I generally reject linear models and dichotomies, but today I was thinking: there is a rough continuum of acceptance, starting at intolerance and running through respect, which could apply to just about anything from my routine dress code violations (I should really just get some comfortable work shoes) to race relations, but I was thinking specifically with regard to homo and poly ways.
Intolerance is when you disapprove of the difference and actively try to stop it. (Remember this is a continuum. There are degrees of intolerance ranging from torture and execution to gentle reproof, and they are all intolerance.)
Tolerance is when you disapprove of something, but don’t try to stop it or change it. Frequently the tolerant will regard the tolerated with contempt, but be surprised when called out on it. They’ll protest that they have no problem with whatever bizarre, deviant difference exists between you, oblivious or indifferent to the insult. I vascillate between tolerance and intolerance of smoking, especially in public.
Acceptance is when the disapproval fades away. You know that uncle jimmy is a queer, but that’s just the way he is. You still don’t grant them equality, but you stop wishing they would change. The defensive reaction also fades but is still present.
Respect is where you acknowledge the legitimacy of the other person’s difference and treat them with and their difference with, well, respect.
It’s a thought framework. I’m sure some social psychologist or anthropologist has a better taxonomy, but work with it
Now my two points. I wish people would see that tolerance is a long way from respect. The defensive reaction is irksome.
Secondly, I better appreciate why a certain openly poly bi guy, married to a woman, said he thinks of me as queer, not gay. That was a bit of a headscratcher at the time, but it makes more sense now.
A lot of homos want narrow respect for same sex relationships, but barely tolerate bisexuality, the openly kinky, self identified poly people, racial minorities, and, in some cases, even the opposite sex.
I understand why some people look at that crowd and want nothing to do with “the gay community”. But as for me, well, I generally tolerate them, sadly.
insightful
Yes, I recently identified myself for sexuality purposes as “an MSM.” I identify as gay, but I don’t identify with the gay community, and so I’m a little confused about my identity.
I was pretty surprised to learn only about 20-30% of MSM accept any sort of gay/queer label, so the public health/epidemiology folks had to come up with that term to get any sort of realistic sample.
A quick glance at craigslist makes it less surprising I guess.
Yeah, MSM is pretty much a public health/epidemiology word. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it outside that context (or occasionally within discussions of sexual behavior generally.)
Hunh. I see, understand, and wonder if I shouldn’t do that myself sometime.
Watching TV one night, there was a commercial we only caught part of, but it had a line about respecting your gay coworker. To which I replied, I pick on my gay officemate endlessly! For his multiple modals. And he picks on me for my midwest vowels.
I stopped making assumptions about anyone’s sexuality a long time ago. But I move in social circles where if there is anything like a norm, it’s probably more bi and poly than anything else. Between academia and the pagan community, I don’t see a lot of the bare tolerance or intolerance on a regular basis. That’s nice, but it’s also sort of sheltered. It’s easy to not think about how much intolerance of diversity in any form is still out there.
My working definition is:
Getting on people’s case for stuff that doesn’t hurt anyone means you’re an asshole.
Free country and all that.
It seems people always grapple with the T word when someone like Rick Warren appears. “You liberals preach tolerance but it ends the moment we call you all pedophiles. What gives?!”
Where to start the response to such an ass?
Liberals are a diverse crowd, as actually, are conservatives. We don’t all agree, out-group similarity effect, look it up and get back to us.
We don’t preach, we demand tolerance, and that’s as a bare minimum threshold.
The tolerance we demand is for the things that people don’t have any or reasonable choices about. You always have the option to stop lying, so we don’t demand tolerance for that.
That’s a place to start, should you find yourself encountering such an ignorant asshole any time soon. =)
Man, this is going to be a rather long response, but…
OK, here goes…
If this thought framework exists, it is not anywhere common in our cultural consciousness… and it is something that is quite overdue.
Back in early 2004, Missouri was a testing ground for an anti-gay-marriage initiative (even though gay marriage was already illegal in Missouri, I guess there was a need to make it double illegal to discourage the hordes of marriage-minded homos lined up at the Iowa and Arkansas borders from coming into our state to tie the knot but I digress).
My home state, of course, overwhelmingly supported the push to make gay marriage even more illegal. The point was not an actual threat on the horizon, but rather this was a test to see if gay marriage would be successful in mobilizing the religious right to the polls (it was).
For a time I was not particularly proud of my home state. But, there have been 30 states who have put the notion of Gay Marriage before the voters (not the courts) and it has been rejected by the voters (to my knowledge) 30 of 30 times. Supposedly “Progressive” California had voters reject the notion of Gay Marriage in about the same proportions as my state.
So after the election (I am just elated at the end of the Bush era) I now have friends saying “I can’t believe there are so many BIGOTS in California. We need to take this to the courts, we cannot let those BIGOTS win”. And I understand the sentiment, but in terms of quality of argument…
If your definition of “Bigot” includes the majority of Californians, then in includes the majority of Americans and the majority of humans on Earth, and that makes “Bigot” a pretty meaningless term.
