teleen_fiction | The Morality of My Identity (Reply)

As everyone who reads this should know, I'm pansexual. I am attracted to personalities, not physical appearance. I can appreciate someone whom society tells me is beautiful, but their gender enters into it only as an afterthought. In addition to this, I don't believe in monogamy. While I'm very committed to those whom I love, I don't allow jealousy or possessiveness. Period. I'm not an object - I'm a human being. And so are those whom I love and/or have sex with.

There are those who feel that my identity as a human being is immoral, that a person should only love one person of the opposite gender (or only one person, as I am discriminated against by some gay, lesbian and bisexual persons as well for not being monogamous). People look down on me for being free with my sexuality.

They tell me that I'm immoral, but they never adequately explain how or why. Why is it immoral for me to love more than one person? Hell, so long as everyone practices safe sex (in the interests of public health), why is it immoral for me to fuck every person I feel sexually attracted to?

Who am I hurting? So long as I am not an unsafe sex-practicing carrier of disease and make no promises that I can't or won't keep, how does my identity as a human being hurt anyone else? I'm honest, up-front and completely open with who I am.

Who am I hurting? No one. But there are those who feel that my sex life is their business and that they have a right to control me in the name of a morality to which I don't subscribe.

To me, something is moral if it causes no direct harm to anyone else. It is moral if everyone is adult and it is consensual. It is moral if it is honest.

My identity is moral. Period.

I started to invite those who believe that who I am as a person is immoral to argue their case and then I realized: I don't give a fuck what you think. You're in the majority and you have a voice. You have a thousand places where you can go and be heard and have other asshats listen to you when you say that being different is bad. Or immoral. Or abnormal. Or unnatural.

When Amazon can put books about incest, pedophilia and bestiality under the 'gay and lesbian' section because they're all somehow 'kinky', I'd say that the voice of the so-called 'moral majority' is being heard loud and clear. (I went looking for where I saw this story for a link, but couldn't find it. I'd appreciate a source, please.)

A while back, Rachel Maddow pointed out the essential fallacy of voting on gay rights. Or civil rights. Or the rights of ANY minority group.

You can't vote on rights - that's why they're called rights. Voting on rights gives 51% of the population the RIGHT to burn the other 49% at the stake.

Roughly 10% (or much less, if you believe Wiki and I don't) of the population is GLBTQP. That means that the vote always has the potential to go 90-10 against. And regardless of what the actual numbers are, there is no question that GLBTQP persons are in the minority. How the fuck are we ever going to get rights through the voting process?

Answer: WE AREN'T.

The only way it's going to happen is the same way it's happened for every other oppressed group. We're going to stand up and make our voices heard. Some of us are going to suffer and/or die for having those voices. And we have to hope that society will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future that recognizes all people as individual human beings, rather than part of the herd.

And that, friends and neighbors, is what our species needs to decide. Our fear of the Other comes from a very base place deep inside us. It's a place that says that a stranger might try to steal your female or your food and that the weak/old/infirm can't hunt or gather and so must be killed for the good of the whole.

We have the technology for nearly every human being to have the potential to be able to contribute in some way. And yet we still marginalize some groups based upon factors outside their control. We marginalize based upon someone's basic human identity, upon who they are as individuals. It's base and animalistic and, at it's essence, IMMORAL.

It's immoral to say that a person in a wheelchair is incapable of contributing anything to the whole. It's immoral to say that the elderly should kill themselves once they aren't 'useful' to society any longer. It's immoral to say that two (or more) people who love each other are harming those around them simply because they aren't in a traditional male/female relationship.

Civilization has to be based around more than just breeding, more than just overrunning the planet with as many of us as we can pump out.

There are nearly seven billion human beings on this planet - we're not going extinct anytime soon. There are thousands upon thousands of unwanted children born every day. Doesn't it seem the decent and moral thing to do to allow those who aren't contributing directly to the gene pool to raise those children if they wish to do so?

I've thought a lot about the biology of non-cis-gendered and heterosexual identities and I was actually thinking of sharing that theory with you. My theory of why people are GLBTPQ and then I realized something very important.

Who cares?

Those who are searching for the reasons why people are this way are doing so in the hopes of finding a cure, a way to prevent it, a way to deal with the 'abnormality'.

Fuck that.

Okay, I'm sharing, but I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not a scientist and all of my 'evidence' is anecdotal at best. These are simply my musings on the subject. I welcome other points of view and, especially those that are backed up my actual scientific research and evidence. That said, this is why I think people are:

Gay. There's evidence to support that a woman who has had more than one male child will have a younger son who is gay due to her body seeing the 'Y' chromosome as an invader and over-producing certain hormones. A friend of mine, who is a scientist, said something to the effect of, "it would make sense in families with more than one boy for the younger ones not to want to kill the older ones in competition for mates." Population control.

Lesbian. I haven't actually read about any particular causes, but my aunt is the youngest of four and the three ahead of her were boys. It seems like there may be a hormone connection there, but again - population control.

