"A Life Incongruent With Who You Are"
A psychologist wrote to the Chicago Tribune's "Dear Amy" advising her to be careful about dismissing suspicions that a prospective bridegroom was homosexual. He said that there were two cases in his family where women married men who turned out to be gay, and both marriages ended badly. In one case, the man knew he was gay but lived in self-denial; the other "found out" his sexual preference much later. Both men were married for years and had several children before they destroyed their families.
The psychologist believed it was wrong for these men to marry women in the first place, and maybe he was right. But then he concluded, "Being gay is really OK. However, trying to live a life that is incongruent with who you are does not work."
Really? It doesn't work? Sure it does. Or it can. Every decent man who has ever lived has struggled to live a life incongruent with who he was.
For example, most men - over 90 percent, I think - are inherently blay. (Don't look up "blay" in the dictionary: I've had to coin the term because I don't know a name for this condition.) A blay man is one who is not naturally attracted to one particular woman through the course of her life as she ages, changes, and loses the bloom of her youth. Instead, he is naturally and irreversibly attracted to multiple women who are roughly in the 18-30 year age range. Now, a blay man might manage to remain faithful to one woman through a 60-year marriage - but that is only because he chooses to live in denial. He puts up a false front, so to speak, and deliberately lives a life "incongruent with who he is." In his heart, he's flamingly blay whether he admits it or not.
A key feature of blayness is that it is simply "there" as one's built-in sexual orientation. No one chooses it. I know I didn't choose to be blay. Most men of my generation discovered we were blay when, around age 11, it became apparent that Farrah Fawcett Majors and Cheryl Tiegs were so much more appealing to us than the girls of our own age and acquaintance. Popular Islam acknowledges the existence of blay tendencies when it pictures heavenly bliss as the possession of a harem of 72 willing virgins. (Wow! 72. I don't think I'm that blay.)
There are men who, having the resources, live a life completely congruent with their blayness. Hugh Hefner is one example. He has never seen the point of denying himself. His attitude is one that we see reflected in many people who indulge their natural tendencies and can proudly say that they "are who they are." Bernie Madoff, for example, has lived a life that is very congruent with his greedy acquisitiveness. Father John Goeghan lived a life congruent with his rapacious pedophilia. Jeffrey Dahmer lived a life congruent with his natural tendency toward same-specie gastronomy (cannibalism).
These all are or were bad men. It is just nonsense to praise them for living lives of "authentic existence" in accordance with their true inner natures. All moral suasion, and all human decency, depend crucially on the conviction that it is possible, and, in many cases, desirable and necessary, to live one's life in utter denial of one's natural tendencies. In fact, that is the kind of denial that virtually all married men must practice - whether they are gay or blay or anything else.
If you are now living a life congruent with who you are, repent.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Wait, seriously? How are these two things on anything close to the same level? Your description of "blayness" leads me to believe that you think people only value sexual relationships, and that in a moral vacuum, so would you. This might come as a surprise, but most nonreligious people aren't hedonists because we believe that loving, committed relationships are more important than reckless sexuality. We evolved past the clubbing and dragging stage a long time ago.
In this society, most "blay" people have to give up nothing, because for the most part we understand what the consequences of pursuing an abusive, misogynistic lifestyle would be, and we have little reservation about leaving that out as a possibility. Is it fair, then, to say that gay people have to give up something at the very core of their being, and, in the broader sense of love, the human experience, while heterosexuals give up something that they'd probably give up in the first place? And don't get me started on equating loving behavior between consenting adults to cannibalism and pedophilia.
In terms of inherent physical attraction, many of us may be blay, but we choose not to pursue that not out of some religiously ascetic sense of self-denial, but because we've found something better. The psychologist was bang on; between consenting adults, let people love who they want. I sincerely hope that there are few like you, because if any of them happen to deconvert, they seem to no longer have any reason to live as decent human beings.
Pinklemon, a response to your comments are on another post(January 27th). If you are interested, please check it out.
Post a Comment