"The Politics of Dancing..."
This is actually a difficult entry for me to write. For most of you who read it, you will not be able to understand why. Things that bother me tend not to be the things that bother other people. Likewise, things that bother other people sometimes don't bother me. But after reading Cindy's entry on blogging since the election, I really feel compelled to write this because I appreciate her honesty. I feel like I need to be honest in return.

You will all notice that I have had nothing to say about the election. This may not be a surprise because I rarely discuss politics in a classic sense. There are many, many reasons for this. I have never had much interest in the workings of politics, and the primary reason I shy away from political discussions is because, ultimately, political discussions seem to be about fighting. Someone has to win. Someone has to be right. One of the reasons I feel so drawn to rhetoric is because it focuses on nuance and context. It's about complexity. Winning the fight is not the point.

Throughout my life, I have always avoided conflict. It's only recently that I thought about this and realized that I grew up in a house where I never saw conflict. My parents divorced when I was fifteen, and my father's announcement that he was moving out of the house completely caught me by surprise. I have really been thinking about it, and I cannot remember seeing my parents argue or fight with themselves or anyone else. They turned the conflict inward. They sat in silence.

Certainly, this denial of conflict was not a good thing. It gave me a somewhat warped view of the world. The first time Da Man and I had a conflict, I thought it meant the end of our relationship. He was more surprised by that than anything else. But since then, he's gotten to know my family and he sees how things work.

My family rarely talked about politics, either. When I started college during the 1988 election, I met people with strong political opinions for the first time. I found it interesting but I didn't know enough to participate. And it was not like that election was a barn burner. Quayle came to campus and pretty much everyone around thought he was a doofus including the Bush supporters. So, politics ultimately felt like a non-issue on campus. Again, conflict avoided without really trying.

Of course, it's not like I do not have political opinions. I am a gay man who grew up as AIDS was tearing the world apart. The more I think about it, the more I realize how that has played a central role in my thinking about the role that the government plays in our lives. The fact that Reagan never said the word AIDS publicly until 1987 and the fact that other politicians used phrases like "AIDS fags" and the like showed me early that the government was not and probably never would be on my side. Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court decision that validated sodomy laws and basically told me that gay men could be arrested for having consensual sex behind the bedroom door, was decided when I was in high school. I felt outside government ever since I realized that it existed.

Let's fast forward a bit. In this election year, I have not been bothered by Bush supporters. Yes, their votes have a direct, material effect on my lives. I take those votes personally. I don't have any friends who voted for Bush or who would ever vote for an anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-privacy candidate. It's not that I chose to have friends with that political bent. It's just the way things have panned out, to no surprise. In the end, my feelings on November 3rd did not differ from my feelings on November 1st (2004 or 2003 or 1994 or 1993).

I have never had enough faith in the government to believe that the election would work out to my benefit no matter who won. Cynical? Not really. No one has ever called me cynical. Naïve? Maybe. Maybe remembering what Democrats and Republicans did (or did not do) in response to AIDS in the 1980s has taught me never to put too much faith in the government because any amount of faith will end up being shattered. I want to be wrong. I'd be thrilled to be wrong. But I don't think I've been proven to be wrong yet.

However, the greatest amount of pain I have felt in the last couple of weeks has been from Kerry supporters who continually slam the two states that have played the most important roles in my life: Texas and Ohio. I am not going to go into some of the things I have heard because it's getting late. And talking about it with Da Man last week upset me more than I expected. But to those who ask me if I will ever fly back to Texas: No, I'm going to make my 70-year-old mother exert all the effort if she ever wants to see me again. To those who question how Da Man could continue to work in a state like Ohio: See, we have this pesky little thing called a MORTGAGE, and we know too many people who don't have jobs for him to quit his. And those for whom he works have more respect and admiration for him than most of us will ever experience in our own careers.

I have family in those states. I have friends in those states. If you are going to attack the people in those states--especially those who attack every person in those states--I will take that attack personally.

We won't even get into those who say that the reason Kerry lost is because he catered to gay people. That was catering to gays? Yeah, I'm just not going to go there. I know that some people are "venting," but one of the things that I try to teach my students is that you must take your audience into consideration when you use language. If you have the right to vent, I have the right to judge you and your response.

The biggest shock of the past two weeks has been that I have felt more silenced now than I have felt at any other time in my life. That has surprised me. I thought being in a so-called "blue state" would mean I would feel a sense of connection to those around me. I was wrong.
- posted by Nels @ 11:42 PM | | | Link |