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.

Asexuals United! -- Give Me a Break!

or NO SEX PLEASE -- WE'RE GLBTA!

You may or may not have noticed how some GLBT bloggers are adding "asexuals" to the list of oppressed minorities (Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender). If you have any sense at all, you're probably going "what the fuck?" [Or perhaps "what the no-fuck" might be more appropriate.] Salon and The New York Times both did articles on the (small) number of people who are identifying as asexual and who claim that, like gay or straight, it is an orientation.

No, I'm not making this up!

It's almost becoming -- hell it has become--comical the way that groups are stealing the language of gay liberation -- "asexual and proud" like hell! -- and appropriating it for their own pathetic purposes. Of course, some dim bulbs in the GLBT movement are perfectly happy to let them do it. As I've said before, some well-meaning but intellectually challenged individuals are loathe to discriminate against anyone who might be "oppressed," so they''ll add just about any group imaginable to GLBT (thank goodness that does not extend to pedophiles or bestialists, but in the future, who knows?)

Asexuality has different meanings but for our purposes it refers to people who have no sexual attraction for anyone, male or female. Naturally they have no sex lives, or if they do, don't get any pleasure out of them. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't an orientation -- it's a disability and it does no one -- least of all the asexuals who are missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures -- any good to pretend otherwise.

Frankly, as a gay man I find it deeply offensive to have these "asexuals" comparing themselves to gay people. Sex is the big bugaboo in our society, not a lack of it. I don't know of anyone being beaten to death because they were asexual, or being fired from their job because of it, or any really negative societal response except maybe laughter, pity, or disbelief. The fact that homosexuality was once seen as a mental or medical disorder doesn't change my mind one bit. Homosexuality is not a disability; asexuality is.

David Jay (pictured) founded a group for asexuals called Aven when he was all of 19. Many people don't know if they're gay, straight, bi or what-have-you at 19, but Jay has identified as an asexual for the past four years. Even people at 23 or (much) older often haven't determined exactly where they are on the sexual scale, so it seems a mite premature of Jay to classify himself as anything. But the asexual movement -- pause for a big guffaw right here -- is just the kind of stupid thing that an immature mind would conceive of and post on the Internet.

There are different reports as to the number of members in AVEN, everything from 100 (which seems reasonable) to 4000 (which is pathetic). I've no doubt that a lot of sad, sexless people who for one (bad) reason or another have zero sex drive have happily signed up with the group to validate their dysfunctional lives. Some of them may be people who couldn't get laid if they showed up in hooker heaven with a pile of thousand dollar bills in their fists. Many therapists [unless they're politically over-correct assholes] agree that these are people who need therapy and counseling, not to be told that their asexuality is just another "orientation."

Comments that Jay makes to reporters make it clear that he has a very negative attitude toward sex, which is either the cause or result of his "asexuality." He literally doesn't seem to understand what it is that he's missing.

It's appalling that some GLBT people would take the asexual movement seriously. Again, I can only assume its very young or at least very immature people who have no real sense of the long-time gay movement, the struggles before and after Stonewall (and still on-going) and really don't understand why comparing asexuals to homosexuals is blatantly ludicrous, inaccurate, and even, as I said, offensive.

And there's something else that's troubling about this. In a New York Times piece written by Mary Duenwald, she writes about a 32-year-old man who got married hoping that it would "fix" his asexuality. Unfortunately, it only resulted in divorce. Duenwald then writes: "now he is living with a younger man in a relationship that he described as loving and romantic but free of sex."

Frankly, this guy sounds more like someone who's gay and in denial, someone who desires men sexually but is too hung up for whatever reason to act upon it, then a genuine (if there is such a thing) "asexual." [Asexual may merely be the opposite of bisexual and just as trendy, if not yet as political.]

And how many more of the men and women attracted to AVEN are in this category, how many more will fall victim to Jay's childishness and irresponsibility. Even if one believes that some people are "oriented" to be asexual (that's like not liking food, as one therapist puts it), it doesn't mean that many people who classify themselves as such don't need counseling and sex therapy and help of some kind to discover why there is this abnormal gap in their psycho-sexual make up. GLBT activists should not and hopefully most will not enable these people in their delusion.

Sure, there may be people who are not sexually active and may be happy in spite of it. You can be deaf and blind and still be happy -- but you're still disabled. Just like deaf people who refuse to get cochlear impants, "asexuals" have the right to refuse treatment or advice. But they are not an oppressed minority group, and I believe -- despite all the pc fools out there -- if they continue to insist that they are it will only backfire on them.

Now I'm going to have some safe sex. The rest of you -- jerk off!