Another agonizing chapter in the Dump administration, “Justice” Kennedy stepping down and thereby shitting on the next 30 years of our lives – the rest of my life. It’s our own Brexit really, something so fucking unimaginably horrific that it’s hard to fathom. How we can allow a bunch of bitter, sexually frustrated and Closeted old white men decide the fate of Women, African Americans, Latinos, the LBGTQ community, immigration, the environment, voting, life itself. The irony of course that their closeted status drives their ambition to dictate policy and punish society for what they deem our “non-Christian” ways. As if marginalizing and punishing immigrants, minorities, women, and children are the epitome of Christianity–Dump’s Christian Army seems to think they are. The reality is that we as human beings are constantly at odds with our tremendously fluid states of gender and sexuality, preferring to corral ourselves into a false duality, the masculine, and feminine. Those born with penises must be shining examples of masculinity while those born with vaginas, the very definition of feminine – and let’s not forget that God ordains that the addendum folks be solely attracted to the envelope set and vice versa. It’s all so fucking simple if you’re a turbo Christian. And that my friends, is the simplest way to tell someone is closeted, their overwhelming need to simplify, codify and parse the truly complex into neat little interlocking blocks as if we’re all just fucking different colored Legos (no offense to Legos – I understand they’re rainbow-woke). These men and women who suppress their non-Lego fluidity are often the most dangerous, acting out their inner rage and frustrations on the most vulnerable: women, African Americans, Latinos, the LBGTQ community, the impoverished, the powerless, other minorities, and on and on. A bitter aging Trumper-woman in my dog run said she appreciated it when real men showed their attraction by touching a woman the way a woman should be touched. “You mean groping,” I said. “That’s what you Liberals call it… I danced with Balanchine and back then real men knew how to show their attraction to women.” I walked away in disgust, failing to point out that whether it was Balanchine or some other “real man” in her company that assaulted her, it wasn’t done in a state of attraction or appreciation, but in self-rage, a reaching out and grabbing of what may have actually repulsed the predator (the feminine form a constant reminder that he wasn’t remotely attracted to it) or taunted him (aggravating his inner desire to feel feminine, dress in women’s clothing or live in his true gender.) And of course, the irony is that it’s these very closeted gender and sexually-fluid men and women in power who make life miserable for those brave and emotionally strong enough to come out in a society that views them as abnormal or disgusting or worse. Why is it so obvious to me, but not yet obvious to the world that every man or woman, celebrity, politician or otherwise who speaks out against the transgender or homosexual is him or herself, a homosexual or transgender person, only closeted, self-denying and really fucking self-angry. I had to laugh at pundits describing Trump’s “grab em by the pussies” behavior as masculine…or even “toxic masculinity”. The irony, of course, is that Trump and so many “masculine men” who grab women are anything but “masculine”. Trump’s explosive anger and childlike taunts are attempts to masculinize his true self, brash brushstrokes to cover the feminine sashays from his little hands, the ladylike way he lounges in his terrycloth robe, the dainty whispers and spits you don’t catch issuing from his soft voice, because he covers everything with scorn and temper – excellent masks over his true feminine identity. As if I give a fuck that Trump is feminine. I don’t. The problem, of course, is that Trump (like every Right Wing Supreme Court Justice, and nearly every Republican congressperson I can think of) can’t stand his own fluidity, he is (and they are) indeed at war with the true self, the hardwired one none of us can truly escape, try as we may. This is not to say there’s not a good many Democrats who are waging similar inner battles, the difference is in the need for Fundamentalists and Conservatives to proselytize and offload their demons onto others, punishing gay men because it strikes too close to the bone, punishing women because inside some are struggling with their own feelings of femininity. Some people believe we were born to be straight…these people, of course, are struggling with their own sexual identity. I’ve never met or seen a homophobe who wasn’t struggling with same-sex attraction or gender fluidity and I never will. We may happen to be straight or gay, but just as likely we’re somewhere in the middle. I’ve often read that sexual violence is not about sex, but control, and I’m sure that’s true to a point, but it’s more about lack of control, the predator’s inability to control his inner conflict of the self – often combined with narcissism or sociopathy. One day the world will wake up and realize that there are men attracted to women who are not straight and women attracted to men who are queer too. If you have to ask how this is possible you’re simply not aware at how complex our sexual and gender realities are. A man can actually be a woman trapped inside a man’s body yet also be attracted to women, as a lesbian. The same goes for women too, although women tend to be far more sexually fluid whereas men are far more gender fluid. These closeted people often pair up in marriages and it works for a great many, the man who can’t