homophobia

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Out And About

Submitted by Christina Engela on 10 August, 2011 - 09:45
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Outing.

How do you feel about it?

I'm referring to the willful public exposure of individuals against their will, and without regard for their health or well-being. Quite often this is an intentional act of spite - sabotage - intended to ruin the life of the victim. An act of malice, to injure them, sometimes an act of revenge.

On Saturday I heard from a young friend that he had been outted and he was very distressed. It seems a love interest of his had tricked him into holding an intimate conversation via blackberry messenger, which he then showed to other people as proof that my friend is gay. There was also a phone call in which they discussed intimate details of getting together and formalizing their relationship, which had been something of an on-again-off-again thing over the past 2 years. My friend is 20 and the love interest 21. This guy shared the entire conversation with his mother, who is connected to my friends family by way of a second marriage to one of his relatives. Apparently she had also been allowed to listen in on the telephone conversation. My friend told me this woman had been calling all his close family and informing them that he is gay. His sister had called him to inform him of the situation and to ask what was going on. He was left with little choice but to come out to his mother before she received the same phone call.

This love interest of my friends seems by all accounts to be one of those guys who suffers from internalized homophobia, being incapable of accepting his own sexuality, while maintaining an overt heterosexual dating life, being all macho and outwardly homophobic - and meanwhile back at the ranch, he is equally comfortable in the sack with a guy. But just don't tell anyone about it. It is our little secret. It is little wonder then that this malicious act leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. Was it some last ditch attempt to prove to the world, at the expense of another person's dignity and privacy, how "straight" he is?
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A Place In The Sun

Submitted by Christina Engela on 27 June, 2011 - 11:41
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No matter what I am or what I have done, I am also just as human and just as flawed and vulnerable as anyone who thinks they are perfect, or stronger, or better than me. Nevertheless, it seems there are always people who think that because I am not straight like them, and not living the gender I was born in, that I am anti-social, have a persecution complex, a huge chip on my shoulder, and am either less intelligent than they are, or that I am just plain stupid.

All told, I had a pretty interesting week.

Friday night I attended a small informal event at a cosy straight-friendly pub in Central Port Elizabeth at which the new SA gay flag was being passed around, promoted and even sported as a clothing accessory. It was nice to see people embracing a symbol of our diversity, even as I noticed the stark absence of the lesbian component of our community at events in this city. As usual I was drowning in testosterone, albeit pink.

Where were the lesbians? Where were the trannies? "Who cares?" Someone said - reminding me of the saying "out of sight, out of mind". And isn't that the truth? Our different groups socialize apart from the rest, forming little cliques. And then we sometimes have the audacity to wonder what happened to the "community"? Some people later wonder why they have been excluded from any of the planning of x, y, and z. What a cheek.

And then I looked at the item being billed as the "gay flag" for South Africa. Gay flag. Says everything, doesn't it? It has stripes of all the colors which represent each group making up the Pink Community, but somehow it winds up getting called the "Gay Flag". How did that happen? And why didn't I get the memo?

A friend told me of his frustrations at getting people in this burg to actually show up for anything without booze, smokes or some other form of entertainment laid on for free, gratis and for nothing. I empathized. Having had a hand in the planning of several under-attended and even cancelled-due-to-lack-of-interest events in the past, I knew exactly where he was coming from.

A few things were said at this event by some, about how fortunate we as the Pink Community are to live in South Africa, and about how "concerned" our government is with our welfare, about how important our well-being, dignity and protection is to the government and so on, and so on to the point where I wondered who they were working for. I cringed. "Are these guys for real?" I asked myself.
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The Blood Feud Continues...

Submitted by Christina Engela on 23 June, 2011 - 12:46
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I keep hearing the SA blood "service" whining about another blood shortage - but at the same time they continue to refuse to accept blood from people who are gay. They won't accept the perfectly good blood that the Pink Community willingly offers - so as far as I'm concerned, they can just whine and whine till they run dry.

They have no reason to not accept our blood. None. Only the terminally stupid or ignorant believes that blanket discrimination is the best way to protect people from receiving HIV infected blood. The problem here is their clear refusal to screen for HIV infected blood - but they clearly have no problem with discriminating against people. And surprisingly, they are allowed by SA's government to continue blatantly thumbing their bigoted little noses at the non-discrimination clauses in our Constitution. What gives?

Every complaint against their unjustifiable bigotry and prejudices has been met with skepticism, regurgitation of right-wing rhetoric asserting the deluded opinion that HIV is caused and spread exclusively by gay people - and that mainstay of South African culture - apathy.

The SA National Blood "Service" bans all gay people who are not sexually inactive for less than 6 months from donating blood.

