To: Participants of Petit Oasis Foundation Scholarship
Subject: My stance on Homosexuality &
Support to maintain a wholesome personality
The poem I wrote a decade ago will symbolize my stance as follows:
Welcome to my Kingdom of Light By Tosh Honda May 10, 2003
Welcome to my Kingdom of Light
Where
We accept ourselves as we are
Which pave the road
to accept others as they are
Beyond Race,
Beyond Belief,
Beyond Preference
Welcome to the Freedom of Choice
Where
You are entitled to prefer Apple over Orange
If someone expects you to like Orange
It’s her problem, not yours
No judgmental
A little tear, A little cry,
She will learn to appreciate you as a person
Come unto the land of the future
Where
We are OK as we are
so long as we don’t step over the boundary of others
Cherry blossoms will bloom in Red in the midst of the winter
way ahead of the rest of the world
Welcome to my Kingdom of Light
I started Petit Oasis Foundation Scholarship based on my humanistic point of view. The meaning of life is to pursue what one wants to do and realize one’s own full-fledged potential. By the same token, I would express my humanistic stance to support and protect youth who happen to become aware that they are homosexual. Petit Oasis had its ninth annual audition this year. Each year I appreciate and admire boys in both younger and older classes who exhibit beauty and sincere enthusiasm in ballet. I always feel that I must protect their innocent souls not to be harmed in vain. Among participants over years, it is probable to assume that there might be some who may find themselves as homosexual. Some of them could be a member of a minority race or ethnic group, and may face triple stigma for being a dancer, a minority, and a homosexual. I hope sincerely that I can help to cultivate and maintain solid self-esteem, which is essential for a wholesome personality to override adverse social stigma. I would like to share what I have learned in my life experience about how to maintain solid self-esteem. It is a most important matter to establish and maintain self-esteem for every one of us, more so for some whose identities are threatened by being profiled by prevailing negative stereotypes, stigma.
The legalization of rights for homosexuals has been progressing and social acceptance of homosexuals is following. Yet prejudice and intolerance still prevail, even in the most liberal societies. It is probable to assume that some of you might find yourself as homosexual. To be a dancer, homosexual and a member of a minority, some of you may have to face double to triple social stigma. I am very much concerned that young innocent souls may undergo unnecessary hardship. I would like to probe with you how to maintain a healthy wholesome personality in this ever so chaotic society.
How to protect yourself to maintain wholesome personality:
We all need to be approved by others to live in society. We learn first to be approved by parents, then teachers, peer groups and others. We naturally feel self-esteem by being approved by others. To live as a member of the society, we have to be approved and accepted by others for certain extent. Yet, if we let ourselves find our self-esteem, self-worth ONLY by approval of others, we end up having low self-esteem. Because some of others would look down or ridicule of you being a dancer and/or homosexual and/or minority. You may easily be hurt and in the worst case scenario you may incorporate the given negative image as yours. THAT is the most detrimental. When others show scorn overtly or subtly, you may feel anger which most of time you cannot express because such derogatory comments and/or expressions are usually delivered subtly and or half jokingly or teasingly. You may become defensive, react superficially nice, or precisely ingratiate offenders in attempt to avoid further harassment, and/or being alienated. The worst reaction you might have is to do the same things to others unrelated to get even, scorn other races or ethnic groups or any category, only to degrade yourself to the same level of the offenders. As I have given in the examples above, if you let your self-esteem be at the mercy of others’ approval, you end up having low self-esteem. You must cultivate your self-esteem by developing yourself to be approved by yourself.
To maintain healthy self-esteem, self-love, you must build up yourself to be approved by yourself, not by others. To be able to do that, you have to be sure who you are, what you know, what you believe, and what you do. The common denominator, factor, to all this process is what is real, true to ME.
1. Examine all your values and knowledge if they are real, true to you. Pick up real and true values and knowledge and incorporate them into your mentality. Throw away what you consider as having no merit.
For instance, you ask yourself, ‘Is being a dancer bad?’ No. It is not bad. It may not be popular as being a doctor or a computer technician, but it is what I want to do. It does promote enjoyment of life for general people. To be a dancer is good to me. ‘Is being a Muslim bad?’ No. Some terrorists are Muslim, but the tendency of society to blame Muslims for terrorism is wrong. I am not a terrorist. I am a good Muslim. ‘Is being black bad?’ No. The stereotype of black people may be bad, but I am not a replica of a stereotype. I am good. “Is homosexuality bad?’ No. It may deviate from the majority (heterosexuality), but it is not abnormal or sinful. I am a normal person. Sexual orientation is the most crucial factor to establish intimate human relation, which all of human beings are entitled to have. I must not deny what I like. I am proud to be what I am. First you must recognize the truth and own what you truly are.
