Friday, April 13, 2012
43 Years of Suicides, and the Future of Homosexuality, Worldwide. On April 1st, 1969, I got student-government recognition for the organization Homosexuals Intransigent! at the City College of the City University of New York.
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Last month, the state in which I was born and raised, New Jersey, did itself proud in finding guilty a vicious Indian national who, several months ago, drove his gay roommate at Rutgers University to throw himself off my favorite bridge in the world, the George Washington Bridge, to end his unbearable humiliation in being exposed to, as he saw things, all the world, as being gay. The conviction was only for "invasion of privacy" rather than murder, but we are all to believe that that conviction made the point, that humiliating someone publicly so badly that he felt no alternative but to commit suicide, is impermissible in an advanced Western society.
+
The issue remains as to why, 42 years after the Stonewall Riots, a young gay man would commit suicide over being revealed as homosexual.
+
The (late) President Soekarno (now more commonly referred to as "Sukarno") of Indonesia was, the story goes, approached by would-be blackmailers with film of his having sex with two women, at the same time, neither of whom was his wife. The blackmailers said they would release that film to media if Soekarno did not step down.
+
Soekarno's response was to ask for copies of the footage for his own pleasure. He told the would-be blackmailers that they should go right ahead and reveal that footage to media, because it would show him, then in his 60s, to be a supremely masculine man. He was, in short, PROUD of his (hetero)sexual exploits.
+
By contrast, the sad young man from Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, was NOT proud to have others (the world, in his view) see him kiss and play around with another man. News reports have been very reticent about saying what exactly Clementi and his sexmate did with/to each other in view of his roommate's videocamera. But whatever it might have been, it was enuf to mortify Clementi, literally. "Mortify" derives from Latin "mortificare", "to put [oneself] to death".
+
Tho I of course feel sympathy for Clementi's pain, I simultaneously hold him in extreme contempt. What was wrong with him, and what is wrong with other people, that they ignore all the work we of the gay-rights movement did over DECADES, to continue instead to feel (literally-)mortifying shame for things we kept telling them were nothing to be ashamed-of? I am FURIOUS with him, but not so furious that I am glad he killed himself.
+
Gay men need to impose new expectations, of openness and acceptance, if not even pride, so gay men will never feel themselves justified in taking the insane way out.
+
There was, in 1978, a small group in New York City, where I was then living (in June 2000, I returned to my home state of New Jersey, to the hugely underappreciated city of Newark, after 35 years in Manhattan), called "SMASH", the Society to Make America Safe for Homosexuals. It was dedicated to fiting back against antihomosexual violence, and trained gay men in martial arts so they could fite back physically. I don't know why that group ceased to function. It has plainly always been needed, and should be revived, everywhere.
+
I never learned martial arts, and martial arts are rarely necessary to fiting for your honor and dignity. Most bullies (tho not, alas, all) are easily dissuaded by their intended victims' fiting back. They don't expect it, and if the counterforce is enuf to fend off their violence, even if not powerful enuf to humiliatingly defeat them and throw them into a clear position of inferiority, most bullies will back off. My (late) father taught me never to take crap from anybody (thank you, Dad), and I never have. He taught me the basics of boxing, if I should ever need it, and told me to stand up for myself. (This was long before I told him I was gay, but the principles stand, for every boy, and girl.)
+
My older brother Alan told me when I was in eighth grade never to fite fair if I have to defend myself, but to punch a guy "in the nuts" to get him to leave me alone. There is, you see, no honor in letting yourself be bullied. Fite back, fiercely. HURT the would-be bully badly, and you won't have to put up with crap. It worked for me. And I never had to punch any guy in the nuts.
+
I am the fifth of six children. That alone tends to make for an assertive personality. Perhaps I lack sympathy for people who DON'T assert themselves. Tuf. We do the weak and self-denying no favor in "understanding" or indulging their refusal to fite back.
