Friday, June 15, 2018

I Will Not Drop The B!

****** I have recently found out that the article I read and posted below was instigated by 4Chan and alt right anti LGBTQ activism group trying to divide our community by stirring the pot with false information. I am a bit embarrassed to say that I did not fact check the information prior to writing my post, and even more red faced that I have responded in a way that they had anticipated.




I just read this article   https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/06/15/drop-the-b-bisexual-lgbt/ and I couldn’t be more frustrated and upset! Why must I change how I identify because it makes you uncomfortable, REALLY?!

First, lets look at the most widely accepted definition of Bisexuality given to us by Robyn Ochs:

“I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

Note that it states, “more than one sex and/or gender.” It doesn’t say, “two sexes and/or two genders.” To be fair, this definition is not any different than for Pansexual. It’s just worded a bit differently, but means the exact same thing in its spirit.

I personally identify as bisexual because that’s the word I feel best fits me and it make me feel good about myself. Who better than me would know exactly feels right to me than me?

In the 60s, 70s, and 80s when not only organized religion but society in general, told everyone in the LGBTQ community we made everyone uncomfortable and we needed to change our ways or we would be imprisoned and damned to Hell, we fought back with a vengeance. We said, “We exist, and we aren’t going anywhere.” Furthermore, “Not only do we exist, we want to be treated no differently than anyone else, because we deserve it!” In that fight to be acknowledged, we were jailed, and some of us were even killed because of who we were. While we have come so very far from those days, we still fight battles because the war is not yet over. Why is it possible then that some of us are still experiencing the same thing, but from members of our very own community, with the hashtag DroptheB?

The people behind the Drop the B movement assert that the “B” acronym excludes people who don’t identify in the gender binary. First of all, I have already discredited this fear by including the current definition of Bisexuality from Robyn Ochs. Secondly, our community was built on the fact that we no longer care what other people think of us and we are going to live as we choose to, and everyone else can go jump in the lake for all we care. So why is this still an issue? Let me explain it a different way to help you understand.

For the sake of argument, lets say there are two dairy farmers. The first farmer is in his 60s, he has 40 dairy cows that he and his son milk by hand twice each day. He grows enough feed on his 100 acres of land to keep his cows fed. His farm equipment is far from new but he is proud of what he has and keeps everything he owns in good working order and looking nice. While he isn’t wealthy, he is able to provide for himself and his wife, and pay his son enough so he can support himself along with his wife and children.

The second farmer is in his early 30s. He now owns the farm he grew up on after his father’s untimely death. Because he has a college degree in business, he was able to quickly turn his farm’s small dairy farm into a major corporation. He uses electric milking machines to milk 1,500 head of dairy cows twice each day, he refines and bottles and distributes the fresh milk in his onsite dairy, and grows enough feed for his heard on 10,000 acres of land with the very latest in farm technology and equipment with the help of 60 employees. 

By all outward appearances you would say this young farmer had it all. But what most people don’t know is that when he was a boy growing up on the little farm, just like the one the first farmer still owns, his father beat him daily, in addition to verbally abusing him which emotionally broke his spirit. Because of this the young farmer wanted nothing to do with anything that even remotely reminded him of his father.

When he went to town for supplies he would meet up with the men he had grown up with who all owned farms like the first farmer. They would joke with him because he had gotten too big for his overalls, and was now too fancy to be part of their crowd. He knew they must be jealous of his success and felt bad because they had not been able to do the same thing with their own farms, but it still cut deeply and brought up those old feelings from when his father had abused him both physically and emotionally.

It bothered him so much so he began to believe small farms were a blight to the future of farming and he used his influence and power in the state government to try to make it more difficult for small farms to exist by making it more difficult for them to get loans and grants from the government. He even tried to buy the first farmer’s farm and couldn’t understand why the man wouldn’t sell. He tried to convince him that large dairy farms were the wave of the future and he had no business in trying to keep his small farm afloat any longer because dairy farming just wasn’t done that way any more.

The first farmer couldn’t understand why the young farmer felt the way he did. His little dairy farm certainly wasn’t a financial threat to the young farmer. The land his farm was on didn’t prevent the young farmer from milking his larger heard nor was it land that connected to the young farmer’s acreage, and buying it made no sense as far as he could see. Furthermore, why shouldn’t he be allowed to farm his farm the way he always had? He wasn’t hurting anyone and he was able to provide a good life for himself and his family. 

What the old farmer didn’t know was the young farmer felt threatened by the older farmer. When the young farmer told people he was a dairy farmer he wanted them to view him as he was, a large business owner with money and influence, not like the old farmer and the men who he had gone to school with who were also small dairy farmers. This was all because he cared too much what other people thought of him because of his previous life experiences which caused him to have deep sense of self-hatred because of his past trauma.

So all of this begs the question, whose responsibility is it to make the young farmer feel better about himself when he sees other dairy farmers who farm differently than he does? First of all, no one would blame the young farmer for feeling the way he does once they found out what caused him to have those feelings in the first place. However, if he chooses to wallow in self pity and self hatred because of his past that is his issue and no one else’s. Nor is it anyone’s responsibility but his to come to terms with his self hatred and work through it to the point where he will no longer care what other farmers think or say about him.

How many people do you think would help him if he tried to eliminate all of the small dairy farms in his state if he told everyone that small dairy farms made him feel mistreated and unsafe because all people thought, when he told them he was a dairy farmer, was of the small farm he had grown up on and not the big mega farm he owned? Not too many, I would guess.

That’s why this whole Drop the B movement is so ludicrous. Why is it my responsibility to make you feel comfortable about how you identify, because I identify differently than you? I have written before about how my life became much simpler and more stress free when I stopped caring what everyone else thought about my life choices. This whole issue stems from people’s inability to except themselves and their differences. I am not shaming them for not doing so. Many if not all of us in the LGBTQ community have had these very same feelings and dealt with them accordingly. However, it I should not have to suffer because of your self hatred.

One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln is, “You are as happy as you make your mind up to be.” If these people chose to stop having a pity party about the fact that they are LGBTQ and how poorly they have been treated over the years, and get the counseling they need to finally feel good about who they are, they will no longer be upset about what others think of them. They will finally be able to say, “F you, and the horse you road in on!” I know who I am and I don’t care what you think, say, or do, it doesn’t effect me at all. 

No matter how hard these people try to change how others think and act, the only true power they have to elicit any lasting change is within themselves. 

2 comments:

  1. Bravo!

    I agree with the definition of "more than one" and hell, if someone wants to call themself "pansexual" it's no skin off my butt but my personal feeling is that "Pan" does indeed mean "all" and I think we should stick with consenting adult humans. Jack Harkness is "pan" sexual because he's attracted to sentient individuals of other species. Me, I stick with grown-up humans.

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    1. When it gets down to it, only I will choose how I identify and no one else will tell me that what I have chosen is wrong.

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