Think Queerly

In this episode, I share an early draft introduction to my, “Six Principles of Human-Hearted Leadership.” I share why these principles are based in the Tao Te Ching, what that 2,500-year-old text can tell us about personal responsibility — not just for ourselves but also for all lives on this planet, and the role of the ego versus nature. Lastly, I share my plan to teach the core concepts of the Tao Te Ching in an easy-to-understand manner that will include thought exercises to practice leading a more human-hearted life.  

https://medium.com/the-ascent/what-is-human-hearted-leadership-and-why-does-it-matter-9a66c0c5df51

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Perhaps the question we need to ask instead is, “What is gender?”, followed by, “What are ways to describe gender?”

Notice I didn’t say, “How can we describe gender?” The difference between ‘what’ and ‘how’ is subtle but an important thought exercise in the understanding of gender as an idea or a concept, and less as a label or a container, in which we might try to drop people into.

The later is what most of society has tried to do for millennia, establishing a codex, written or unwritten, of what is ‘male’ or ‘female’. With this invitation, I am asking you to consider what ways you can use to describe gender.

Read the article here: How Can We Understand Gender Within the Fluidity of Human Nature?

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43 years ago today, on August 1, 1977, I was 11-years old. It's a significant moment in Toronto queer history and it was most certainly formative of early queer identity, albeit not in a positive way at the time. 

Looking back, this incident may have been the root-cause of what made me intent on making a difference in the world, especially for other queer people.

Read the article on DarrenStehle.com: How the Murder of a 12-Year Old Boy Shaped My Queerness.

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Over the weekend I wasn’t feeling well, worn out from the heat and humidity, and stuck in my head feeling somewhat depressed. I decided to lay low and take it easy and binged on Netflix. I was feeling a lot of stress and worry about how to make progress on some projects I’m working on when I'm feeling so scattered and unfocused all the time.

That worrying caused me to think deeply all day. On Sunday, I felt better after a solid rest and realized my previous day of deep contemplation lead to absolute clarity about what I needed to do.

The short version is that I have decided it is time to close my publication on Medium, Th-Ink Queerly. Over two and a half years ago I had an idea to launch a personal development blog on Medium, which I called Th-Ink. Within a few months that morphed into Th-Ink Queerly as I began to talk about more LGBTQ issues and then opened up the publication to other writers on Medium.

Read the full post here: To Kill Your Darlings — Move Forward By Letting Go.

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It often feels like everyone is speaking at a level that is loud and not in a form we would call dialogue. On social media, in the news, in person we see shouting, personal attacks, and arguing to prove one’s point and seeking to be the winner of the argument.

That is a deafening alarm that makes many of us want to pull back and become silent, not to pull out of the discussion, but to bear witness to what is going on to come up with a more meaningful, thoughtful, and hopefully compassionate message which people may choose to pay attention to.

In this episode I discuss the challenges with micro-aggressions and how they can be misunderstood, how ideas are taken out of context to make an argument, the difference between intention and impact and why intention gets a bad rap, what makes for a good dialogue, and how active silence is the space between reaction and response.

Read the complete and in-depth article on Medium:

From Silence to the Deafening Disturbance of Difference.

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Two years ago on June 20, 2018, I launched my first podcast. It was called, The Living OUT Podcast, a tongue-in-cheek reference to coming out and being proud to be authentically out.  My focus in early episodes was the gay male experience, the uniqueness and creativity that gay men bring to the world, as well as my go-to core subject, personal development..

Concurrently, I was running my publication on Medium, Th-Ink Queerly, that had grown exponentially and was about to endure a period of difficulty, due to some personal interactions. What transpired continues to be a perfect learning experience and has shown me how awful infighting can be within any marginalized group or community.

The podcast still fulfills its original mission to challenge the status quo. My use of the word queer broadens the scope, since queer is not the sole domain of sexuality or gender, it is also a way of being and looking at the world.

Almost a year ago, I asked, "Is there such a thing as a queer leadership?" That led me to my current research on contemplating various translations of the Tao Te Ching and considering how to share that ancient wisdom through queer eyes.

Think of 'queer' as that which is flexible and yielding to influence, like water flowing over, through, and around. We can see this as the yin and yang of society — the status quo and the queer. We need both as they are a priori part of the relationship that allows each other to exist. In any relationship, we need to work towards the balance of the polarities — which the status quo and 'queer' represent — to function harmoniously in society.

Now, a new journey begins as I prepare to launch exclusive, new features on the Think Queerly Podcast, as well as launching a new, personal transformation podcast. 

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Last week I published a post on my Medium publication by Shawn Banks titled, "Why White Gay Men Have Ruined LGBTQ+ Pride Month For Me." My involvement in the comments raised a number of questions in me, so I asked Shawn if he would come on the podcast and have a conversation. 

We discussed the reasons that prompted him to write the article. He tells me that he was watching the momentum and social media focus on the Black Lives Matters demonstrations in the United States. Then in the first week of June (being Pride Month), he started to notice people he follows on social media shifting their focus more to Pride content and wanting to enjoy Pride without having to pay attention to everything else going on. He then realized that most of these people where white gay men.