+
When I chose the name "Homosexuals Intransigent!" for the organization I wanted to form, and managed to form, it was because I didn't want gay men to cave in, to any degree, to antigay bigotry of any kind. Don't play their game. Don't start from their premises. Don't concede anything. Start from OUR premises, that homosexuality is not just normal but actually BETTER, from our point of view. Assert that homosexuality is powerful, absolutely masculine — if not actually hypermasculine —, and ennobling. That gay men are BETTER for being gay — not necessarily that all men would be better off gay, but that gay men are better off gay than unhappily frustrated and self-denying. That being yourself is a good thing, which enables you to accept other people's being THEMselves.
+
I personally believe that homosexuality is actually better than heterosexuality, and not just for gay men, but also for the planet. By far the worst problem on Earth, which underlies most other major planetary problems, is overpopulation. Most pregnancies, and thus most births, are unintended: "accidents". Some pregnancies are regarded as happy accidents. Others, as unhappy, or even appalling accidents.
+
Gay men produce NO such "accidents". Indeed, for gay men to have children takes not just an active will to reproduce but also, if a man has sexual integrity, extraordinary measures: artificial insemination of a woman they have been able to recruit. That process, even in its simplest form, of a surrogate mother willing to be inseminated medically, is a conscious process, for which both participants make informed decisions along the way, and are thus morally bound to live up to their commitments. In vitro fertilization and implantation in a willing surrogate is a step further, that entails extra layers of conscious and affirmative decision-making. In all such cases of non"sexual" reproduction (which is, scientifically, still "sexual reproduction", in that it entails two individuals of different "sexes", that is, genders), there is an active will to create a new life, and a clear undertaking of responsibility by whoever initiates the process, father or mother.
+
Gay men never, in the course of their sexual hunts, conquests, and satisfactions, give any thought whatsoever to making babies. They don't have to, because homosexual sex NEVER produces babies. Alas, most heterosexuals, female but most especially male, don't give much thought to making babies either, even tho it is commonplace for heterosexual sex to produce babies. Few people, married or unmarried, are really ready to have a baby come along when not expected. Babies are expensive, and not just medically at birth. It's that "another mouth to feed" factor that produces an economic drain upon, at the least, the mother, and possibly also the father — if the mother even knows for sure who the father is. We see, from TV shows like Maury Povich's frequent DNA-test programs, that women often do NOT know who the father of their baby is. It is this inability to be certain about the father that led various primitive societies to track the family tree by the mother.
+
Gay men are apart from that ugly game of accusation, incrimination, and exculpation via DNA testing. We are not outside the human, egotistical desire to have a son / child, to carry on our essence, if not also our name. I am assuming here that the preponderance of gay men would want a son, who would carry on both his genetic heritage and his name. Alas, not every single gay man is well reconciled to his sexual identity and therefore wants a son. A few might prefer a dauter who might live out a sick sexual fantasy for them, in which they are female, sexually penetrated by a man. Never mind that they couldn't have either a dauter or son if they weren't fully a man, with the ability to reproduce by virtue of producing sperm — not ova. There are a lot of gay men who suffer serious gender-identity problems due to heterosexual society's absurd stance that if a person is male, then he must, of necessity, be sexually attracted to women, and, more to the point, that if a person is attracted to men, then that person must be a woman.
+
In any case, the bulk of gay men spend none of the time they expend in looking for and having sex, on thinking about creating children. The planet, were it capable of emotions, would be very glad of that.
+
43 years ago, the population of the Earth was 3.63 billion, a sustainable number. Today, it is 7 billion. By 2044, it is expected to be 9 billion, an UNsustainable number. No one at all is talking about preventing this planet from reaching that disastrous number, nor about the role that unrestricted homosexuality might play in minimizing population increase. Why not?
+
The gay movement has an obligation to address the monstrous consequences of overpopulation, and to present homosexuality as Nature's way of controlling population. Laws against homosexual activity are entirely insane, in undoing Nature's plan of preventing overpopulation by allowing enormous numbers of people to find sexual satisfaction without engaging in population-risky behaviors. Do you hear anyone making that case? I don't.
