From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Why?
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 00:54:27 GMT

In article <1992Nov08.142206.7204@donau.et.tudelft.nl> thomas%knoware.ruu.nl@accucx.cc.ruu.nl (Thomas Okken) writes:
>Why?

>There are certain abnormal behaviours among men, in our present-day western
>culture, that are so widely misrepresented and misunderstood, that I find it
>unbearable to just sit and watch, as people are destroyed by prejudice. I am

How ironic.  See below.

>talking about homosexuality and cross-dressing, and also about
>transsexuality.
>To define these terms:
>- Homosexuality: having or wanting intimate or sexual relations with men
>- Cross-dressing: wearing or wanting to wear women's clothes
>- Transsexuality: wanting to be a woman

Now, why you bother to label these things "abnormal behaviors," I
don't know.  "Abnormal" is a judgment based on some construction of
normality: what's yours?  Also, "wanting" isn't what most of us class
as a behavior.

>Parallel behaviours also occur among women, by the way, but in this article,
>I will concentrate on the male angle. Since I am a man, that is my area of
>expertise.

Uh, right.  Have you experienced all the "wantings" and exhibited all
the behaviors above?  Not to mention all the "normal" ones?  Seems to me
that *everybody* is an expert on this subject.  I hope you have more
qualifications than ownership of certain genitalia.

>When referring to homosexuality, cross-dressing and transsexuality as a
>group, I will call them "unMale" behaviours. This is just for convenience; as
>will become apparent, I make no moral judgment.

Yet you choose a term that is loaded with all kinds of judgments.  Surely
you could find a better term, one that is not so likely to lead people to
assume the very things you disclaim.  

For the record, in what way is male homosexuality "unmale"?  As far as I can
tell, it's *entirely* male.  I know of no male homosexuals among women,
nor is there anything about male homosexuality that does not involve males.

>Psychology
>The individuals who indulge in unMale behaviours are usually labelled
>according to which of these behaviours they prefer; men who have homosexual
>relationships are called "gay", men who wear women's clothes are called
>"transvestites" or "TV", and men who want to be women are called
>"transsexuals" or "TS". It is widely accepted that research into these
>behaviours and what causes them is the domain of the science of psychology.

"It is widely accepted" -- by whom?  Certainly not by anyone I know,
especially those people I know who are actually psychologists, or other
researchers in this area.  Sociologists, anthropologists, historians,
legal scholars all study these things.

>Now it strikes me that psychologists mostly try to find the right labels for
>their patients. 

Why does it strike you?  Do you have any evidence?

For one thing, note that "psychologists" has suddenly undergone a mutation.
A moment ago, psychologists were doing research; now they have patients.
To be sure, some researchers have patients; but many therapists do 
no research, and many researchers have no patients.

Next, "mostly try to find the right labels" -- as opposed to what?  
Performing treatment?  Nonsense.  Finding the wrong labels?  Perhaps.
Labeling is a very small part of a psychologist's job, whether one is a
researcher or a therapist; and it is useless unless one makes the effort
to find out what's behind the labels, what the label might be good for,
etc.  Labeling is *not* a major concern of any branch of psychology.
Your statement is nonsense.

>This tradition was probably started by Freud, who would label
>patients for their abnormal behaviours, and then try to find explanations for
>them, based on a theory of the development of the human psyche from childhood
>to adulthood. At certain points in this development certain things could go
>wrong, resulting in all kinds of different abnormal behaviours.

Wrong.  Freud's theory developed not from labeling, but from observation.
(what happened to some of these observations is another matter.)  Nor
did Freud label his patients; he labeled aspects of their personality.
That the individual patient had to be treated individually, not according
to some routine based on the label in question, was always part of
Freud's doctrine.   

Why are you so hung up on labeling, especially since you do it yourself 
(see above, "unmale")?

>It is not necessary to go into Freud's theories: they are all only based on
>conjecture anyway, 

It *is* necessary to go into Freud's theories if you want to talk about 
them.  You don't seem to know much about Freud, yet you want to dismiss
his work.  That's convenient, perhaps, but not convincing.

Conjecture?  Freud observed a lot of patients, and observed the effects
of various treatments.  Besides, people who live in glass houses...

