IT'S NOT ABOUT ISSUES; IT'S ABOUT THE REACTIONARY MIND-SET OF THE POWER ELITE AND ITS ALLIES!

Posted by Jerry Maneker at 12:16 AM

A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS

QuoteWe must finally come to realize that the enemy we are fighting, the enemy that oppresses us does so, not especially because we are women, Black, Italian, Jewish, Mexican, poor, immigrants, or Gay but, rather, that "oppression" is what that enemy, the possessor of that reactionary mind-set, routinely does, and has historically done, to gain and maintain power within society and/or the institutional Church!

Once we understand this phenomenon and how we all have a personal stake in the acquisition of equal rights for members of each and every non-predatory minority group, it will be at that point that all of us who are members of minority groups (and that's most of us in the U.S.) will see our commonality with each other and begin to work together in the fight against our common enemy: the Power Elite (and its allies), comprised of those who possess the Reactionary mind-set and who ferociously seek to maintain their control over others at any cost in order to keep their privileged positions!

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I'm going to editorialize.  What Prof. Maneker is saying may sound shrill, but I believe he's correct in saying that the conservative/religious fundamentalist attack on the LGBT community and more specifically on trans (because of the increased 'ick!' factor which lends a greater return on investment) is part of an overall campaign.  If they could eradicate the last traces of the LGBT community (which is an impossibility that guarantees job security in that respect,) they would surely turn their energies on another group and begin sending up trial balloons to see how best to demonize the [______]s, and the cycle will begin anew. 

So rather than directly skirmishing with those who attack the trans community, understanding their overall battle plan and world view will suggest how to undermine their positions and interfere with their logistics of organizing masses of people who can be told, "there's your enemy, go get 'em!"



Repaired link that hadn't been completely made.

Quote from: Karen on July 07, 2008, 11:29:34 AM
If they could eradicate the last traces of the LGBT community (which is an impossibility that guarantees job security in that respect,) they would surely turn their energies on another group and begin sending up trial balloons to see how best to demonize the [MUSLIM]s, and the cycle will begin anew. 

So rather than directly skirmishing with those who attack the trans community, understanding their overall battle plan and world view will suggest how to undermine their positions and interfere with their logistics of organizing masses of people who can be told, "there's your enemy, go get 'em!"

They've already sent up trial balloons, notice the primary one I filled into your blank, Karen. I've said before, many of these people are the down-trodden and left-behind in our society anyways. They dream, often enough, of a world where "white-is-right" and "heterosexual is the only natural way" and "sex is simple, male/female just like God said."

They hurt and feel betrayed by the time, the society and the inevitable forces of change that technology has given great impetus to in the past 70 years. Just as they thought they were to become the "power-elite" everything began changing. And they feel they have been deprived of their "right" to be at the top, to make others hurt the way they hurt.

That their leadership and their icons have used them and all minorities in heartlessly cynical and devisive ways doesn't dawn on them. It cannot, for for it to do so would send their dreams totally crashing to wrecks around their feet. Their only hope, I believe they think, is in hatred and "putting the genie back into the bottle."

Even though I say many things here that are in many ways dismisive of them, I can also feel their pain and know their lives intimately: many of them have been, or are, my blood-relatives and have been, or are, my neighbors, especially when I lived in and grew up in the South.

To oppose them and try to negate their views of the world can perhaps best be accomplished with attempting to understand and even empathize with the pain that seems to cause this deep-hatred and perversion in their very souls. They are, quite honestly, in need of a healing balm as much as any of us may need that.

To forget that they are Mother's children same as us is to take the cynical and perverse pathway their leaders have already chosen to follow. Prof. Maneker definitely points us in ways we can undermine their beliefs and practices. It's also incumbent on us and him to recall that at their hearts they are sadly mis-used and in very deep pain.

To make their pain greater without providing them at the same time relief and understanding and compassion will only bring their fury to a fever-pitch and only lessen our own humanity at the same time.

