Category Archives: Queer Issues

It All Comes Back to Love

Posted in Queer Issues, Race and Ethnicity by

What can I even say?

I didn’t know anything about Troy Davis’ plight or his case until last night, when his life was taken by the state.

I am angry, sad, confused, lost… its crap like this that leaves me feeling hopeless, unable to escape from a culture that would murder a man who had so much reasonable doubt tied to his conviction that he probably shouldn’t even be in jail, let alone dead right now.

I feel complicit in all of this hate. No matter how much I read, no matter how many worthy causes I advocate for there are always going to be things that I miss. Like Troy Davis. I want so badly to do my part in advocating against racism, but I don’t even know where to begin in my community.  I want to advocate against the death penalty. I want to do something that would help to stop this from happening ever again. Yet I can’t seem to get past this feeling that my one voice doesn’t mean a single. damn. thing. I mean, if the voices of the thousands who did protest meant nothing to America’s government, why would mine?

How do you pick up and keep going when the country you’ve been raised to love violates its own principles so blatantly?

How do you accept the fact the the cries of so many Americans, calling out for justice for Troy, were so soundly ignored?

Tonight I watched a room full of Republicans boo a f*cking soldier, risking his life in Iraq for a country that doesn’t even recognize him as an equal citizen. So much for, ‘support our troops.’ Earlier this week I saw headlines telling the story of Jamey Rodemeyer, a fourteen year old boy who was pushed to suicide at the hands of bullying.

Where do you go when you dread opening your computer, turning on the TV, even opening your eyes in the morning… for fear of witnessing something else you can’t bear to comprehend?

What could I ever say, or hear, that could make this better? There’s the old standard: life goes on. And that’s true, life will go on and before long Troy Davis and Jamey Rodemeyer will be forgotten by most of us, overshadowed by a million other injustices, annoyances… and good things, too.

If anything, that makes me feel worse. For me, and for so many other life goes on. For Troy and Jamey it ends abruptly, senselessly, without justice.

Its human nature to look for connections, even when there are none. This time, there is a connection: it’s hate.

We’re trained, from an early age, to fear one another, to hate one another. White kids taught to hate kids with skin darker than their own by parents who weave elaborate lies about entitlement (welfare, affirmative action) and danger (muggings, crime). I should know, even my own progressive family feeds right into this BS from time to time. Children who aren’t white taught to hate themselves by a society that tells them you are not good enough, not deserving even of the things you have earned, a society where history has no meaning and everyone’s circumstance is something that they have earned rather than something determined by centuries of history, stretching back long before their birth. Is it any wonder Troy Davis is dead despite the overwhelming doubt surrounding his conviction?

When straight kids are taught to fear queer kids, as preachers teach that love can be a sin, teachers turn a blind eye to bullying and parents try to steer their kids in the “right direction.” When those queer kids are taught to hate themselves, to want to change because as they are love is something dangerous, not something that every human being deserves. A country where just being openly gay is enough to get a soldier booed. Is it any wonder that Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself just this week?

We’re taught to fear everyone who is not just like us, fear that can turn to hate in the blink of an eye.

A system that executes people for their crimes teaches us that killing, violence, and hate are the answer.

A government that refuses to grant basic rights (like marriage, or job protection) to vulnerable members of its population is one that teachers discrimination is okay.

… and we’re all complicit. Every single on of us has had a moment where we stayed silent, watched hate unfold before our eyes but sat paralyzed and unable to act. Maybe it was a friend calling a stupid movie gay or a grandmother making a ridiculous comment about Mexican students going to school for free. I’ll just let this one slide, we think. We’re having a nice time and I don’t want to be the downer.

I almost stopped blogging just a few weeks after starting, because the passage of Prop 8 in California left me feeling so gutted, so hopeless, that I just didn’t see the point. Just as I did then, I find myself returning to the idea of love as the only thing that matters, the only thing powerful enough to change our world into one that doesn’t hurt so much to inhabit. I don’t meant this in a wishy-washy metaphorical sense though. I mean we have to love each other enough to be honest. Love ourselves and the people around us enough to confront the hate, head on, to call it out even when it is masquerading as humor. We need to love our country enough to demand better. To write letters, and protest, and vote, and campaign until America lives up to the values it was founded upon. We need to love even the most hate-filled people, love them enough to push the hate from their hearts and help them to transform. We have to love even when all we want to do is close out the world because the hate simply hurts too much to bear.

