Modern taboos and social media

Comments are deliberately turned off. Why? I intend to have my say about a few things and I am not willing to risk the passive aggression, taunting, and insult that these topics bring out in people. If, among my readers, there are people who have been waiting for the opportunity to take a dig instead of considering my point of view for its own sake, I don’t want to know that about them.

I know far too much about the contents of other people’s minds (and they mine) already. There’s only so much disappointment I’m willing to take in a short period. It’s better here than on Twitter, yes, but it still happens.

Surrogacy—I’m against it. For straight people. For gay people.

Why? Because it’s buying and selling children. It is deliberately creating a child with the express intent of depriving him of his natural mother and father (or some combination).

I am disturbed at how many people this doesn’t even occur to. At all. Zero thought about the child. None. They can’t even process it when I point it out. I’ll say, “This is depriving the child of his mother,” and people will respond with “But gay couples deserve kids, too.”

This is narcissism (acute and limited, I’m not saying “personality disorder”) that shuts down thinking and the ability to process morally difficult questions.

I have discovered that a number of people I thought I knew a little better than that, I didn’t actually know at all. They are 100 percent unwilling to even acknowledge that the child’s needs are a primary consideration, and that we have a moral duty to attend to them first, even if that means we won’t get our favorite outcome.

I do not wish to learn that about any of my readers, which is why I’m allowing no comments here. I find learning that so disturbing that I cannot have a productive conversation with such people, and I cannot view them the same way again.

Children need a mother and father to thrive best. No one is entitled to a baby. The child, not the woman, is the victim in a Western surrogacy transaction.

The origins of homosexuality—I fairly strongly suspect that, in many cases, child abuse and mistreatment, along with factors like single-mother homes and violent older male “father figures”, has a causative effect on homosexuality.

What I do know objectively is that the correlation is real. It’s real, it’s obvious, and it can’t be handwaved away.

What I cannot know is whether, and to what degree, I’m correct. Why can’t I know this? Because it is not allowed to be known. “Born this way” is enforced. No exceptions in respectable society. Academics cannot research it for fear of being drummed out of their universities. Their reputations will be trashed. They’ll never be published again.

What are the possibilities? They are many:

a. Homosexuality is primarily caused by overbearing/enmeshed mothers combined with absent, weak, or violent fathers.

b. Homosexuality is instead largely genetic, but happens to co-travel, genetically speaking, with genes that incline a mother to a Cluster B personality disorder. So, in this case, the correlation would not mean causation.

c. It’s a combination of A and B.

d. There are other factors that I have not thought of, but that I am unlikely to come across because this conversation itself is not allowed to be had in respectable society.

I have a bad case of repetition compulsion when it comes to Twitter. I know from experience how it will turn out when I discuss the things I like to discuss there, and it always does. That’s on me. Only I can decide to rein it in and stop expecting instant social media to be anything other than the disturbing experience that it is .

Nevertheless, I will complain (come on, it’s me!). Trying to discuss these topics has gotten me (and others with my point of view) called “homophobic,” “acting out of your damaged psyche (said deliberately to degrade and insult)”, “bigoted,” “full of internalized homophobia,” “a typical gay misogynist,” a “woman hater,” a “jealous old queen who hates younger better-looking men.” Etc.

And not just from randos. From people who’ve followed me for a long time. Not a great number of followers, but some were a real surprise.

The most troubling aspect is when I realize that some people have been waiting for an opportunity to try to hurt others in a soft spot. And they have been. I know it when I see it. I’m more emotional than most men, I am damaged (in ways I share with the world out of a sense of honesty, and because I truly want to help other damaged people, whether readers believe that or not). This is all true.

But the people who lob this at me are reacting just as much, and often more, out of pure reactive emotion (and their own trauma) as I may be. So, we provoke, we hit back, we try to get our own, and we’re left with five fleeting seconds of ugly satisfaction that comes from stinging someone else. It feels disgusting when the rush of emotion passes.

Real conversation and exchange is impossible in the instant social media paradigm. Structurally. It’s baked in. No, I don’t believe any of us can just “choose to do it differently” in any way that would substantively change the way Twitter world would end up.

These are topics I really would like to talk over with people of good faith. Contrary to how it may look online, I’m not unable to tolerate disagreement. That’s simply not true. What gets in the way for me is the defensive attitude and posture that’s necessary online when one discusses these things. And yes, I do believe it’s necessary. No, it is not only “muh trauma”, and it’s not only my personal inadequacies.

People, in context of Twitter and social media generally, are, in actual fact, looking to score points. Some are looking to genuinely hurt others. Some are careless and hurt others because they haven’t thought through what they’re saying.

But it’s real, and I make no apologies for placing the bulk of my betting money on the side that says, “More likely to try to gotcha me than they’re likely to be genuine, so I’m hitting back harder.” You see where this ends up.

This place, Substack, is much more conducive to good conversation. But no, I’m not willing to risk it even here. I want to have my say, and I hope that readers find something interesting in it, and I’m sorry that I don’t trust the format or the universe enough to talk about it with readers. But I don’t.

I do appreciate you reading what I have to say just the same; thank you. I wish things were different.