Transgender. I'm not going to speculate. It's too far outside of my experience. I knew a MTF transsexual and spoke to her in-depth on it, but her experience doesn't speak to the experience of every transgendered person.

Bisexual/Pansexual. Honestly, I truly feel that human sexuality is a lot more fluid than we want to admit.

Polyamorous. I think this is how we naturally are as human beings and monogamy is an artificial construct. Anything else I would say here is definitely offensive to someone, so I'm going to stop there.

So these are some of the possible causes of non-cis-gendered, non-heterosexual identities. They are all essentially me talking out of my ass so completely I'm surprised I'm not echoing. And the worst part? It doesn't matter.

I'm going to repeat that, because it bears repeating. It doesn't matter what the cause is.

I can believe that a woman will have a gay son if she eats too much chocolate ice cream and it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change who a person is as a human being. It has no effect on whether or not they are an asshat.

Some people are born asshats (we call these people 'psychopaths'), but most of us learn it. We learn that there is a magic state called 'normal' and if you don't conform to it, you cease to be a human being and instead become an epithet. We teach conformity to our children and wonder why they bully those who don't conform. We say we want individuality, but individuals question authority, so it's better to have sheep.

Back to me, since I appear to have strayed fairly far afield here.

My sexual identity is none of your business. I speak up about it because I'm not ashamed of it, but in my perfect world, no one would care. No one would care who was fucking who because sex would be seen for the natural biological function that it is, rather than the end-all, be-all of human existence.

Who I have sex and/or fall in love with has no bearing on my contribution to society as a whole. There are enough human beings in this world - whether or not I choose to reproduce with someone of the opposite sex will have little effect on our survival as a species. In fact, with the improvements in technology that have allowed us to overpopulate, if I choose to breed it might actually negatively impact our chances of survival.

My love life is none of your business, but the people who are in power love to make every little thing their business to keep control. Telling a man who would rather have a root canal than have sex with a woman that it's 'immoral' for him to be with another man allows those in power to make everyone miserable for no good reason. It solidifies their power in the name of 'morality'. "Be fruitful and multiply," because the more of us there are, the more sheep the power structure has that will blindly obey and kill for that power structure.

(At this point, I'm going to interject an aside: I am in NO WAY saying that people don't have a right to reproduce or even that they shouldn't reproduce because there are too many people already (though an argument can be made for that, sigh), only that they aren't obligated to contribute to the gene pool if their identity doesn't easily allow them to do so. It's not necessary for the survival of the species for those who don't wish to breed to HAVE TO for the 'good of society'.

I feel kind of damned if I do, damned if I don't, here. On the one hand, I'm saying that it's good for the planet in general and human civilization specifically if those who can't have children through the usual biological method raise the unwanted children of the world. On the other hand, if you wish to have a biological child via whatever options (such as surrogacy) are available to you, it's your ABSOLUTE right to do so. So, um, yeah. Don't shoot me, parents. Actually, please don't shoot me, everyone.)

Back on topic..

Most people are dogs. Friendly and sweet until you threaten their masters, and then they'll defend those masters to the death. Hey, dog owners! Do dogs defend masters who kick and abuse them so long as they throw them a bone every now and then? I've never owned a dog, but that seems likely from what I've read about them.

When I was proofreading this, I realized that I have to make one thing absolutely clear: The asshats who marginalize minorities aren't dogs or animals. They are human beings. I almost didn't make that distinction, until I realized that if I try to make them into animal monsters, I'm no better than they are. They are still human beings, with thoughts, feelings, dreams and inalienable rights. However, I don't feel that they are civilized human beings.

People have to choose to be civilized human beings. So what makes a civilized human being?

A civilized human being is someone who doesn't care what color/gender/religion/national origin/sexual identity a person is, but at the same time respects how that identity has affected that person's past.

A civilized human being doesn't care who someone has sex and/or falls in love with and will support and protect that person's right to be with whomever they choose.

A civilized human being respects the individual rights of other human beings and defends those rights against anyone who would infringe upon them.

A civilized human being doesn't cause quantifiable harm to other human beings. (Quantifiable harm is defined as the loss of life, liberty or property.)

A civilized human being is honest and civil in their dealings with others.

A civilized society gives every human being the right to be an individual, so long as that individuality causes no quantifiable harm to society as a whole. So long as people aren't stealing from, raping and/or murdering each other, a truly moral and advanced civilization doesn't give a shit if everyone in the office has an orgy after business hours are done. Or if some people never wish to have sex at all. So long as people are still being productive (and if they're allowed to be who they are, they'll be a FUCKTON more productive), society will be just fine.

So when you tell me that I'm less than human because your 'morality' tells you so, I reject your morality. I reject your primitive version of civilization. I reject your identity as an asshat, because again, unless you are a born asshat (i.e., a psychopath), you can choose to be a decent, civilized human being instead.

I didn't choose my sexual identity, but I did choose my identity as a decent, civilized and ultimately (despite my many, many failings) moral human being.

ETA: I'm rather glad that I thought of something cool to post about for my 600th entry, :).