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Amaros -> RE: Openness (1/13/2008 10:07:54 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: KindLadyGrey
Almost everyone in my life knows. My parents have requested I refrain from sharing details, my inlaws openly disapprove, my coworkers think I'm strange, my boss has an inkling, my friends think it's great, and my husband knows all about everything I do.
There are certain people who don't know, but any of them could easily find out with a bit of google-fu.
I think I am rare in this regard, and people tell me all the time how "dangerous" my choice to be totally open is. If I had a dollar for every time someone suggested that I might want to be more discreet I would not need a job.
There are definite consequences that I must accept. I am a teacher by profession, but I will never work for a normal K-12 school. I will never be elected to political office (and that one bothers me, because I have always wanted to run). There are many many jobs that I will never get, or once gotten, I will never keep. The general social consequences of living any kind of alternative are well known to everyone on these boards I am sure, and I weather them openly every day.
People talk to me about my indiscretions like I am not aware of these consequences, like I am simply naive. It baffles people that I could willingly CHOOSE to face such daunting consequences for what they perceive as something not that important to life in general.
But I hate living a pretense. In the end, even though I must live with certain social consequences, I would rather be true to myself in all ways. I have just as much right to be who I am as anyone else in this country. If the sheeple want to pretend they are sexless androids as their default social behavior, they can go right ahead.
I cannot say how it is elsewhere, but the politics of sex have gotten complicated in America - there is something of a conservative backlash going on right now, and sexual politics are at the fore: the more corporate religion get on board with a foreign policy based on brute force rather than diplomacy, the more they need some distraction where they can take the moral "high ground", thus much anti-gay noise, and general public disaproval of anyone suspected of being remotely interesting or independent.
Religion, at it's core, is largely sexual politics: they claim to be concerned about your soul, but when it comes to discuassion, it's all about you hole - erotophobia, fear of female sexuality, masculine preogotive, etc., expressed as magical thinking or half baked amateur psychology/sociology. There are a lot of primal fears involved and moral horror is the stick they use to keep people in line: alternative sexuality threatens them politically, they hate us because we're free. Whereas the evidence keep mounting that more open expressions of sexuality are healthy, and most of the things conservatives bitch about are at least as often if not more often the result of repression rather than expression - the most sexually repressed countries in , it tthe world are also typically the most violent, it's all the people who aren't fucking causing the problems.
I've been getting this erotophobic vibe a lot more lately, circling the wagons maybe, given that conservatives have pretty much screwed the pooch in every other area, and now, with the economy getting sluggish, they're a bit frantic to keep exerting and maintaining control, and sex remains a bit of a hot button, knee jerk issue.
This complicates the politics of sexual de-politicization which has been for less of an issue for the last 40 years - hopefully, it will recede once more when and if we get things back on an even keel, but there has been considerable infiltration by Dominionists/Reconstructionists, who have very explicit views on these things, which has been reflected and reinforced by the administration, in both rhetoric, and in the operation of the justice department among other things - there is even a good bit of mounting evidence that there might be a putch in the offing, the constitution being an egregious inconvenience to certain political ambitions.
Anyway, I sympathize with your dillema concerning your political ambitions Lady Grey, we have a tradition of supressing any alternative viewpoints when it comes to sexuality, anal retentiveness in sexual behavior is apparently all some people have to brag about, and don't hesitate to legislate about that which they keep themselves deliberately ignorant for political gain - I for one wouldn't mind seeing that particular atavism die natural death, you'd have my vote.
Otherwise, in terms of consensus, it would be nice if people were able to act like adults when it comes to expression of sexuality, but again, there is a lot of repressed guilt and anxiety about sexual behavior, not to mention sheer boredom - when you live your life in an emotional/sexual straightjacket, there's not a whole lot left to titillate but to gossip about other people.
But as a couple of posters have mentioned, discretion is often the better part of valor, if you are in a situation where you feel free to express your sexuality, go for it, if it's just going to cause a lot of hate and discontent, then you're probobly better off laying a little lower - there is a certain amont of validity in allowing parents to exert some degree of control over social influences on their children, for beter or worse, until they reach the age of majority - even if the forces of morality are probobly the worst offenders when it comes to blabbering about it in public - I really didn't need to know what Clinton did with his cigar.
So it goes.
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