>and I will replace them with a far simpler model, that has
>at least as much explanatory power as Freud's: abnormal behaviours are
>displayed by individuals who do not fully believe in our cultural values.

a) This is not a model.

b) You don't demonstrate any explanatory value.

c) You have no way of measuring "belief in our cultural values."

d) WHOSE "cultural values"?  Whose are "ours"?

e) What's a cultural value?  How can you determine that a culture does
or does not have a given value?  

f) Do you have even a shred of evidence?  Can you point to a person who
is displaying this or that abnormal behavior and tell which cultural
value he or she is not believing in?  

g) Does this work for all abnormal behaviors?  Is psychosis (and the 
behaviors that go with it) caused by a lack of this or that belief?  
Or might there be an organic source for the behavior?  Likewise, 
cyclothymic disorders, etc.

>This failure to believe in the rightness of our culture will often be caused
>by a child's growing up in unusual circumstances. 

Yet many children grow up in unusual circumstances and don't display the
behaviors you call "abnormal."  So much for explanatory power.

>This is what Freud noted.

Nonsense.  Freud noted no such thing.  Freud insisted that SPECIFIC
traumatic events in childhood caused neuroses.  Not "growing up in
unusual circumstances."

Don't cite Freud if you're ignorant of Freud.

>For example, it is hard for a boy to believe in male toughness if his father
>does not display this toughness. 

a) Freud noted no such thing.

b) Says who?  Have you any evidence of this?  Many boys learn "male 
toughness" -- whatever that is -- from older brothers or uncles or 
cousins.  

>The male and female role models have to be
>learned, they are not innate, 

a) Not entirely true.  Men don't breast-feed.

b) Irrelevant to your theory.  Innate or not, you claim they have to
be there in a certain way at a certain time.

>and if a child grows up in an environment where
>these role models are not shown, he or she may well fail to learn them.

So?  What effect does this have on "unmale" behavior? Can you show 
a causal connection between role model and later behavior?  even a 
statistical one?  As far as I can tell, you're trying to explain something
that isn't there in the first place.

>But what psychologists, in the footsteps of Freud, now do is to regard
>abnormal behaviour as a problem, 

Bullshit.

Which psychologists do this?  Did Freud do this?  Show evidence.

Moreover, what kind of problem are you talking about?  If you mean that
psychotherapists are concerned for the smooth functioning of society
and therefore want to treat people who cause "problems", you're wrong.

If you mean that the people you stigmatize -- yes, stigmatize -- as
abnormal feel pain because of the way they are treated, and because 
they are often unhappy, THAT is a problem.  Undeniably a problem.  And
that is what psychotherapists treat.  Should they stop?

>instead of regarding the common intolerance
>toward those behaviours as the real problem.

It's *part* of the problem.  Besides, what are therapists to do?  Go
out and cure all the intolerant people at once?  Or help unhappy people
live with their feelings?

>Intolerance

>Where does this intolerance come from? Generally, most people would agree
>that variety is a good thing. But unMale behaviour is not regarded as good at
>all. This intolerance has very old roots. It probably originates with
>prohibitions against sodomy and cross-dressing in Jewish law. 

Bullshit.  It goes much further back than that.  Have you ever read
*anything* on the history of homosexuality?

>These laws were
>among the many Jewish laws adopted by the Christians, and through
>Christianity, they found their way into our present-day western culture.

Right.  Greece and Rome and Arabic culture had nothing to do with it.  
Northern European cultures had  no homosexual taboos.  Uh huh.  Get a 
clue.  

>So the intolerance toward men who love men and cross-dressers is originally
>religious. 

Even if your "Jewish" hypothesis is correct, this is a thundering non-sequitur.
How do you suppose the Jews came to include these strictures in their 
religious book?  Don't you suppose there was some cultural issue regarding
homosexuality?  Do you suppose Moses just made this stuff up out of thin air?
Please: THINK about thte things you write.

>This intolerance was very severe at times, so unMale behaviour was
>driven underground.

True in many cultures, including some non-Western ones.  Of course, in 
different times and different places "unmale" meant different things, 
and intolerance took different forms.

>In more recent times, religion has lost much of its power, due to the rapidly
>increasing power of the physical sciences to explain the world without
>needing a god. But even though religion has weakened, its impact on our
>culture persists.

So?  Is cultural anti-gay prejudice strictly a residue of religion?  
Most research says otherwise.

>A strange thing happens: a man who loves another man, who in older times was
>merely a sinner, is now suddenly "abnormal". 

