{"id":11255,"date":"2010-09-27T01:50:52","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T08:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=11255"},"modified":"2010-09-27T01:50:52","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T08:50:52","slug":"bigotry-and-reflected-appraisals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=11255","title":{"rendered":"Bigotry and Reflected Appraisals"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Crossposted on Alas, TADA and Family Scholars Blog. Anti-LGBT comments aren’t allowed in comments to this post on Alas.]<\/em><\/p>\n


\n\"analyzing<\/a>
\n<\/center><\/p>\n

Mark Blechner, a former Orthodox Jew who became estranged from his religion as a consequence of accepting his homosexuality, brings up the question of same-sex marriage — not civil, but religious — as necessary to the mental health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Orthodox Jews.<\/p>\n

Harry Stack Sullivan (1953), the American psychiatrist and founder of interpersonal psychoanalysis, said that the self is constructed of reflected appraisals. For any minority that experiences bigotry, the self is exposed constantly to reflected appraisals that are degrading and humiliating. It happened to the Jews in Germany, and it happened to blacks in white-ruled South Africa. For the Jews, one of the solutions was to found the state of Israel, a nation where their Jewish identity is valued proudly. The same has happened in post-apartheid South Africa, where the blacks are now in charge and deciding their own fate.<\/p>\n

For gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, a similar organizational change is needed. Lesbians now have the group Orthodykes, and there is a smaller group of gay male Orthodox Jews that meets regularly. However, they need
\nmore. They need a group of Orthodox gay and lesbian rabbinic scholars who as a group can publicly challenge the Orthodox interpretation of the Bible, people who can study the Torah and Talmud, and argue with the religion on its own terms. They also need Orthodox gay and lesbian synagogues, where Jewish family life can be adapted to gay and lesbian couples and their children, where gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews can develop their own communities with their own affirmative attitudes and rituals, so that gays and lesbian couples can stand under the chuppah (marriage canopy) and celebrate their marriages, blessed by a gay Orthodox rabbi.<\/p>\n

When we have such things in place, many of the mental health conflicts experienced by Orthodox gays and lesbians will be solved. Then, the therapists and psychoanalysts who work with them can focus on more usual forms of psychopathology, not those that are caused by a prejudiced society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For me, the sentence that is the most striking is “For any minority that experiences bigotry, the self is exposed constantly to reflected appraisals that are degrading and humiliating.” I think that’s correct, but it brings up the question: What is bigotry? That’s a question I want to explore in an upcoming post, hopefully this week.<\/p>\n

(Source of quote: Blechner, M. (2008). Selective Inattention and Bigotry: A Discussion of the Film Trembling Before G-d. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health<\/i>, 12<\/i>(3), 195-204.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Crossposted on Alas, TADA and Family Scholars Blog. Anti-LGBT comments aren’t allowed in comments to this post on Alas.] Mark Blechner, a former Orthodox Jew who became estranged from his religion as a consequence of accepting his homosexuality, brings up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,49,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-lesbian-gay-bi-trans-and-queer-issues","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}