+
Last month, the state in which I was born and raised, New Jersey, did itself proud in finding guilty a vicious Indian national who, several months ago, drove his gay roommate at Rutgers University to throw himself off my favorite bridge in the world, the George Washington Bridge, to end his unbearable humiliation in being exposed to, as he saw things, all the world, as being gay. The conviction was only for "invasion of privacy" rather than murder, but we are all to believe that that conviction made the point, that humiliating someone publicly so badly that he felt no alternative but to commit suicide, is impermissible in an advanced Western society.
+
The issue remains as to why, 42 years after the Stonewall Riots, a young gay man would commit suicide over being revealed as homosexual.
+
The (late) President Soekarno (now more commonly referred to as "Sukarno") of Indonesia was, the story goes, approached by would-be blackmailers with film of his having sex with two women, at the same time, neither of whom was his wife. The blackmailers said they would release that film to media if Soekarno did not step down.
+
Soekarno's response was to ask for copies of the footage for his own pleasure. He told the would-be blackmailers that they should go right ahead and reveal that footage to media, because it would show him, then in his 60s, to be a supremely masculine man. He was, in short, PROUD of his (hetero)sexual exploits.
+
By contrast, the sad young man from Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, was NOT proud to have others (the world, in his view) see him kiss and play around with another man. News reports have been very reticent about saying what exactly Clementi and his sexmate did with/to each other in view of his roommate's videocamera. But whatever it might have been, it was enuf to mortify Clementi, literally. "Mortify" derives from Latin "mortificare", "to put [oneself] to death".
+
Tho I of course feel sympathy for Clementi's pain, I simultaneously hold him in extreme contempt. What was wrong with him, and what is wrong with other people, that they ignore all the work we of the gay-rights movement did over DECADES, to continue instead to feel (literally-)mortifying shame for things we kept telling them were nothing to be ashamed-of? I am FURIOUS with him, but not so furious that I am glad he killed himself.
+
Gay men need to impose new expectations, of openness and acceptance, if not even pride, so gay men will never feel themselves justified in taking the insane way out.
+
There was, in 1978, a small group in New York City, where I was then living (in June 2000, I returned to my home state of New Jersey, to the hugely underappreciated city of Newark, after 35 years in Manhattan), called "SMASH", the Society to Make America Safe for Homosexuals. It was dedicated to fiting back against antihomosexual violence, and trained gay men in martial arts so they could fite back physically. I don't know why that group ceased to function. It has plainly always been needed, and should be revived, everywhere.
+
I never learned martial arts, and martial arts are rarely necessary to fiting for your honor and dignity. Most bullies (tho not, alas, all) are easily dissuaded by their intended victims' fiting back. They don't expect it, and if the counterforce is enuf to fend off their violence, even if not powerful enuf to humiliatingly defeat them and throw them into a clear position of inferiority, most bullies will back off. My (late) father taught me never to take crap from anybody (thank you, Dad), and I never have. He taught me the basics of boxing, if I should ever need it, and told me to stand up for myself. (This was long before I told him I was gay, but the principles stand, for every boy, and girl.)
+
My older brother Alan told me when I was in eighth grade never to fite fair if I have to defend myself, but to punch a guy "in the nuts" to get him to leave me alone. There is, you see, no honor in letting yourself be bullied. Fite back, fiercely. HURT the would-be bully badly, and you won't have to put up with crap. It worked for me. And I never had to punch any guy in the nuts.
+
I am the fifth of six children. That alone tends to make for an assertive personality. Perhaps I lack sympathy for people who DON'T assert themselves. Tuf. We do the weak and self-denying no favor in "understanding" or indulging their refusal to fite back.