Utterly, totally, ignorantly WRONG.  For the last thousand years, the 
Catholic Church has treated homosexuals quite differently from other
sinners; most sinners were not burned at the stake, for instance, something
the Church has often recommended for gays.  Even today, most churches
treat gayness as quite different from other sins.  The decline in religion
(where it has actually happened) has nothing to do with what you're talking
about.

>No one bothers to ask why a man
>might love another man, and why a prohibition against this was once thought
>necessary. 

a) Bullshit.  Lots of people ask just these things.

b) Prohibitions are *still* thought necessary in many places.  

c) If your "labeling" theory is based on all this misinformation, why not
just start over?

>No one seems to realize that the religious prohibitions against
>sodomy and cross-dressing imply that these behaviours may well have been
>common at one time; 

Oh, give it a rest.  Every Anthro 101 student knows that, not to mention
every student of Ancient Greece.  This is the *first* thing one learns when 
studying religious codes.

>that there probably was a time when men would indulge in
>them without being made to feel guilty.

Non-sequitur.  Do you have any evidence that the cultures that developed
the codes you're talking about had such a Golden Age?  In fact, the 
existence of the codes suggests that there WAS a social problem; why 
invent a rule that solves no problem?

>Why are you gay/TV/TS?

>These days, when a man discovers that the idea of a relationship with a
>certain other man appeals to him, he will very quickly be pushed into the
>pigeonhole labelled "gay". 

Nonsense.  Only if he comes out will this happen.

>He may do this himself, or it may be his
>environment or a psychologist that applies the label. 

When did you start having these fantasies about psychologists? 

>A man who finds that
>the idea of wearing a dress appeals to him will be labelled "TV" in a similar
>manner. A man who finds the male role as a whole to be unpleasant and would
>much rather be a woman, is labelled "TS". For a psychologist, this finishes
>the business: the diagnosis has been made, the patient will now simply have
>to learn to live with it.

I can't believe you've ever  actually *met* a psychologist; if you had,
you wouldn't spout such stupid slander of an entire profession.  (You
would also learn to use more accurate terms: "psychologist" doesn't cover
all the therapists you seem to be talking about, nor is it limited to
therapists.  Freud, your old fantasy-enemy, for instance, was not a 
psychologist.)

>I think this is bad. 

I think Balrogs are bad, too.  But they're fictional, much like your
notion of what "psychologists" do.  Psychotherapists tend to AVOID
labeling their patients, except with specific purposes in mind; in
general, they help their patients to live with their own feelings and
to improve their interactions with the rest of the world.

>When a man is "diagnosed" as being gay, he will more
>often than not find himself in a violent inner conflict. On one hand he will
>be glad that everything is all right, that he is not sick; on the other hand,
>he still believes that loving a woman is the only "normal" thing to do. He is
>being asked to swallow that conflict whole and just forget about it. 

By a "psychologist"?  Not by any therapist I've ever met.  On the contrary,
AWARENESS of the conflict is the first step toward adjustment.  

>He is being asked to "accept his homosexuality".

Make up your mind, if you actually have one.  Is he being asked to
FORGET, or to ACCEPT?  

>But wait a minute! Why does no one tell this man that he is simply in
>conflict with our culture? 

Because that's a WORTHLESS insight if what you wnat to do is help the
person feel better!  Unless you want to make ther person change his
values (which is practically impossible) the only alternative is to
change everybody else in the culture, which is UTTERLY impossible.  
"simply in conflict with our culture" and $1.25 will get you a subway
ride.  It is a meaningless, worthless (*and partly untrue*) statement.
It has no therapeutic value.

Moreover, YOU now seem to want the person to hear this, shrug, and say,
OK, it's not me.  So much for "violent inner conflict." Now YOU want them
to forget it.

>Why does no one tell him that our culture has many
>values that go against human nature, 

Because that would be EVEN MORE STUPID, given that "human nature" is
an undefined catch-all term that can be used to justify any point of 
view, however enlightened or wrongheaded.

>and that finding yourself in conflict
>with your culture is, if anything, a Good Thing, because it shows that you
>have the courage to think for yourself and make your own decisions?

BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T HELP A PERSON IN "violent inner conflict." 

Besides, people -- including therapists -- DO tell their patients all 
of those things, albeit in somewhat more sensible ways.  Again, you're 
fantasy of what therapists do is at variance with reality.

