If something disturbs me, I have a right to say so.
Tuesday night 08/09/22, a bunch of us were on the parking deck smoking, and I heard a deep voice. I turned and looked, and it was a trans woman. This disturbed me. The next day, sitting outside Starbucks drinking my coffee, here comes a lesbian couple leaving the Starbucks, holding hands; they looked to be 18-24 years old. This did not disturb me.
Some things disturb me; some things do not. This text will report various things that do.
Gender binarism has been with humanity forever — as well as with practically all vertebrates, except certain fish. Only since 2015 or so has it begun to be questioned, and only in the West, only in the First World; and, as will be seen in passing below, there is a movement to eliminate the concept entirely.
Meanwhile, socially, there is an extensive, detailed mapping of human attributes, between those indicating femininity and those indicating masculinity; from body language to how one uses one’s voice (and not just in terms of high-pitched versus low-pitched registers). These are deeply engrained, and focal to my knowing how to relate to another person. I can deal with a masculine female or a feminine male, or a person who displays none of these particular indicators at all. I don’t know how to relate to someone who displays an incoherent mixture of attributes; such as a person with a heavy beard who also wears nail polish, a skirt and stiletto heels.
It is not realistic for a tiny, tiny minority — and its “allies” — no matter how strident, to demand the world turn itself upside down to accommodate them.
In this discussion, with all due respect to those who prefer specific pronouns and those who prefer that others follow such preferences; I am going to refer to each person as that person appears to me, “he” as “he,” “she” as “she.” No one appears to me as “they.”
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Experts often have agendas.
Without dismissing experts’ testimony, I’m not willing to uncritically embrace it (as if it were God’s Word), either.
We will be in articles linked to below, that “experts” say thus-and-so about a young woman’s pronouns, and thus-and-so about the terms “cishet” and “straight.”
It is well to keep in mind that experts often have agendas.
I have no doubt that the experts referred to in this first image are, in fact, experts in their field. I have no doubt, either, that they specifically want you to take out a home equity loan, because that’s how they make money.
The experts referred to in this second image are, again, no doubt, experts in their field. They also are, no doubt, employed by the fossil fuels industry.
Next week’s post will deal with the nation’s foremost expert on the use of certain drugs in children. He’s paid by those drugs’ manufacturers.
Demi Lovato
This young singer, actress and model gets a lot of press, and I have never understood what for. She impresses me as very immature, and confused. She has had issues with addiction. As far as I’m concerned, she’s free to live her life any way she may please. What I really don’t understand is why it’s national news every time she changes pronouns.
Authors insist that “gender is fluid.” I am skeptical. Certainly there must be a range, a bell curve, of how fluid gender may be, for how many people.
I have friends who are gay, friends who are queer, friends who are bi, friends who are trans. Heck, I even have friends who are Trumpers. I’ve never personally known anyone whose gender was fluid.
The Tavistock Clinic
This clinic, recently closed, was the flagship treatment center in the U.K. for children with gender dysphoria. I have no knowledge of how many children were sent there, or how many of those children were identified as transgender. No individuals have ever been named publicly whose conduct was cause for particular concern. But for some years, staff turnover was very high, and there were concerns expressed, including concerns of gay and trans professionals themselves, that (1) children were being overly diagnosed as trans, (2) children displaying other serious issues besides gender dysphoria, were being left untreated for those issues, (3) children were being overly prescribed puberty-suppressing medications, and (4) children somehow weren’t safe there.
In short, the clinic was a government-sanctioned vector for advancing gender ideology, under the guise of medicine.
Miley Cyrus
I’ve had an intense crush on Miley Cyrus for many years, but she does not seem to be the person to look to for wisdom.
She came out to her mother as “pansexual” at age 14. 23 December 2018, after ten years of friendship and perhaps unofficial romance, she married actor Liam Hemsworth. That marriage lasted ten months; during which time she spoke unreservedly about his “good dick.”
In July 2019, they separated, and she had a fling with female actress Katilynn Carter. That lasted less than two months. Upon leaving Carter, she hooked up her longtime friend, actor Cody Simpson. She declared at that time, that no woman needs to be gay, since there’s so much “good dick” available. To me, that statement strongly suggests she’s actually straight.
