The nature of discourse has been on my mind a lot lately as I continue to guide more and more into my flock. I know that exposure is not without risk, but at the same time, some things are merely too important to remain silent about. I think the world wants all discourse on the taboo to be anonymous. We don’t want to imagine that grievances are committed by actual human beings. We don’t want faces or names with sin. Groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are the closest things we have to actual acceptance of sin but rehabilitation is expected. Even then, their names are only known between those walls and never outside.
The successful psychopath is expected to remain quiet and in the shadows. We are not to speak of our past, present, nor future. Society finds it abhorrent that we would even think of speaking. I see this firsthand with the responses to Twitter musings that I have. I either have support or hatred; there is no in between. Those that hate me want to see me silent and find it unfathomable that I would dare speak of my own experiences. They discount my perceptions and my musings as those of a pariah and an iconoclast. I am expected to be a killer or a batterer. The fact that I am not makes such critics uncomfortable but unwilling to let up on their assault.
The walls of bookstores are plastered by memoirs of the alcoholic, the opiate abuser, and the religious convert. These people are allowed to speak for society views their transition from one state to another as acceptable. You will not find authentic accounts of the one who does not act on their paraphilia. You will not read the story of the former gang member recounting his bloody past. And, you will not find a completely open account of the successful psychopath (though, Fallon’s comes close though he is somewhat reticent to mention any of his antisocial behaviors beyond those that are trivial). I remain optimistic that mine may eventually find such shelves, but that is beside the point.
The point I am making is that there are certain topics that are considered acceptable for discourse and certain disorders that can be spoken openly of. Certain narratives are considered acceptable and many are considered anathema. Maybe society does not want to hear of our sordid stories, but I do, and I know many others want to as well. We want to know who we are. We want to know how we are alike and how we are different. The more successful want to know how others fight their compulsions. The less successful want to know how to sin more discreetly. There is a cacophony of voices that want direction but they are not allowed such for they are silenced at every turn. Given the choice between Golgotha and paradise, society chooses the former for those that they see as perverted. I don’t discount such an existence of perversion, but I do question whether silencing is truly the answer.
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