Latest Entry Older Entries Email Me Diaryland More about me... Guestbook (*new*) Read them as well:
|
2005-06-23 - 5:24 p.m. "Disease Free" This has been bugging me for a long time, and I guess I feel like I finally need to vent it, write it down, and maybe get one step closer to "getting over it." I HATE the above phrase for so many reasons, which should be obvious. I doubt if people who use it in personal ads, online, and so forth really think about how it sounds, what it means, and what exactly they are expressing a preference for. I think what ticks me off most is just thinking about what the opposite of this highly-desired trait would be. Yes. "Diseased." I'm sure that's not exactly how anyone on earth would really like to greet themselves in the morning: "Hello, Diseased. Rise and shine!" Of course, technically, that's what "we" are, I suppose. But I guess it would just feel a tad more humane to be using some other phrases, like "poz" versus "negative" or something like that. Not to trot out Political Correctness for its own sake, but I think we should (out of courtesy? propriety? whatever?) put behind us references that evoke centuries of "Le Peste." ==== While not dismissing the responsibility of the individual, I have lately felt very strongly that "we" are quite a product of our environment, and that living in a gay-hating society like this one is extremely destructive to the individual psyche on a very deep and "subconscious" (whatever that means to you) level. While a great many of us certainly do not feel persecution on a daily basis, and may even live in gay "meccas," I think the idea of how much of the country truly despises us must and does creep into our self-concept. It is hard to draw a line as to where personal psychology ends and a "collective psychology" begins. Ask a Jew, or a Roma, or an Armenian -- or a German for that matter -- if any of their cultural histories impinge on their own individual psyches. What does that make the Queer? The Gay? The Poz? The "Diseased"?
= = = = = = = = = = = previous entry next entry |