Her liaison with Simpson lasted less than a year. She has since left public life. But as opposed to being “pansexual”[ref] or anything else, I am impressed that her sex life has been merely a whirlwind of confusion. Or perhaps “tornado” of confusion, since she’s pretty intense about anything she does sexually.
Related, given the way she talks: The self-loving reptile | The Homeless Blogger
WATCH: Miley Cyrus Tells Women ‘You Don’t Have To Be Gay’ After You Find A Good Man | The Daily Wire
Megan Rohrer
In 2021, this trans woman was elected bishop of the Sierra-Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This occasioned great fanfare, as Rohrer was the first trans person ever elected bishop in any large U.S. denomination. In retrospect, I have to wonder how politicized the campaign may have been for this person’s election; how much Rohrer’s trans-ness was incidental to Rohrer’s qualifications for office, as opposed to being the focal attribute of interest to Rohrer’s supporters.
The Synod received serious, credible complaints about the conduct of a particular pastor, the Rev. Nelson Rabell-González, who served a tiny Latiné congregation, the Misión Latina Luterana in Stockton, California. The bishop decided to remove him from that office, and that that removal would be effective on December 12, 2021. That date coincided with the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is a high holiday in Latiné culture, and many people were greatly offended not only that this pastor should be removed at all (Some parishoners are ardently loyal to him, having followed him to this congregation from a previous one, from which he had been removed because of similar accusations.), but that it should take effect on that date.
That some consternation would occur, appears to have been anticipated. Bishop Rohrer attended the worship service on that date — wearing body armor.
In deliberations following this debacle, Rohrer deflected all criticisms of Rohrer’s conduct and judgment, claiming that they were all dissimulated attacks on Rohrer’s sexual identity.
On top of everything else, Rohrer has autism.
How many crosses is it prudent for any one person to bear?
At the time I attended a Lutheran seminary (1990), there was tremendous pressure that a ministry candidate be completely “NORMAL.” She or he could not have any marginalizing personal attributes. That’s how I got expelled.
The wisdom of that former approach was as follows. Everyone knows that life in the ministry will find the servant constantly being pulled this way and that. It takes powerful centeredness to not get distracted. Any eccentricity, any idiosyncrasy, gives people or events a handle whereby to pull the servant off-center, and distract the servant from ministry. A perfect example is Bishop Rohrer’s response to the criticisms: to them, it’s not about the wisdom of how and when they dismissed that pastor, but about their sexual identity. A second example is their autism, which complicates in-person communications and which may also have influenced their non-collegiality and certain details of how they conducted that pastor’s dismissal.
I am reminded of a story that was reported many years ago in The Lutheran magazine, at the time the journal of what was then the American Lutheran Church. This newly ordained female pastor, a wheelchair user, had chosen to adopt two special-needs children from the Soviet Union. At the time, this struck me as quite unwise; just how many crosses did this woman mean to bear? Ordained ministry is one; second, to be a female pastor, at least at that time, that was a very significant second cross. And she was a wheelchair user. Now she also wanted to become a single parent, of two orphans, from another country, who both had special needs. A couple years later, The Lutheran carried another report about her. She had, indeed, taken on more than she could bear; at this time, she was seeking to re-home the children.
I am not saying that a trans person cannot ever be fit to serve as clergy, or as a bishop. But as to Bishop Rohrer, to the extent that the Synod was intent on electing a trans person, they elected the wrong one.
Ezra Miller
In short, this individual, another one who identifies as nonbinary and who prefers the pronoun “they,” has become a poster child for the question of untreated mental illness (comorbidity) in LGBTQIA+ persons.
Cishet ≠ straight
Two different presentations of the same article:
(Subtitle:) FYI: It’s not the same as being straight.
This article specifically fails to tell me the difference.
The language around gender and sexual identity is constantly evolving—as it should be—and one term you may have heard recently is “cishet.”
I dispute that the language “should be” constantly evolving. The multiplicity of terms, and constant changing of their meanings, has already gotten completely out of hand. One can spend all one’s time trying to keep up with the changes — More than a few people seem to have nothing better to do in life. —
Meet the Experts:
Dr. Penny Harvey is an an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Human Sexuality Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies where they specialize in sexuality, gender, health, and culture approaching these from intersectional feminist perspectives, global and decolonial contexts, and critical sexuality studies.
