Killing two Memes with one stone

[bellatrys]

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

Comments

[tlachtga]

I hadn't realized the line came from Douglas. I guess I ought to go back and read up on Wilde's trial.

[jesurgislac]

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.

Yes. You've just defined heteronormativity, and why blog against it.

There's a reason why it was blog against heteronormativity day, and not (as you seem to be saying you think) blog against heterosexuality day.

the norm *is* righthandedness

[bellatrys]

the norm *is* heterosexuality. Pretending it isn't, pretending that left-handedness/ambidexterity/gay/lesbian/bi/trans are not minorities, *won't change that.* The question is just *what ethical justification is there* for denying minorities - any minorities - the same rights as the other approximately 90%? For example, you could argue that having to have redundant equipment is an undue burden on a school, or that forcing teachers to spend more time on the sinistral is taking away from and injuring the majority of grade schoolers, or that there are safety risks in hiring lefties for working with machinery. (In fact you can make a better argument from "practicality" for persecuting left handers for the common good than you can for discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, because I haven't seen a single one for the latter, despite all the winger yapping about "special rights" , being able to get married or not being able to be fired for non-work-related private behavior are not rights above and beyond the majority's.) Against

Re: the norm *is* righthandedness

[tomscud]

Side issue - apparently (per Brian Whitaker's soon-to-be-published book on homosexuality in the middle east) the same conservative Muslim clerics who have a hate on for homosexuals also have a similar hate on for lefthanded people, recommending that children be forced to use their right hands &c - but the younger contingent is starting to change their assessment of that judgment.

I also found the specific argument about military morale & chain of command to be somewhat convincing, in that it involved a specific area - group dynamics within military units in situations of stress - that I had no expertise about and that at least plausibly could differ substantially from my intuition - this was in an argument in the mid-90s with a military family I was staying with over Xmas - I specifically objected to the argument that gays would be bashed on the grounds that the same things must have been said about black people, but had to plead nolo contendre on the specific question of how small-unit dynamics worked in the real world.

[anna_wing]

I didn't know that line came from him either. Nice to learn something new.
However "his brow chalcedony" (it was a pale, translucent,blue-grey colour? And rather hard and brittle?)does rather show why Douglas is a Very Minor Poet. At least when Tolkien mentioned chalcedony it was for a scabbard.

I agree with you on the moral equivalence and irrelevance of the heterosexual/homosexual, right-handed/left-handed distinction. To make a legal/social distinction is like trying to argue that Rh negative people are morally inferior to people with Type O blood.