One of the hardest things to learn is that your gut feeling is not my gut feeling.
Don’t trust your gut.
Okay, go ahead and trust your gut for you. That’s good sense. That’s using your intuition wisely. But your gut feeling is not an indicator of human gut feeling. How you feel doesn’t tell us how “all men” or “all women” or “all parents” or “all teenagers” feel. (When I see the ubiquitous “What do women want?” “What do men find attractive?” message board plaint, I am often tempted to ask if the poster really believes that all men/women/girls/boys are the same.)
No one seems to know this, yet the knowledge is crucial. So get this: Just because homosexuality squicks you out, doesn’t mean it is against nature. It just means it squicks you. Just because polyamory offends your sensibilities doesn’t mean it is inherently offensive. Just because your gut says “wrong, wrong, wrong” when you think of aborting a fetus, doesn’t mean that this is the right and normal way for a woman to feel.
Years ago, I got into an abortion argument with a friend and I said that to me it felt, viscerally, really violating to have anyone tell me what to do with my uterus (in fact I said it felt as bad to be told not to have children as to be told not to abort). He said it was all well and good that I felt that way, but his wife’s viscera were every bit as trustworthy as mine, and she felt differently.
He was right. Basing an argument about choice on my gut feeling was wrong. But the thing is, lots of arguments are based on that. The whole anti-gay propoganda machine is all about that it feels unnatural to straight people. And it does feel unnatural; if you visualize screwing someone you don’t want to screw, that feels ew yuck oh no no way no. (It feels especially unnatural to people in denial about their own gayness, but that’s another story.)
What’s needed in our world, in many arenas, is for people to unhook from the idea that they can predict nature, right, wrong, and all of human society based on what makes them go “ick.”
Great post, De.
Thanks. Were you one of the participants in that abortion discussion? It was in that place where we met, long ago. 🙂
I’m not sure how practical it would be, but I like the idea of using the argument you’ve got here: “if you visualize screwing someone you don’t want to screw, that feels ew yuck oh no no way no.”
I don’t get grossed out by visualizing sleeping with women; I get grossed out by visualizing sleeping with people I don’t want to sleep with. And this disgust is a feeling everyone can relate to, even if they are so emotionally retarded that they can’t understand that the love they have for their partner is the exact same love that all couples (and polyamory…groups? what’s the PC term for that?) share.
is the exact same love that all couples (and polyamory…groups? what’s the PC term for that?) share.
I think polyamory is too new as a movement to have PC terms. Groups I guess. Or they get specific (triads, quads).
Great post.
I’d just note, in regard to: “The whole anti-gay propoganda machine is all about that it feels unnatural to straight people” – that the other thing it’s also about it a religious belief that homosexuality IS unnatural (not just that it may or may not feel that way), as is any other kind of non-procreative sex. For a not insignificant number of people, I imagine that what their “gut” is telling them is simply a reflection of an internalized aversion born from stigma, rather than an actual in-born repulsion.
I’ve thought about it a lot, Shakes, and I mostly disagree. First, let’s agree that the anti-gay movement is about neither of these thoughts, it’s about rallying the Right around a scapegoat issue.
But anyway.
If I recall correctly, the Bible doesn’t tell us that being gay is unnatural and therefore a sin, or that it’s non-procreative and therefore a sin. It’s masturbation that is singled out for the non-procreative piss-off. Homosexuality is a sin just because, like mixing the kinds of thread in a garment.
I have friends who are Christian and believe homosexuality is a sin, but they also recognize that pride, avarice, masturbation, and cheating on your income tax is equally sinful; they don’t single the fags out. The people who go nuts over homosexuality specifically are freaking out based on an internal aversion.
AND the people who are all about the “it’s unnatural” thing use their internal feelings (the gut) to justify and prove it. It’s what they trot out when you ask them about, for example, marital sex post-menopause.