Disgusting

Thank Suzanne for the following link: Raping lesbians to "cure" them in South Africa. Beyond vile.

ﾠhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/1...pe-south-africa

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Understand that when I talk about stuff like this, I'm not trying to let the perpetrators off the hook. In fact, I would be happy to shoot the bastards in the head. But I always look at things in the context of "what the hell is going on, and how do we get to health?" From the obsessive perspective of balance, no, I don't blame this on "men" any more than I look at the fact that most of the art, science, and heroism has been done by men and think that there is something wrong with "women." No...my position is that there is something far more insidious and subtle going on. Understand that about me going in.

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So what do I look at when I try to understand something as hideous as the above events

1) "Core Transformation": every action is an attempt to come closer to the divine. OR: an attempt to unite with a loving force, or find a feeling of spiritual/loving connection.

2) The destruction wrought by colonialism, and post-colonial collapse.

3) The belief that our natural state is one of growth, self-discovery, and movement away from pain toward pleasure.

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With individuals, when I try to understand who someone is, I look at the three major aspects of their lives: body, mind/career, relationship/spirituality. Taking the position that any digression from a path of growth and evolution is evidence of damage, and that any act of violence is actually an act of fear, I've been able to psychologically disarm muggers and work with prisoners in the maximum security block. If psychology is quantum sociology, then the same principles should apply to groups.

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Viewed that way we have a culture yanked through thousands of years of technological development in hundreds of years, vast imprintation of negative self-imagery for generations, and tribal boundaries destroyed by lines drawn on maps. In other words, all of the processes that ordinarily take human beings slowly and (relatively) elegantly toward higher levels of social organization torn to hell. I remember being relieved when the Soviet Union fell apart, and violence erupted in former Soviet satellites. Why? Because I was SICK of going to cocktail parties and having white people (yes, mostly conservative) ask me what was wrong with blacks, why couldn't they stop killing each other in Africa, etc. etc. When white people started killing each other in similar ways in Europe, for some odd reason, they stopped asking me those questions. They got it. Oh...this was a HUMAN problem, not a "black" problem.

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I've been distressed by the degree of homophobia in the black community in America, but I feel like I understand it. Consider the popularity of black men dressed as women, black men portrayed as sexless, black women sexually available to white men...all of the imbalance of the natural balance of male and female energy. This creates literal fear, which leads to anger and projection of personal damage onto others.

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Black male fear that they ARE what their surrounding culture implies they are. (All humans do this, of course.) This leads to violence and self-destructive behavior (riots in communities where little of the property is owned by the rioters) on the social level, as well as violence in the home and the personal level. Sex substituted for love, "making money" for running an honest sustainable business.

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ANY time I see behavior that could not be sustained over many generations, I know I'm seeing dysfunction, regardless of how much people scream that individuals have the freedom to do whatever they want. What I see in gay-bashing is terror that the "evil" urges most men feel within their own sexual natures is walking in representative form in the outside world. Destroy the "evil" and you are safe. You prove that you aren't one of them.

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And men who attack and fear lesbians are, in my mind, men who are terribly insecure in themselves, in their sexuality and personhood. To think that a woman would be more attracted to another woman than to them is dangerous to an already fragile ego. In other words, when the world is out of control, when you don't know where you fit, when you are consumed with blind terror that you might be the non-entity that the outside world says you are...

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You fall back on whatever "security" can be found in social norms. Now, this is a form of Conservatism, but I don't mean it in the political sense normally used. More like: "what has worked? What did my grandfathers say and do?" There is security there...but also hideous abuse.

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The men who do these things are, in my mind, too damaged to be re-programmed. Personally, I'd rather they die, and I'd spend my time raising the next generation in a healthier fashion. They have reached the point of the "Internal chorus" singing in their heads telling them what to do and approving of violent actions. There is no known mode of social rehabilitation.

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Do I think that a technique like "Core Transformation" could help them? Sure, but I remember Jerry Pournelle did a qualitative analysis of different therapy techniques when he was in his psychology doctorate program. And the result he got, that I agree with completely, is that there IS NO DIFFERENCE in success rates. The difference is in the personal health of the therapist. In other words, if the therapist has resolved the issues, he or she can help the client resolve them. To put it yet another way, you have to want to grow up to be the therapist, in a manner of speaking.

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How many human beings are evolved enough to look at a man who has raped and/or murdered for the sake of cultural honor and personal fear, and see the love inside them? See what that little boy could have been, if raised by a loving mother and father and community and shown the doorway to excellence and joy, and made to believe that he was one with the force that created the universe? Taught to respect and love all of creation? I would say that most therapists suffer from the Optometrist Syndrome: Most Optometrists wear glasses. Most therapists seem to go into the field to heal themselves. In other words, they start out being MORE screwed up than average. Then they get lost in a maze of competing intellectual theories about how it all fits together. Waking up your kundalini backwards, anyone?

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Crap. So what is to be done? I would say educate the women of the world. Catch the rogue males and isolate or, frankly, exterminate them if necessary. Train little boys with both love and discipline to channel that critical destructive energy into protective and creative channels. Train little girls to respect themselves as keepers of the keys of civilization.

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And acknowledge that we can't help everyone, that some problems take generations to work out. I hate watching it happen, but this shit has been going on since the beginning of our species, and we don't seem to be killing ourselves off. I believe that there is less rape and child abuse than there has been in the past--but we HEAR about it far more. It turns our stomach, and so it should. We must never, ever be satisfied with the current situation.

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And more than anything else, we must root out the pain and fear and anger within ourselves, become as strong and successful as we can be as individuals, because individuals make societies, and societies can change the world.

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