Homophobia

Homophobia is a subject close to my heart and it makes me extremely angry and frustrated.  If you have read my other blogs, you already know my brother, Jason is gay.  What you don’t know if how much homophobia has affected his personal choices.  Jason was married to a beautiful woman, Angela in his early twenties.  Jason knew he was gay; however a few of our pastors and leaders at our church convinced him if he would get married and live a heterosexual lifestyle he would be freed from the demonic spirit that caused him to desire sexual relations with men.  I personally think these individuals are complete morons!  Jason desperately wanted to be a minister and a “Godly” man.  So against my pleading and hours of conversation, Jason proposed to his best friend Angela.  Angela knew Jason struggled with homosexual desires; however she too believed Jason’s sexuality would change once they were married.  Obviously being gay is not a choice, so getting married did not suddenly make Jason straight.  Jason and Angela filed for divorce after two years of marriage.   Angela remains single because she is afraid to get involved in another relationship.  Jason still struggles with the loss of his best friend, Angela and how much pain he caused her

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My point is homophobia within our church caused Jason to make a terrible choice.  Homophobia in essence devastated Angela.   I also lost Angela as a friend.  We were friends before Jason married her and became much closer as sisters-in-law.   Homophobia hurts everyone involved, not just the homosexual individual.  Trust me; I have been deeply wounded by people who claimed to love me as result of having a gay brother.

Body Image

Chapter 68, The Body Politic in Readings for Diversity and Social Justice is very interesting to me personally.  In spite of the fact I am now very much overweight, I once struggled with an eating disorder.  I really struggled with writing about this time in my life because I think people who see me as I am know will never believe me. 

With that said, I will attempt to allow you guys a small glimpse into my personal battle with a combination of anorexia and bulimia.  It actually started with a bleeding peptic ulcer.  Due to the blood in my stomach I vomited frequently and lost a little weight before my physicians were able to diagnosis the ulcer and treat it.  I gained the weight back, which made me think I could get really skinny by vomiting.  So I started purging everything I ate or drank.  After a few months, I would go for several days without eating or drinking at all.  My senior year of high school, I missed over forty-five days of school because I was so frequently hospitalized due to dehydration.  Because I missed so many days, I had to go before the school board and convinced them to allow me to graduate.  The only reason I was not forced to repeat my senior year was that I was an honor student with a very high GPA. I continued my pattern of starving and purging until I was in my early twenties.  I was sent to Scott & White hospital in Temple, TX at the age of twenty and spent several weeks attempting to get better.  The physician told my family, I would probably not live; they could not help me because I was unwilling to be helped. 

Shortly after that I was involved in a severe car wreck. I suffered a closed head injury, which caused me to develop severe migraines and other medical issues. I spent months in physical and cognitive rehab, which made it very difficult for me to keep up my eating disorder routine.  I would love to say, I learned to eat health and quite purging and starving myself because of some inspirational insight.  However the truth is, I quite because it was too difficult to keep up with my routine and deal with constant severe neck and back pain and atypical migraines.

My family and I are fully aware; I have the potential to develop an eating disorder at any given moment.  I attempt to keep myself from that temptation by remembering the excruciating hunger pains and how weak I felt.  My fear of developing another eating disorder is what has kept me from dieting at all in the past.  I recently started weight watchers in hopes to get back down to a health weight.  Thankfully I have a few friends that know my eating disorder history that help me not get too carried away with my dieting attempt.

We as social workers must keep in mind; things are not always as they appear.  No one in our social class would ever be able to guess I struggled with an eating disorder just by looking at current physical appearance.

 I decided to include a few pictures of myself when I was much smaller.  At the time of both of the pictures, I was already beginning to gain weight.  At the height of my eating disorder I weighed ninety-six pounds and was five foot seven inches tall.

Jennifer Bliss age 19

Jennifer Bliss age 21

Babies

Earlier I had the great pleasure of babysitting my cousin’s six month old little girl, Bridgette.  She is an absolute doll and I really enjoyed getting to see her.  I also have a cousin who has a baby boy, Greyson who is also six months old.   Ironically Bridgette and Greyson were actually born on the exact same day.  Since I absolutely love children and deeply desire to have my own some day, anytime I am in town I try to see the babies as much as possible. 

I read “Night to His Day” in our Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, which made me really look at the differences of how my family treats Bridgette compared to Greyson.  According to Lorber, “For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category bon the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth.  The babies are dressed or adorned in a way that displays the category” (Lorber, 2010).   She continues to explain choice in name, clothing, and use of other gender markers creates the gender status (Lorber, 2010).

Bridgette is clearly a female, based not only on her physical genitalia, but her name, her clothes, her toys, blankets, even her diapers scream, “I am a Girl”.  Beyond these clearly defined female items, my Grandmother points out her supposed feminine way of acting and looking.  Quite frankly at this age, I don’t really see much of a difference in their actions.  Bridgette certainly looks female and Greyson is without a doubt male looking.  Of course, I really don’t know if has much to do with their sexual anatomy or the way my family is dressing and raising them. 

I really don’t want to continue rambling about the differences in appearance of my two adorable baby cousins. I decided the easiest way to really demonstrate, how they look is to post a picture.  So you can look at Bridgette and Greyson and use them as I did to more fully understand Lorber’s point about society creating gender identity.

 

 

Bridgette Humphrey                                                    

Greyson
Kent

Questioning Christianity

It is no secret I struggle with my own religious upbringing.  Reading the text for next week over religion and more specifically the unfair dominance of Christianity certainly has not made my personal struggle any easier.

I sometimes wish I could just walk away from my Christian roots, but I recognize this is impossible as many of the Biblical Principles I have been taught still instruct my actions and thoughts on a daily basis.

How can Christians claim to love every individual while at the same time blatantly discriminate, demonize, and damn those individuals?  Of course, I have been repeatedly told, “love the sinner, but hate the sin”.  A scripture in the Bible basically teaches where there is love; this is no room for darkness or hatred.  Perfect love cast out all fear. (Sorry I do not have my Bible with me, and I do remember the exact scriptures or their location.)  So why are a large portion of Christians afraid of other religious beliefs and teachings?  I have been told not to even read books about other religions, because those books will cause me to doubt Christianity.  It’s the actions of individual Christians, that cause me to doubt, not the beliefs and practices of Buddha, Islam, Hindu, Muslim, Jews, etc.

My problem with Christianity is the lack of consistency between the scriptures studied and quoted during church services and the actual actions followed outside the four walls of a church.