As Susan Faludi once said, “It’s my goal in life to be accused of being shrill.” It usually means I’m doing something right.
S/he’s really not; s/he’s coming in, or at least s/he was, with pre-made conclusions that s/he attempted to present as truth. And I haven’t seen him/her asking questions, really. I see very few question marks in his/her post.
Even fairly uptight homophobes, I can (and usually am happy to) answer questions for. If s/he were really asking questions and trying to understand things, or at least doing it in a more obvious way, I would find it much easier to deal with.
I completely get this point, which you make very eloquently below.
You are, of course, correct. I am starting to take my own life situation too much for granted, and I’m sorry. Working in Amsterdam, let’s just say that homosexuality is a very much accepted part of life for most people here. And even they, I’m sure, still occasionally have to defend themselves. Even I have caught myself thinking at times that I thought one particular man was behaving so feminine that I’d probably have said something about it if he’d been a girl.
[quote]
Have you ever seen the French movie Ma vie en rose (released in English as My life in pink)? It’s about a little boy named Ludovic who many would describe as compulsively feminine. He’s always doing things like showing up in a dress, wearing makeup, watching the soaps, etc. He thinks he’s a girl – in fact, he’s convinced of it.
I don’t actually think I’ve seen it, but it is so famous that I do know of it, and my mother has always had a postcard of it hanging in the toilet. Just like her girlfriends painted her a pink triangle in her bedroom.
I guess I should have seen it, it would have helped me realise the problems my explorations here are causing you, Kaitlyn and others. I’ve incidentally lived it, but fortunately more from the perspective of Chris than of the main character. I did, however, lose all my friends at school at one point.
I lived in a village, where wearing make-up to school, making your own clothes and having long hair was very, very much not the norm, even at the progressive school I went to. So at one point the popular kids decided I was a no go area. I guess this is where Maastricht is right about me - my strongly developed internal locus of control allowed me not to care sufficiently to, well, not care, but I do attribute that quality to my parents, and even then I don’t think I’d have been able to keep it up if I didn’t have a best friend next door who was more the girl from la vie en rose.
I doubt I can compare my experiences with yours or Kaitlyn’s, though, because part of it (definitely not all) came from a strongly embedded sense that I should be allowed to behave feminine, because feminine/masculine stereotyping was stooopid. Also, in the period that I had most trouble in school, socially, I had frequent bouts of anger, very likely related to the fact that the last year before my parents finally split up caused a lot of tension at home.
In my last year at this school however I was very accepted in my school and when going to the next school, I was mentally strong enough to prevent other kids from doing the same thing not only to me, but to others. Then again, I didn’t continue the make-up experiment very long either (but I’ve always picked and bought my own clothes, since my pre-teens).
I will do my best here to make sure that whatever further ideas I develop, this is as clearly accounted for as I possibly can. I think the idea of setting up a number of propositions as I did in my previous post may help further this discussion and keep things clearly defined to prevent as much misunderstanding as possible.
Thank you for your patience and helping me starting to realise how big my feet really are (I know they’re big, but sometimes I still underestimate … ) and how big cultural differences can be, even though Bush makes it painstakingly clear, and even under Clinton there was all this fuss when he tried to allow gays into the military.
I’ll save you the hassle, I’m a he. I guess my questions are (too) often disguised as propositions and hypotheses.
Just to clarify, it doesn’t hurt my feelings when people hate me for being femme. (“It just astonishes me. Why would anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company?” - Zora Neale Hurston) Well, it does make me angry that people are still so dense, but that’s the problem, not my femmeness.
And I also agree with your second paragraph here – I’m not femme just to push the envelope, but envelope-pushing is a welcome side effect.
I’m pleased with the way the last few posts have gone.
Now then, I think if you are interested in bringing Kaitlyn back into the discussion (as she, after all, is directly affected by this discussion in a way you and I are not), you need to clarify your “pathologically Korean” remark.
It was extremely offensive to her, obviously, and I have to admit I can’t think of a positive way of taking it. You seem to have a history of pissing people off by saying things that, when clarified, weren’t what you meant. I think this might have happened in this case. I also think an apology for expressing a racist sentiment you didn’t mean would be in order.
