Conformance for Social A

Conformance

There’s this idea that you’re supposed to operate according to other’s expectations. It’s suggested to us from an early age that who and what we are is dictated by the larger social context and situation within which we’re raised. This becomes the current debate on “Should boys play with Barbies” or “Can girls play boy’s sports?” and then goes rapidly downhill. It becomes toxic quickly because its nature affronts what we’ve always been told.

Conformance is, shall we say, de rigeur for social acceptance.

As a parent, I’m unsure as to why this becomes such a struggle to deal with. I have two girls, both in their mid/late teens, and thinking back to what my ex-wife and I did to encourage their growth and development, I can’t quite put my finger on anything that steered them one way or another. But perhaps that’s it; maybe it was the unconscious decision to reinforce a particular ideal that we had through gifts, praise, and other types of encouragement.

So here we sit, looking out at the world through the windows of social expectation and conformity, and the questions rise unbidden: what if we’re wrong? What if everything we’ve understood to be ground-level truth is just something we embraced because we didn’t challenge the ideals? What if, what if, what if…

We expect these questions to be answered in the larger social gyre we participate in. Our communities shape our actions and beliefs quite strongly. Dissent is quashed through the whelming majority; difference is tolerated only so far as the rest agree. This social structure is ancient, built on the necessary foundations of primal survival when aberrations resulted in death. Still, its applicability to modern society is quite distant and removed.

Our twisting and turning around this issue is based on the adoption of theocratic heteronormativity. This perverse ideology finds its foundations not in the understanding of social and biological evolution but between the pages of a book written by men. It’s a gross assumption that the way things were is the way things are and should be. It wholly neglects the progress of humanity across the continuum of time and assumes a static state of being.

I wonder if we’re not inured to this conformity, dear souls. We see the pantomime of acceptance played out in our legislative halls and the threats of violence from the opposite side of the room. We have our champions and allies fomenting for social change and acceptance. At the same time, lip service is played by those comfortably ensconced behind keyboards and committees, daring people to step out of line lest they be smacked down again.

What will it take for us to shift society? Not to degenerate into a lawless order of death and destruction but into one of grace and kindness. I’d rather be a community of intentional love and acceptance than one that chooses hate and exclusion.

These questions and wondering won’t be answered in a day, week, month, or year. They won’t be answered by the vagueries of politicians’ promises or in the unkempt town halls. They will be answered, however, by those who stand watch over who and what we are, those who understand what it means to be the isolated and the unloved.

Regardless of your views, the truth stands like this lighthouse: ever watching and mindful of the world at its feet.

May it ever be so.