Killing two Memes with one stone
I keep forgetting that this is National Poetry Month and so we're supposed to post poems (what, you need a special month for that?) and apparently in addition to being Earth Day and Shakespeare's birthday it was also decided to hold a Blogging Holiday, Blog Against Heteronormativity Day. Which poses a problem: I don't have a problem with Blogging Against Homophobia, as anyone can tell; but the idea of blogging against heteronormativity doesn't really make any sense to me.
It seems to me to be as rational as blogging against right-handedness; the problem isn't that normally plus/minus 90% of the population are heterosexual, or right-handed, but that a significant percentage of that majority are so bloody insecure and threatened by the existence of difference that they feel entitled/obligated to abuse that minority in order to make them go away so they won't have to acknowledge their existence, whether it's literally, by forcing them to physically move away with violence, or merely to "go away" from the majority's perception by forcing them to pretend to be other than they are, or to shut up about it at the very maximum of tolerance.
The insistence on making everyone outwardly conform is the problem - and this is a problem which can be found even inside the tiniest community of marginalized or persecuted or just mocked "non-conformists," including people who are GLBT; just as there are battles of orthodoxy and true believership within fandom, over whether or not fantasy is "real" speculative fiction compared to science fiction, or media fandom is "real" science fiction, or whether people who say "scifi" are "real" fans, etc etc etc...
I mean, aside from "don't persecute people just because they're different from you, if that difference isn't hurting anyone," what is there to say, ultimately, except to explain what constitutes persecution (ie yes, firing someone because they're GLBT is wrong, even if it's legal) and how that difference doesn't hurt anyone (you really think we're going to run out of white people any time soon, because < 1/6 of the population isn't choosing to breed for this reason as opposed to that?) and maybe wondering how come so many ostensibly straight people who ostensibly only want to not have to think about the mechanics of non-missionary-position sex because it squicks them out, how come they spend so much more time then thinking and talking about it than most openly gay people do? It's not like you can say, "Hey, so many of us shouldn't be attracted to the opposite sex!" to counter the "too many people choosing the Gay Lifestyle™" rantings of the social conservatives, really.
So. Anyway. I discovered a while back that this younger generation isn't universally familiar with the euphemism "love that dare not speak its name" nor the source, to my surprise at being more familiar with "Queer History" than even many well-educated GLBT commenters. Since the poem well-exemplifies the "straight-freakout" phenomenon which creates the "problems of being gay" from which the supposedly-charitable claim they only want to "rescue" hapless victims of homosexuality, in a time of limited and exceedingly-fragile tolerance, among people forced to pretend that they were part of the majority so as not to cause an increase in "irrational and violent reactions which wouldn't happen if they weren't pushing their gayness on the world, per the Aggressive Heteronormatives, as I suppose we might call them (since some of them themselves are gay, like Roy Cohn.)
Don't worry, it's not just "good for you" as a Moral Lesson nor a Historical Curiosity: it's classic Aesthetic stuff from the Gilded Age, complete with words like "chalcedony" and poppies and embroidered dragons and Liebestod, too--
Two Loves
Lord Alfred Douglas, 1894
I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades
Of grass that in an hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt,
A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss
Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed
To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair.
And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend,
Come I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life. See from the South
Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.'
And lo! within the garden of my dream
I saw two walking on a shining plain
Of golden light. The one did joyous seem
And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain
Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids
And joyous love of comely girl and boy,
His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy;
And in his hand he held an ivory lute
With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair,
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute,
And round his neck three chains of roses were.
But he that was his comrade walked aside;
He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes
Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs
That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red
Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight,
And yet again unclenched, and his head
Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death.
A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.'
Oddly enough, back when this was written, the aestheticism itself, in this era of Mucha and the Pre-Raphaelites and Sara Bernhardt and Yeats and the Order of the Golden Dawn and George MacDonald and Du Maurier and all, even among the Decadent Aesthetes, wasn't then taken as a sign of sexual unorthodoxy as it is now, when all things artistic are suspect of "unmanliness." O tempora, o mores!
It seems to me to be as rational as blogging against right-handedness; the problem isn't that normally plus/minus 90% of the population are heterosexual, or right-handed, but that a significant percentage of that majority are so bloody insecure and threatened by the existence of difference that they feel entitled/obligated to abuse that minority in order to make them go away so they won't have to acknowledge their existence, whether it's literally, by forcing them to physically move away with violence, or merely to "go away" from the majority's perception by forcing them to pretend to be other than they are, or to shut up about it at the very maximum of tolerance.
The insistence on making everyone outwardly conform is the problem - and this is a problem which can be found even inside the tiniest community of marginalized or persecuted or just mocked "non-conformists," including people who are GLBT; just as there are battles of orthodoxy and true believership within fandom, over whether or not fantasy is "real" speculative fiction compared to science fiction, or media fandom is "real" science fiction, or whether people who say "scifi" are "real" fans, etc etc etc...
I mean, aside from "don't persecute people just because they're different from you, if that difference isn't hurting anyone," what is there to say, ultimately, except to explain what constitutes persecution (ie yes, firing someone because they're GLBT is wrong, even if it's legal) and how that difference doesn't hurt anyone (you really think we're going to run out of white people any time soon, because < 1/6 of the population isn't choosing to breed for this reason as opposed to that?) and maybe wondering how come so many ostensibly straight people who ostensibly only want to not have to think about the mechanics of non-missionary-position sex because it squicks them out, how come they spend so much more time then thinking and talking about it than most openly gay people do? It's not like you can say, "Hey, so many of us shouldn't be attracted to the opposite sex!" to counter the "too many people choosing the Gay Lifestyle™" rantings of the social conservatives, really.
So. Anyway. I discovered a while back that this younger generation isn't universally familiar with the euphemism "love that dare not speak its name" nor the source, to my surprise at being more familiar with "Queer History" than even many well-educated GLBT commenters. Since the poem well-exemplifies the "straight-freakout" phenomenon which creates the "problems of being gay" from which the supposedly-charitable claim they only want to "rescue" hapless victims of homosexuality, in a time of limited and exceedingly-fragile tolerance, among people forced to pretend that they were part of the majority so as not to cause an increase in "irrational and violent reactions which wouldn't happen if they weren't pushing their gayness on the world, per the Aggressive Heteronormatives, as I suppose we might call them (since some of them themselves are gay, like Roy Cohn.)
Don't worry, it's not just "good for you" as a Moral Lesson nor a Historical Curiosity: it's classic Aesthetic stuff from the Gilded Age, complete with words like "chalcedony" and poppies and embroidered dragons and Liebestod, too--
Two Loves
Lord Alfred Douglas, 1894
I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades
Of grass that in an hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt,
A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss
Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed
To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair.
And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend,
Come I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life. See from the South
Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.'
And lo! within the garden of my dream
I saw two walking on a shining plain
Of golden light. The one did joyous seem
And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain
Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids
And joyous love of comely girl and boy,
His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy;
And in his hand he held an ivory lute
With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair,
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute,
And round his neck three chains of roses were.
But he that was his comrade walked aside;
He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes
Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs
That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red
Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight,
And yet again unclenched, and his head
Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death.
A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.'
Oddly enough, back when this was written, the aestheticism itself, in this era of Mucha and the Pre-Raphaelites and Sara Bernhardt and Yeats and the Order of the Golden Dawn and George MacDonald and Du Maurier and all, even among the Decadent Aesthetes, wasn't then taken as a sign of sexual unorthodoxy as it is now, when all things artistic are suspect of "unmanliness." O tempora, o mores!