It's A Shame

 Joyce Carol Oates Masterclass Writing Assignment

 

4.  Write a story about an unsolved mystery in your life. Use Joyce’s phrase “An unsolved mystery is a thorn in the heart” as your first line. Then, in an entirely new paragraph, begin explaining the mystery while keeping the first line in mind.

An unsolved mystery is a thorn in the heart. 

 

Why I can’t bring myself to like myself is a thorn in my heart. I even tell people, “I’m a decent person,” as if to remind them, but it’s really to remind me. I don’t know how this came to be. Well, other than growing up poor, and internalizing the poverty and equating it with character failure and moral worth. So maybe it’s more of a riddle. Disliking myself (hate is such a strong word) is why the words of an adjunct professor, Andrew Stypinski, have stayed with me all these years (30 yrs): If you don’t love yourself, you can’t love anyone else - there’s no analogy to draw from. This thorn has impacted my relationships (no friends to speak of at the age of 50), a troubled marriage, and parenting that won’t win any awards, or even honorable mention. So there’s a thorn, or maybe it’s a switch-blade, or the Conan Sword in my heart but I guess I’m lying when I tell you there is this big unsolved mystery. There isn’t. My early life (Freud was right about so much shit), my parents, my surroundings, my choices, my zeitgeist, my biology, my culture, my nature, my nurture, my wiring, my education, my lack of education, my intelligence, my lack of intelligence, my experiences, my being a late bloomer (as in weighing 95 lbs in the ninth grade late bloomer), my early sexual experiences, my lack of early sexual experiences (see late bloomer info above), my cramped childhood household (eight people in a two bedroom ONE bathroom home) my potty training, my living thirty yards from an interstate highway, my contracting scabies as a kid, my parents’ and uncles’ and brother’s alcoholism, and my goddamn self are the reason(s) I dislike myself - this shit isn’t a mystery or a riddle or a limerick or an amusing anecdote, to paraphrase George Carlin, it’s a shame.

Our Psychological Selves

Follow along:

So Trump has rescinded Obama’s guidance on transgender bathroom use.

(http://www.npr.org/2017/02/23/516787816/former-doj-official-on-the-future-of-transgender-student-policies)

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Federal law prohibits sex discrimination in public schools. Last year, the Obama administration interpreted that to mean transgender students should be allowed to use the bathroom or locker room of the gender that they identify with, and they put out federal guidance to schools to reflect that. Many conservatives saw it as federal overreach.

This “overreach” led to this:

SEAN SPICER: The president's [sic] made it clear throughout the campaign that he's a firm believer in states' rights and that certain issues like this are not best dealt with at the federal level.

Later in the interview I latched on to this:

 

MARTIN: At the same time, you know, when this guidance came down, there were these charges of federal overreach and especially conservatives saying this is a moral issue and this is now the federal government telling me how to understand an issue that I think of in religious terms.

STOP.

This is interesting.

Think about this, people view sex and gender in religious or moral terms. Fascinating.

Morality, be definition, requires objective truths. I was taught that objective in this sense means that x is true no matter what people think or say or do. Think 2+2=4 but for moral statements.

Now the indicting of religious terms here clearly means that these truths come from god.

Circling back, we are to believe that sex and gender are handed down from god. Binary.

Remember from above 

… transgender students should be allowed to use the bathroom or locker room of the gender that they identify with…

Identify with? Your sex and your gender are handed down to you and god doesn’t make mistakes.

Thesis: This completely ignores the fact that we are psychological beings. Because humans are psychological beings, sex and gender are identified with…and malleable…and influenced…and AMORAL.

I have fun with this in my psych class via this Louis CK bit about starving. 

Humans have a terrific set of homeostatic mechanisms (i.e., physiological [god given]) to balance eating and weight but…psychology factors in and people become overweight and obese and morbidly obese.

Why aren’t the god given mechanisms enough? Why do we become obese to the point of unhealthy?

Especially if we aren’t psychological beings subject to influence?

Maybe the question is: why is psychology a factor for weight gain but not for gender identity?

Do you know of a good argument for the denial of our psychological selves?