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Sympathise, don't empathise
Mar. 1st, 2012 01:31 amSo, I was talking about how Beloved’s parents aren’t exactly super-duper thrilled about be, or mine about him for that matter – and I was quickly informed by an empathetic person that they totally understood, they didn’t get on well with their in-laws either. See, they understood what it was to be rejected by your loved one’s family.
But it’s not a matter of my in-laws not liking me or my parents not liking Beloved. Even if Beloved or I were completely different men, our parents would still be hostile. We cannot have a relationship that would possibly meet their approval. Every potential relationship is wrong. It would actually be better for us not to have relationships, in their eyes, than have any of the relationships open to us. Our very capacity to love is flawed in their eyes. They weren’t just rejecting our partners, they were rejecting us. And that is so extremely different from your in-laws not liking you very much.
I spoke about the difficulties of the closet and the evils it perpetuated on us. And someone told me how they understood because they were “closeted” about their political position (in fact. The Tories actually ran an advertising campaign based on the concept).
See, they wanted to say, they understood how hard it was to be closeted, because they had to hide too!
Except there is a world of difference between political opinion and actual being. Except they didn’t have to live with constant societal rejection and invisibility. Except they didn’t have the shame and self-loathing and the history of conversion therapy, bullying, suicide, substance abuse, familial hatred and everything else that goes into the soul-destroying closet. They had none of this context behind them to make such a gross statement.
I spoke about how slurs hurt, how they made the whole world cringe for me and how dehumanising they were. And someone told me that someone called them an anti-gay slur once because they thought he was gay!
See, they wanted to say, they understood what it was like to be called that nasty name, because they’d been called it too.
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But it’s not a matter of my in-laws not liking me or my parents not liking Beloved. Even if Beloved or I were completely different men, our parents would still be hostile. We cannot have a relationship that would possibly meet their approval. Every potential relationship is wrong. It would actually be better for us not to have relationships, in their eyes, than have any of the relationships open to us. Our very capacity to love is flawed in their eyes. They weren’t just rejecting our partners, they were rejecting us. And that is so extremely different from your in-laws not liking you very much.
I spoke about the difficulties of the closet and the evils it perpetuated on us. And someone told me how they understood because they were “closeted” about their political position (in fact. The Tories actually ran an advertising campaign based on the concept).
See, they wanted to say, they understood how hard it was to be closeted, because they had to hide too!
Except there is a world of difference between political opinion and actual being. Except they didn’t have to live with constant societal rejection and invisibility. Except they didn’t have the shame and self-loathing and the history of conversion therapy, bullying, suicide, substance abuse, familial hatred and everything else that goes into the soul-destroying closet. They had none of this context behind them to make such a gross statement.
I spoke about how slurs hurt, how they made the whole world cringe for me and how dehumanising they were. And someone told me that someone called them an anti-gay slur once because they thought he was gay!
See, they wanted to say, they understood what it was like to be called that nasty name, because they’d been called it too.
Read More