Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Aint that a shame

Kesher Talk has addressed the issue of an anti-Israel policy appearing as a sophisticated, caring and encouraged gesture among well to do teenage students. Right Thinking Girl has brought up the issue of whether or not to be for Homosexual marriage in a manner reflecting that of many considerate people. Somehow, when I get to this point I think of the "it" recently divorced female physician at the VA, and me the cockroach that has avoided Raid, who would always put in her notes "..no homocidal ideation..." The reason for both 'caring' behaviors which their advocates are trying to induce is in the interest of shame reduction. The usual argument is over whether or not homosexuality is natural. A really more fruitful enquiry would be over whether shame is natural in homosexuality. I think it is as well as masochistic or sadistic satisfaction. For me, it is an anal level sexual identity and there is shame in anal level expressions. To leave this beginning of psychodynamic enquiry, look at political level expressions. 30 years ago we had the demonstrations to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. I think this was in large part, by it's proponents, to protest against shame. If this was all society's problem, then I think this would have solved it. Now we have another step to 'normalize' homosexuality, which I think betokens an internal shame rather than social stigma. For the Muslim, whose proxy here is the Palestinian, submission to Allah yields, according to the Koran, dominion over all nonMulims. WTF, the Israelis appear to have more money and don't even have Allah's gift of oil. The Israelis have stayed in land they have the nerve to claim rather than joining the sea fishes as the Arabs and Allah, of course, would have seemed to prefer. What a terrible narcissistic insult. How shameful that the Arabs do not have the status granted by Allah. If dominion is what Allah grants to men who are Muslims what part of this equation, description, are they not? So to be pro-Palestinian is to fight against Palestinian shame. Let's all be nice.

2 comments:

Judith said...

"0 years ago we had the demonstrations to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. I think this was in large part, by it's proponents, to protest against shame. If this was all society's problem, then I think this would have solved it. Now we have another step to 'normalize' homosexuality, which I think betokens an internal shame rather than social stigma. "

No, the reduction of social stigma is only within the last 5 years, and there is still legal discrimination. Not to mention that social conditions can produce shame.

From whatever we know of Islam and Arab culture, I think this works for your first example. I compare the Arab attitude toward Israel to the old plantation owners of the South attitude toward freed black slaves. To them it was an outrageous affront that their former slaves got to "act like they was just as good as a White man." Thus lynchings and the KKK. Hamas etc are the Arab bloc's equivalent of the KKK.

Dymphna said...

I hope you write further on the issue of homosexuality in this country. I don't fear homosexuality so much as its open display makes me uncomfortable. And what I once saw as the desire for equal treatment in the civil arena, I now see as an aggressive, in-your-face p.c. machine.

Homosexuality has been banned from the DSM. Can pedophilia be far behind?

This appears to be slope of deviancy --especially if you retain the original meaning of deviant.

shame sometimes seems to be the fundament of Self and all our acts are either in propitiation or projection of this unbearable experience...if we could find a way to make it containable, what an evolution in human relationships would ensue.