To See Or Not To See

Too often we take for granted at what’s being presented to us in face value. The logic behind that intuition is easily explained in that we like looking at pretty things. A young wife would rather choose a vibrant, floral themed wall paper instead of the other choice of a dull, brown dark. A successful businessman loves to sport his newly purchased Jaguar rather than driving around in an uninteresting Spectra. Subconsciously, we have the tendency to engage in anything that has to do with the word “beautiful.” In fact, this phenomenon was studied with a group of babies where they were presented with a series of human faces and almost unanimously, the “beautiful” faces received much higher reactions to those that were judged otherwise. Psychologist Dr Alan Slater of University of Exeter concluded that, “this inbuilt notion of beauty persists with us throughout life: not only babies, but children, adolescents, and adults.” If this theory is true, then there is reason to believe that our gay community has fantastically magnified this basic human instinct to a whole new level. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Equality, a word that led generations of debates, movements, and wars, has been the single true foundation of what our gay community has been fighting for during the past half a century. The matter isn’t merely about rights, freedom, or embracement, but only the desire to be treated as equals as the rest of the lawful citizens of the world. But if one takes a more amplified look into our society, specifically in the dating scene, it’s shocking to observe the oxymoronic circumstances that are being displayed right in our very own backyard.

Our preferences limit our full enjoyment in life, and there’s nothing truer than when a guy asks another guy out on a date based on a detail out of his initial checklist: Race. A UC Irvine study confirms that, “Race is one of the main selection criteria for daters — which express racial preferences even more commonly than religious or educational preferences.” Surely one can see the cascading negative effects this has on our gay society given the fact that we are supposed to be the premier group to champion the essence of equality.

Let’s do a little experiment.

If you take a moment and close your eyes to observe your environment, you sense air. Air provides us one of the basic ingredients of life as we greedily inhale its presence in its pure grandeur. It has no color, taste, form, or shape. You are doing nothing special here but simply grasping a feel of what’s in front of you. Let’s take another moment to feel something else in front of you by using your hands, this time a person. With your eyes closed, you begin to feel his face. His skin is smooth on the cheek, but scruffy by the jaw line, yet warm to the touch. He has a very sturdy nose and strong thick lips. His ears are slightly inward, covered by his long soft hair. You don’t know what he looks like, but you grow fond of him simply because you made a connection with him through your hands. Studies have shown that touching communicates distinct emotions such as love, happiness, and intimacy*. This romantic power of touching creeps its way to your brain from the sensors of your finger tips, materializing in a vision of someone of whom you fantasize him to become. Alas, you open your eyes, and he is black. Or Asian. Or white. Or Latino. Or whichever race you have on your checklist of don’ts and you become disappointed. From there on, you close the door on yourself at endless possibilities of a future with this person. Within our eyes, love should be blind and unlimited. Within our eyes, we are but the same beings who bleed the same color of blood, cry the same salty tears, and yell the same loud screams in search for the ultimate truth.

But we like what we like. That’s the truth. Thus, we choose to see what we want to see, and we choose to be blind to those we wish not to see.

So, are we still babies? Maybe as a society, we have some growing up to do. Having said that, it’s not hard to see how it would take someone with a tremendous command of persuasion, a keen sense of understanding, and an infinite gauge of patience to change the way we are because baby, we were born this way. 

*Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006

Greener Pastures *As seen on David Magazine Atlanta issue 651*

We’ve all heard the old saying: The grass is greener on the other side. You ask yourself, at this moment, what in your life symbolizes the “grass” that’s supposed to be important to you. Then you find things that are supposed to be “greener” than your grass. Voila! To your surprise, the list can be astoundingly long. Then, “dog gone it, why don’t I have all these stuff in the first place?” You ask. The answer is simple: Because you just don’t have them.

We are prone to see past things that we already have and ironically focus on the things that we don’t possess. Canadian social specialist Marcy stated that this idea is imbedded in our psychology where people “think that what they want is better than what they have.” This idea runs especially true when applied to our romantic relationships.