>Why would a man who wants to wear a dress stand for being called "TV"? Why
>not realize that our culture is wrong for giving women an area of
>self-expression - their clothes - and denying this to men?

a) Because it's not true.

b) Because even the part that *is* true isn't that simple.  

c) Because that doesn't help the guy who's having a problem.

>And what about men who want to be women? My heart goes out to all of them,
>and given this culture we live in, I would prefer to be a woman as well. The
>male role is so unnatural, so stressful, so impersonal, so relentlessly
>competitive. 

Oh, sure.  Women don't experience this at all.   

Listen are you 100% stereotype and prejudice, or do you ever think for 
yourself, think in individual terms instead of nonsensical generalization?

>No wonder the conditioning of males fails so much more often
>than that of females 

Does it?  Evidence please.

>- the latter can be themselves so much more in our culture.

Or perhaps we don't notice their pain as much.  Perhaps they are
conditioned not to be themselves.  

>No wonder there are so many more gays than lesbians. 

I thought it was the "conditioning".  Perhaps conditioning of females
is STRONGER and more PERVASIVE.  Perhaps females are offered less FREEDOM.

>No wonder there are so
>many more "male-to-female-transsexuals" than "female-to-male-transsexuals".
>And as for cross-dressers: women in pants, or even suits, are a common sight
>these days. But for a man to wear women's clothes in public was illegal in
>the Netherlands (a supposedly tolerant country!) as recently as 1976.

Proving what?

>Why? Why? Why?

WHAT?  WHAT?  WHAT?  

Look, Thomas, if you'd get off of YOUR prejudice and misinformation and
ignorance and lack of sympathy with people who aren't just like you,
you might learn something.  Until then, you'll be stuck spewing this
sort of babble that has no relationship to real life.  Your "psychologists"
who spend most of their time "lableing" simply do not exist.

>Any man who finds himself in an inner conflict because of unMale longings
>should ask himself "why?" until he finds the answer. 

Which is why so many of them go to see therapists to help them work out
the issues.  (Real hterapists, not fictional "psychologists.")

>The answer is always
>there to be found, despite of what psychologists say. 

Thomas, can you name a SINGLE psychologist who says otherwise?  So 
far, all you've given us is a very vulgar perversion of Freud's thought;
I see no evidence that you know ANYTHING of what "psychologists" say.

>If you suffer from such
>conflicts, a psychologist will be of no help to you: they will simply attach
>a label to you and maybe try to "help you accept it". 

This is a flat-out lie.  You are utterly ignorant of psychotherapy and
of what therapists do to help gay (and straight) people with their 
conflicts.  

>Real help would be to resolve the conflict!

Which is what therapists strive to do.  See, your ideas are already being
accepted!  Gosh, you must be smart.

>Remember: loving a man does not automatically mean you cannot love a woman.
>If you have trouble in relationships with one sex or the other, ask yourself
>why. Saying "I'm gay" does not answer the question, it is merely accepting
>your unwillingness to dig deeper. What were you expecting from women that you
>did not get? Was that your fault or theirs?

Gee, maybe you should open up a therapy practice yourself, you're so wise.  
(Hint: this approach was tried and abandoned decades ago.  It was found
to be worthless.)

>And wanting to be a woman does not mean you cannot be a man. Ask yourself
>what you mean by "being a man". When I hear someone say: "Real men don't wear
>dresses", I would like to answer: "What, you think my dick falls of when I
>put on a dress"? (But I don't; I prefer not to get in barroom fights.)
>Or do you think maleness equates with sexual performance? Having problems
>with sex doesn't mean you are not a proper man. It usually means that you
>expect too much from it, that's all. Sex is not a competitive sport!

Whom are you preaching to? Seems to me you aren't talking to anybody but
yourself.  I know of no gay male who has conflicts that are addressed 
by any of the above statements; all you have to offer is your own 
homilies and bromides and prejudices.  See what I meant above by "ironic"?

The most prejudiced thing around here is your view of gays -- 
followed closely by your nonsensical view of "psychologists."

>Ask yourself why! Don't spare yourself, and don't regard our culture as
>right. Whenever you find yourself in conflict with our culture, it is most
>likely the culture that is wrong, not you.

I bet you say that to *all* the murderers, rapists, etc., too.  

Roger
Newsgroups: alt.homosexual