LGBT and NPD

Nowadays it seems as if everybody is mad about something.

Anger can be a good thing, but it can also be counter-productive. Anger can also be a product of self-absorption.

Angry self-absorption can afflict anyone in any community, but let's talk about the GLBT community while we're at it.

In recent weeks I've had a few angry asexuals, bitter bisexuals and others sending me hate emails, saying they're "watching out for me" and making veiled, vague threats of one kind or another because here and there I write or say things that they don't agree with. Let me make it clear that I do not believe that these people speak for nor represent the intelligent and rational members of their respective communities.

Rather these are people who are so insecure, whose sense of self is so tenuous, that they feel a need to bully -- or at least try to bully -- everyone into agreeing with their every pin-headed opinion, whether it makes sense or not.

I try to keep abreast of new developments in, new thoughts on, and new studies of, sexuality. I have a problem with studies that I feel are unscientific, too small or vague, or which are not objective. I don't trust people who have an agenda, whatever it may be. And I have never trusted bullies.

Today studies and surveys on sexuality are often done by those who have a vested interest in the studies saying what they want them to say. By their very nature they are suspect. Studies are rarely done by the impartial.

But getting back to the angry folk. Some of these people may at least feel they have legitimate complaints but why do I think that so much of it really has to do with me-ism? Meaning, it's all about me, me, me. Much of the anger is not due to any real or even perceived discrimination, but to an almost overwhelming self-centeredness that prevents these people from seeing an inch beyond their own noses. They are incapable of understanding -- or even listening to -- another person's viewpoint. You either agree with them totally or you get a hate email. Pathetic.

LGBT people are just as subject to NPD -- Narcissistic Personality Disorder -- as non-LGBT people. These howling, mad-as-a-hornet-types desperately want attention, which makes you wonder why they also prefer to be anonymous -- but there's nothing rational about them. They desperately want you to think of them as victims, they accuse you of victimizing them just because you disagree on certain aspects of certain issues. They want you to feel their pain, even if they could care less about yours. I suppose in their real lives off the Internet nobody pays these people attention -- assuming they even have a life off the Internet.

Most of these people aren't comfortable in their own skin. And certainly not with their sexuality, whatever it may be. They need to take it out on somebody. Let's get this Out and Proud Gay Guy who's stupid enough to use his real name and photo (they never use theirs; too ashamed, I suppose).

I don't know what these people have been doing but I've spent decades fighting for gay rights in one way or another. I hardly need these immature, emotionally stunted pissants threatening me or giving me a lecture cobbled together from trendy reports by people just as dumb and inconsequential as they are.

Often these people are very young, but not always. NPD can affect all sorts of people. I recently got a rather nasty email from a guy who objected to my criticisms of a certain historic bar. He made insulting and wrong speculations about me. After a couple of rounds of emails I realized that this guy didn't really give a shit about the bar. You see, it was his hang-out, "his" bar, and if I "attacked" the bar that meant I was attacking him. A regular person, of course, wouldn't feel this way. They'd think: okay, I like the bar; you don't -- big deal. But a self-absorbed person is a different story. It's all about them.

I'm sure there are various members of the LGBT community who have legitimate gripes and grievances, and can talk about them -- rationally, honestly -- without getting hysterical or stupid.

But the ones with NPD?

I'm not interested in a damn thing they have to say. Because it's never really about a cause, about biphobia or whatever, or this or that or what-have-you.

It's always about them.

And they're a bore.

Attack of the Self-Hating Homos

Okay, you've heard of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Giant Leeches, but have you ever been subjected to an attack by a self-hating homo? As much as I'd like to think that SHH's are a dying breed, they still exist. Most of them are in the religious ex-gay camps or on the down low, but a few identify as gay and can be found in gay bars and parties. They can strike when you least expect it.

It usually goes like this. SHH is offended by your gay identity because he or she has none of his/her own. Instead they're dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia. They are almost never out of the closet, even to family and [non-gay] friends, even though just about everyone knows that they're gay anyway.

What brings on an attack can be anything, but especially a discussion on gay rights and gay marriage. Self-hating homos will employ the same arguments that straight bigots use when discussing gay marriage and gay rights ["special privileges" to them]. Regardless of how old they are, they're stuck back in the 1970's.

Because they are on the periphery of the gay scene, they have little knowledge of it beyond their own sexual urges. They know little of homophobia or of the struggle for acceptance, and couldn't care less -- to their minds, it doesn't concern them. They tend to eschew relationships and their sex is of the anonymous (as opposed to casual) variety. They have sex not in actual beds and bedrooms but in parked cars and bushes. Even if they are not in heterosexual relationships (wife and kids), they very much resemble those kind of closet cases. Since they think of gay men in the most stereotypical of terms, and feel they are not in any way like them (except, ahem, for the attraction-to-men bit), they want to disassociate themselves as much as possible from gay guys. They deign to have friendships with openly gay men. [As if we need them.]

They speak of gays as if they are somehow apart from them (which in many ways is true; these people are homosexual but hardly Out and Proud). Like straight bigots they will point out all the outrageous [to them] participants in Gay Pride parades -- "those drag and leather queens, why would I want to march with them?" -- blindly ignoring the fact that most participants in Gay Marches are just average folk who happen to be gay. [Let me make it clear that I am not putting down the more flamboyant marchers.]

They speak of total disdain for gay culture, gay life. Because they are essentially unhappy, they blame it all on their being homosexual. They brag about how they hardly ever go to gay bars, how they have few if any gay friends. In their own minds this somehow makes them better than the rest of us. Their superiority complex only masks an inferiority complex -- but it doesn't fool anyone.

An aside: Most of us certainly have and should have heterosexual friends. But whenever I meet a homosexual person who says, in that certain "superior" tone, that most of their friends are straight, I always get an impression that they feel this makes them somehow better in their own eyes because after all, they think heterosexuals are better than gays [or at least that it's better to be straight than gay].

Sometimes you can help a self-hating homo to find acceptance. More often they set up a stony wall of attitude that it's impossible to breach. They need therapy and counseling but will rarely seek it. They prefer to wallow in their misery.

Some of these people stay shivering in their closets. Others do real damage to themselves and others. They never understand that by acting as if there's something wrong with being gay, they insult every gay person they choose to associate with.

SHH's are all over the Internet. They have strong opinions, but their opinions are always ill-conceived and uneducated because, as they admit, they are on the periphery of gay life. Still they persist in mouthing off on message boards and blogs.

Always anonymously.