Modeling
Much of this comes out of a conversation I had earlier with dpolicar.
I find it really useful sometimes to try to figure out a way of thinking that would lead someone to position obviously wrong to me. Today I was thinking about homosexuality and how it seems to be considered by most of the English people I know, a sort of "well, of course everyone did it in school, but we're not kids anymore and it's certainly not something one speaks of in polite company," attitude. dpolicar commented that he's been told that this is also a common attitude among the Japanese, that it's childish. He compared it to his mother's attitude toward people of his generation who continue to move from job to job, instead of sticking with one company for forty years, as her generation aspired to do.
Hearing that, and thinking about how employment has changed in the past few decades, something clicked in my rudimentary model of someone being anti-gay marriage in specific and anti-homosexuality in general. I think the problem is that we're working from some entirely different basic ideas about how society functions.
I mean, if you take as a given that it is the responsibility of men to protect and provide for women and for adults of both sexes to procreate in order to ensure continuation of the tribe/carrying on of the family name and fortune/eldercare/etc. then yeah, under those terms, homosexuality is clearly dead wrong. Homosexuals are shirking their duties. They are lingering in an adolescent state of self-gratification, based on what they want and what they like. They are refusing to take up the mantle of adulthood, giving precedence to personal preference over responsibility. Even in societies where homosexuals have not been shunned, they've been shunted into occupations that are outside of the business of society--shamans, actors, artists.
As a side note, the former set of assumptions about what it means to be an adult also disregards the idea of sex as being fun. It's immaterial, given those priorities, whether or not one enjoys sex. In fact, enjoying sex is frequently discouraged by the Powers That Be as frivolous, selfish, and--worst of all--distracting. Like love in marriage, in most societies good sex is a nice potential side effect, not the point of one's life. The idea that women not only can but should enjoy sex is still not something everyone believes. As someone once said, conservatives hate homosexuals because they can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.
Now, from this perspective, what homosexuals are asking in campaigning for the right to marry is to have their child-like status given the societal stamp of responsible adulthood. They want the rights and privileges that adults contributing to the business of society have, without taking up the responsibilities. And therefore they are threatening straight marriage, because if gay people are permitted to marry, then marriage no longer marks the abandonment of childish pleasure seeking. It is no longer a pact with the rest of society to participate in the business of taking care of the women and making babies to carry on our way of life.
Of course, from my perspective, they've got it all wrong. Women don't need taking care of. Women are adults in their own right and responsible for taking care of themselves. And, really, much as I'd like to have kids of my own, I'm under no illusion that what the world needs now is more people. The business of society should not, in my opinion, being the perpetuation of our own genetic and cultural lines, but an acceptance of ourselves as part of a much larger world. My marriage is not constituted in order to have children, or even to provide for me--much as I appreciate that jason237 values what I bring to our lives enough to foot the bills--I was doing okay before I met him and if I had to go it on my own, or even if we just decided it would be better to have another income, I'm confident that I could do okay again. And I don't think that I'm at all unusual, as a straight person, in marrying for personal enjoyment and satisfaction--I think that's actually the way most people do it now. But that's a relatively new thing and perhaps it's not surprising that a lot of people haven't caught up. Or perhaps they do realize that these assumptions are no longer valid, but they've got hold of the wrong end of the telescope and see the process of liberalization in love as being the cause, rather than the effect, and think that they can still combat it successfully.
I make no claims that any particular individual thinks this, but I'm finding it a useful model for explaining positions that are deeply mystifying to me, so I thought I'd share. Perhaps it's time to move the argument back up the logic tree a few steps and do a better job of defining terms in the public discourse.
I find it really useful sometimes to try to figure out a way of thinking that would lead someone to position obviously wrong to me. Today I was thinking about homosexuality and how it seems to be considered by most of the English people I know, a sort of "well, of course everyone did it in school, but we're not kids anymore and it's certainly not something one speaks of in polite company," attitude. dpolicar commented that he's been told that this is also a common attitude among the Japanese, that it's childish. He compared it to his mother's attitude toward people of his generation who continue to move from job to job, instead of sticking with one company for forty years, as her generation aspired to do.
Hearing that, and thinking about how employment has changed in the past few decades, something clicked in my rudimentary model of someone being anti-gay marriage in specific and anti-homosexuality in general. I think the problem is that we're working from some entirely different basic ideas about how society functions.
I mean, if you take as a given that it is the responsibility of men to protect and provide for women and for adults of both sexes to procreate in order to ensure continuation of the tribe/carrying on of the family name and fortune/eldercare/etc. then yeah, under those terms, homosexuality is clearly dead wrong. Homosexuals are shirking their duties. They are lingering in an adolescent state of self-gratification, based on what they want and what they like. They are refusing to take up the mantle of adulthood, giving precedence to personal preference over responsibility. Even in societies where homosexuals have not been shunned, they've been shunted into occupations that are outside of the business of society--shamans, actors, artists.
As a side note, the former set of assumptions about what it means to be an adult also disregards the idea of sex as being fun. It's immaterial, given those priorities, whether or not one enjoys sex. In fact, enjoying sex is frequently discouraged by the Powers That Be as frivolous, selfish, and--worst of all--distracting. Like love in marriage, in most societies good sex is a nice potential side effect, not the point of one's life. The idea that women not only can but should enjoy sex is still not something everyone believes. As someone once said, conservatives hate homosexuals because they can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.
Now, from this perspective, what homosexuals are asking in campaigning for the right to marry is to have their child-like status given the societal stamp of responsible adulthood. They want the rights and privileges that adults contributing to the business of society have, without taking up the responsibilities. And therefore they are threatening straight marriage, because if gay people are permitted to marry, then marriage no longer marks the abandonment of childish pleasure seeking. It is no longer a pact with the rest of society to participate in the business of taking care of the women and making babies to carry on our way of life.
Of course, from my perspective, they've got it all wrong. Women don't need taking care of. Women are adults in their own right and responsible for taking care of themselves. And, really, much as I'd like to have kids of my own, I'm under no illusion that what the world needs now is more people. The business of society should not, in my opinion, being the perpetuation of our own genetic and cultural lines, but an acceptance of ourselves as part of a much larger world. My marriage is not constituted in order to have children, or even to provide for me--much as I appreciate that jason237 values what I bring to our lives enough to foot the bills--I was doing okay before I met him and if I had to go it on my own, or even if we just decided it would be better to have another income, I'm confident that I could do okay again. And I don't think that I'm at all unusual, as a straight person, in marrying for personal enjoyment and satisfaction--I think that's actually the way most people do it now. But that's a relatively new thing and perhaps it's not surprising that a lot of people haven't caught up. Or perhaps they do realize that these assumptions are no longer valid, but they've got hold of the wrong end of the telescope and see the process of liberalization in love as being the cause, rather than the effect, and think that they can still combat it successfully.
I make no claims that any particular individual thinks this, but I'm finding it a useful model for explaining positions that are deeply mystifying to me, so I thought I'd share. Perhaps it's time to move the argument back up the logic tree a few steps and do a better job of defining terms in the public discourse.