Introduction to Hate and Acceptance

(s)

So in my therapy sessions when my pretty aweosme therapist (I think she's the most amazing therapist ever) we talk over many topics. A common one is anger. Since as a kid I learned to bottle up my anger. Yeah..healthy, I know. But we went on to talk about anger on a more general level, not just personal and told me some conclusions about hate.

So I was going to post a clip from Pixar's Night and Day short film but all of the versions have a different audio and the point of the clip was for a quote on differences. I'm going to grumble in my corner.

Anyway!

With every new thing, there are two reactions to go with it. They are acceptance and rejection. Now acceptance is broader than rejection. Liking, enjoying, asking, being curious are all signs of acceptance. Even if you're not 100% what something is, asking questions is a sign of accepting it because you want to learn from it.

The flip side is rejection, obviously.

So let's add anger into that. Anger is a natural emotion your body has. It's to protect you. If you're in a dangerous situation, you get angry to fight and to protect yourself. It's one of the most basic functions. However in this day and age, we are unlikely to find ourselves in such a dangerous situation. Though we know we're usually very safe, that doesn't turn off the anger response. So when someone intrudes in your room you do get angry. Because your personal space has been violated, your bubble has been burst and you must fix it to be happy again. Now, we typically use words to resolve this, rather than fighting.

There are other things that trigger the anger response. One example is the unknown. People generally speaking do not like not knowing. We like answers, we like to know how things work, why things happen. It's less scary when you know its function. And if it is dangerous, you can figure out how to stop it once you know how it works.

Anger is triggered to protect you. You don't know what something is and it could potentially be dangerous so you become angry. Even when you can rationalize something by saying, “Hey self, I don't know exactly what this is, but I know it won't hurt me” the anger doesn't disappear. Of course people try to work on settling their anger and pacifying themselves.

Now you're saying, “Hey Kal, this is a LGBT* blog..why are we learning about emotions?” That's a very good question, person who is reading this who I assume is asking this question and if not..well..you're probably asking it now.

I recently saw a video on bullying that hit close to home. (Yes, this is the part of the post where Kal goes off in the other direction. No really..I can't stay on topic ever..sorry..not sorry.) And bullying is about hateful things. See, anger is connected to hate. Because when you hate something, you behave in a fighting manor to protect yourself from a potential threat.

Weening you off the topic again, a little bit.

In this society, straight is the norm. (I'm absolutely terrified of my wording, I in no means mean straight people are hateful by nature, just that it's assumed everyone is straight at first until they say otherwise. I really hope that's worded well..) That's normal and regular and expected. So when someone is not straight it disrupts that order. Or when someone doesn't conform to a gender norm, it shakes things up.

So again, we have a new thing. It's unknown to most people. And unknown can be dangerous. And since there's a trace of danger anger is triggered.

But as stated earlier, there are two responses. Anger is one, acceptance is the other.

And at times, people accept those who don't conform to the norms. Sometimes they're just kind-hearted people that see people as people no matter what. Other times, it's someone who took the time to research the topic to realise it's not scary at all. I'm one of those people. When a friend said they were genderqueer, I thought they were insane. They were not normal and weird and while I didn't react with full-blown hate, I did somehow find this threatening. But using my good friend, Wikipedia, I began to learn what genderqueer is. It allowed me to learn about cis gender, gender fluid, third gender and so much more. But since I did research I learned there's nothing to be upset about. I'm not threatened in any way which leads to me accepting this.

Anyway! What I'm trying to get to is that learning leads to understanding. Understanding leads to acceptance. Acceptance leads to no hate.

I'm not proposing the queer community ties down homophobic people and explain sexual orientation to them or what trans* maens. I'm also not proposing it's one simple thing to suddenly change people full of hate to love. I understand things don't work this way.

But I suppose right now, I'm trying to understand why there is hate. Why take the time and energy to hate? And to hate people that don't affect your life. I'm not saying to hug and kiss everyone, but why is it so hard to accept things? Why is it so hard to reject hate?

So this is only a small exploration into hate and not accepting directed to the queer community. I'm not going to come up with any breakthroughs anytime soon, but I suppose I'm just planting this idea and will hopefully return to expand on it more later.