They also ban blood from males on the grounds of anal sex - as if straight people and women don't indulge in anal sex. Uhuh. Right. Clearly these jackasses should watch a little of the pornography they take a so-called moral stand against - they would be educated quite quickly into abandoning this little fantasy of theirs - and naturally I am referring to the heterosexual variety.
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I Woke Up This Morning

Submitted by Christina Engela on 13 June, 2011 - 10:30
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I woke up this morning, alone. The space beside me, cold and empty. You should have been there, but you weren't. Your pride was too strong and you were too good for me, remember? Well, I do. How could I ever forget?

You said you could handle my past, you said you could face the future by my side. But somehow both issues became just too steep for you to climb over. What I am and what I was before was just too much for you to accept or deal with, your misplaced faith that I could be anything else just too much for me to give in to, or capitulate.

Nothing in this universe could stop the process I went through to become who I am, nor turn it back to what I was, nor make me perfect enough for me to be acceptable to you. And so here we are, two opposites in a world of opposing forces, assigned labels like 'good' and 'evil' simply for how we come into this world, how we cope with it, and how we go out from it. In a world where we are taught too much that it matters, how can I blame you any further?
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Christo-fascism Anti-fun Police At Work In SA

Submitted by Christina Engela on 8 June, 2011 - 09:15
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In recent times I began pondering more deeply about religious matters. Having come from a Christian background, I am more familiar with the way things work in what Pagans tend to describe as a "book religion" - by this is meant - a religion which is defined by a set of rules in a book, and a dogma which is taught and enforced in its temples, homes and wherever its adherents go.

The concept is firmly aimed at extending control over its adherents. You're not allowed to question or challenge anything. You're not supposed to innovate or find your own path or "cherry-pick" which principles in the book you're going to adhere to, and which not - which oddly enough is precisely what the fundamentalists do, even though they certainly won't admit to it. You're not supposed to think, argue or challenge anything - and least of all, to test it for yourself. You're supposed to do nothing but follow, keep your mouth shut, trust, have faith - and above all, to obey the doctrine.

Anyone who doesn't comply is outside the church, outside the law and out of "the grace of god" - or so they clam. When you begin to pick at the stitching holding this bag of nuts together of course, it begins to unravel somewhat dramatically.

The entire concept of a book religion is a house of cards - built on the foundation of the book itself. Therefore it can never be more firm than the foundation upon which it is set. It is claimed that the book is the work or writing of the foundational god of the book religion itself - and once you realize that "hang on a minute, some blokes wrote all this stuff down" - it's pretty much a domino effect from there. That's right - for a book to be entirely produced by the central deity of the religion - i.e. a set of laws given by it to Humanity itself, would amount to tantamount proof of the existence of that deity. Unfortunately, not one single copy of the Christian bible (or any other holy book) has been found with any signs that it was written by anything other than ordinary mortal men - no matter what their adherents claim. Oops.
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Bed-knobs And Broomsticks

Submitted by Christina Engela on 6 June, 2011 - 18:32
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If people today think of anyone who is sexual, or who enjoys sex, as "immoral", "deviant" or "undesirable" today - it is because of religious indoctrination. If we think of people who abstain from all sexual activity, and those who remain virginal through their lives, living by a code that sex is for procreation and not enjoyment, it is because of the puritan hangover left us by folks who were too afraid to see themselves naked lest it cause them to think sinful thoughts - and with an obsession about the afterlife and where they would spend it - instead of enjoying and celebrating the life they had.

Older civilizations did not suffer this afliction. Historians can bear me out when I say that the Roman, Egyptian and Greek civilizations did not fall because they were sexually wanton by today's "Christian" standards, or because they were "morally corrupt" or "sinful". In fact, Rome fell because it had become militarily weak, and ironically enough, at this time the state religion was Catholicism. Hmm.
Many people today spend a great deal of time meddling in the lives of others, working to limit their options, delineate their freedoms, and suspend their liberties - and they do so from a blatant and overt hyper-religious angle, attempting to force other people to embrace the same litany and adhere to the same liturgy as they hold to themselves. Of course, we all should know that not everyone is the same, looks the same or feels the same about everything, so why should people all be forced to think, feel, believe and speak or act the same way? And how can one group, in all fairness decide that IT should be the model which all others should adopt and be held accountable to?
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Blasphemous Rumors

Submitted by Christina Engela on 2 June, 2011 - 08:42
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I know I have been quiet lately, but it's just because I've taken the weekend off. Honest. Rumors of my being raptured are greatly exaggerated - in fact, I am still here, and so is my underwear drawer, which still needs tidying. Damn.

I am typing this article on the morning of Sunday 22 2011. I am still here, and so is the house I live in - and the cars parked outside tell me the businesses across the road are doing their usual booming breakfasting business. The city around me is not on fire and there haven't been any tsunamis during the night. My mother woke up this morning, as usual, and shuffled past my door - so I knew she was still here. All is right with the world then.