You’ve seen it. I saw it. We’ve all been there. How many times have we heard our friends console each other about being dumped by their boyfriends, cheated on, or simply wondered about the existence and meaning of love altogether. The grass in this instance indeed means the “men” who are always better looking, smarter, and do better than what you can ever do for your boyfriend. Your boyfriend is the type that has “mastered the techniques and absorbed the subtleties,” as Blanche put it to Rose, of the old saying in discussion because he wants what he does not have. So he runs off and fetches his greedy sexually excesses. But the reality of the situation is that the grass is not always greener on the other side, and often times than not, the result usually ends in tremendous romantic devastation. Feelings hurt, friends lost, relationships broken are usually the aftermaths of stepping over to the dark side (well, green side in this case). But as intelligent human beings, we come up with ways to make circumstances work. Although not entirely far off the ethical way of things, we make our relationships work through compromising.

Enter open relationships. An idea of such an alien concept dating back to the early 1980’s is now a rampant, normal, sort of the cool thing to do in our gay society. The thought process is broken down as such, using the grass is greener rule: Why can’t I have both the grass I have and the greener grass on the other side? Only in this case the grass is infinite, allowing the pursuer to feed his hunger of lust, and there is one gay commandment that everyone must abide to: NSA, or DL depending on your upbringing. This arrangement has worked out extremely well for many relationships and in some cases, built a stronger bond between two lovers. So at the end of the day, what gives with all the negativities and controversies that this concept has generated?

First, our happiness factor is greatly reduced. This stems from the fact that in a couple, one out of the two is unhappy because the open relationship is generally compromised. Research scientist Patil concluded that being in an open relationship is “uniformly bad, decreasing positive feeling by 15 percent compared with single people.” Second, the “fear response,” as columnist Kathleen Doheny found out, can destroy a relationship. The fear is when your lover is focusing more energy and spending more time with the “second” lover. Jealous broods and envy arises, stuff that can cripple any relationship. And third, the most obvious concern, looks at the health aspect of the relationship. It might be too late to treat that sore after finding out your boyfriend transmitted a certain disease from his other lovers. But don’t you worry. It could get worse.

While there are preventive measures to combat the shortcomings that an open relationship creates, such as practicing safe sex, have a bigger net of open communication, or simply undo the relationship, the inevitable emotional scar carved on one’s heart can take some time to heal and recuperate. As homosexuals, we are hardwired to think and react in a certain way after all, even though not everything we do is generally accepted. We learn and conquer our obstacles, which the generation before us has done to make way for our modern lifestyles. With the concept of open relationship, it will obviously fail for some but work for others. And when it works, it works splendidly.

At the end of the day, it is the bed you choose and pick to sleep on that matters the most. The person that lies next to you is the one who you will openly call your true one and only love. Nothing NSA or DL about that.

About The Peng Perspective

Hello there,

Thanks for checking in. If you are asking why I am here, you could ask yourself the same question - because you love to write. Like you, I love to write. I love to create ideas, situations and embellish their elements to tell a more flavorful story. But for the purpose of this blog, I would like to share not simply just the stories themselves, but the philosophical underlying contexts of such stories that I present.

I delve into current affairs, romantic issues, religious beliefs, or simply the daily mundane happenings and dissect the point that I am making, only that I offer you the point of view from the perspective of a gay individual. I want to create something in that the writing is serious, informative, yet at the same time offers a sense of general understanding. It never intends for one to agree or disagree with the thought process but simply invites the reader to join the ride and observe a situation from a different angle.

My goal, in the end, is for a reader, regardless of sexual orientation, to look at a certain situation, event, or ideology from the outside in and then inside out. I present the material derived from our every day society, then perhaps occasionally apply it into my gay community to compare and contrast. My only hope for the reader when finished reading the writing is for him to be aware of his intuitions of the self. Nothing more or less. 

Please, take a moment to read my blog and if you like what you read, connect with me. Thank you.

Sincerely,

S. Peng

Zzz