Matthew Shepard

[synapticjava]

stonering's offer to knit me a scarf, the "Matt" scarf in memory of Matthew Shepard has stirred up a lot more feelings than I can physically handle right now.

Why us? Why him? Why can't people just accept it? Why do so many of us get bashed or killed, or kill ourselves? Why does it have to hurt so much because a great majority of us can't be honest with those who pretend to love us, can't be honest with ourselves?

It doesn't make sense to me - I don't understand it. Maybe someone can explain it to me, because it doesn't seem psychologically correct to hate a group of people with such a passion. It doesn't make sense to me that I can't walk down the street without fear. It doesn't sit well with me that though things are changing, that there's a *need* for things to change. Can someone please explain this to me? Can someone tell me why people hate at all?

Not just those in my community, but everywhere. Why do so many people get disgusted when a black person and a white person kiss? When a man and a man or a woman and a woman show affection?

Maybe I don't understand because I'm on the recieving end. Maybe I don't understand because there's something wrong with me. I just don't get it - why is it okay to beat the queer boy in the lunchroom or at recess until he has blood running down his face and scars so deep no surgeon or therapist can ever remove them. Why is it alright for a girl to be raped by some biggot who thinks he can show her the "right way"?

You know, one of the first things we're taught in psychology is that Hate is not a natural emotion - it is a learned emotion. It is a socially dependent emotion. WHY does society teach it? Why do we subject our children and our selves to the notion that if we hate someone we are better than them? If we kick someone while they're down, that makes us superior? If we take the control away from them, if we make them beg, if we make them bleed, if we make them die - we're better. What is wrong with us? What is wrong with all of us?

Maybe I'm naive and maybe I'm a simple minded person, but maybe that's the way we should all be.

Comments

[tsavoritegarnet.livejournal.com]

Good points on natural vs unnatural. People get all excited about "organic". I do it too. I don't use use chemicles on my garden. I buy organic vegetables at the store when I can find them. But then "organic" gets used on things like bug killing poisens. Organic chemicals are the bad ones - the ones your body is likely to end up with cancer because of. But it's "Organic".

I thought about the us & them thing last night too, but I couldn't articulate it. Some of it is pretty primative stuff. And from sheep keeping, I tend to think of primative as where the good survival traits come from. And in some sense all the things Bradley mentioned - gay, black, female -- comes down to identifiable as different, and potentially weaker.

I do wonder what can be done about it all. It should be *not ok* for any of the things Bradley talked about to happen. I am daily wondering what I can do to change things, especially from my position as a white, thirty-something, mundane looking mom. It bothers me even when I see folks hitchhiking along the freeway, and don't stop for them, because it woudlnt' be tough for someone to overpower me, or with a kid in the car, have a good deal of leverage over me. But I wish the world I'm living in wasn't a place where I had to think about those things.