I had an interesting conversation last night with my husband after about the fifth time the Ru Paul’s Drag race commercial came on. Each time it aired, the heavy sigh and eye rolls would break loose, so I finally asked, “What bothers you so much about drag?” I made sure that I went with the “we listen and don’t judge” position, and I waited.
“The double standard makes me really angry.”
I couldn’t connect the dots to that answer, so I asked more clarifying questions. A lot of years now, I’ve suspected underlying homophobia with him, but it was never in a way that made any sense, and the harshest reactions were almost always exclusive to exposure to drag queens. His response absolutely floored me.
“Every man in America has been asked to undertake the task of unlearning the behavior that paved the ways to allow for women to be marginalized, stereotyped, objectified and sexualized. Why does this group of people get to exploit it and be celebrated for it? They put on the stereotypes as a costume, by choice. They want to be the provocative, sexy, thirst-trap, the average woman has been trying to outrun her whole life in order to be taken seriously as an equal.”
As I sat there digesting it, I felt really proud of him. It’s not often that he can veer me from my own perspectives, especially on controversial topics. I immediately said, “I’d never thought of it like that, and you’re right.” I realized that it wasn’t homophobia, my husband is a feminist. This thing that I suspected was bias against the queer community, is actually a deeply rooted appreciation and respect for women, that he is not willing to make exceptions for.
This has been a serious area of tension in our marriage a good number of times. I do not, and will not tolerate gender or racial bias, and this particular topic hits my equity reader no matter who I’m conversing with. I have a good number of friends across the LGBTQ+ community. I celebrate them all, and I am their ally. So when I started to feel traitorous about not only understanding my husband’s perspective on this particular topic, but attempting to embrace it, I realized that this was worth writing about.
As I was putting my thoughts together, this conversation we had didn’t just leave me with a better understanding of my husband’s perspective, it showed me that what I had long perceived as bias, is just a hierarchy of tolerance. His tolerance was out of rank with my own.
INTOLERANCE has been woven into our culture, and with that, it seems, it’s led many people to abandon the ability to appropriately weigh and measure the corresponding response that comes with it.
In the example I just gave between me and my husband, I jumped straight to intolerance of his position without fully understanding why. My need to protect my ideals as the only acceptable version of the truth, overrode my ability to throttle my response, until I asked more questions.
As we inch closer and closer to a new presidential administration, I want to do better at accessing this level of analysis and questioning. Don’t get it twisted, I do not hold as much value and appreciation for the American government as I do my marriage, but I am going to do a better job of throttling my response this time around. Whether I agree with it or not, I have to acknowledge that a significant majority of this nation’s people chose this guy. In response, I think a lot more people need to consult their hierarchy of tolerance and learn how to make some adjustments. Living inside the veil of intolerance and consequently responding with unthrottled outrage at every adverse circumstance is no way to live.
I am in no way saying that the next four years won’t bumpy, but when have they not been? When was the last time this country was pulled together by its leaders rather than untethered from each other by outrage? Maybe this time, we can all learn from the not-so-distant past and recognize that the solution doesn’t lie in the hands of one person, it lives within your own ability to ask the right questions.