Mahojiano kati ya Zamaradi Mketema na Shoga maarufu 'Kaoge'
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
The question of homosexuality is probably the most complex social issue of our day! Obviously, most of us are not well-informed and are, therefore, misguided when we hastily condemn homosexuality. While I am not a practicing homosexual, I have come to realize that the question of homosexuality is more of a biological question than a cultural question, as I'll explain in the paragraphs subsequent hereto.
We've built our entire anti-homosexuality argument on one important premise: the idea that all people are either male or female. That way we can distinguish the appropriate sexual relationships from the inappropriate ones.
But what if we find out that someone is NEITHER male NOR female? Then what?
You see, despite their rarity, gender anomalies do exist. Many people have abnormalities that prevent them from being classified as male or female. Some have both sets of genitals; others have deformed genitals; some have bodies that don't match their chromosomes; others have chromosomes that aren't XX or XY; and still others have bodies that don't match their brains. It's a field that gets more and more complex the more you study it. Most of these people find a way of publicly identifying as male or female, but their bodies may in fact be more like the opposite gender, or anywhere in between.
Most of us are just glad not to have to deal with problems like that, so we simply put it out of our minds. But this is a very real problem that affects many real people. It's not their fault they were born with these difficulties, and this is the only life they've got. So if they fall in love with someone who loves them just as they are, then how do we advise them? We can't just write it off as "an exception to the rule"--not if we really believe that gender marks the difference between appropriate sexual relationships and inappropriate ones. No, somehow we'd have to find a way of distinguishing, but how? Would we just go by the gender they identified with, even if their body was quite different? Would we go by external genitals? By chromosomes? What about the ambiguous cases?
A lot of Tanzanians tend to quickly dismiss homosexuality as a nonTanzanian culture, without really understanding that homosexuality is not a question of culture per se. Americans of all races and Europeans alike have struggled with this question for many years and most of them were initially just as strongly opposed to homosexuality as we Tanzanians are today. The more they debated and studied it, the better they understood it. It is just unfortunate that these people always see things before we Africans do!
We should perhaps refrain from prematurely judging the homosexuals or letting our emotions run the show. Just because we have a clearcut biological XX or XY makeup, it doesn't mean every human being is like that. We need to open up our minds and study this issue carefully!
1 comment:
The question of homosexuality is probably the most complex social issue of our day! Obviously, most of us are not well-informed and are, therefore, misguided when we hastily condemn homosexuality. While I am not a practicing homosexual, I have come to realize that the question of homosexuality is more of a biological question than a cultural question, as I'll explain in the paragraphs subsequent hereto.
We've built our entire anti-homosexuality argument on one important premise: the idea that all people are either male or female. That way we can distinguish the appropriate sexual relationships from the inappropriate ones.
But what if we find out that someone is NEITHER male NOR female? Then what?
You see, despite their rarity, gender anomalies do exist. Many people have abnormalities that prevent them from being classified as male or female. Some have both sets of genitals; others have deformed genitals; some have bodies that don't match their chromosomes; others have chromosomes that aren't XX or XY; and still others have bodies that don't match their brains. It's a field that gets more and more complex the more you study it. Most of these people find a way of publicly identifying as male or female, but their bodies may in fact be more like the opposite gender, or anywhere in between.
Most of us are just glad not to have to deal with problems like that, so we simply put it out of our minds. But this is a very real problem that affects many real people. It's not their fault they were born with these difficulties, and this is the only life they've got. So if they fall in love with someone who loves them just as they are, then how do we advise them? We can't just write it off as "an exception to the rule"--not if we really believe that gender marks the difference between appropriate sexual relationships and inappropriate ones. No, somehow we'd have to find a way of distinguishing, but how? Would we just go by the gender they identified with, even if their body was quite different? Would we go by external genitals? By chromosomes? What about the ambiguous cases?
A lot of Tanzanians tend to quickly dismiss homosexuality as a nonTanzanian culture, without really understanding that homosexuality is not a question of culture per se. Americans of all races and Europeans alike have struggled with this question for many years and most of them were initially just as strongly opposed to homosexuality as we Tanzanians are today. The more they debated and studied it, the better they understood it. It is just unfortunate that these people always see things before we Africans do!
We should perhaps refrain from prematurely judging the homosexuals or letting our emotions run the show. Just because we have a clearcut biological XX or XY makeup, it doesn't mean every human being is like that. We need to open up our minds and study this issue carefully!
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