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Feb. 10th, 2005 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kamomilIt is funny how activist liberal people can be just the same as fundamentalist conservative people: going around indoctrinating people about what is right and wrong.
I read an article last night in Eye magazine and it was ostensibly about sex and relationships and attitudes. They had on their "panel" two therapists, and the magazine's sex columnist. Well, it was pretty clear who was who!!! The sex columnist at one point lashed out against religious belief, Catholicism in particular, saying that it damaged people. The therapists, used to un-doing damage, not doing more of it, were way more gentle.
Just because someone was raised with a damaging belief system does not mean you can just beat the religion out of them with a confrontational five-minute conversation and everything will be okay. Skewing someone's beliefs in distortion to what happens in the world can also occur by having an overprotective parent, an overbearing parent, being the superstar-of-the-family youngest child, the forgotten middle child, and so forth. Being raised in a way like that infiltrates your life, it colours all your thoughts and feelings, and the way you see the world. Expecting to change their minds about something in a five-minute conversation is futile. All you will do is confuse the person. You can't tell someone everything they believe is wrong. It probably won't stick, at least not right away. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!"
I have had some astoundingly rude conversations with people at university about this type of thing. People who are very socially conscious about not oppressing anyone, think nothing of getting into a discussion with me, that leaves me feeling disconnected and confused and angry. Sure, Catholicism damaged me a bit, does that give an academic person license to damage me some more?
I read an article last night in Eye magazine and it was ostensibly about sex and relationships and attitudes. They had on their "panel" two therapists, and the magazine's sex columnist. Well, it was pretty clear who was who!!! The sex columnist at one point lashed out against religious belief, Catholicism in particular, saying that it damaged people. The therapists, used to un-doing damage, not doing more of it, were way more gentle.
Just because someone was raised with a damaging belief system does not mean you can just beat the religion out of them with a confrontational five-minute conversation and everything will be okay. Skewing someone's beliefs in distortion to what happens in the world can also occur by having an overprotective parent, an overbearing parent, being the superstar-of-the-family youngest child, the forgotten middle child, and so forth. Being raised in a way like that infiltrates your life, it colours all your thoughts and feelings, and the way you see the world. Expecting to change their minds about something in a five-minute conversation is futile. All you will do is confuse the person. You can't tell someone everything they believe is wrong. It probably won't stick, at least not right away. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!"
I have had some astoundingly rude conversations with people at university about this type of thing. People who are very socially conscious about not oppressing anyone, think nothing of getting into a discussion with me, that leaves me feeling disconnected and confused and angry. Sure, Catholicism damaged me a bit, does that give an academic person license to damage me some more?
