Tag Archives: lgbt

Relating to Deaf culture as a queer man

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Posted by maxporter on January 24, 2012 – 10:14 PM
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Remember that post about an identity schism that I just put up? Well, more identity stuff happened today. I am just going to quickly type up this blog post to get it off of my mind, then head out to the barcade and shoot baddies.

Today I gave a presentation to a bunch of Hearing students in an ASL class with an older Deaf instructor. It went really well. After the presentation, the instructor and I chatted for a bit in the lunch room.

She said that cochlear implants are against God’s will – I have a cochlear implant and she knew that. It was quite upsetting because, as a queer man, I have had “it’s against God’s will” used against me. Like, people have sat in front of me with the Bible open on their laps while they quote Bible verses at me for hours (and several tissue boxes, all of which they ignored) to explain exactly why I am such a horrible person for exactly these reasons as stated in God’s book. It’s against God’s will to like people of the same sex, it’s against God’s will to have a gender expression contrary to what God “intended,” all that crap. I don’t want to have it used against me from the Deaf community, too.

I also don’t think that “it’s against God’s will” is the most logical and airtight argument in the world. I’m such an atheist that the notion of creating an ethical code based upon this imaginary person’s desires is just so foreign to me.

Another thing that bothers me about it is that religious notions in Deaf individuals just seems so foreign to me. Religion is something that Hearing people forced upon us. They didn’t – and often, still don’t – care about us until we said, “Okay, we will listen to your teachings of Jesus Christ just so that you can give us food/money/whatever.” So to hear a Deaf person, who probably would not have been religious if Hearing people had not forced it upon her ancestors hundreds of years ago, talk as if God was the only thing in her entire life that mattered – it was upsetting.

Also, this lady said that her body told her that she is deaf, so she obeyed her body and socializes primarily with the Deaf community. Again, this triggered me on the queer aspect. In order to have a fulfilling life, I have had to change my body to be more congruent with my identity. And, upon changing my body, I have been happier because now my body fits my identity. I tried to do it the other way around – changing my identity to match my body – but I was just so unhappy that I had to go ahead and change my body. So, to have this lady sit here and tell me that she socializes with the Deaf community because she has a deaf body – I had to take a headspace break before I could work again.

It also really highlighted some of the downfalls to having a complex identity. For the most part, I like having a complex identity. You can’t make any assumptions about me. That’s okay, because I don’t make any assumptions about you either – to the best of my ability. But it made me remember that nearly everyone else sees identity as a simpler thing. Either you are a man or you are a woman. Either you are deaf or you are hearing. That kind of thing.

I’m very definite in some categories, – I’m definitely that blue-eyed and blond whitey who could never be mistaken for any other race, for example – but I blur the lines on the categories in the minorities that I belong to. Do I act Deaf or Hearing? Neither/both. Do I act gay or straight? Neither/both. That kind of complexity may upset people who are used to a more binary mode of relating to others.

I mean… this lady was saying that I should have an interpreter at work and just sign all the time. Because I guess that being neither fully Deaf nor fully Hearing is too complicated. Which was rude – it’s my life, so let me live it. I tried to convey to this lady that I do share her mixed feelings about cochlear implants – it’s not right for everybody, and it shouldn’t be the first solution that parents go to – but I definitely did not share the fact that I personally appreciate my cochlear implant as a tool that enables me to function in the Hearing world.

Like, I don’t blame her for telling me to not trust Hearing people. She told me that her own brother would make fun of how she spoke. I can definitely see why she would be like, “Fuck the Hearing world!” after that. But the world is not the same as it was in her day. My problems are different than her problems.

It’s just all so complex. Other people see intersectionality as this kind of academic theory that doesn’t really apply to them – I don’t. It’s definitely very much a part of my day-to-day life, and sometimes that makes it harder to find people to talk to.

Alright, time to go shoot those baddies at the arcade.

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Codifying transphobia into media

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Posted by maxporter on December 29, 2011 – 1:16 PM
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In college, I had a negative experience with a bigoted creative writing professor and experienced both audism and homo/transphobia from her. I went into depth about the deaf thing in an earlier post, but I didn’t talk about the queer aspect of it.

The TL;DR version of it is that I wrote a story about a trans man who goes home for Thanksgiving – he began transitioning two years ago, so he is not newly out. At this point, his family is quite accepting, for the most part. However, his mother is unaccepting, so the conflict that arises between them is the central plot point.

