Life As Performance Art 111

Here is a comment I just submitted online. "I find it troubling that the Pride Society is visiting upon others the same kind of intolerance that they have often and legitimately complained of being themselves subjected to. They need to take more time to reflect and accept that the entire world is not going to, nor should have to, share in every detail the same point of view and opinion. Libraries and universities are not centres of propaganda, but education, dialogue and the exchange of ideas and information. Not everyone is going to agree. As a queer asexual androgynous man, I am saddened by this development and I really hope that my friends at Pride really take a look at how easily they themselves can turn into the enemy that they themselves have fought so hard to overcome. They also need to grow a skin." This is my response to an article online I read yesterday. The Vancouver Pride Society has barred the Vancouver Public Library and the University of British Columbia from participating in this year's Pride Parade. They have a tendency of disinviting anyone who has disappointed them, or who has not lived up to their impossible high standard of narcissism. Anyone remember the revolting little ditty sung by a little girl about the Me Generation? "I am special, I am special. Look at me. look at me. I am very special, yes so very special, you will see. You will see". Sung to the tune of Frere Jacques. And if you don't agree with us then we will rip your lungs out and serve them up for brunch this Sunday. This is a huge event that attracts well above half a million participants and spectators every August. It is also controlled and dominated by what appear to be some very narrow and closed minds that have been rendered entirely dysfunctional by political correctness. I have just read a bit about Meghan Murphy, the feminist who openly questions that people can really change their gender. She appears to approach this from her experience as a woman, stating that men who transition to women are still missing a whole range and depth of experience that is unique to women, and so questions their insistence that they be also regarded as women. I happen to agree with her. No amount of hormone therapy, nor cutting and pasting or fake boobs or fake dicks is going to make an iota of difference to your DNA nor to your chromosomal structure, and those are going to remain completely deaf to your strident entreaties about your gender. You were born X, and you will die X. You were born XY and you will die Xy. This doesn't mean that you can't pretend, and it doesn't mean that you are not allowed to believe that you are a different gender or (as in my case) no real gender at all. We live in a free country and in a free society. We are allowed to believe whatever we want, about ourselves and about other people. Which also means that we are free to not believe whatever we want, from religion to what any of you want to believe or expect the rest of us to believe about your gender. Because I am suspicious and also sick and tired of the empty and angry rhetoric that comes from these minions of postmodernist thinking, I will have nothing to do with those organizations. They are simply intolerant. They are like fascists. To them, it isn't enough that they be accepted and welcomed into the mainstream. We are also expected to believe in their self-delusion. Okay. I am a Christian. I believe in a God, whom a lot of people deny existence to. I follow and walk with a Jesus Christ whom, to the mainstream, has no real existence or relevance. I have to adapt to a society that rejects, or at least does not respect or honour, my deepest and most cherished beliefs and life experience. Some people who know me, people I work with, even personal friends, think of me as deluded and possibly even psychologically impaired because I believe in God. They still do what they can to include and accept me. I do not expect them to share my point of view, since that is something very personal. Neither does their respect for me as a person have to include their accepting as their own my beliefs and my life experience. As long as they are willing to show respect about it, and then we all get along well. I think this is a kind of a leap that everyone has to take in the interest of coexisting well. No one can be reasonably expected to buy into everything that we believe about ourselves and the universe. No one should have to. By the same token, we still have to accept one another, without judgment. We don't have to agree, and really, we need to keep our minds open enough, and free enough from the strong emotions of trauma in order to welcome dialogue and debate. Even if this means having to carefully re-examine our most cherished beliefs and opinions. Historically oppressed and persecuted populations that gain legitimacy and power are often in danger of turning into the very kind of people that oppressed and persecuted them and made their lives miserable. We have only to look at Israel, what they are doing to keep the Palestinian people oppressed and impoverished on their own land, in order to get a sense of this. LGBT people have come a long way. We still have a long way to go. We also have to grow a skin and start behaving like adults.