As I expected, the May 21 "rapture" was a bust. Partly I was a little disappointed, because I had accepted invitations to several events on Facebook, such as the "Post-Rapture Party" and the "Post-Rapture Looting", which I admit, I had been looking forward to a little. In fact, I already had been eying those fancy cars some of the folks from Harvest and Word of Faith drive around in - unless they took to selling or giving them away in anticipation of being "raptured" of course. Hehe. I can only imagine the arguments to follow.

Be that as it may, it is now May 22, and nope, no Rapture. Some of you, a very few, may wonder what this "Rapture" is supposed to be. My mother, who has been a Christian her whole life, is one of them. Simply put, the Rapture is supposed to be the start of the end times, when all the "good Christians" vanish from the Earth, cars and planes crash with nobody to fly them, to be taken to God, Jesus, Heaven etc. People just disappear, leaving behind perhaps no more that a set of empty clothes and maybe a half-eaten hot-dog - which has prompted some folks to attempt some interesting pranks!

The Rapture supposedly leads up to the rise of the "anti-Christ" and ultimately the end of the world - because, as everyone knows, civilization simply could not exist without the Conservatives.
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Come To The Dark Side - We Have Cookies Too

Submitted by Christina Engela on 23 May, 2011 - 11:39
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Christians - you just can't seem to win with them. If you're gay, you're evil. If you're not religious, you're evil. If you're an atheist, you're a "willing pawn of the devil". If you believe in another god or gods, or even call their god by another name, you're evil. If you are tolerant of other faiths, or of homosexuals - then you're "misled", "backsliding" or yep, evil.

If you're gay and a Christian (horror of horrors), they want to cut up your membership card and deny that you are part of their club (or ever were), and when you abandon their faith or even go so far as to change religions and want nothing more to do with them, they still persecute you because you have somehow "proved them right" - and then they see you as an even bigger "threat" to their paranoiac little "worldview".

Many Christians automatically assume everyone else is a Christian too, or if they aren't, should be - which is why I often receive these annoying spam chain letters filled with snarky comments about Muslims or other faiths - or about us dirty rotten trannies and queers who just don't seem to get the message. God has got our number and will be coming round to punish us for our "sinful lifestyle choice" - oh yes, and presumably to pat them on the head for a job well done. And quite often, these people do not realize the harm they do to their own image and their own cause - take for example the following:

The world is always ending, the sky is always falling, and there are always "signs of the end times". I am seriously looking forward to the 22nd May 2011 - because I am going to taunt every fundamentalist half-wit who sent me a chain letter about the end of the world being nigh on the 21st with: "Hey guess what, the world didn't end yesterday - don't we feel stooopiiid?" LMAO. Just like the other twenty-odd dates I've heard of in the past few years. What happened? Was it postponed? Cancelled due to poor attendance? Why didn't I get the memo? LOL. Now, ahem - before someone runs off to report me for being a "Christophobe" (that one was specially for "Dr" Peter Hammond of the FF and CAN conglomerate whose wonderful book exposed our cunning plan to take over the world), let me move on to my point.
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SA - Not So Liberal After All

Submitted by Christina Engela on 5 May, 2011 - 12:36
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Not interested in politics? Not interested in how the government spends its time - and your money? Really? Think we live in a nice, quiet, safe country where all is right with the world? The government is benevolent and doing its best to deliver all the things it claims to? Think it lives up to our Constitution? Think it cares about all the people who live in South Africa? Think there is no reason to be concerned with anything to do with politics?

Who is still naive enough to think we aren't already living in a police state? Come on, don't be shy - put your hands up.

Think about it for a moment. No, really.

The South African Police "Service" have resumed the use of a military rank system - and their "General" has told them for all intents and purposes to shoot first and ask questions later - and to shoot to kill. People accused of crimes, innocent or not, spend years in prison awaiting trial. The recent spate of police brutality and excessive force and unjustifiable violence has resulted in comparisons between the current Police "Service" and the old Apartheid-era Police "Force" - and these comparisons have been made not just by the average citizen - but also by those formerly oppressed by the old Police Force. Looking at it closely, one can understand perfectly why.

Two weeks back, a local activist in Ficksburg was brutally assaulted and then shot dead by a group of policemen in riot gear - this despite the fact that the man was not even resisting them. The fact that this transpired openly in front of press cameras and journalists, speaks of a shameful devaluation of human life and threatens to redefine the term "transparency". Last week, an unarmed civilian was shot dead by a policeman in the street outside a police station while in her private vehicle, apparently after colliding with a parked police vehicle. It is as though the average police officer these days doesn't care a damn what they do and who sees it and knows about it - because the "boss" said it is "okay" and they are after all, "only doing their job". Also last week, it was reported that a policeman at a crime scene refused to call an ambulance for a wounded victim despite repeated pleas to do so because "she was going to die anyway". And yes, the victim did die - but who made this policeman an expert in the medical field? The fact that she did die doesn't prove him right - if anything, it makes him complicit. So first we had "shoot to kill" - now we have cops who think they are qualified to decide whether shooting victims will die or not. We now have police officers who seem to think they are the law and they are above it.
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