Our professor had individual conferences with us periodically, and my conference with her about that story was absolutely horrible. She told me that some of my characterization was impossible because nobody could possibly be that accepting of a trans man. Obviously, transsexual people were inherently disgusting and wrong, so my story was unrealistic because nobody could accept them at that level. Furthermore, she said that there was no way that his brother could accept him as a male only two years after transition because he wasn’t really a man. To top it off, she said that his mother’s prejudiced feelings were quite valid and understandable, then went into this whole long thing about how a mother holds her daughter in her arms and has all these dreams and hopes for her future life as a woman – and, when that child transitions to male, it completely shatters all those dreams. It was awful.

Basically, she was saying that prejudice is part of human nature. I absolutely don’t believe that that’s true – it’s part of a specific cultural ideal that has come to dominate the world. Also, it bothers me when people say this – it’s an excuse for them to not work on their prejudices. Rather than being ashamed of their prejudices, as they should be, they proudly flaunt them as part of ‘human nature.’

Thinking about it, that’s definitely one reason that I decided not to make a career out of being a writer, which I’d considered before. I was like, “If there are experts this bigoted in the writing world – agents, publishers, etc – who have the power to dictate the landscape of contemporary literature, how am I going to get my foot in the door? Will my deafness and queerness forever bar me from participating in the writing world?” I decided that I’d rather work in a nurturing and affirming environment that values diversity rather than constantly have to butt my head against ignorance every day.

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Advice Animal

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Posted by maxporter on December 20, 2011 – 4:20 AM
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Recently, I asked a queer coworker for advice about a queer-related issue. She gave me solid advice and I thanked her. Later that afternoon, I told another coworker – a straight woman who basically hadn’t even heard of LGBT people until a few months ago – about that conversation. Even though she is ignorant, she’s very willing to learn and is open-minded, so we get along. I told her about that conversation so that she’d see some of the nuances of the queer experience, but she offered me advice instead. Interestingly, she gave me the completely opposite advice than my queer coworker did.

Honestly, I’m going to take the advice of my queer coworker. As much as I respect and love people who belong to the privileged population, they simply can’t give advice as relevant as a fellow minority person’s. Someone who is in the same minority as I do has actually lived through similar situations, whereas somebody in the majority culture has no clue what it is like to be in that minority.

It was an interesting situation because I realized that this wasn’t the first time that I’ve gotten advice from non-minorities. That conversation with my straight coworker seemed awfully familiar. After I thought about it for a while, I realized that it reminds me of the advice that I got from my parents. My parents did the best they could, considering that they had had no exposure to queer culture or deaf culture prior to having me, but they were still straight and hearing when all was said and done.

When I was young, my parents were very big on me self-advocating with regards to my deafness. This was, for the most part, a good thing – many colleges and professional environments expect the deaf client to request what they need in order to get services, so learning how to advocate for myself from an early age was an extremely useful skill.

However, what my parents didn’t know is that there are times when a minority individual should choose his or her battles. Sometimes it is exhausting to constantly advocate for oneself. I learned on my own that, as noble as “advocating for myself” is, sometimes I just do not care about the small details in the face of much more oppressive problems. Thankfully, I had access to books about Deaf role models, so I could read about how they handled stuff and apply them to my own life.

Later on, similar things happened with my sexuality when I came out as queer. At first, my parents tried to explain my own sexuality to me. “You’re just confused,” that kind of thing. Of course, I ignored them in this area.

Then, later on, they tried to give me advice – my mom, especially, was very concerned about my safety in a manner disproportionate to the actual threats I face out there every day. I had to remind her that people aren’t gonna automatically know that I am queer and jump me; besides, I know how to handle myself and what social rules to follow in this world as a queer man.

It is all really interesting. I wonder about the motivations of people – sure, they’re just trying to be helpful, but what makes them think that they have advice to offer? I don’t mean to hate on advice-givers – it’s just that it’s a topic that’s irrelevant to your own life, so how do you expect to have knowledge about that topic?

Put it this way – it’s like if I tried to teach somebody how to crochet a baby sweater. I know absolutely nothing about crocheting or babies, so it’d be pretty ridiculous, right? Likewise, I think it’d be ridiculous for me to try to give a person of color advice about dealing with white racism.1 So… as much as I love straight people and hearing people who can be an audience for my venting, I don’t expect them to have any real in-depth knowledge of my experiences. So, I appreciate your intentions, but I can find my advice elsewhere, thank you very much.