quite come out as gay settles for a more masculine woman who can’t come out as a lesbian but settles for the feminine man. Like many a closeted predator, Trump is not attracted to women, he’s attracted to their accouterments, their high heels, their hair, the way they fill a dress…not because he’s attracted to their bodies so much as he would like to fill a dress himself. He lives out his own feminine fantasies in his overt “toxically masculine” gibes about their pussies. He is gender-conflicted. Massively. His inability to express his feelings of femininity have turned him sour, giving him the patented FOX News upside down frown. His failure to act on his femininity causes him to act out instead, blurting sexualized commentary, pinching an ass or grabbing a pussy. The conservative among you are screaming “see, it is the gays’ fault, they’re the pedophiles and reprobates” and I say to you, “I’m sorry you’re not able to come out to yourselves, truly, because you and your inner-hatred (which you can never quite keep to yourselves) will be the end of us one day.” Don’t misread what I’m saying. There are far more of us living in between that “straight or gay” duality the Church and patriarchy have been feeding us since time immemorial. Sexual attraction and gender identities exist on highly complex continuums. When I hear Christians and Fundamentalists compare gay and trans people to pedophiles I can only think of the pediatrician affiliated with St. James Catholic Church back in Omaha, Dr. Daniel Schrein, and how he jerked me off every time I saw him. If I had children I would make sure to hire an out gay, transgender, bisexual or crossdressing babysitter–but never, ever-ever a turbo-Catholic or an evangelical. Repression is the issue, not whether someone identifies as gay, trans, etc. Repression of our true gender/sexual selves plays out every day in maniacal policies of madmen whose hatred for themselves morphs into hatred for gays. Repression fuels Trump’s loathing of women because every beautiful woman he sees is a reflection of the fluid gender he cannot acknowledge. It’s no accident that so many repugnant people attain positions of extreme authority. When you’re Mike Pence or Ted Cruise or Rick Santorum or Stephen Miller and you can’t fucking bear your same-sex attraction or gender fluidity you feel such a profound disgust that self-recrimination isn’t enough, you need a megaphone to destroy those that would normalize the LGBTQ identity. Maybe you go into politics, or maybe you become a Supreme Court Justice like Clarence Thomas, and the rest of that Right Wing closeted band of jokers who can’t fucking stand themselves so every decision is forged in the crucible of their own self-life, their moralizing windbaggery a sleight-of-hand distraction from their sad truths…they’re molten with rage because they feel feminine, or they experience same-sex attraction or they don’t inwardly conform to what they believe good and Christian and godly. God fucking help us. Gender-repressed and sexually repressed individuals often latch onto some righteous cause they pursue with fiery vigor because the successful flee from the self-demands it. Our old-brain, hardwired impulses of attraction and self-identity are unrelenting, like a never-ending game of Whack-a-Mole, the inner truth keeps popping up in a man’s drunken caress of his buddy’s back during a football game, a woman’s drunken caress of her girlfriend’s breast while dancing. I’ve been groped by so many supposedly straight men I’ve lost count, and the count hasn’t ceased, even in my fifties. Out gay men never touch me inappropriately. The ferociously repressed, those whose repression is so painful they must castigate the courageous “out” among us require not just any righteous cause to distract them from their true nature, they scream for the blessedly innocent, pillow angels, brain-dead spouses on life support and of course the unborn. The boiling scorn with which militant pro-life women regard pro-choice women is really just self-hatred, hatred for the part of them attracted to women, so teaming up with closeted men who hate women, indeed even marrying them or consistently voting for these misogynists is hardly surprising – it makes perfect awful sense. The real tragedy, of course, is that Dump will elect a closeted woman for the Supreme Court so he can claim inclusion while he feeds the evangelical sharks their bloody chum. This woman who hates women (because she’s actually attracted to them) will have a queer (closeted) husband who spearheads some Christian group that denounces non-traditional marriage; together they’ll have half a dozen children proving their hetero lineage. They both attend Church on Sundays to keep their straying attractions at bay. Our new Lady Justice will have climbed higher than her peers for the same reason closeted men do, repression is a powerful fuel. Hatred for the true self is toxic and virulent but this flight from the self can be rocket-propelled, focusing the drives and goals of these mean-spirited individuals whose self-loathing is so strong that it escapes in hot gases, boosting them into atmospheres of greater influence where they can spread their scorched views among the also-angry, also-repressed masses. If we’re lucky, one or more of Lady Justice’s hallowed offspring, conceived by missionary sex and intentional insemination (not four beers), will come out as gay or trans – early enough to renounce the Conservative indoctrination they’ve suffered through, perhaps inching our world back from the brink–one out at a time. But will there be enough time?  

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