The Voice of Reason
"You're not the only one who has a voice inside of their head. In fact, everyone has a voice in their head. They may call that voice the conscience, or they may call it something else. Regardless, when we do something wrong — lie to someone's face, for example — we might find ourselves hearing from that little voice asking 'why did you have to do this?' and then feeling terrible about what we did."
The Voice of Reason is a blog about inner thoughts and feelings. It will examine the ways these feelings affect our lives and relationships with other people. It will also explore motivation, empathy and introspection in order to understand how to better interact with others around us.
How does that feel? Does it sound familiar? It should, if you've ever been to therapy before. The Voice of Reason is a blog about therapy, which is to say the goal of therapy is not to achieve personal growth so much as self improvement. Its purpose and function on this planet is to help people feel better by helping them keep their feelings under control, and as long as that's the case, we're quite content with how things are going in our lives and society as a whole.
This blog was created by a man named Bill Weintraub who describes himself as an "emotionally disturbed child" on his LinkedIn page.
In his own words:
"A broken family — my mother abandoned me when I was eight. I spent the rest of my childhood and adolescence being bounced from one dysfunctional foster home to another."
Weintraub is a stereotypical loser who attributes all his problems to mommy issues because he's a frightened child in search of a warm pair of arms. However, he doesn't seem to be quite aware of the irony that not only does he have a voice in his head (just like everyone else), but this voice also appears to be an integral part of an entire system of self-improvement that is as narcissistic as it is exploitative.
This system's ultimate purpose is to appeal to the most insecure and emotionally vulnerable members of the LGBT community — namely, effeminate gay men like Weintraub. It's based on the assumption that gay men aren't happy because they haven't reached a certain level of self-actualization, and that once they reach this level they'll be able to find love from other people because everyone will want to get with them. It's as much about self-love as it is about love for other people, and judging by how successful it's been at getting a lot of people laid, it seems to be working.
But what is it, exactly? What is the Voice of Reason, and where did it come from? More importantly, why does it appeal to so many effeminate gay men who are looking for a way to make sense of their lives and relationships through the use of psychological jargon and self-help pseudoscience?
The Voice of Reason is essentially a system of self-help which takes its cues from a lot of different schools. Weintraub's book was inspired by the works of various gay theorists who have attempted to explain homosexuality in terms that apply specifically to men. Perhaps most notably, there's Eve Sedgwick, author of Epistemology Of The Closet .
Sedgwick argues that gay men have a complex set of codes they rely on to make sense of their lives, and that this "gay code" is used to interpret everything from personal relationships to daily interactions in the workplace. These codes are based on three main ideologies:
1. That gay men can fool others into thinking they're heterosexual by acting as much like heterosexuals as possible. 2. That no one can truly understand what it's like to be gay unless they've experienced the same struggles that a gay man has experienced. 3. That all gay men are essentially the same.
Sedgwick's conclusion is that "normality" for gay men is entirely a social construct — one that, when compared to what straight people think it means to be straight, makes it much easier for these gay men to feel like they're not weird and different from everyone else. And while there's no denying that this explanation of homosexuality provides an interesting way of looking at certain communities and subcultures, it doesn't really apply to all gay men, who Sedgwick herself admits are quite diverse in their personal interests and personalities.
For instance, while many effeminate gay men like Weintraub may subscribe to the code described by Sedgwick, masculine gays will likely have a completely different interpretation of what "normal" is. Given that there are many gay men who never feel compelled to see themselves as having much in common with other gay men — and that many other gay men only see their homosexuality as one aspect of their overall identity — it's absurd to think of the whole LGBT community as functioning under one big "gay code.
Conclusion: No one can really understand what it's like to be gay except for the gay men themselves.
To put it simply, it's absurd to think that these theories and ideologies are what lead effeminate gay men to seek therapy on the internet, when there are so many other factors at play in their lives. They may be comfortable enough with who they are that they don't need therapy, and they may also feel a deep sense of empathy for those who do need it. But unless you're one of them — or have a similar personality — you have no idea how these ideas have shaped the way today's effeminate queer men live their lives.
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The Voice of Reason