It won’t ever be easy, but it will be worth it. That’s what I’ve learned, at least, in twenty one years of muddling through this all, and personally I will never stop trying to prove that love is stronger, for Troy Davis and Jamey Rodemeyer and the million other voices silenced all too soon by the simple power of hate.

New York is the Place for Love Tonight!

Posted in Queer Issues by

Today is a great day for love.

I don’t have much to say aside from, I LOVE New York!

Seriously though, this decision was a long time coming.

Now, when’s the rest of the country going to get on board?!

For that matter, I think its about time we started to pass laws protecting the rights of trans people. This victory is beyond fabulous, yes, but it is so important to remember that many trans people, some even living in the states with marriage equality, still don’t have vital things like job protection and this is so not okay. The DSM still lists being transgender as a mental illness, under “gender identity disorder” which is also, not okay. I am so, so happy that marriage equality laws passed in New York but the battle for LGBT equality is far from won.

Avoiding Trans Erasure

Posted in Gender, Queer Issues by

I find this video pretty funny & I was excited to post it up here to keep the Planned Parenthood conversation going… but then, it made me sad.

“You can tell [I am a woman] because of the whole vagina-having thing.”

Except… not all women have vaginas, and not all vagina-having people are women because sex (your anatomy) and gender (your identity ie. “woman”) are two totally different things!

This line is problematic, because it conflates sex and gender and ignores the existence of the trans community. Yet, at the same time, I still think this is a fairly effective video… and I have no idea how I’d want them to rewrite that line (“You can tell by the whole… shit, there is no universal marker of a woman now is there?“)

So what the heck am I even trying to say here?

I guess, what I am trying to say, is that being inclusive of all people is important.

I want to take a moment to make it clear that I am not saying that this video or the people who made it are somehow wrong or bad. How could I be saying that when if you comb through this very blog long enough I guarentee you would find posts that engage in erasure because there was a time where I honestly wasn’t aware that making statements like “all women have vaginas” left many trans women out of the picture.

Its somewhat ironic that this post was sparked by a video in support of Planned Parenthood, because Planned Parenthood as an organization has a reputation for being inclusive (as far as I’ve been informed)!

No one is perfect, but I think that the important take away, for me and for you, is that we should be trying to minimize if not totally do away with the amount of erasure that we engage in.

That’s not always easy though. I have several blog posts that honestly may never see the light of day because the writing in them has gotten so clunky and weighed down with qualifying statements intended to make sure I am not leaving anyone out (or including anyone in a statement that doesn’t really apply to them.) It’s not always pretty and its not always eloquent but at this point in my blogging career I’d rather sit on a fully written article until the right words fall into place than publish something that has the potential to make someone feel unwelcome here.

Inclusion isn’t always natural and easy and eloquent because society has not trained us from birth to be aware of the existence of people who fall outside the gender binary. We haven’t been given a language or a frame of understanding for many things… which is why we have to seek them out from the communities in question, and start using the words that they claim.

It isn’t always easy, but it is important to be mindfully inclusive because this is honestly the only way we can change the tides and make it so that future generations are just naturally inclusive. This means a lot of things: it means not leaving trans women/men out when you are talking about all women/men but it also means not including trans people when you are only talking about issues as they effect cis people. (For instance: when talking about DADT I would not call it a victory for the LGBT community so much as the LGB community… because trans people still aren’t protected, so it would be inaccurate for me to claim this as a victory for that group.)

Learning to use inclusive language is a small but important part of being an ally. I like how Renee, of Womanist Musings, puts it best…

Part of being an ally is making a conscious decision to learn about the issues of the community that you are trying to advocate on behalf of.  This takes a conscious effort, as society will continue to affirm various isms thus ensuring that those of us that have undeserved privilege seldom consider the true cost of the social hierarchy that we have naturalized.