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  1. Actually, this is something that I come across every day in work – what is my role in, for example, a discussion between two Hispanic students about the semantics of Hispanic/Latino/Mexican-American? [↩]
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More on LGBTQ youth and boundaries

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Posted by maxporter on November 29, 2011 – 4:20 AM
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In this post that I wrote approximately a week ago, I discussed LGBTQ youth with poor boundaries and came up with a few reasons why the LGBTQ community in general has poor boundaries.

Well, I came up with another theory: trust issues.

My reasoning is this: When LGBTQ youth are coming to terms with their identity and are preparing to come out, many enter a period where they don’t trust anybody. This is especially true of LGBTQ youth from unaccepting climates where it is quite certain that people would reject them.

Most people have at least one friend who they can confide in. People place more trust in people who belong to their support network than in random strangers. So a typical teenager can look around his or her classroom and see a few really good friends that they can tell everything, a few people that they avoid as much as possible, some acquaintances that they get along with but don’t trust as much as their close friends, and a lot of people who are neutral unknown territory.

What happens if LGBTQ youth don’t have this support network and trust nobody? Many end up telling nobody and hiding every aspect of their personality that could possibly relate to being LGBTQ. They bottle up their emotions, building a lot of pressure deep down inside. I think that, when LGBTQ youth come out of this closeted situation, all of the emotions that they have spent years trying to bottle up suddenly come out all at once.

Alternatively, if someone trusts nobody, it can lead to the same behavior as if he trusted everybody. The logic is: Who cares who I tell about my private issues? I don’t have anybody to confide in anyway, so I might as well as confide in the girl who sits next to me in math or a random teacher or something.

I have noticed that newly-out LGBTQ youth sometimes read me as one of them and begin telling me all of their deepest secrets until I am just like, “Thank you for sharing, but I’m sorry – I’m just on my way to the bathroom” or something. I try to provide emotional support whenever I can, but I also say to youth, “Thank you for trusting me, but I am a stranger that you just met – how do you know that you can trust me?”

I mean – it is wonderful that they trust me already, but they have to learn that not all adults will be understanding or supportive, even if the adult in question is also LGBTQ. In fact, sometimes a negative reaction from other LGBTQ people can be more painful than from straight people. For example: I knew a therapist who was a gay man; he told trans youth that they were suffering from internalized homophobia and that they were really gay. He was transphobic in general, even towards adults. It sucked.

Anyway, I think that one reason that youth start sharing every single aspect of their stories with social workers is because the youth have just gotten out of their unsafe environments into a new environment with completely new dangers and safeties. It’s dangerous to sleep on the streets, but at least you have a new network of friends who completely accept and support the LGBTQ aspect of your identity. It’s like shaking a bottle of soda and then opening it: after all that pressure builds up, you remove the cap and it all comes out with no control.

Another factor is that some LGBTQ youth may find that people who they have just met five minutes ago are much more accepting than people that they have known their whole lives. I imagine that this causes even more confusion – if you can’t use the length of a relationship to gauge the level of trust that you can place in a person, how do you determine to what extent that you can trust others?

And I think that another factor is whether being LGBTQ is the first minority/hardship that a youth has experienced. For instance, if a youth grew up in a poor family that received a lot of social services, she understands her relationship to a social worker much better than a youth that was kicked out of his affluent family’s house last week and has never received social services in his life.

Also, I’m not sure if LGBTQ individuals who don’t belong to any other minority are really well-equipped to understand the realities of being a minority in this country. I grew up deaf, so I knew from an early age that we do not live in an equal society free from prejudice. I imagine that some LGBTQ youth grew up under the illusion that they would be treated equally – and received a shock when they learned otherwise. That’s material for a whole other post, though.

So, yeah. I am not sure why some LGBTQ youth immediately attach themselves to authority figures that they read as LGBTQ and why some LGBTQ youth have poor boundaries in general, but I’m gonna continue thinking about it. Anybody have any ideas?

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LGBTQ youth with poor boundaries

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Posted by maxporter on November 23, 2011 – 4:20 AM
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After a few weeks of spending the majority of my waking hours with youth, approximately 1/4 of whom are LGBTQ, I have noticed something: many LGBTQ youth have poor boundaries. Also, some of them attach themselves to the visibly LGBTQ staff very quickly. I talked about this with my coworkers, and they’ve noticed the same thing.

I can remember this behavior in high school – I had one other openly LGBTQ friend who would hug everybody, for example, and cuddle people in class. And, although there were no visibly LGBT faculty members who we were in contact with, we definitely attached ourselves to the liberal members of the faculty.

That behavior continued in college – lord knows that I’ve had to struggle with my own poor boundaries. In fact, one of the best aspects of this job is that I’m finally learning good boundaries, and it’s definitely affecting my personal life positively.

