Response #31 (maya) Tuesday, August 21, 2001

 As I edge towards 50 here, I note that what has come to the forefront
 of my consciousness is the abuse many suffered as children. My friend
 Will Roscoe has repeatedly stressed that teaching a child to try to be
 something other than what he/she is constitutes child abuse. And the
 result of such unbridled and socially enforced abuse is the anger that
 builds up in "queer" people. So yeah, sure, any minority or fringe
 group is called fag, and the straight chess player might get angry
 about it but flips it off, whereas the "true" fag feels stabbed to the 
 core, and this essential injury is not ameliorated by whether or not
 the insult is accurate.
 
 When I see "queers" at their most politically volatile, or trying to
 be understood by fundamentalists (in whatever camp), I see the weaponry
 of anger. I sometimes believe that it is how we each cope with our
 own anger about the abuse we have experienced since youth that
 constitutes how we truly survive. What saddens me is to see "queers"
 caught in the anger (and who can blame them?) and unable to detach.
 
 Among queers, what could this pent-up anger transform into? I'd be
 very sorry to see an upsurge of pistol-packing even though, as image,
 as metaphor, it seems to provide the perfect expression of anger.  

Website Feedback