by Zefferin LLamas
*Note from the author: I am a queer, bilingual, biracial, bicultural person living in the United States today. Indigenous blood courses through my veins (of the Caxcan people of Zacatecas, Mexico). European blood courses there as well (Spanish and Anglo). I seek to fight cultural division, inequity, and racism, but have struggled in the past with the question of how. What is an appropriate response those who seek to disenfranchise others based on personal prejudices regarding sexuality, gender expression, race, and cultural identity? In my early 20s, I questioned the value of non-violence. Later, I decided to reject the position of violence because I realized that taking such a position would do nothing to combat the hate that I wanted to see dissolve from this world.
I came to the conclusion that using the tools of the oppressor against the oppressor would only turn me into an oppressor myself. Today, many still disagree with the philosophies of non-violence of the kind promoted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Yet the position of non-violence, although a more difficult stance to take, is the only position that aligns with the principles that might create a future that is peaceful, equitable, and just for all people.
It is understandable to be shocked by the darkness of hateful actions. But as we peer into the dark hearts of those who hate, we should take the opportunity to remind ourselves what we do not want to become; a person who is consumed by hate, a person who acts from a place of fear.
Dr. King says in his book Strength to Love (1963), that this kind of person acts from a place of irrational fears, such as, “loss of preferred economic privilege, altered social status … and adjustment to new situations.” King describes such an individual as a victim of fear, and notes:
“Some seek to ignore the question of race relations and to close their mind to the issues involved… others hope to drown their fears by engaging in acts of violence and meanness. […] Instead of eliminating fear, they instill deeper and more pathological fears that leave the victims inflicted with strange psychoses and peculiar cases of paranoia.”
Dr. King made these observations some 60 years ago, but it is not difficult to recognize such people today. How do we respond to this kind of person? King would say that we should try to avoid contracting the illness of hate, because:
“Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true … hate divides the personality … love in an amazing and inexorable way unites it.”
Love is Love. Love wins. Love transcends. The movement for LGBTQ+ civil equality has used love as a guiding principle to advance our goals. If we as queer, trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people are to challenge and transcend the conventions of gender, and other binaries, then it is not enough to simply identify with this transcendence; it is something that we must display and practice in daily life.
Dr. King spoke of the “tough mind and the tender heart.” That is, to strive to have a mind that is tough, but not so rigid that it might shatter; and to have a heart that is tender, but not so soft that we become “unduly gullible.” Instead of looking at the principles of toughness and tenderness as opposites, King describes them as complementary forces. “We must be tough-minded enough to transcend the world, but tenderhearted enough to live in it.”
Regarding liberation, King warned that “soft-minded individuals … feel that the only way to deal with oppression is by adjusting to it.” To passively accept an unjust system is to “cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.” But to react in violence (to be too tough-minded), brings “only temporary victories … creating more social problems than it solves, never bringing permanent peace.”
Personally, I believe that queer and trans people, in challenging binaries, do have an elevated potential to transcend those boundaries. Beyond the boundary of the binary is the singularity. To me, that means contact with a divine consciousness. But it is not enough to identify with this innate potential, we must practice it.
By reacting in hate, we do not transcend, we descend.
There is a Buddhist philosophy that says, “When someone insults you by doing or saying something that irritates you, take deep breath and turn off your ego… remember that if you are easily offended, you are easily manipulated.”
To this point, Dr. King said, “a victim of …the disease of egotism [fails to] realize that …all life is interrelated… all men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality… whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Some may call this point idealistic. I see it as a big-picture idea, and I think it is important to act according to our big picture, not to satisfy the desire for a short-term victory like using violence as a means of combating hate.
Today, as I contemplate the words of Dr. King, I believe that the path forward is to cultivate a tough mind and a tender heart, and to synthesize the two. From this place, a person is more able to advocate for peace, social equity, and justice in this world without needing to consider the path of violence as an option. A person who chooses violence as an option is a desperate person acting from fear. If we intend to change this world for the better, we must act from a place of peace and of love.