This fits in with the notion you are toying with about tolerance/acceptance/respect. Something feels…off about forcing the majority of the people in a State to accept Gay Marriage versus gaining the acceptance of the people by persuasion or what have you. I don’t know how to go about this, and I understand that no one wants to wait for another group to acknowledge their full rights as human beings. And there is, of course, the parallels to the civil rights movement, who used the courts – but these parallels are limited. Gays are not an ethnic group – a gay couple will not necessarily have gay children, gays were not some national group forcibly displaced, there are no majority gay nations (insert France joke here) and gays have been around for at least all of recorded history – a true statement if you measure that as two Neanderthal dudes making out in a cave or Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis.
And that last example is telling. About half the world, and most of Western Civilization is Monotheistic and has a culture built on Monotheistic social mores – and all three big Monotheisms (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) have STRONG anti-gay traditions. The West has backed off a bit vs. some Islamic nations where being gay garners one the death penalty – but the Torah/Bible/Koran still have those rather hard-to-ignore condemnations of gay lifestyles. Supporters of gay marriage can point out scripture that is outdated or sounds silly to make light of the anti-gay provisions, but that really doesn’t persuade anyone of anything – it is still an obvious and intentional point that is written in books considered holy by half of the world.
All the hipsters I know have used the cliche “I respect religion, but I don’t like those people who try to cram their beliefs down my throat” at some point, but if going to the courts to force acceptance of gay marriage on a group of citizens who have rejected it as voters isn’t “cramming down the throat” then what is?
I don’t have a solution, but yelling “Bigot” at most of the people at the world doesn’t seem productive and I would like a conceptual framework that would be useful to persuading people to accept that there are gay people doing their thing – and that’s OK.
Re: Man, this is going to be a rather long response, but…
First off, this is speaking as a straight female who volunteered and donated against Prop 8.
Supposedly “Progressive” California had voters reject the notion of Gay Marriage in about the same proportions as my state.
As a Californian, I actually wept after the election because I knew we were about to get precisely this sort of statement. I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m saying it hurts my pride that you’re right.
Something feels…off about forcing the majority of the people in a State to accept Gay Marriage versus gaining the acceptance of the people by persuasion or what have you.
Here’s the thing, though: Nobody was being forced to do anything during the months when same-sex marriage was legal in California. Nobody was breaking into churches demanding that clergy who were against same-sex marriages perform them. All that the other side was being asked to do was coexist with — that is, tolerate — same-sex marriage, and they weren’t willing to.
When same-sex marriage was legal, people who were against it were still free to be against it, ignore it or not get one. Nobody was cramming same-sex marriage down anyone’s throat. (By contrast, we now have a law that was voted in mainly for religious reasons, imposed on many people who don’t share those religious beliefs. Do I feel that someone else’s religion is being crammed down my throat? Absolutely, and it makes me very, very angry. Unlike your hipster friends, I am willing to say that I have very little respect for organized religion, at least outside of the fine and culinary arts.)
You’re right that calling people names isn’t very persuasive, but I also think the shoe fits. I believe that the tolerance argument and satire (of ideas, not people) are the way to convince people.
Re: Man, this is going to be a rather long response, but…
I love your post.
You’re coming from the negotiator position: it’s incrementalist, but probably realistic. Psychology just doesn’t allow for social changes at the rate sexually-different people would like. You get resistance from human failings like projection, squeamishness, jealousy, defensiveness, and pride, but also from utilitarian considerations: homosexuality does threaten existing family structures by providing an alternative model. Anti-gay groups can’t admit this for the obvious reason.
If gay marriage is a threat, polyamory is a 100-megaton warhead.
The expert on philosophical models of tolerance is a guy named Thomas Scanlon. His stuff is really fantastic, and he breaks the continuum down into a few more discrete parts:
intolerance (as you said–disapprove, actively attempt to establish/maintain institutional inequality)
tolerance (disapprove, possibly vocalize disapproval, don’t actively attempt to establish/maintain institutional inequality)
apathy (this is a bit of a misnomer, as apathy here doesn’t mean you don’t care to form an opinion, but: no opinion, don’t vocalize, and don’t try to do anything)
acceptance (approve, possibly vocalize approval/respect, don’t attempt to establish/maintain institutional equality)
embracing (approve, vocalize approval/respect, attempt to establish/maintain institutional equality)
I like the three-variable model, because I think it makes an important distinction between treatment on an individual level and treatment on an institutional level. You can respect Uncle Jimmy (acceptance, under this model) without attempting to institutionalize that respect or without generalizing that acceptance across the entire community. Also, there are people who generally don’t care about particular issues. There are plenty of people who just don’t give a rat’s ass about the RIAA. I am probably apathetic about gun control because I haven’t got a fully formed opinion, I don’t vocalize my fairly unformed opinions, and I don’t seek institutional change (because I haven’t developed my opinion fully yet). And while I embrace LGBT lifestyles, I only accept poly lifestyles, and I am somewhere between apathy and tolerance of furry lifestylers (if I know any, they aren’t out to me). When it comes to, say, creationism as an explanation for the creation of the universe–especially as regards public education–I am certainly intolerant.
One last word: none of these things has anything to do, really, with being “open-minded.” These aren’t steady states, but stages fixed at any given point in time. With different experiences or knowledge, your place on the spectrum can change. Until I dated a person who cross-dressed, I was apathetic as to the issues involved. Now, after learning about the hardships that person suffered, I oscillate between acceptance and embrace.
And there you have it.