I think that as we embrace activism and change that we cannot forget that the reasons for our work are the relieving of pain and anguish among human beings; and that these people are people just like us: they bleed and cry and hope just as we do. To approach them with hatred and mis-understanding, with words as fiery and dismissive as are their own will only compound the pain, compound the perversity, we wish to struggle against.

(Sorry for my own editorialisation!! )

Nichole

Hi, Nichole;

My editorial was directed at the handlers, not the handled.

Dealing with the handled is much like coming out to a relative who is revolted by LGBT issues -- some are too delicate/dangerous/whatever for the prescription-strength truth.  So if they are of less importance perhaps you tell them last, or let them find out by other means, all while building up other family allies to withstand the tantrum-y challenges of "If you invite that thing, I won't be there!" when planning family get-togethers.

But there are some situations where you gots to stand your ground because being sensitive to their 'issues' is going to deny you access that you deserve as a human.

I write under a pseudonym that gives me free reign to use creative sarcasm.  I use it only as a tool to cut through the rhetorical [bovine effluvia] and try to get at least some susceptible readers to see the [bovine effluvia] for what it is.  That's the undermining of which I speak, finding the weak points of the argument and getting it to cave in so it loses its usefulness.  It's the essence of the much maligned 'politically correct speech' -- find words to describe a thing or quality of a thing that lack power connotations.  The corollary is finding those words useful to the enemy because of the connotations, and by various means destroy the usefulness.

Take 'vast majority' (please  ) I know what 'vast' means, and I know what 'majority' means.  But the right slings it around indiscriminately, because it connotes an assumed quantity of 90% of the total, when in reality the quantities, in the example of the 'vast majority' of Californians who 'favor' defining marriage as 1man+1womanOnly is in some polls less than 50% of the California population.

Anyway, I do sympathise with the unwashed who have [allowed themselves to be] duped by the handlers.  But their calls for discrimination against me and my community are certainly not for my benefit, but theirs.  I will defend and fight for that which I/we deserve with as much kindness as possible.  Some, though, will find the medicine bitter, no matter what we do.

Karen

And that. my dear, I cannot argue with. Sometimes one does the best she can and realizes that a total "win-win" is simply not possible. Thus, one goes for "win." At least someone benefits from that. *smile*

N~

Karen wrote:

QuoteBut there are some situations where you gots to stand your ground because being sensitive to their 'issues' is going to deny you access that you deserve as a human.

I must agree in part, at least. However, as adamant and inflammatory as i know i can be sometimes, (and have made every effort to be here on this site lately), it is in fact, something like "sensitivity" to their own plight(s), that has often allowed me to make the greatest progress in many areas of my own life in recent years, within certain segments of my own family as well..

I have/am continuing to open dialogue with local clergy and others in every walk of life and demographic (every single day, and at every opportunity possible)-(some connected to very conservative elements). I am able to effectively do this sometimes largely due to maintaining true civil decency, and showing a great deal of senstivity to their "issues", (thereby giving me an opportunity to explain the real facts of "Our Issues"), while others on both sides of our legislative and social issues have thrown a lot of big & very ugly rocks and will continue to do so in many cases.

I feel i must somehow learn to balance continual swimming, right directly in the middle most often. Frankly, it is a lot more difficult in many ways than i had ever imagined it would be. What else can i do ? If i usually show both the handlers and the handled more decency, respect, genuine warmth, and just plain regular old "humanness" in ways that completely defy all common stereotypical misperceptive boxes of hell most of us have had to live in, there is always a chance for progress, in terms of better social understanding and social progress.

Just my feeling and my belief of how i must do things to make a difference. Both you, Karen, and you, Nichole, have given me much humbling food for thought lately in this regard, and i am deeply thankful for that, no matter the strength of my sometimes overwrought emotions..

Thank you both,

most loving regards always,

Sincerely,


Maryanne 

Dear Maryanne,

It's obvious that you have a large and giving heart and the bumps we have had the other night are forgotten and forgiven.

That people of good-conscience and good-heart may disagree seems to me as true as the sun rising east and setting west: a natural part of life on earth.

Thank you so much for your kind words. Thank you as well for your passion in the pursuit of both justice and mercy. They are quite commendable.



Nichole