From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Audience for Sargon Follies (was Re: B.S. forms a synapse)
Date: 23 Aug 92 18:14:27 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Aug23.153320.8675@spdcc.com>
rdonahue@spdcc.com (Bob Donahue) writes:

>I won't let B.S. take any more of my time.  I urge everyone
>to do the same.

Sargon himself is only marginally interesting, and that
mostly in a kind of case-study way (how does a person like
that get formed?).

What *is* of interest, I think, is the audience among us who
in varying degrees resemble the Sargons of this world.  They
know they're gay (I'll leave lesbian and bisexual aspects
for another time), they are extraordinarily afraid of
anything alien to their known universes, and they are
intensely homophobic, not only in the form of self-loathing,
but also in the form of open or barely concealed hatred of
anything or anyone who is "obvious" or "weird" or "not a
regular guy," and so forth.

It is not so unusual for a person raised under the
incredibly constraining socializations of our society to
pass through one or more of these viewpoints or stages, but
it is farily unusual -- to the point of being rather
pathological -- to get stuck there for a long time.

For whatever reasons, Sargon himself is stuck, so entrenched
behind the fortress wall of what he styles as thought that
it's very likely anything short of a complete breakdown
would liberate him.  One should at least show some
compassion for anyone whose situation is *that* desperate.

However, in my view, the majority audience for our recent
range of Sargon responses is not and has not been Sargon
himself.  Rather it is all these others among us, looking as
all of us must once have looked for a way to live in a
repressive and largely hostile world.  In a variety of ways,
many of us, including most of our most forthcoming or active
participants, more or less have it made.  One could choose
many models, but to pick just one who's had a lot of highly
perceptive and very intelligent things to say about many
related topics recently, Arnold Zwicky is a fine example of
the sort of person I mean when I say we have it made.

I invite anyone reading this who has misgivings about their
feelings of sexuality, gender identification, fashion sense,
role models, social patterns or any of that to consider the
examples Arnold has so freely provided.  For one thing, it's
obvious that in no conceivable sense of the word (including,
I believe, every sense pointed to by Sargon-style bigotry)
could Arnold be seen as less than wildly successful.

Nor is Arnold alone in providing a rich lode of things to
consider; indeed as I've read these Sargon responses, one
thing stands out very clearly: coming out, by which I mean
coming *all* the way out, to the point where the oppression
of the dominant society must be enforced with actual,
physical brutality (an option one hopes is never seen again,
but that one knows will be seen) or not be enforced at all,
is the *best* course of action.  Though one must be
realistic (no point getting killed or maimed), in the end,
coming out is the *only* way to be free of the kinds of
hounds Sargon and his demented type actually call down upon
themselves and upon us.

The participants (it's the one thing we can thank Sargon
for) have lavishly offered alternatives to the poisonous
self-repression Sargon advocates.  Diversity being what it
is, not everyone will find every modality comfortable or
suitable in the same degree.  But respect for diversity and
pluralism is indeed the only route to freedom; to be free
ourselves, we *must* respect the legitimate freedoms of
others.  What is evil in Sargon's message is that he so
clearly does not (a more obvious woman-hater there has never
been).

So rather than interpret these postings as rebuttals (for
that is a waste on its face, Sargon is an island unto
himself), I think it makes sense to interpret them as
presenting a large menu of starting points for
self-realization.  That is clearly *not* a waste.

<> I think that the really excellent homophobes should be
<> preserved in Lucite so that succeeding generations can
<> wonder at them, too.
<> -- Vincent Manis (manis@cs.ubc.ca)
<> Funny that you should say that -- when I was in Houston
<> last Christmas I had the chance to see an art exhibit at
<> the Museum of Fine Arts, something from the 50s.  It was
<> exactly what you describe: ordinary, everyday garbage
<> encased in lucite. -- Nelson Minar (nelson@reed.edu)
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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