2. Incorporate knowledge and values (which you perceive as true and real) into your mentality by three steps combining: Knowing, Believing, and Practicing.
You don’t want to be prejudiced. 1) Knowing ‘prejudice is bad,’ 2) Believing it, 3) Practicing it (refrain from being prejudiced against others). If you keep consistency in what you know, what you believe (feel) and what you do (practice), then the knowledge becomes incorporated in your system and become true knowledge in you. That means not to be prejudiced is normal and pleasurable. Being able to feel that way, your self-esteem goes up and you feel, “I am a good person.” You will feel good and be able to practice good values. This is the most important value and practice to protect your self-esteem. Since you no longer hold value of profiling certain people, your self-esteem does not get seriously harmed when others may show or act prejudiced against you. You may feel unpleasant as if you got a splash of dirty water, which you can wipe off, but it never penetrate or stubs your self-esteem because you don’t have that value in your system. However, if you are practicing prejudicial projection of stereotypes on others, instead of perceiving others as individuals, you have the internalized value, ‘to judge people by stereotypes is OK.’ Therefore, when others unjustly scorn you, you get hurt seriously because you believe in the stereotype mentality.
If you do not act prejudiced against others or precisely constantly discipline yourself not to practice prejudice, first naturally you will feel good about yourself for being good (high self-esteem). Second, you won’t get hurt when others are prejudiced against you because you know you are at a higher level than those who feel good by despising others unjustly.
There are many values we can incorporate into our system. For instance such as the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill; Thou shall not steal.’ Ask yourself, ‘Do I like to kill?’ I am sure most of us would realize that we think, ‘I like not to kill; I like not to steal.’ Since you establish yourself to be approved by yourself, you would like to incorporate good values into your system. I like being honest. I like being fair. I like working hard. Or I like taking it easy. Whatever the value you feel true and good you can incorporate into your system by three steps, knowing it good, believing it good, practicing/doing it good. Since you establish yourself to be approved by you, you know very well you are good, wonderful. If you regulate your behaviors by being approved by others, you can sabotage yourself if others are not looking or noticing. You may say and do good things superficially. But being approved by you is very strict. It is equivalent to being approved by God. Lying, hiding are not possible. To the extent higher values are incorporated in you, your self-esteem is bound to be higher. Your self-esteem will grow accordingly. Being able to feel, “I am good, great,” your ego would not be disturbed even if you were showered by stereotypical scorns.
Ideally it is healthy to admit and be open about your sexual orientation simply because you are true and real and nothing is wrong with you. But you have to weigh the climate of your given outer world. How far you can open up is up to your discretion and responsibility to deal with the outcome. The higher the self-esteem, the more open one can be. The more open one can be, the more one’s ego expands—and one can be stronger and healthy.
3. When people project stereotypes onto their target, they want to see what they expect to see. They have the need to look down on some (justified by stereotypes) to feel superior because they have an inherent inferiority complex someway or another. They may be persistent to provoke you in their attempt to confirm the validity of the stereotype to which they subscribe. If you react to that by being angry or being humiliated, it will confirm the validity of the stereotype. The most effective retaliation would be that you just stick to your own self-esteem and never react to them as they expect. This is the technique of separating your own world from that of others. While maintaining your own world, let that of the others be.
4. Use negative feeling as the fuel to generate positive feeling: I am sure most of you already know and practice this mechanism. I am sure you had at least once experience that someone teased you for studying ballet. You may have felt anger being humiliated. Instead of punching the nose of the offender, you would have chosen to intensify your practice of pirouettes, burning up that angry feeling. Becoming a more competent dancer, you would not feel anger any more. With your self-esteem, ‘I am a good person,’ this process is possible. The higher the self-esteem, the more positive achievement will be realized, and the process will heighten your self-esteem more.
Use the negative feeling as fuel to generate the positive feeling: This technique will be useful in many ways to cultivate a wholesome personality for any one of us, more so for those who have a lot of negative feelings generated.