Slightly out of date text here, started writing it a year ago, but only just finished yesterday, and submitted it to the college magazine. thought i'd post it here. I'm not saying in any sense that one's sexuality is a choice, just that it was a useful debate in terms of demonstrating that tolerance (that is tolerance of true difference) was elided.
other than this, i've started the new academic year feeling pretty dishevelled. the dissertation had to be written, and was, but it felt pretty hard going. have made very little/no art for some while, though have attended lectures, seminars and written, which is something.
spending a lot of time in crouch end, which is a pretty wierd bit of london to my mind, pretty posh, high level of owner occupiers, big victorian and edwardian houses and very posh caffs - can''t get a cup of tea for under £1.50. it's also silent at night, no car alarms or sirens.
well, will write more very soon. here's the text:
TOLERANCE
Our society is predicated upon the existence of an autonomous subject that exercises choice. Shopping and voting are the twinned activities that legitimate this system and express the agency of this subject. The virtues of choices in shops, latterly in public services and in political parties are often extolled. Diversity and choice are presented as one of the defining features and greatest virtues of liberal democracy.
Tolerance of difference is also valorized. The different becomes the target for therapeutics, celebration, and tolerance, with one crucial provision; it must not be one that is freely chosen. Difference contains a critical dimension, to choose difference implies a rejection of what is on offer (the same); the implied criticism is negated when difference is imposed by circumstance or biology.
The debates surrounding Clause 28 and its subsequent repeal demonstrate this dichotomy. The proponents of the amendment claimed that homosexuality was a choice, therefore morally suspect, and that children could be influenced by teachers or teaching materials to choose it. Opponents argued that sexuality is not chosen, therefore to demonise homosexuals was unfair and illogical, more or less in the same way that to act prejudicially towards someone on the basis of biological facts, skin colour or gender would be. The arguments against the amendment elide the question of tolerance for true, chosen, difference. This can be demonstrated by a simple thought experiment: imagine an activist from Stonewall or some other group saying, in favour of repealing the amendment, “I like cock and arse, I choose it. I would encourage everyone to try it, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
The only way that homosexuals could enter the charmed circle of freedom and agency was to relinquish agency in connection to that aspect of themselves that led to their banishment in the first place; to say “I did not choose this, I was born like it.” Entrance to a free society is guaranteed by the claim to be under some compulsion; that is, un-free in regard to the designation that marked one as an outsider. Tolerance can be extended towards difference as long as it disavows any agency. To put it another way, we are diverse as long as the different say that they are not different at all, that if circumstances were not as they are, they would be just like us.
The asylum seeker is in a similar position, in order to be accepted as such – to be able to stay – they have to prove that they are genuine. That they did not want to be here.
One enters the promised realm of freedom by relinquishing freedom. We are protected from the threat of difference by naturalizing it. The recent attempt at legislating against religious hatred, placing religion on the same level as ethnicity was a way of defusing the overt criticism of our secular state contained in fundamentalist religious discourse. The attempt to corral it into the same space as biology – that which is not chosen – was in effect saying “poor things, they can’t help it”, whilst simultaneously showing respect and tolerance.