So, I have to ask: why do LGBT youth have such poor boundaries?

I have a theory: I propose that it’s an overreaction to society’s restrictive norms.

One thing I’ve noticed is that gay men tend to have poorer boundaries than lesbians. Well, when I think about the societal ‘rules’ that are in place for men in modern US society, there’s definitely a taboo on any form of contact: men can’t hug unless it’s a bro-hug, men can’t look at other men too directly or for too long, and holding hands is unthinkable.

So, when I see my male youth hugging every single person in the room, I definitely think it’s an overreaction to society’s norms that say that men cannot be affectionate towards each other in a platonic manner.

Another societal norm that many youth have internalized is that their sexual orientation is disgusting/immoral/sinful/evil/shameful.

Imagine being told that many important aspects of your life – who you are attracted to, who you plan on spending the rest of your life with, who you socialize with, etc – are disgusting. What kind of burden is that? Society is basically saying, “Don’t love who you love because your love is disgusting.”

So I definitely think that, in the face of being told that their love for others is disgusting, some youth overreact and become overly affectionate towards their peers, even when it is not appropriate. After all, we have basically taught LGBT youth that their love can be a weapon – it can be a tool to make other people react. That’s a pretty shitty message to send, honestly.

I think it is fine and natural to go through a stage of questioning society’s norms – in fact, I think people should continue to question society’s norms for a long time, even after they have learned to ‘play the game,’ because society is inherently untrustworthy. However, there is a point at which poor boundaries can be damaging to the LGBTQ community. In particular, it can create codependence – I have seen LGBTQ people become attached to other LGBTQ people and do everything with them, becoming dependent on them for all emotional support, even though they are not dating.

And then there’s the fact that some LGBTQ people find it acceptable to act in inappropriate ways – I’m thinking, in particular, of gay men who think it is okay to grope women’s boobs just because they are not attracted to women. That is so far from being okay that it’s not even funny. If these gay men had learned the importance of boundaries and respecting others in the first place, everyone would have been better off.

It’s true that I have some issues with where American culture has placed boundaries as a deaf bi man – why can’t men hug each other? Why is it unacceptable in Hearing society to explain the full story behind your late arrival to work? But when it comes down to it, boundaries are ultimately about respect – it shows that you respect the other person’s preferences. And, if someone has a more restrictive culture than yours, you should respect their boundaries.

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On being a member of invisible minorities

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Posted by maxporter on November 14, 2011 – 4:20 AM
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I belong to many different oppressed minorities, but all of the ones that I belong to are different from most minorities: they are relatively invisible.

I’m deaf – but I speak with a tiny accent and am able to hear a lot (75-85%?) of what goes on. I’m queer – but there are strangers who wouldn’t ever be able to tell.1 In all other respects, I’m pretty much The Man: a white male who doesn’t have to worry about money/class. It’s resulted in some interesting tensions.

Many people who are in minorities undergo identity/assimilation struggles. The choice often is: embrace your differences or shed them to assimilate?

Personally, I’ve definitely gone through these identity issues, but it’s weird for me because I ‘pass’ so often as a white able bodied straight dude in everyday life. The person sitting next to me on the bus may never discover that I am deaf or have any idea that I like men. If I pass so often, that leads to the question: well, what really separates me from The Man with all the privileges in the world? Do I have more privilege than I’m used to thinking that I have because I pass so often? Should I assume that everyone is reading me as The Man and act accordingly?

It’s even weirder because I didn’t always pass so well. I used to be so deaf that I could hardly communicate with anybody but my younger sister and my interpreter, but now people forget I’m deaf. I used to be so gay that people could tell from the next state over, but now I can interact with strangers without experiencing random homophobia. So that evolution from non-passing to complete passing has been strange. I grew used to having much less privilege because I didn’t pass, but now that’s changed.

The thing is that my differences definitely set me apart once they are discovered. I could be denied medical treatment – easily – due to my body if a doctor is uncomfortable treating me. I don’t know if I could always hold my partner’s hand in public. And people assume on a frequent basis that deafness = mental retardation and treat me accordingly. It’s not like I belong to some benign non-oppressed invisible minority like left-handedness – these minorities definitely aren’t treated kindly in this world.

So, when I think about my identity/assimilation struggle – on one hand, I have a tremendous amount of privilege. On the other hand, I… don’t. So that’s interesting, I think.

I have so many questions these days about the visibility of minorities and passing and how it all affects identity. I think it’s time to finally pull Nobody Passes, which I’ve been reluctant to read for some time, off of my bookshelf and read it.