Being an Ally to the Trans Community 101

To help that mindful inclusion along I’ve done my best job to compile some of the most common trans* related foot-in-mouth situations here as sort of an etiquette guide for the uninformed. A small disclaimer: I am a cisgender woman (meaning my gender identity is congruent with what society would expect, based on my sex.)  I am coming at this as an ally to the trans community; a person who has trans friends and acquaintances, but (obviously) no experience living as a trans person. This means I am not immune to fucking up and if I have done so I would ask my more knowledgeable readers to please drop a comment or an e-mail correcting me so I can amend the post. That said, I see this as one small way that I can help as an ally… by educating other allies to the movement, and making a small dent in the frustrating erasure and ignorance that trans* people have to deal with. So, here we go!

Continue reading →

Its Just Not Enough…

Posted in Queer Issues by

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has officially been is as good as repealed (once Obama signs it!) and the ban on LGB people openly serving in the military is over… yet I can’t bring myself to feel to happy about this.

What does it say about our country when we are more comfortable giving people the right to kill others than we are with giving them the right to marry the person they love?

ETA: Illinois should be pink as it has passed legislation for civil unions. Thanks Anna!

What does it say about our country when the same people who are now protected from losing their job in the military, can still be fired from a civilian job in many states just for being who they are?

What does it say about our country when the same people who are not free to defend our country, are not being defended from bulling in schools?

What does it say about our country when those same people who we’ve just granted the right to fight and die in our military, could be shipped off to countries where queer people are executed just for being who they are? What does it say that the UN doesn’t seem to care about these killings? (Warning – this link contains an image depicting two Iranian teenagers moments before being hanged for suspicions that they were gay.)

Because they don’t, at least not anymore… sexual orientation used to be considered a protected class under a resolution that affirms UN’s duty to protect the right to life of all people, putting emphasis on investigating killings based on discriminatory grounds.  Not anymore though, because just last month the West African nation of Benin  proposed an amendment that would strike sexual minorities from this resolution, and the amendment passed with 79 votes (70 against, 17 abstentions, and 26 absent).

None of this sends a good message about America, or the rest of  the world… I can tell you that much. In fact, most of this just makes me want to throw up or cry on a night that most of my friends are celebrating. The demise of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was an amazing step, don’t get me wrong, but the fact that this step is what came first breaks my heart just a little bit. Let’s prove that America values love and life more than we value death by fighting even harder for equal marriage

Not to mention, in another blow to Social Justice… The DREAM Act, which was passed by the House last week, came up five votes short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation in the Senate today. The DREAM Act would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the US as children, so long as they attend college or serve in the military for at least two years. This act would have provided hope to so many people though a path to citizenship, and a legitimate shot at the “American dream” but the Senate decided today that the dreams of these children, apparently, don’t deserve to be realized.

What kills me is that just after reading about the DREAM Act, I happened to spot a clip from this interview with John Boehner, on a rerun of the Soup of all places. During this interview he tears up while trying to explain why he can’t go to schools anymore. In his own words…

Boehner: I was talking, trying to talk about the fact that I’ve been chasing the American Dream my whole career. There’s some things that are very difficult to talk about. Family. Kids. I can’t go to a school anymore. I used to go to a lot of schools. And you see all these little kids running around. Can’t talk about it.

Stahl: Why?

Boehner: Making sure that these kids have a shot at the American Dream, like I did. It’s important.

[You can watch this in the video here, skip to about 5:40 for this specific part.]

As you would expect, given this heartfelt performance, Bohner voted Nay on the DREAM Act. This all meshes together perfectly because clearly, only perfect little American-born children deserve this dream… wait, what? Seriously, how is it possible for some people to be so oblivious to their own hypocrisy? How can a man who is moved to tears by the thought of children being denied their shot at the “American Dream” not care at all about the children whose dreams he crushed with this vote? This man is going to be our Speaker of the House in January. He is going to be representing our country in a MAJOR capacity and yet, he can’t even stay true to his own “passionate” beliefs… how can we let assholes (there, I said it) like this speak for us?

I for one, refuse to let this go on.

So let’s celebrate the death of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but let’s keep this victory firmly in perspective. Let’s remember the many deaths that come out of our military and the continuation of these wars. Lets remember the many people who die daily in a different kind of war, the wars that are fought on our streets, in our homes, in our schools, in our offices; wars for survival, for acceptance, for hope. Lets stop the killing and the dying by pushing ourselves and those those around us to continue fighting, tooth and nail, for love, respect, and opportunity for all people because this one little step is honestly not good enough at all.

[Crossposted at Not Your Average Feminist.]