sadydoyle:
So I’ve been talking to some friends tonight, about organizing. And specifically about the fact that organizing around old, big issues — like, say, abortion! — is difficult, because it’s a very political thing and everyone is playing politics. It’s good to have old and big and well-funded organizations, fighting for people’s health and safety. It is. What’s less good is the inevitable political process, which comes down to refining a message until it is “effective.”
And what is “effective” always comes down to the fact that we live in a homophobic, transphobic, classist, racist, sexist fucking society, and what is “effective” usually turns out to be the message that most thoroughly dodges anything that makes people uncomfortable, and what is “effective” is therefore, often, the message that poses the least challenge to homophobia, transphobia, classism, racism, and sexism. The most “effective” message, according to common wisdom, is often the most ineffective one.
Look at these ladies! They probably know it makes people uncomfortable that they have the oral sex, with the ladies! They straight-up don’t give a shit! Because they are protesting your discomfort, specifically! That is a hilarious “I fucked your sister” joke, right there!
I guess what I’m saying is that a truly effective movement doesn’t try to smooth away its rough edges. It doesn’t worry about whether you like it. It doesn’t worry about how good it will be at winning over old, scary white men. Because it knows that those old, scary white men are what it protests, and that the goal is not to win them over, but to overthrow them and change the structure of society so that they’re no longer in charge. It doesn’t create a narrative that only serves the most privileged people within the movement, it doesn’t dress itself up in a suit and some fancy language to look like a Responsible Politician or Mature, Reliable Public Figure, it doesn’t self-castigate or self-doubt for being big or scary or loud or crude, and it doesn’t steer away from the “I fucked your sister” joke if that joke is really funny and good.
I guess what I’m saying is, as an activist, I want to go bowling with these ladies and not-so-subtly quiz them on how they get stuff done.
(via sadydoyle-deactivated20110608)
Posted: February 10, 2011 at 6:13 pm.
About damn time!
Posted: December 18, 2010 at 4:38 pm.
danielextra:
I’m writing letters to my loved ones in case I don’t return from Afghanistan. I hope my partner never has to open his. If he does, it will ask him to tell who I was, because I couldn’t.
Read more here.
(via civillyunioned)
Posted: December 17, 2010 at 4:32 pm.
“So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?”
Why indeed, Jon? Why indeed would you say such things about people on the right, making it impossible to work with them? Except, of course, that it’s not your rights being denied. It’s not you who can’t marry your girlfriend, who when you look down the road at your potential futures see the horror of not being able to protect your assets together, or even be by each other’s side at a hospital bed. It’s not you who have had to fight all your life to get your gender accepted, even grudgingly, as a legal reality, not you who will have whispers following you the rest of your life or who fears to publish things under your own name because it outs your entire life history. It’s not you who worry that you’re getting older and a woman in an industry that is not known for accepting women, not you who are worrying that if you get fired from your job you may never find another one like it.
We’re pretty clear that you’re not up with that last one, actually.
The thing is, is that it’s not a lack of reasonableness on both sides that’s the problem. It’s that one side is completely unreasonable–whether because of true belief or cynical calculation is immaterial. It’s that ultimately you can’t compromise your own belief that you are a human being and deserve every. single. damn. right. as everyone else does. I mean, what is there to compromise? I’ll be some percentage of a person until you get around to agreeing my troubles are important? You go, and you go, and you go, and for some of us it never seems to be our turn to edge into traffic.
The ludicrousness of the idea that the left and right are equivalent, that for every Scott Roeder there’s an unrepentant Weatherman terrorist, is the most pernicious result of the fake “impartiality” of the modern media, who somehow have all become perfect postmodernists in their belief that if you present two sides to every issue you’ve somehow avoided bias–even if one side is saying that Dachshunds hold up the sun and Santa Claus wants us to nuke Iran.
If you want to take a stand for “sanity” in the media, Jon, why not ask them why the hell they won’t stand on the facts?
Posted: November 7, 2010 at 11:54 am.
Outside anti-gay organizations like the American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defense Fund, Faith & Freedom Coalition and National Organization for Marriage spent more than $1 million targeting three Iowa Supreme Court justices for defeat over the court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality … and I can’t say that I am surprised that the effort paid off.
Posted: November 3, 2010 at 1:46 pm.
I don’t care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time — and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones — I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don’t worry about other people so much.
Betty White, being a friend.
via Good As You
Posted: October 30, 2010 at 8:22 pm.
Gay kids are dying. So let’s try to keep things in perspective: Fuck your feelings.
Savage Love by Dan Savage
The opening salvo of a full-on amazing response to a Christian upset by the implications that the rhetoric of Christian Anti-Equality Movement has something to do with the current rash of gay suicides.
Posted: October 13, 2010 at 9:02 pm.
the Washington Post’s remarkably poor decision to post Tony Perkins’s falsehood laden, anti-gay screed on their On Faith blog (on National Coming Out Day nonetheless) was because they felt they needed to “cover both sides” of “bullying and gay suicide.” No, really, they’re serious. Apparently they hosted a Live Q & A chat with Dan Savage to discuss “bullying and gay suicide” and his “It Gets Better Project,” which is a You Tube channel Savage created in order to reach out to gay youths to prevent suicide. So, to balance Savage, the Post turned to Perkins to respond. Apparently to the Post, gay suicide is a two-sided issue.
Posted: October 13, 2010 at 7:14 pm.
It’s tougher, more uncertain work creating a world that loves queer kids, that wants them to live and thrive. But try—try as if someone’s life depended on it. Imagine saying I really wish my son turns out to be gay. Imagine hoping that your 2-year-old daughter grows up to be transgendered. Imagine not assuming the gender of your child’s future prom date or spouse; imagine keeping that space blank or occupied by boys and girls of all types. Imagine petitioning your local board of education to hire more gay elementary school teachers.
Against ‘Bullying’ or On Loving Queer Kids | The Nation
Posted: October 8, 2010 at 5:10 pm.
And what do you think? Gay soldiers are getting something out of the deal? ‘Hey I’m totally gaming the system. All I gotta do is go to Afghanistan for 18 months where a bunch of people are going to try and kill me, but on the plus side, I might just catch a glimpse of some dude’s weiner in the shower. Really.
Amy Poehler “Really” (via tlmonahan)(Source: herblondness, via stfuconservatives)
Posted: September 27, 2010 at 10:15 pm.
©1977–2008, Jessie Rauch-Dickson. All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed.
