John Lennon: A "Racist" And A "Homophobe"? Really??

This is in response to a question a friend of mine - a big John Lennon fan - received anonymously :  

What do you say to the homophobic/racist things John Lennon has said?

Present day political correctness is an ideological set of lenses which, if we choose to interpret the world through them, give us an excuse to demonize anyone we want to from the past. We can call Mark Twain, one of the most prominent pro-equality voices of his time a racist simply because he used the word ‘nigger’ in his antislavery masterpiece ‘Huckleberry Finn’, and demand book publishers censor it. We can call John Lennon racist or homophobic - if we choose - because we can play recordings of him making jokes in an Indian accent or using an effeminate voice.

But these judgements are literally meaningless, as you will not be able to find pretty much any other person living through the same time period that didn’t use the same language and share the same cultural sense of humour, which had no cultural stigma surrounding it at the time. Whereas, in the same period of time, using the word ‘fuck’ or even ‘Jesus Christ’ was considered shocking and could lose you your job and/or friendships amongst the ‘good’, ‘moral’ people.

So, unless the person in question took any of this behaviour to some very noticeable extremity - ie, organized lynch-mobs or campaigned to have gay people shot or whatever, it cannot actually mean anything, as there is no valid reference point from their time to compare their behaviour to.

As a thought experiment, imagine in 30 years time the words ‘black’ and ‘gay’ have been made taboo and are now universally reviled. Any writer from today who talked about ‘black people’ or ‘gay men’ would find their books either removed from school library shelves or released only in censored versions, with the future world ‘correct’ terms ‘coloured’ and ‘queer’ (or whatever) put in their place. Video footage of people using the offensive words - such as yourself - are rolled out only to show how evil a person you were, and if you are still alive, why everything you do should be boycotted.

Something like this actually will happen: it’s inevitable. As the old saying goes: “He who marries the spirit of his age becomes a widower in the next”.

Reality continues to exist beyond all the fashions of all ages and all perceptions shaped by ideology can only ever be temporary. People 50 years from now will be far more judgmental of the feminist and social justice mobs cruelly witch-hunting people today over amplified trivialities than they will be of the innocent folk they presently vilify.

Look to yourself and try consider what the very different future will think of your actions today. You won’t get to redo them, after all, and you can be sure all your excuses won’t be any excuse at all.

5 Reasons 'No-One Is Born Gay Or Straight' Is Horseshit

This is a response to E. Jane Ward's article "No-one Is Born Gay Or Straight Here Are 5 Reasons Why". You'll probably want to take a look at it first so the following makes sense: 

FIVE REASONS THIS IS HORSESHIT:

1. The 'reasons' it offers up AREN'T 'reasons at all, only opinions, and opinions hugely coloured by a single, specific ideology at that.


2. Science. There IS no science. Its entire argument hinges on the idea that the body of scientific evidence that exists is there only because the scientists - ALL of them - found only what their society had somehow tacitly instructed them to look for. But of course no science is offered to back up this contrary position. The one source offered in the WHOLE THREE-THOUSAND WORD ARTICLE is a bit of pop culture fluff 'Brain Storm' - which I dimly recall getting out from the library and reading myself - that the author has ransacked for her 'arguments' here. My recollection of the book is that it does precisely the same thing: because it has no evidence of any kind whatsoever, the entirety of the book is simply spent trying to make you doubt the intentions, honesty and results of the thousands of scientists who actually DID experiments and came up with results that make her tiny brain feel uncomfortable.

The best she can manage is to say 'People like to cite “the overwhelming scientific evidence” that sexual orientation is biological in nature.  But show me a study that claims to have proven this, and I will show you a flawed research design.' But of course she has no studies to prove the opposite, and cherry picks a trivial example (the length of women's fingers?) which you've never heard anyone seriously put forward as any kind of final, conclusive proof in the real world.


3. Argument from authority. This is circular thinking: 'Feminists tell us that feminism is correct because feminists tell us that feminist theory is correct'. IF you already believe the radical feminist theory that gender (along with just about everything else) is a social construct (for which, again, there is no empirical evidence) THEN what is being said here MAY make some semblance of coherent sense to you. You'll be able to follow the crazed logic, anyway. If you DON'T already believe what we say.... well then you're simply wrong. AND a bad person.

4. The assumption of a conspiracy to suppress the non-existent evidence to the contrary. Again, no reason to believe this whatsoever. The argument is purely ideological.

Couple random examples of her flawed reasoning:

a)'We may find (as Simon LeVay did) that men who identify as gay share a certain trait—a larger VIP SCN nucleus of the hypothalamus, for instance.  But how do we know that this “enlargement” is a symptom or cause of their homosexuality, and not, say, a symptom or cause of their general propensity for bravery, creativity, or rebellion? '

Well, because there are plenty of brave, creative and rebellious men out there who are not gay. That's why. Again, no evidence OF ANY KIND to the contrary is presented. The entire case for the prosecution is worthy of OJ Simson's lawyer: 'all evidence shows us that this is the case, but HOW CAN WE BE SURE? If there is ANY doubt, of ANY kind, about ANY THING, then obviously OUR version of events (for which we have no proof at all) is correct!"

b)'When young college men stick their fingers in each other’s butts while being hazed by their frat brothers, we don’t call this gay — we call this “[b]oys gone wild!” '

Um, no... I think most people would call that pretty damn gay.


5. The argument throughout is that science has found only what it was looking for and ignored or refused to believe any evidence to the contrary. But she shows no awareness of any kind that this precisely is what the entire article she has written is doing. She is, for instance offering up the argument that gender is a social construct, when that itself is an IDEOLOGICAL construct, with (once again) no actual evidence to back it up.

