Chopping Down The Bigotry

Have you ever gone looking for one thing and found something else, something you'd been looking for earlier and not been able to find? I did that just recently, and was what I found ever a doozy! One big difference: I hadn't been rooting around in the junk drawer, but in my psyche (which is not entirely dissimilar, come to think of it). As per usual, when I rummage mentally I'm looking for a reaction to something a character of mine needed (while working on one of my many works-interminably-in-progress); I found it, naturally, and along with it I seem to have found the source of my bigotry. In physical terms this is not unlike pushing in a golf tee and striking oil.

Apart from the occasional use of passively racist terms like "rice queen" (which I'm ashamed to admit I have used, but only to communicate the concept, and I'm always aware it's wrong as I'm saying it) I don't consider myself to be terribly racist - or not predominantly at least, like some I could name. Occasionally, a person of colour will do something that annoys me, and I may find myself wondering whether what they're doing is culturally ingrained or if they're just a jerk, since I know that, in life as in a Jamaican restaurant, jerk comes in all varieties. I've certainly never used the n-word - have never even said it, as a matter of fact, and never will - nor do I have any facility with any of the dozens of other words whitey is so fond of spewing. In fact, I happen to believe that there is only one race, which is human, and repeat said trope to all and sundry as often as possible. As such, I allow myself to wear a smug mantle of superiority; since I am not racist, I tell myself, I am therefore not bigoted.

Only I am extremely bigoted, just not about race; I am culturally bigoted, even socially bigoted, as bigoted as Archie Bunker, Al Sharpton, and Abu Hamza combined. A logical fascist, if you will, having saved my bigotry for those who, in my opinion, have earned it.

For instance, I hate the homeless. While some part of me realizes that the sloppy pile of human attempting to scrounge my hard-earned money off of me may have simply encountered one too many difficulties along the way, and perhaps not benefited from the familial and social advantages I've had, for the most part when I see one I can only think they wanted to end up that way. Their pride wouldn't let them approach a mental health agency, or take welfare, or admit they had an issue with substance abuse, and look where it's left them. This, I believe, is the intended meaning of the once-popular phrase "pride goeth before a fall" which people used to proudly say, but which has fallen from favour in recent years.

The homeless are not the only group upon whom it is my joy to ignore, or occasionally heap scorn. I also loathe, despise, and abominate civil servants - the most misnomered people on the face of the Earth (since they are neither). Yet I am friends with civil servants, and like them very much despite their profession; I was indeed raised by them, and grew up in that comfortable sub-stratum of the bourgeoisie where they dwell with, well, the same smugness as I. But all of them, from elected officials to police officers, I view with such a poisoned eye that I will often do without something or other (even if it's something I need) just to avoid making contact with one.

Bigots of all kinds need do nothing whatsoever to earn my opprobrium; religious fundamentalists, Robert Mugabe, the frat-boy misogynists of Maxim magazine - I must work very hard at understanding from whence their loathing oozes, and even when trying my hardest, I often cannot summon up one scintilla of empathy for them. Whenever I see the phrase "mean people suck" I must stifle a laugh at such an understatement, although I realize the more appropriate phrase "mean people should be used for target practice" wouldn't fit on a lapel pin.

Likewise, while tooling around on a Facebook application such as Are You Interested, before I flirt with a guy I will attempt to ascertain his class; often there are clues in his manner of dress, or in the background of the photo, or just in the level of grooming. A lower class guy with middle class aspirations is fine, as is an upper class guy who's down-to-Earth; but a middle class social climber is also a middle class skin crawler, and a lower class yob or redneck who's proud of that fact will turn my stomach.

It should be pointed out that in gay terms, class is based entirely on looks; that's the way I'm using it here as well, or mostly at least. The prettier the guy - the more likely you are to find his face in a catalogue, for instance, or his body on a porn star - the more likely to my mind that guy is a first class douchebag. Of course, this is not always the case; years of experience have taught me that occasionally these guys have some malfunction between their optic nerve and their pre-frontal lobe that doesn't allow them to see how hot they are. Either that or they were parented in such a way that makes them be nice to everyone, even chubbos or the fugly. Should they happen to be burdened with low self-esteem and/or are chubby chasers (well, not and/or really, just and, since the latter is caused by the former) I'm in with a chance, and can be counted on to pounce at such easy prey.

When dealing with class in the more traditional sense - financial class - it's much the same; I have no time for people who feel they are better than me because they went to private school, and I have an equal measure of scoff on reserve for people who claim they are proud to be rednecks, as if such a thing were something of which to be proud.

My reaction to the homeless has a component of fear, and so too does my contempt for civil servants, to an extent, based as it is on years of experience (albeit highly selective experience) both first-hand and anecdotal. Hot guys inspire in me deep antipathy; the hotter the guy the less likely I'll be to ever speak to him, lest he be given the chance to call me a) old, b) fat, or c) ugly - even though I am all three, and as a Brahmin he'd be well within his right to be disgusted at the possibility of my shadow soiling the hem of his garment. Haters I just hate, and don't care who knows.

Into the flaming inferno of my bigotry you may toss doctors, lawyers, politicians, the right-wing, realtors, greedheads, the loud, and Paris Hilton. Among others to numerous to enumerate - still, you get the idea; what it seems to come down is that hating myself has allowed me to project what I hate about myself onto all sorts of people, and hate them instead, offering me some respite, however brief, from doing so.

They say the first step to curing a problem - be it addiction or even bigotry - is admitting one has a problem; the second step, less frequently stated, is that there must be the desire to cure it. People who try to quit smoking because their spouse or their friends doesn't like it will be doomed to fail if they themselves like it. Certainly there is a physical component to addictions; so too is there a physical component to bigotry. The brain, for all its wondrous electricity, is an organ; it is taught a response to a stimulus, which must be untaught. Perhaps the connection between bigotry and addiction is a valid one after all; tearing someone else down to build one's self up may indeed flush the body with endorphins like that first puff in the morning, or that first swallow of fermented poison.

The purpose of this blog is to aid me in my evolution, and part of that must surely be ridding myself of the mass of generalizations, half-truths, and received elements that constitute my own bigotry. Since, as a control freak, I have always dealt with my problems (not to mention other people) best in writing - where I can work and rework my salient points into crystalline bullets - this makes a blog the ideal venue in which to work. Recently, Mr. Gagne commented on my "slavish commitment to self-improvement", and that's always been what I've intended to record here at Self-Loathario - both the positive aspects of that, and the negative as well. As my workload lessens at the Pop Culture Institute through the summer and fall I hope to be contributing more here to that end.