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xiphiasSo, this is an analogy I've been thinking about for a while, and Lis has been pushing me to finally write about it in my LJ. As a matter of fact, she's bribed me with an offer of fudge, so here we go. I've been thinking about this since before Worldcon, and I remember talking about it with folks there, but haven't really posted about it.
There's something that has struck me as really, really odd about how a certain segment of the right-wing talks about homosexuality. There are a whole bunch of comments that I'd been hearing for months which all have an underlying assumption that "homosexuality is incredibly attractive." I'm not going to mention specific quotes, mainly because I found them somewhat disquieting and I don't want to think about them, but there were about half a dozen quotes from Republican congresscritters and pundits which made no sense to me until I applied that filter to them, and they then started to make sense. Things like, "If you COULD sleep with men, why would you ever sleep with women, since men would understand your body better?"
And this finally gave me a way to think about and understand their position.
Y'see, I belong to a religion which forbids me to sleep with men and to eat bacon. As it turns out, I have done both.
Bacon is better.
I know perfectly well that not everyone feels that way. There are plenty of people who just plain don't like pork products. Some people are grossed out by them. Some are grossed out by meat in general, some just find pigs disgusting. And I know for a fact that there are really quite a number of people out there who rather like the concept of having sex with men. I've dated some of them.
But for me, bacon is far more tempting than sex with guys is.
So, I started thinking. How would I look at the world if I really took my religion's prohibition against bacon very seriously, and as a universal law, rather than just as an odd little tribal taboo (which is how I do perceive it -- that doesn't mean I don't consider it important, but I consider it to be a rule that is just supposed to be applied to MY tribe, and not to everyone).
Well, if I didn't really like bacon, I'd just think of it as gross. I mean, pigs. They live in mud and filth. Pig meat has like fat and glop dripping off of it. Eeew.
And I might think poorly of people who ate pigmeat. I might want to avoid them, and I'd be upset by depictions of people eating pig meat. But that would really be the extent of it. It might be something I'd think about some, but, mostly, I'd avoid thinking about it as much as I could, and that would be that.
It would be far, far worse for me if I really loved bacon. Or, even if I'd never HAD bacon, if I loved the IDEA of bacon -- had smelled it, heard people talking about it. . .
Because I would see that as a failing in myself. It would be a temptation, and might even represent the entire CONCEPT of "temptation."
I would certainly be saying many of the same things that people who didn't like bacon would say. Mud, filth, glop. But I'd go further.
For people who didn't like bacon, well, they wouldn't much want to think about bacon, and wouldn't much think about bacon. But me, I'd have to DWELL on how gross it was, because I'd be trying to convince myself.
And I'd go much further. I'd certainly talk about how the Bible spoke against bacon, but that wouldn't even be the centerpiece of what I'd say -- it's not visceral enough. I'd talk about the health risks -- pigs carry trichonosis! Pigs have high saturated fat contents! And the impact on the world -- I'd have figures about the vast ecological damage that pig farms cause -- the lagoons of pig shit in commercial hog operations, the smell, the bacteria infestations in the drinking water. I'd talk about the vast number of callories that a pig ate, and how inefficient it was as a source of food, and how much that damaged the world as a whole.
So what would I do if my local supermarket started selling bacon? It would infuriate me. It would be an acceptance of the pig-eating lifestyle.
And it would infuriate me most strongly because it would be an ongoing source of temptation. Most anti-pork folks could just plain not buy bacon, and they might be annoyed, but they could mostly ignore it. Maybe they'd want to have the pork section separate from the other meat section so they wouldn't have to see it, but, well, as long as they could ignore it, they wouldn't worry about it. Even if they knew that people were eating bacon, as long as they didn't have to watch, it wouldn't bother them much.
But for me, someone who WANTED to eat bacon, it would be hell. I'd be trying to get the sale of bacon to be declared illegal. I'd be talking about the deviance of the people who ate bacon. I'd be picketing supermarkets, and trying to get court orders. I'd try to get the FDA involved.
And that realization helped me understand where some of the most vitriolic anti-gay rhetoric is coming from. Most of the anti-gay rhetoric is frankly not vitriolic. For the most part, most folks who are against gay marriage really don't care THAT much. They don't really want to think about it, but it doesn't make that much difference to them. But the people who are really vehement -- they keep talking about the great temptation that homosexuality represents.
And as far as I can see, homosexuality doesn't represent any sort of a temptation. I'm just not attracted to other guys. So there's no temptation for me. And folks who are gay, well, homosexuality isn't a temptation -- it's just who they are. Maybe a cute guy or girl they see, maybe THAT would be a temptation -- but homosexuality itself isn't a temptation, any more that heterosexuality or bisexuality is.