• We speak about the various levels of white privilege (and why that’s a form of white supremacy), the intersectionality of “otherness”, and the significant difference between prejudice and racism;
• The challenge of activist fatigue, empathy avoidance, yet choosing to continue with the momentum of this movement towards improving lives for Black People and working towards greater equality;
• How social media (Instagram) is educating on missing Black history;
• How many white people don’t like being called out, even in general terms, about white privilege, prejudice, or racism, and;
• Why resistance to change is a reaction to a lack of prediction and response in our environment and what we can do to reduce the stress that causes.

Shawn Banks is 25 years old and originally from Clinton, MD. He currently resides in Chicago, IL. By day, he’s a men's stylist and by night, he’s a stand-up comedian who has been performing in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area for about a year. He considers myself a perpetual optimist who questions every facet of life and why we behave the way we do, which he displays in his sassy yet insightful style of stand-up. His Instagram is @Bankzzyyy (the only form of social media he uses consistently).

• “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” — Peggy McIntosh
• “Party and protest: the radical history of gay liberation, Stonewall and Pride” — Huw Lemmey
• “Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor” — Layla F. Saad
• Reconfiguring Pride to Savour Black Lives in 2020 and Beyond — Think Queerly Podcast

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Pride will always be political so long as it continues to exist. Pride, as a celebration, because it is celebrated, is a priori political because of its origins. Even to those to whom Pride only seems a big party, the nature and existence of Pride is dependent upon its foundations as a political movement.

There are multiple intersections of inequalities, systemic norms, laws, attitudes, and ideologies which demonstrate that it’s never a single issue that is the cause of prejudice, bigotry, and racism.

Covid-19 has shown us the volatility and impermanence of everything we thought to be constant by disrupting our lives and society. As Jack Kornfield said in his recent podcast, “If you don't grow in love through the pandemic, somehow suffering will have won."

Throughout this episode, we examine deeply and with great vulnerability the potential paradigm shift that’s happening in real-time, right now, about engaging with open and honest dialogue to make the space we inhabit a better one for Black People and how we can make that better still for People of Colour who are part of LGBTQ+ communities.

"The legacy and complexity of the problems of marginalization we seek to solve started well before Black Lives Matter and their protest during the parade in 2016.” — Olivia Nuamah

https://darrenstehle.com/reconfiguring-pride-to-savour-black-lives/

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In this special edition of the Think Queerly Podcast, I speak with my friend and colleague, Shaun Proulx about the issue of shaming and judgment of those who are choosing (and needing) to have sex during the COVID-19 pandemic and social quarantine.

In this episode Shaun and I get right into the various contrasts we are witnessing in human behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic and why that reminds of our own experiences having lived through the very beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

We discuss the layers of shame, including gay shame, bareback shaming from the early days of AIDS and eating our own — how marginalized groups are often more judgmental of their own, which further exacerbates feelings of shame and a lack of belonging and acceptance. Shaun drives home the point that this is a conversation for everyone who has sex, not just gay men. Everyone needs to hear this message and have this conversation.

We talk about the neuroscience of the mammalian brain, which is always seeking acceptance, connection, care. I those needs are not met, we have a difficult time using our pre-frontal cortex, the so-called human brain for logic, reasoning, and planning for things like safer-sex strategies. This all comes back to the human need for touch, physical connection, and sex — the longer we go without social connection, the more difficult it is to be “human.” We are all feeling some form of social-distancing fatigue.

This of course makes it even more of a challenge being single right now, especially for people living alone. For those who suffer depression or have challenges with addiction, following the rules is more challenging and stigma and preaching abstinence simply does more harm than good.

We conclude with a discussion about the need for compassionate and empathetic advocacy, as well as practicing more empathy for all of us. COVID-19 is the straw that has broken the camel’s back; it is a tipping point for humanity to realize that it’s not just a global health pandemic, rather, this is a life-changing, world-altering, system-disruption that is forcing us to evaluate civil liberties, human rights, and greater respect for the planet.

Shaun has credits as a television personality and host, producer, talk radio host, motivational speaker, columnist, author, publisher, actor, live event host, spokesperson, life coach, and activist for the issues of mental health, animal rights, and HIV stigma. He is the publisher TheGayGuideNetwork.com, Canada’s #1 LGBT digital magazine since 2002. Find out more about Shaun at his website, ShaunProulx.ca.

• HIV/AIDS in Contrast with the COVID-19 Pandemic — Lessons in History 
• The Prejudice of PrEP: You’re Fucked if You Don’t Bareback – LOP093
• Why Gay Shame Is Your Superpower
• Humanity’s Tipping Point — Without a Return to Compassion, We’re Finished
• GGN EMPOWERMENT: Pandemic Shaming – Sex In Covid Times
• GGN EMPOWERMENT: Sex + PnP In Pandemic Times
• Covid Conversations with Shaun Proulx
• fagdemic on Twitter & Instagram

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• How those of us at the bottom of the pyramid can create social and humanitarian evolution;
• Why despair holds us back from making meaningful change;
• Is sharing a meme on social media to support a trending hashtag helpful;
• My thoughts on #BlackOutTuesday, and;
• Why the time is NOW to do whatever it takes, without shame, to put a full-stop to bigotry, oppression, racial discrimination, gender and sexual prejudice, and to dissolve corrupt leadership.

• Martha Beck's video
• The Instagram post I mentioned
• Brené Brown's post about the system and power

Humanity’s Tipping Point — Without a Return to Compassion, We’re Finished.

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