+
When I chose the name "Homosexuals Intransigent!" for the organization I wanted to form, and managed to form, it was because I didn't want gay men to cave in, to any degree, to antigay bigotry of any kind. Don't play their game. Don't start from their premises. Don't concede anything. Start from OUR premises, that homosexuality is not just normal but actually BETTER, from our point of view. Assert that homosexuality is powerful, absolutely masculine — if not actually hypermasculine —, and ennobling. That gay men are BETTER for being gay — not necessarily that all men would be better off gay, but that gay men are better off gay than unhappily frustrated and self-denying. That being yourself is a good thing, which enables you to accept other people's being THEMselves.
+
I personally believe that homosexuality is actually better than heterosexuality, and not just for gay men, but also for the planet. By far the worst problem on Earth, which underlies most other major planetary problems, is overpopulation. Most pregnancies, and thus most births, are unintended: "accidents". Some pregnancies are regarded as happy accidents. Others, as unhappy, or even appalling accidents.
+
Gay men produce NO such "accidents". Indeed, for gay men to have children takes not just an active will to reproduce but also, if a man has sexual integrity, extraordinary measures: artificial insemination of a woman they have been able to recruit. That process, even in its simplest form, of a surrogate mother willing to be inseminated medically, is a conscious process, for which both participants make informed decisions along the way, and are thus morally bound to live up to their commitments. In vitro fertilization and implantation in a willing surrogate is a step further, that entails extra layers of conscious and affirmative decision-making. In all such cases of non"sexual" reproduction (which is, scientifically, still "sexual reproduction", in that it entails two individuals of different "sexes", that is, genders), there is an active will to create a new life, and a clear undertaking of responsibility by whoever initiates the process, father or mother.
+
Gay men never, in the course of their sexual hunts, conquests, and satisfactions, give any thought whatsoever to making babies. They don't have to, because homosexual sex NEVER produces babies. Alas, most heterosexuals, female but most especially male, don't give much thought to making babies either, even tho it is commonplace for heterosexual sex to produce babies. Few people, married or unmarried, are really ready to have a baby come along when not expected. Babies are expensive, and not just medically at birth. It's that "another mouth to feed" factor that produces an economic drain upon, at the least, the mother, and possibly also the father — if the mother even knows for sure who the father is. We see, from TV shows like Maury Povich's frequent DNA-test programs, that women often do NOT know who the father of their baby is. It is this inability to be certain about the father that led various primitive societies to track the family tree by the mother.
+
Gay men are apart from that ugly game of accusation, incrimination, and exculpation via DNA testing. We are not outside the human, egotistical desire to have a son / child, to carry on our essence, if not also our name. I am assuming here that the preponderance of gay men would want a son, who would carry on both his genetic heritage and his name. Alas, not every single gay man is well reconciled to his sexual identity and therefore wants a son. A few might prefer a dauter who might live out a sick sexual fantasy for them, in which they are female, sexually penetrated by a man. Never mind that they couldn't have either a dauter or son if they weren't fully a man, with the ability to reproduce by virtue of producing sperm — not ova. There are a lot of gay men who suffer serious gender-identity problems due to heterosexual society's absurd stance that if a person is male, then he must, of necessity, be sexually attracted to women, and, more to the point, that if a person is attracted to men, then that person must be a woman.
+
In any case, the bulk of gay men spend none of the time they expend in looking for and having sex, on thinking about creating children. The planet, were it capable of emotions, would be very glad of that.
+
43 years ago, the population of the Earth was 3.63 billion, a sustainable number. Today, it is 7 billion. By 2044, it is expected to be 9 billion, an UNsustainable number. No one at all is talking about preventing this planet from reaching that disastrous number, nor about the role that unrestricted homosexuality might play in minimizing population increase. Why not?
+
The gay movement has an obligation to address the monstrous consequences of overpopulation, and to present homosexuality as Nature's way of controlling population. Laws against homosexual activity are entirely insane, in undoing Nature's plan of preventing overpopulation by allowing enormous numbers of people to find sexual satisfaction without engaging in population-risky behaviors. Do you hear anyone making that case? I don't.
