Hate, Choice, and Identity. Or, Bigotry Makes My Head Explodey

That right there is a fucking fact. People CHOOSE to be bigots, to do violence to another person, to hate. And it does not actually much matter where one comes down on the nature/nurture debate as it relates to being gay, hating someone and carving that hatred into another human being’s skin is FAR MORE OF A CHOICE.

Think about it, though. Why would someone choose to be a person who can be hated to such an extreme, so much so that they know that there are people out there who want nothing more than to carve “dyke” into her skin with a knife? No one chooses that! It just doesn’t happen. But the hatred does happen. And it is chosen. It is latched onto. Just at this very moment, I have no desire to try to delve into that mind and understand it. I will, eventually, in my private thoughts, try to understand what could possibly have brought someone to that level of hatred, and to empathize to some extent. But right now, I need the anger. (And oh my, yes, I see the dangerous line of potential hypocrisy looming up ahead as I stride that fine line bordering towards cognitive dissonance.)

Yesterday, very, very early in the morning, three men broke into the home of an openly lesbian woman in Lincoln, NE. Read the story here. Now imagine that you are her. Find something about yourself that is not part of your privilege, something about you that places you as a part of some sort of a minority population (nearly everyone has something about themselves that is like that).[1] Now imagine that three masked men, screaming obscenities and waving weapons around, shock you into consciousness; you’re confused, not quite aware yet of what is going on. You suddenly find that in the midst of their guttural slurs and threats, your hands and feet have been bound. It hurts. They cut your clothes off. You can’t tell, but the knives in their hands look dull and rusty to you. Their breath reeks, the rot in their brains apparently making its way down to their lungs and out of their open and panting mouths. They begin to carve the slurs of your minority status onto your face, your arms, your chest, your belly. The pain begins to take on an unreal, distant sort of quality, but full on shock won’t set in, yet, you won’t let it, because you know you have to escape. Maybe after that. Maybe not.

Alright, I think that’s enough of that exercise. The point is to empathize with the terror, the panic, the horror, the fucked-up-edness. And realize that someone is doing that to you because of WHO YOU ARE. And because you are willing and able to say aloud to the whoever is listening, whether they agree with you or not, This is who I am. I am who I am. Someone out there is apparently so uncomfortable with the fact that you are who you are, that they CHOSE to take a knife and carve the fact of who you are, the fact of their hatred of who you are, into your very body. It doesn’t matter what it is, at that point in the game; whatever it is, it should not be hard to see that they chose their hate far more than you ever chose whatever-it-is.

Hate is far more of a choice than ANY IDENTITY ever was or will be.

What has been beautiful to see is the response from the communities in both Lincoln and Omaha. That gives me hope that all of these beautiful people will rally to give this woman the strength to bear what she has born, to bear what she will have to bear. So that in the midst of hate that pushes back, pushes down, shoves, and tears, she will have the strength of beautiful people to take the next step forward for all of us. So that the children that see us doing this don’t have to suffer the same things. So that she can heal. This community will link arms and push back against the hate to ensure that she and so many others have a safe space to heal in. They will also push out, push up, push forward against hate.

Hate is far more of a choice than ANY IDENTITY ever was or will be. I do not, even from within the chaotic heat of my anger, choose hate. I choose love. I choose beauty.

I will choose beauty, along with a whole mess of other beautiful people, here. Join if you can, in your thoughts if nothing else, because that does make a difference.[2]


EDIT: I should also add that there is a fund set up to help out the woman, who has no insurance. http://starcitypride.org/victim-recovery-fund/

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[1] I know, right? It’s no fun, and requires that you recognize and acknowledge those parts of yourself that *are* part of your privilege.

[2] Not in some woo-woo pseudo-spiritual way, either. I think it is consciousness-raising, something that you take back out into the world later, and it affects not only the way that you think and behave, but also, through that, the way that other people behave around you.



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