The Mighty Shrub just wanted to beat up the guy who made his daddy sad.
But this isn't about Bush, not yet. This is about the monster of political correctness, and how the evils of maniacal fantasies have corrupted this nation and continue to do so. I direct you to the following link, http://tinyurl.com/8ys7swm but will gladly sum it up for those of you who don't like to be sucked into other websites: a comedian named Ally Bruener, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, was arrested for using the word "crippled." I'll pause for a moment to let the sheer level of bullshit sink in.
A crippled woman was arrested for using the word "crippled." Isn't that like arresting Jews for not referring to themselves as some made-up PC term like "Moses' Followers"? Or forcing everyone of Hispanic heritage to call themselves Latin on pain of incarceration?
Now, this brings me to several different points, all of which bear analysis, so I'll arrange them in no particular order.
1. Offensiveness
This is a sticky one, since offensiveness is sort of subjective. Up until my late teens, curse words caused a literal reaction of pain in my mind when spoken by people I knew. I chalk this up to autism, as my mind is geared toward words. The intent that comes with these words, when spoken in anger, burned in my mind; at least that's the best I can describe it. Now that I'm older and have really made words my thing, I am for the most part unaffected by the cursing of myself, my friends and family, though words spoken in true hate directly in front of me still generate a visceral response beyond simple revulsion.
Enough about me, let's talk about me some more! Just in a context that's relevant this time: I am a graduate of an HBCU. For those who don't know, that's a monogram for Historically Black College/University. I am essentially the photonegative of a black person, so while I was readily accepted by most people, I was always looked at funny if I used black slang and I didn't dare use "the N-word." I'd have gotten the ever-loving hell beaten out of me.
This is important for several reasons. First, it still shows the power of a word. Even if the general definition has been inverted, non-blacks are still forbidden to say or write it or they are automatically labeled as evil. Second, it proves that the civil rights movement has backslid. I won't say it altogether failed, because I can't judge, but when the same group that fought for equality now fights to remain segregated in its own subculture and lashes out against others, I'd say that the sentiment definitely got lost in the generation gap.
The question I raise, then, is this: how is that word, one that can get sixty to seventy percent of Americans beaten up or killed if uttered in public, not legal taboo, yet in a moderately large city the word "crippled" can lead to the incarceration and fining of a legitimately crippled person? The mind boggles.
2. Presumption and, moreover, missing the fucking point
This is something that both "sides" fall victim to, though in its inception political correctness was more pioneered by liberals yet is now more a weapon of conservatives, but we'll get to that. The presumption is, forbidding something will make it stop. That somehow, by preventing people from using a word, we will stamp out discrimination. I hate to make the reference, because the referred-to material makes my eyeballs bleed from its sheer ineptitude, but even fucking Naruto got this right: forbidding people to tell that the kid had a demon stuck in him didn't make people hate him less; they just found other ways to raise their children to hate the kid.
Originally, political correctness was just a finger-wagging method of trying to force respect, which I suppose is a noble cause and it got the general idea of words' power: by insisting that certain groups be referred to by more respectful terms, the idea is that people will come to be more respectful. This is decent enough in theory, but since you can't control what people think or what they say in private or among likewise bigoted minds, it accomplishes precisely dick. Tacking on a fine to this is a more conservative way of keeping up appearances, Stepford-style. You WILL conform to our delusion that Leave it to Beaver was a documentary and that life can still be like that, or we WILL jail your pinko-Nazi-socialist-fascist-Commie-homo ass.
This draws from what would be a major failing in Conservative thought/rhetoric, except that the American public is so bone-stupid that it works: most Conservatives believe that not talking about something makes it cease to exist. And guess what? Like a Twilight Zone ostrich whose world really does vanish when it sticks its head in the sand, this works more often than not. Who among you remembers Ted Haggard, the figurehead for the entire goddamn Evangelical church who was, in the mid-2000s, finally outed by a guilt-ridden male prostitute who confessed that Haggard had for decades been paying him exorbitant fees for gay sex and copious amounts of drugs. What did Conservatives do? A collective "our bad," then he was swept under the rug and never spoken of again.
Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away, but if the public forgets about it that's what matters to maniacs like Beck and Limbaugh and other less-powerful political figures like senators and congressmen who vehemently fight environmental acts because that would mean admitting that a problem exists, and it's just easier to pretend everything's fine.
This entire concept of Conservative rhetoric will be examined in a later post. I'd do a piece on Liberal rhetoric, but let's face it, Liberals really have no fucking rhetoric, nor do they really have a platform. I'd refer to Liberals as "we," but I like to imagine that, were I attacked by a murderer, I wouldn't help him drive the knife into my throat after a few seconds of struggling and nearly disarming him.
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