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  1. Honestly, I’m not sure how people read me most of the time – I identify as bisexual. When I was in high school, people could tell a mile away because my gender presentation was so non-stereotypical, but now? I’m not sure. [↩]
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Nonconscious motives and happiness

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Posted by maxporter on September 18, 2011 – 3:00 PM
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Book cover of Strangers To Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson

Book cover of Strangers To Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson

I currently am reading a fascinating book, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy D. Wilson. Wilson explores various theories of consciousness and explains how the unconscious mind plays a larger role in our lives than we would guess. Furthermore, the unconscious is a more complicated entity than psychoanalysts thought of it in the past; far from being a simple Freudian construct of repressed sexual urges, the unconscious mind is a part of our brains that evolved to perform important functions like learning our native tongue or making snap judgments.

One of the topics that Wilson explores is conscious motives versus nonconscious motives. For instance, we may believe that we are fair-minded individuals when, in fact, we are bigots. His central thesis is that, because our unconscious mind evolved to make snap decisions, it is impossible for us to access our unconscious motives.

What I found especially interesting was that Wilson talks about dual motivations: conscious and unconscious. This has a number of interesting implications for our interpersonal relationships; for example, somebody who has met us only once may be able to better predict our behavior than we ourselves are. We do not know our unconscious motives, so we fabricate a narrative of our motives that puts our actions in a good light.

Furthermore, Wilson talks about bringing our conscious and nonconscious motives into sync. This is important because:

“Some individuals… did have nonconscious and conscious motives that corresponded, and these people showed greater emotional well-being than people whose goals were out of sync.”1

Wilson mostly talks about this in the context of careers. For example, one may believe that she is extraverted and is therefore well-suited to being a teacher when, in reality, she is an introvert who would be much happier working as a librarian. However, when I read this passage, I couldn’t help but think of minorities, especially queer people.

I feel like a lot of queer individuals, myself included, go through a period of confusion as to what his or her true motivations are. Am I really gay? Do I really want to present in a masculine manner, or would I be happier presenting in a more feminine manner? What if this is simply a phase? And so on and so forth. I would call this phase a conflict between unconscious and conscious desires: consciously, we want to fit in with society. Unconsciously, we know what we are not the person that society expected us to be.

Today, bullying is a ‘hot’ topic. The logic is that a higher portion of queer teenagers experience depression and anxiety than their heterosexual peers because of bullying and the intolerance of society. I agree that bullying contributes, but I have to wonder if there is an additional component. You see, I personally was never bullied. Maybe I was the luckiest out queer teenager alive, but I cannot ever recall a time when anybody called me a name or shoved me in the hallway or beat me up or whatever. I did, however, feel misery. All throughout high school, I was extremely depressed. I believe that, if I had been an adult rather than a teenager, I would have been immediately diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. Instead, people chalked it up to teenage angst.

Looking back, one major reason behind my unhappiness was the fact that my unconscious motives did not sync up with my conscious motives. It was only when I finally discovered all aspects of my queer identity, came out for (hopefully) the final time, and began living an authentic life that I experienced happiness. So, for me, Wilson’s conviction that it is important to sync up the unconscious and conscious self rings true with me.

The question is, where do unconscious motives come from? Genectics play a role, but what interested me was that Wilson talks about a study that shows that experiences that occur during the prelingual period of a child help to shape the unconscious self. It made me wonder: What happens if parents unconsciously pass on their prejudices? For instance, a parent may roughhouse with their son more than with their daughter, therefore setting up the expectation that the daughter is more dainty and feminine than the son. She may then internalize this self-concept, an idea that her parents may continue to reinforce even after the postlingual period. Suppose that she then grows up and discovers that, after a long period of self-examination and angst, she is happier presenting in a more masculine manner.

The thing is, though, a lot of queer people do not realize that their unconscious and nonconscious goals are out of sync for an excruciatingly long time. I can’t help but feel that wasted years could have been used more productively. If society were fairer, would it prevent this? If we did not place expectations upon or children but, rather, let them play with whatever they wanted to play, they may be better able to discover their unconscious desires. Then, when the conscious mind develops better, they could create goals in sync with their conscious mind.

In the end, I think that there are a lot of reasons that a higher percentage of queer teenagers experience emotional distress than their straight peers. It’s important to tease apart every possible reason so that we can work on changing society for the better. In the meantime, psychological theories give us great insight into a queer person’s mind so that we can help them feel better.

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  1. Strangers to Ourselves p. 91, Timothy Wilson [↩]
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