Thoughts? I know that I've got people on my friends list who are queer, and also people who are against same-sex marriage. I'd be interested to hear what y'all have to think about my analogy.
There's something that has struck me as really, really odd about how a certain segment of the right-wing talks about homosexuality. There are a whole bunch of comments that I'd been hearing for months which all have an underlying assumption that "homosexuality is incredibly attractive." I'm not going to mention specific quotes, mainly because I found them somewhat disquieting and I don't want to think about them, but there were about half a dozen quotes from Republican congresscritters and pundits which made no sense to me until I applied that filter to them, and they then started to make sense. Things like, "If you COULD sleep with men, why would you ever sleep with women, since men would understand your body better?"
And this finally gave me a way to think about and understand their position.
Y'see, I belong to a religion which forbids me to sleep with men and to eat bacon. As it turns out, I have done both.
Bacon is better.
I know perfectly well that not everyone feels that way. There are plenty of people who just plain don't like pork products. Some people are grossed out by them. Some are grossed out by meat in general, some just find pigs disgusting. And I know for a fact that there are really quite a number of people out there who rather like the concept of having sex with men. I've dated some of them.
But for me, bacon is far more tempting than sex with guys is.
So, I started thinking. How would I look at the world if I really took my religion's prohibition against bacon very seriously, and as a universal law, rather than just as an odd little tribal taboo (which is how I do perceive it -- that doesn't mean I don't consider it important, but I consider it to be a rule that is just supposed to be applied to MY tribe, and not to everyone).
Well, if I didn't really like bacon, I'd just think of it as gross. I mean, pigs. They live in mud and filth. Pig meat has like fat and glop dripping off of it. Eeew.
And I might think poorly of people who ate pigmeat. I might want to avoid them, and I'd be upset by depictions of people eating pig meat. But that would really be the extent of it. It might be something I'd think about some, but, mostly, I'd avoid thinking about it as much as I could, and that would be that.
It would be far, far worse for me if I really loved bacon. Or, even if I'd never HAD bacon, if I loved the IDEA of bacon -- had smelled it, heard people talking about it. . .
Because I would see that as a failing in myself. It would be a temptation, and might even represent the entire CONCEPT of "temptation."
I would certainly be saying many of the same things that people who didn't like bacon would say. Mud, filth, glop. But I'd go further.
For people who didn't like bacon, well, they wouldn't much want to think about bacon, and wouldn't much think about bacon. But me, I'd have to DWELL on how gross it was, because I'd be trying to convince myself.
And I'd go much further. I'd certainly talk about how the Bible spoke against bacon, but that wouldn't even be the centerpiece of what I'd say -- it's not visceral enough. I'd talk about the health risks -- pigs carry trichonosis! Pigs have high saturated fat contents! And the impact on the world -- I'd have figures about the vast ecological damage that pig farms cause -- the lagoons of pig shit in commercial hog operations, the smell, the bacteria infestations in the drinking water. I'd talk about the vast number of callories that a pig ate, and how inefficient it was as a source of food, and how much that damaged the world as a whole.
So what would I do if my local supermarket started selling bacon? It would infuriate me. It would be an acceptance of the pig-eating lifestyle.
And it would infuriate me most strongly because it would be an ongoing source of temptation. Most anti-pork folks could just plain not buy bacon, and they might be annoyed, but they could mostly ignore it. Maybe they'd want to have the pork section separate from the other meat section so they wouldn't have to see it, but, well, as long as they could ignore it, they wouldn't worry about it. Even if they knew that people were eating bacon, as long as they didn't have to watch, it wouldn't bother them much.
But for me, someone who WANTED to eat bacon, it would be hell. I'd be trying to get the sale of bacon to be declared illegal. I'd be talking about the deviance of the people who ate bacon. I'd be picketing supermarkets, and trying to get court orders. I'd try to get the FDA involved.
And that realization helped me understand where some of the most vitriolic anti-gay rhetoric is coming from. Most of the anti-gay rhetoric is frankly not vitriolic. For the most part, most folks who are against gay marriage really don't care THAT much. They don't really want to think about it, but it doesn't make that much difference to them. But the people who are really vehement -- they keep talking about the great temptation that homosexuality represents.
And as far as I can see, homosexuality doesn't represent any sort of a temptation. I'm just not attracted to other guys. So there's no temptation for me. And folks who are gay, well, homosexuality isn't a temptation -- it's just who they are. Maybe a cute guy or girl they see, maybe THAT would be a temptation -- but homosexuality itself isn't a temptation, any more that heterosexuality or bisexuality is.
Thoughts? I know that I've got people on my friends list who are queer, and also people who are against same-sex marriage. I'd be interested to hear what y'all have to think about my analogy.