My standard response to “God made you the way you are” is this:
If this is so, then God made my spirit and He made it female. By taking on a female role and changing my body to match the female spirit I was given, I’m doing God’s work.
I feel that I have already tried to the best of my capabilities that I do in fact believe you can be pathologically anything. She came up with Korean herself as an example, and since I believe you can be pathologically anything, I could only confirm. I gave a few examples and could easily add more - for instance, I think you can be a pathological car lover, a pathological Gothic fan, you can be pathologically Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Irish, Bolivian, Malaysian, you can be a pathological musician, a pathological romantic, etc.
Nearly everything that involves behavior and identity has the potential to become pathological. Obsession. Compulsion. Rigidity. Etc. I even gave a cite with some examples of well known features of obsessive-compulsive disorders. And I feel I have been clear enough on my stance on bigotry.
And so, I’m at the limits of my patience. I don’t at all mind it if people misunderstand me by accident, but when it comes to the point where I get a strong feeling that people have a strong, uncontrollable desire to want to misunderstand me and will continue to do so no matter what I say, I give up. I don’t have a lot of pride, but there are limits.
Apologizing for bigotry when I am guilty of no such thing is well beyond my limits. Even when I didn’t mean them.
“You seem to have a history of pissing people off by saying things that, when clarified, weren’t what you meant.”
Have you any idea how much it pisses me off when I get the impression that people are intent to misunderstand everything I say and are all too eager to give me the benefit, not of the doubt, but of their suspicion? And suspicions of bigotry, racism, gay-bashing, hating transsexuals, and so on, are so against the core of my being, so much against the principles and morals I stand for, that there are few greater insults that someone could possibly make against me.
It’s been hard to deal with, and I have had it. I will continue this discussion only on an abstract level and ignore anything else.
Perhaps I will summarise some of the ideas that this discussion have led me to formulate, on a point by point scale or in an essay, and post them in a new great debates thread with a good introduction of my intent, and that can start the discussion a-new.
I didn’t suggest you apologize for bigotry. I suggested you apologize for saying something offensive. I am sharply anti-racist, but if I were to make an innocent comment that, unintentionally on my part, was interpreted as racist, I would apologize and clarify.
Again, a wise suggestion. Still, I feel that’s something I’ve been doing a lot already with regards to transsexuality. The problem at this point is that Kaitlyn mistrusts me no matter what I said, and I doubt anything I do now will regain that trust (if not the ‘second opinion’ she aksed a professional to give which she should receive somewhere today, if I remember correctly).
Ah well. I’ll take up at least part of your suggestion - to any looker’s on who didn’t really follow the discussion and read my ‘pathological Korean’ comment as bigotry, I apologize for causing you unintended grief. I meant pathological in the sense I have used above, and as explained above, it is nothing Koreans, transsexuals, homosexuals, or whichever group that is commonly known to often be a victim of bigotry, can lay exclusive claim to. In fact, I’m even sure that there are people out there who want to be pathologically unique. Pathological knitters. Pathological cat-lovers. Pathological astrologists. Pathological marathon runners. Etc. etc. etc.
You have to understand how when you first say that someone can be “pathologically Korean” and then come back and make a flip remark to me about it being us North Koreans who are pathological, that it seems to me that you’re intentionally trying to take a shot at me on the basis of where I was born.
I still can’t fathom why you’d make such a remark if it wasn’t meant to get my goat, but I’ll accept your assertion that you didn’t mean it that way at face value.
You are wrong, though. One cannot be pathologically a nationality or race. A pathological behavior is excessive and harmful, and being Korean, black, Swiss, Dutch, or American is not behavior of any kind, any more than being blonde or having freckles has anything to do with behavior.
I’ll come back in a bit and post what my therapist said about “Carl”.
There may be people out there who think there’s more to these than just common stereotypes. I’d be less than honest if I said I’d never made assumptions about people with blonde hair or freckles, not to mention people of certain races, people with tattoos and piercings, and so on.
I have no doubt there are such people, just as there are people who make judgements about me based on my place of birth. If a problem arises because someone is making judgements based on appearances, it is the person making the unfounded judgements that is the source of the problem.
