Gay Pride Post

Today is gay pride day, so I thought I'd post a great anecdote passed on from my stepfather.

I'll have to give some background. My stepfather grew up in a very poor family in a small town in East Texas. His father was a violent and manipulative alcoholic. When he was on a bender, my stepfather and his younger brother were often responsible for feeding the family; they would go out into the copperhead-infested swamp with rifles and kill game for dinner. At 15 he left home. He joined the Merchant Marines and later the Army, served out the Vietnam War as a medic in South Korea, then wandered for several decades.

Their family was involved in a high intensity brand of Charismatic Pentecostalism. They didn't have snake handling, but they did have exorcisms. They were very fond of casting out demons. The religion was one of the reasons my stepfather left home. The exorcisms really got to him.

The default demon was the demon of homosexuality. There was one young man in town who could be relied on for a good exorcism. Every week, he would confess to having homosexual thoughts. Then the preacher would cast out the demon. My stepfather explained that when this happened, the man would froth at the mouth and run around on all fours like a dog. And he kept coming back, and confessing, and getting exorcised, and frothing at the mouth, and running around on all fours like a dog, every week, for years. What an insane, terrifying, heart-breaking dysfunctional communal relationship. The other church-members weren't allowed to watch television, but I guess the exorcisms were better than television.

After a few decades of wandering, my stepfather came back one year to visit his family for Thanksgiving. While walking around town, he saw a man sitting in a convertible, looking very conspicuous in a fishnet shirt! It was the exorcised man! My stepfather ran up and said how glad he was to see him again... and how glad he was that they had both escaped. The man said he now lived in a gay neighborhood in Houston, and had made peace with his family and with himself.

From the depths of hatred to redemption and peace... it can happen.

Father's Day

My father went off to travel in China for a while. I wished him happy father's day yesterday.

"A stupid barbarian holiday, there is no such thing in Japan."

"Actually, I looked it up and there is a father's day in Japan."

"If it exists in Japan then it's stupid commercialized garbage."

"Well happy father's day anyway."

"Hmmph. Thanks."

I wished my stepfather happy father's day too. He appreciates it a lot, especially because he's never had any children.

The New South

I've been really slack about blogging. There's not that much going on right now, and I'm in a low-energy phase. As a reminder to myself, I need to finish that that long-suffering post on the Japanese foster care system, update my links and email expert reader Mom2Many with a description of my dog's social awkwardness with other dogs.

I just read a nice summary of Georgia's changing demographics at Creative Loafing, and it's worth quoting in full. Self-satisfied non-Southerners irritate me when they go on and on about our horrible primitive racist existence down here. Their condemnation ignores two huge points:

1. Believing that "southern culture" = "white Christian southern culture" erases the existence and historical contribution of a vast number of people.
2. We are probably more multicultural than you are.

Georgia’s changing demographics
June 15th, 2007 by tbarnes in Hot Off The Press

Georgia is on track to join an exclusive club, that of states with a majority population of racial minorities, according to the Afro-American Newspaper.

Only Hawaii, Texas, New Mexico, and California have majority-minority populations now. But, according to the paper, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2025, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Arizona, and Nevada are also expected to have less than 50 percent of their population as white.

Whereas growing Latino populations account for most of the nonwhite population in majority-minority states, blacks will be the primary minority in Georgia. Blacks currently make up 29.8% of the state’s population, according to the 2005 census.

Atlanta is already majority-minority, with 68.7% of its population as nonwhite or Hispanic, the Brookings Institute’s analysis of the 2000 census shows. The city attracts minorities because of its strong, diverse economy and reputation for international business, Brookings demographer William Frey reported.

Conversation with an involved brother

I had a nice conversation this morning with someone about my age I know from church. I told him where our family was at, and he told me that when he was 9, his parents had adopted two children from foster care, biological brother and sister. As is usual, they had abuse issues. The aftermath of the abuse is still very much impeding the older sister's quality of life, but the younger brother is doing really well and recently graduated from college.

I told him that I felt like adopting from foster care is dominated by two myths: "all you need is love" and "no matter how hard you try, they're still going to burn your house and kill your pets". The truth is a lot more complicated. You just have to do your best and hope for the best. I feel lucky to have a realistic outline of what it's going to be like.

I have two cousins, one of whom I've written about before. She's one of the most competent people I've ever met in my life. My other cousin has ADHD, and a huge amount of talent he tends to waste in doing incredibly boneheaded things. I don't want to give any examples, but it's the kind of stuff that really makes you want to bang your head against the table.

I recently read an article that gave me a lot of hope for him, though. It said that many people with ADHD have brains that mature differently. They have unstable thought patterns until they hit their late 20s. Once a person with ADHD learns to properly tap their potential, they can shine like a star and shoot past "normal" people. So right now, my cousin is a young man living inside the emotional pattern of a fourteen-year-old, and he hasn't been able to get it together yet, but after five years or so, who knows.

If there's a point to any of this, I guess it's that there are no guarantees in life.

Two picnics

We went to two picnics today, a foster-care-related event and a neighborhood event. I just want to note that I'm proud of my little dog. He's so great around children! He's calm, quiet and lets them pet him very happily.

If we could only convince him to get along with other dogs. He turns into an instant Mussolini in any canine social situation, barking at much larger dogs and working himself into a neurotic frenzy if they don't obey his incomprehensible instructions.

My theory of bad internet behavior

I lurk on several forums and post actively on a few. I have a theory that the dynamics of many internet communities are heavily influenced by their sex balance.