No agenda there, eh? — if you know what “intersectional” and “critical” refer to —
In many ways, being cishet is seen as the default in our society, Harvey adds. If you identify as such, you likely haven’t experienced gender dysphoria—the sense that your biological sex and your gender identity are mismatched—nor do you identify as transgender or another identity that falls under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.
Harvey adds that some people view being called “cishet” as an insult, but believes that feeling might be more of a reaction to the “challenge of not having to think about being cishet, and then suddenly having to think about it; it makes folks feel uneasy.”
I do, in fact, experience the term as a slur. It never occurs apart from vilification of the folk it refers to. The same was true of the word “white,” as applied to people, in 2015-2016.
Related: Appeals
“You could define heterosexual as someone who is attracted to the other sex, but that recreates the binary that we’re really trying to move away from,” says Jey Saung (they/them), a doctoral candidate in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. “I think defining both of these terms is hard because we can only do it through the lens of other concepts that we’ve constructed.”
Yeah, the mission is to eliminate binarism. “Other concepts that we’ve constructed” — Who’s constructing these concepts? Why are they changing all the time?
From this point forward, the essay turns away from considering what “cishet” means, to focus instead on how, as it were, cishet folk can become “allies.”
Categories, labels and identities
The self-defining person needs no labels.
So many categories, so many labels and “identities,” and new ones are being (to use Jey Saung’s word) “constructed” all the time; and the definitions of all of them are continuously in flux.
Some people attach a lot of importance to them. It’s very important, in their eyes, to know exactly what pigeonholes to put each person in — today — albeit the attributes anyone attaches to this or that pigeonhole may have very little to do with who that person really is.
In September-October 2022, I was engaged in a long exchange with a certain individual on FaceBook, who only wanted to deal with me in terms of the categories he sought to impose upon me. The final text I addressed to him speaks for itself:
Some weeks ago, I told someone that FaceBook is not the best platform for certain discussions. Your responses to me have perfectly illustrated why.
When I open my heart, you are flippant and dismissive.
You only want to deal with people in terms of categories, rather than as the flesh-and-blood individuals they are. (Link: https://thehomelessblogger.com/…/free-speech-handbook/…) You have referred repeatedly to old folks, white folks, Christians and conservatives, as if those labels apply to me. I refuse to be defined by any label — or any “#identity” that someone else seeks to impose upon me. Sure, there are people who impose labels on themselves, but to my mind that constrains their freedom. No one needs a label to be oneself.
Conservative I’m not. Any of my Friends can tell you that. My timeline includes many posts critical of right-wing politicians. I am anti-gun and pro-choice. I support marriage equality. I voted for Biden, and in Maryland this fall will vote for Wes Moore, Anthony Brown and Kweisi Mfume.
As to #whiteness, know for certain that your politics mean nothing to the black man on the street. Your skin color is all he sees.
You need to spend a day with me in the ‘hood around my church. You’ll be far less “#woke” at the end, than you were at the beginning. You’ll cling to my arm, seeking support from the only other white man you can see. You’ll be FEELIN’ your whiteness, and it WON’T feel GOOD.
As to Christianity, I determined a few years ago to look at people the same way I think Jesus did, each one as first and last a child of God, with no presumptions whatsoever about an individual’s background. (Link: https://thehomelessblogger.com/2019/10/05/just-the-person/)
I wish you all the best.
More:
11/19/22 — Ministry of Justice officials warned that talk about ‘protecting women’ could be transphobic (yahoo.com) (The Telegraph has a paywall.)
12/08/22 — Lt. Col. Christopher Schilling called to resign after responding to Angela Reading Facebook post (nypost.com) (How is “polysexual” different from “pansexual?” From “omnisexual?” Are these things 7-year olds need to know?)
12/19/22 — What is sapiosexuality, and why is it so controversial? (starsinsider.com) Yet another label? For what? Why I can’t I just be me?
01/24/23 — What Does It Mean To Be Apothisexual? (glam.com) My life could not go on without this.
01/31/23 — Abrosexual Vs. Pansexual: What’s The Difference? (glam.com) I’m glad this post is to be published soon. Then I can stop collecting these headlines.
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