I talked with my therapist briefly about “Carl” yesterday. Here is his take on the case (summarized):
Carl was in need of therapy. He needed counseling to help him learn to understand why he acted the way he did, and to deal with the reactions his behavior and mannerisms were causing in others, and to understand that it might be beneficial to him to moderate some of the more extreme behaviors in situations where they might provoke an unwanted reaction, and that he could alter his behavior in situations that required it without giving up his identity. This, of course would have been done in kid-friendly terms.
Mom was in need of couseling to help her to understand and accept her son’s behavior, and to be able to help him to deal with the negative reactions caused by others, and to deal with her other problems that might have been contributing to her reactions to her son’s behavior.
The treatment given to Carl by the psychologists, interns, mother, and teachers in cooperation with each other was extreme and unnecessary and at times bordered on systematic psychological child abuse. The goal was clearly to eradicate feminine behavior in childhood so that it did not manifest itself in later adulthood as homosexuality or transsexuality.
My counselor’s treatment for his isolation would have been to introduce Mom and Carl to other families with children who would freely accept Carl for who he is and make him feel safe and accepted and loved. There are support groups for transgendered children and transgendered families that are set up for just this purpose.
I foolishly thought you meant it as a random example of something which you could not believe could be pathological. I had no idea, and even up to your post right now didn’t really think about it, that you yourself are Korean.
The differences between the people that live in these countries, genetically, is practically non-existent and very irrelevant. It very clearly is mostly cultural differences that distinguish peoples from different nations. Therefore it is group behavior supporting a national identity, and I still believe that almost anything related to identity and behavior can be pathological, for the reasons I’ve given ad nauseum.
Sounds fair. I have some small issues with ‘the goal was clearly … so that it did not manifest itself …’ - I believe the main goal was the first one you describe, but the psychiatrist writing the article does make strong assumptions about links between the two so I understand where it is coming from and it is indeed a borderline that is easily crossed and I don’t exclude the possibility that this happened here. They did go a long way when treating his behavior, but to their defense there weren’t any support groups back then I’m pretty sure and he had seen two psychiatrists previously that could not help him.
Ah, that explains it. I was born in North Korea and adopted from a South Korean orphanage as a baby. I’ve mentioned this in a few other threads and thought you knew, hence your remark about North Koreans.
We may be talking at cross purposes here. I’m referring to nationalities not in terms of culture or behavior, but in terms of characteristics over which people have no control. I have dark yellowish-tan skin, straight black hair, very dark brown eyes, prominent eye folds, an oval face with a short chin, flat, broad nose, etc. In short, anyone looking at me will see an Asian person, and those who can tell the difference will see a Korean.
But that’s just my physical appearance. Culturally, I’m a Jewish American kid from the Midwest. Being Korean has nothing to do with my culture, behavior, and little to do with my identity, yet people have very often reacted to me as if my appearance told them something about what kind of person I am.
The reactions of these people, no matter how many of them there are, and no matter how pervasive their attitude might be in a particular culture, does not make my being Korean–in other words, my physical appearance–pathological, and what’s more, it isn’t possible for them to do so.
Apply this general principal to any ethnic group, and you get my point. Merely being a member of a particular ethnic group or nationality tells you next to nothing about a persons personality or identity, and the reactions of others to that ethnicity or nationality do not make being a member of that group pathological, regardless of the degree or extent of those negative reactions.
Furthermore, I’m not even certain that being “pathologically nationality” makes sense even if you apply it to cultural stuff. I mean, if I played hockey “pathologically,” that would be being a pathological hockey-player, not a pathological Canadian.
Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense to me to refer to any non-behavioral characteristic as pathological. It’s silly to call someone pathological Canadian/Korean/whatever nationality. One could certainly be pathologically nationalistic, but that’s behavior and it doesn’t actually have much to do with what country you’re from…although any good nationalist would probably disagree!
No problem, Carl’s case was somewhat similar to my childhood, but without (Thank God) the psychological intervention, and I wasn’t quite as extreme as he was.
The psychologist had obviously seen enough feminine boys to have been able to categorize them by their behavior into pathological and normal exploration. This being so, he would have had ample opportunity to form a support group for these children and their families himself rather than trying to eradicate the behavior. Given his ideological belief that being feminine was harmful beyond normal childhood exploration of roles, I doubt he even considered such a possibility.
Arwin: Thank you for your kind words about Mrs. Six and I in the true love thread and above in this thread. They are much appreciated and warmly recieved.
