Squash the Purple Butterfly
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It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world: The chaos theory. While it might seem quite illogical to blame a butterfly for a typhoon, this concept, at first glance, might appear awkwardly plausible to most people. This derives mainly from the fact that it fulfills the most basic conditions for methodical reasoning, the age-old cause-effect. The next logical move for avoiding such a grieve effect is eliminating the cause, in other words, to squash the purple butterfly. This type of destructive thinking not only applies to the typhoon, but it also applies to all that constitutes a source of fear or mystery to the common man whether on the meteorological, biological, or sociological level. On the minds of all current sociologists and the butt of every other joke, the modern day champion of both sociological fear and mystery, is homosexuality. The larger mystery to these sociologists lies however in finding that purple butterfly or maybe in this case the rainbow butterfly or to be more politically correct the nonconformist sexuality butterfly.
Several theories that tackle the origin of homosexuality have been introduced throughout history. The psychological enthusiasts blame it on a search for a parental emotional presence that they lacked throughout their childhood in their partner or on a traumatizing childhood event. The sociological enthusiasts blame it on an insufficient transmission of the defining roles of each gender or in layman’s terms allowing boys to do girly stuff and vice versa. The overeducated fleas in congruence with up and coming technological breakthroughs blame a certain genetic defect that will expose itself soon with the progressive genetic mapping of introns and exons. All these causes regardless of their relation to the truth of things only serve one purpose and that is to reduce the mystery factor in the homosexuality issue.
However, the fear factor remains the same, and in this disequilibrium lies the danger. Throughout history, all that was presented as a mystery to man was responded to either by avoidance or by an attempt at its destruction. This is manifested clearly in the case of homosexuals who are either exiled from their own homes and families or have the homosexuality “beaten” out of them. Taking all this into consideration, one might wonder that after the cause of homosexuality rises to surface, how will the public react to it?
Let’s pretend that a genetic locus was found for homosexuality. If we look at things from an optimistic point of view, we see that this helps to prove that homosexuality is innate and therefore cannot be reversed or cured since it is not a disease but a genotypical trait. In addition, this will prove that homosexuality is not defined by certain life-altering events, nor can it be reversed by reciprocal ones. On the other hand, through the pessimistic point of view, knowing the cause of homosexuality orients the radical solution for its eradication. In addition to genetic screening for the homosexual gene and stigmatizing people since early childhood, pre-implantantion diagnosis in fetuses will be available for all parents. In this way, they will be able to dictate their newborn’s sexual orientation which is the dream of every gay individual’s parent. At the cost of eliminating its pathological nature, homosexuality will be converted into a social disease or a stigma that parents will try to avoid since parents want their baby to have both a Barbie or Ken figure and attitude. Effectively the optimistic point of view is that of the gay-friendly individuals, while the pessimistic point of view is that of the homophobes, and sadly the larger ratio of individuals are those with homophobic ideals. (Bad choice of words, I know.) The public is therefore unprepared to face such a new discovery with the appropriate response.
The real question lies not in pinpointing the cause of homosexuality but in the utility of its definition. Heteronormative people never asked themselves as to why they are attracted to the opposite sex. I would seriously doubt that in their efforts to conform, they passed through any self-questioning phase because that in itself would be unconforming. So why should the LGBTQ community feel they need to justify their every action and even their reason for existence? Is it because they violate the laws of mother nature? The laws of mother nature created by man that seem to approve all actions undertaken by heterosexuals including those that are demeaning to anything remotely motherly? The whole quest to find a cause for homosexuality is therefore one extra item on the inequality list between heterosexuals and homosexuals. A homosexual should be able to stand up and say I’m a homosexual because the leprechaun and the little red riding hood in my closet are having an affair and since they need their privacy I had to come out. Moreover, since every homosexual starts out his life as society tells him to or in other words with heterosexual tendencies, that feeling of unease and lack of fulfillment usually sends him through a twirling existential crisis as to the reason for this dissatisfaction with what others around him seem to be obsessed about. I cannot imagine the ups and downs that this person must go through and the mistakes he should learn from to reach a place where he can be at ease with himself and with his sexuality, and hence declare himself an outsider to society and its norms. The truth is that it’s not that I cannot imagine, it’s that I don’t have the right to. How can you ask someone to put into words, and to be concise about it, the emotional struggle with himself and all that’s around him and to describe his pain and agony so that you can understand why he’s different only by standards that you set and by a pain and confusion that you inflicted? It is no more cruel and an invasion of personal privacy than it is unfeasible.
Regardless of the type or presence of a causative agent, a homophobic society’s first rule of action is the non-existence of homosexuals amongst them and all new information will be dealt with in accordance with these goals. Raising awareness is therefore important in acquiring a positive feedback from the public on all future LGBT-related breakthroughs and diagnostic modules. The LGBTQ community should also take a stance on what questions they should answer and what questions they should choose not to. While it is true that homosexuals come from heterosexual couples, that does not mean that the LGBTQ community should work to integrate itself within a heterosexually oriented society and therefore is a minor player in a dominant mentality. Society should be shifted to a more encompassing attitude where different sexualities coexist and not where one has to answer back to the other. In the end it is not an understanding of homosexuality that we should be after but an understanding of our sexuality on an individual basis and that is when we as a society can develop as a collective of sexual beings, a broad spectrum of butterflies.
- Contributed by Hillary
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