By her own admission, she is a girl who used to like men, went to university, got into feminism, took a women's studies class which taught her she should be repulsed by the men she previously desired and so now FOR EXPLICITLY POLITICAL REASONS is living as a lesbian(!) (go look - I'm not making this shit up).

Now, the number of people who can identify with THIS particular experience of sexuality is statistically very, very, very small, but she is insisting HER (current) experience is not only valid for her but the objective, fundamental reality for everyone else ('Don't you see it's SOCIETY that is telling you don't want to go to bed with me?!!')

The only thing this article demonstrates is how political ideology can fuck your head up and prevent you from acknowledging what is observably happening right in front of your face. It certainly would be fascinating to come back in 20 years and see how this woman is living then.

5 ½. What is most repugnant about all of this is you would think any sane, compassionate person in favour of gay rights would welcome ANY evidence that people are born gay or lesbian: you can't, after all, send your child away for electroshock treatment or off to a Christian camp to be 'made normal' again if it is widely understood that your child simply is born the way they are, the same as if they are autistic, or dyslexic or lactose intolerant or whatever the hell else.

It's perplexed me for some time why anyone would be making these arguments - they seem so backwards, cruel and nonsensical - It makes sense only when you realize this has nothing to do with gay rights at all, that the position is being argued only for political reasons: to concede any biological realities of sex would weaken and run contrary to what I guess Marxist feminists would term 'Social constructionism of gender differences' (though I confess I do not know the ins and outs of their arcane gobbledegook terminologies).

If I were gay I would find it deeply insulting to have someone tell me that I desired people of my own sex only out of personal choice, and that I could CHOOSE to be different if I only tried. Just as much as I find it insulting to be told my desire for women is societally created too.

The whole sorry business is couch-jumping crazy, and in my humblesque opinion it is only because of the aggressively maintained insanity of Marxist-derived PC culture that this kind of thinking hasn't been laughed out of every discussion of sex the past 40 years, the same as talk of succubuses and the aphrodisiacal effects of ground rhino horn.

Ye gods!

All Women Are Homophobic!!!!

The thing that stands out most to me about this quote - fantastically wrong on so many levels - is how clearly it demonstrates something I've been saying for quite some time, and that is this: All women are 'homophobic'.

Yes yes I know the etymology of the word but whether the men being prejudiced against are gay or not is kind of beside the point - all women, to a greater or lesser extent, at the very least display the 'symptoms' we attribute to said condition when manifested in men: overt caution, fear and/or disdain of men.

The woman originally posting this foolishness is quite happy to burble forth the conviction that all men should be treated as potential sex criminals - by both sexes. The only thing that marks this out as even slightly unusual in our present era is that she appears to be excusing or even encouraging distrust of homosexuals in order to make her greater point of distrusting all other men. Apparently the key thing to remember here is just so long as you are hating men (gay or straight), you're good to go.

Female 'homophobia' is so normalized in our society that treating every man you meet like 'Schrödinger's Rapist' is considered an ordinary, common sense fact of life - just so long as you are a woman. But if a man feels at all uncomfortable around another man sexually, he is generally branded an evil bigot for behaving the way all women do at all times.

Not that behaving that way is a healthy way to be, of course: hating  anyone - homosexuals, lesbians, heterosexuals, women or men simply because they are homosexuals, lesbians, heterosexuals, women or men, is a pretty woefully unenlightened way to go about one's life. But even if we were to accept that the reaction being discussed (which often comes down to no more than a heterosexual disinclination to celebrate homosexual acts) is a pathology of some kind, a 'phobia', like arachnophobia, or nomophobia, or ouranophobia even, it must surely be the only medical condition we know of for which the only recommended treatment is to be treated with contempt and ostracization by everyone you meet.

Still, if it works, I suppose. Maybe it's homeopathic or something.

Homophobia is the one kind of misandry you're presently not supposed to consider worthwhile and deserved. All the others are still fine and dandy, though.

What I find so strange about the times we are living in is how we compartmentalize bigotries, and label them either 'good' or 'evil'. Whereas, before this Maoist theory-derived age of Political Correctness, we used to just tell people 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you', or 'treat people the way you want to be treated yourself'. We used to call this 'The Golden Rule'.

And isn't that better? I mean, if you really take those words seriously, wouldn't that actually make you a better person than one who can be manipulated into hysterical overreactions over the difficulties facing one group of human beings while congratulating themselves for openly expressing contempt for another? Wouldn't that be a better way to have spent one's life, in the long run?

There's a blogger by the name of Chelsea Fagan who wrote something in response to that original quote, but I find it also tidily addresses the perils of the underlying 'rape culture' narrative that feminism has promulgated for at least the past 50 years. In her conclusion she says:

 If we lived in a world where to show even a trace of sexual or romantic interest in another person was somehow a reproachable or even criminal act, could you imagine the consequences? How could we fall in love, marry, reproduce? How would we break the barrier with someone we are interested in? We all start off as strangers, and to make someone’s innocent flirtation or starting of a conversation into a justification for homophobia is absolutely repugnant.

A man — gay or straight — respectfully hitting on another person is not a cause for bigotry, it’s not a cause to treat all men as potential predators, and it’s not a cause to reinforce hatred. This quote has successfully justified a young man in his homophobia, reinforced the idea that all men should be treated as potential predators until proven otherwise, and demonized the act of flirting with another person as something that should be feared and, ultimately, reviled.

Sho 'nuff.

Anyhow, to recap:

If any men behave like all women do all the time, they are to be considered very bad people. That's all your society needs you to remember at this point in time.

And once again I am forced into the philosophical position that it sure is a funny old world. 

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