Men and women think differently, but not radically so. Most of this is social and some of it is chemical. I think of male and female style of thinking as two overlapping circles. It's not too hard to go back and forth between the two circles... if a woman starts taking testosterone shots, for example, she'll move way over on the male side. I really dislike the "Men are from Mars" stuff that uses evolutionary psychology to justify vast differences between men and women. I think the reason behind the difference is fairly simple: upbringing (social and cultural factors) plus a little bit of chemistry (hormones).

When people behave badly on the internet they behave badly in different ways, depending on whether the community is dominant male or female. Male communities love rank and hierarchy. There are a few alpha males that establish dominance. The community tries to develop a stable hierarchy in which everyone knows their place. But if the hierarchy doesn't come together or isn't stable, conflict develops over the alpha position. Men start to wave their penises around via their keyboard. A frustrated alpha contender finds out they're outclassed, and decides to be a lone wolf instead of accepting a follower role.

Female communities consolidate according to a group identity. Multiple groups form, and even though each group is actually clustered around a few strong personalities, they invoke the idea of equality to maintain cohesion. Within the group, consensus, lack of competition and a feeling of togetherness and support is upheld; the success of one (in outside competition) is the success of all. If one member of the group feels attacked, the rest of the group launches a counterattack. The community works toward integrating all the different groups and becoming one big group. However, conflict is inevitable as subgroups battle each other.

Let's say two people have a disagreement. In a male community, the man will be able to shrug off an attack, regard their feelings about the message as irrelevant to the message itself, and perceive it as a disagreement, not an insult. They won't personalize it... as long as they are secure in their position in the hierarchy. In a female community, the woman will tend to personalize it more. She will feel attacked, and her group will leap to her defense, sparking off a much wider conflict. However, when conflicts develop, men are usually the blinder followers. Women question the hierarchy more; they realize gradations in between blind obedience and outright rebellion.

Adoption forums are usually 95-100% female! I also post at an adoption-unrelated forum (the Fighting 44s) that's more like 70-85% male. While superficially scarier, and much more R-rated, I think the Fighting 44s actually has less serious conflict than the main adoption forum I post at.

I don't think people are doomed to fall into negative sex-related behavior. It's not something that rules us completely, it's more like a magnet pulling us in a certain direction.

A healthy community has a complex environment where both kinds of organization -- hierarchies and groups -- coexist in a flexible way. Hierarchies are the best way to satisfy a desire for competition and debate. Groups are the best way to satisfy a desire for mutual support and consensus.

Murderer Probably Caught

It looks like my husband's friend's murderer has probably been caught.

My husband had been pessimistic about the chances, but I told him the guy was almost certainly going to get caught. Criminals like that are usually amazingly stupid. It was obvious he was low on the food chain to be doing such a petty mugging and carrying it off so badly. He told someone, and they tipped the police, I bet.

I've been through this before when I was on the outskirts of a serial murder case in college... but the inevitable revenge fantasies really, really bother me. I have no stomach for them. When grief over death turns into rage it just makes me want to put my hands over my ears. I don't wish a horrible death on the murderer, or prolonged suffering. I just hope he's prevented from harming anyone else, ever again. There's one less idiot with a gun and a hair trigger wandering the streets.

Transracial Adoption Essay

This is such a neat, cover-all-the-bases essay that I decided to make a quick link post for it.

From The Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus blog: My Sister’s Adoption Essay

Loyalty

The concept of loyalty has been swirling around in my head lately.

Loyalty or allegiance is not a prominent part of the modern American psychic landscape. It's too connected to old or alien ways, feudal kings and queens, primitive tribes.

I free-associated the word. It connects with solidarity. But solidarity implies more of an idea of equals working together. There's the possibility of power inequality in loyalty. Dogs are the paragon of loyalty. Parents are not loyal to their children. Brothers and sisters are loyal to each other. You're supposed to be loyal to your friends, but not to your parents. Unless you're in a divorce custody case or family feud. Then, you might have "divided loyalties". When it comes to families, loyalty, as long as the family holds together, is absent, or hidden and unspoken.

This helps me puzzle out the way my father thought of his adoption. He has so little connection with any family left. I don't talk about it much, but I miss that feeling of family. My only connection to Japan is through him. Because of a series of events that was triggered before I was born, I have a half-brother that I have never met, and a half-sister I haven't talked to in more than 15 years.

He calls his adoptive parents "stepparents", never talks of them, and has only told me a few bare details about his biological mother and father. But his loyalty lies near his adoptive home, in the mountains west of Tokyo. It's an attachment to place, to clan, to a name, to the spirits of the earth and water. It's not an attachment to people.

More than a hundred years ago, an order came down that everyone (even peasants!), must have a last name. This was part of a sweeping modernization movement. It made a lot of sense. My father's adoptive ancestor went to the records official, who asked him where he lived. When he told them, they wrote that down and it became his last name.

I get a headache thinking about this stuff. It's like I'm wearing a pair of glasses. In one lens, I look at a world where everyone is a separately formed individual moving around in search of love and belonging while trying to be rational. In the other lens, I see half-formed people sprouting from seemingly random webs, sometimes trying desperately to disentangle themselves, with the webs constantly being ripped apart by invisible forces and woven back together again.

I'm not a huge cultural relativist; I believe all humans are basically the same, but they tend to see their worlds in very different ways.

The Man with the Thing in his Pants

Ever since moving to Atlanta more than ten years ago, I have wondered about the strange man who stands at the corner of Ponce and Briarcliff with the thing in his bike shorts.

Everyone who lives in, works in or travels through eastern intown Atlanta has seen this man and has the same question: "Is that thing real?"

I just found a video about him. This is not a mockumentary. He is really one of our best-known local characters.

There's no nudity in the videos (and thank goodness for that). In terms of dialogue, Part I is PG-13 and Part II has a few R-rated bits.

Mr. Understood: The Willy Terry Story Part 1


Mr. Understood: The Willy Terry Story Part 2