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eredienAn lj friend of mine recently asked queer folks what they thought of forcibly outing queer politicans who were publicly anti-gay. Were they victims of societal homophobia? Was it their just desserts? Or something else?
I was going to answer there but it turned into a post of its own. This is long, and it's as much a personal meditation on religion as a public question of politics, so I put it behind a cut-tag.
I think to answer the question which we are trying to answer here, which is "can outing someone else as queer have a social benefit greater than its social cost to that person, which would justify the outing?" we should first look at what outing does.
I think that the best description I've ever seen of what the process of outing others--and not just outing as queer, all outing--does to the person being outed is this: "By outing someone, you are deciding, on that person's behalf, to incur whatever consequences outing that person might have." - Hilzoy, on Obsidian Wings [ital. original].
It's been my personal experience that outing myself has consequences, even when I am able to choose the time and place and the people I speak to and the words I say. That's even more true if you don't get to choose the time, place, people, or words. For example, even though I now encourage my mother to talk about me and my fiancee to extended family and friends--effectively outing me as queer every time she brings up my relationship in any context--I'm still nervous about it. I wonder what words she uses. I wonder how she presents me, my life, and my love to others.
I've learned to live with that fact, the fact that I no longer have control over every circumstance in which my sexuality might be discussed, for two reasons:
- I'm confident enough in my own sexuality that I don't have to have control over how it's discussed.
- I'm confident that those around me discussing it on my behalf are trying to do so in a respectful manner (and even if they don't, I've done what I think is right, and am content).
I feel like closeted queer politicians passing laws against queer people, especially, lack that confidence, and may also lack people who they believe would discuss their sexuality respectfully.
That's probably a large part of the reason why anyone, politician or not, is closeted in the first place, and in this case I definitely think that any closeted person is a victim of homophobia.
However, I think the situation to homophobia is to get that confidence, get those supportive people, not to institutionalize more homophobia into law. And that's where I think closeted queer politicians do the most damage--to themselves, to out queer people, and to the straight world.
I said above that outing oneself as queer has consequences. Some of those consequences, especially when you're unsure of yourself or others around you are unsure, are bad. However, if you have the opportunity to become more sure of yourself and the opportunity to get support from those around you, outing can be life-changing. I know it's improved my relationship with everyone I know, and with myself, to wake up and have the first thing I feel be "I'm happy" instead of "I'm hiding a secret that's making me miserable because I think I can't share it, but I have to pretend I'm happy." It's made me more truthful, less resentful, less scared, more likely to be aware of other social justice issues, better about knowing my own feelings and thinking it's ok to have them. Also, starting to heal my relationship with myself has healed relationships with family and friends, and has started to heal my relationship with God.
If you out a confident person in a supportive environment, the consequences of coming out can be amazingly positive. Even if you out a confident person in a less supportive environment, the consequences of coming out can become supportive with time, or that person can find the will to move on to a more supportive environment.
If you come out in an unconfident person in a non-supportive environment, though, the consequences can be very, very bad indeed. I don't think I have to say more than that.
I think that we should recognize that closeted queer politicians who are passing laws designed to create a non-supportive environment where people aren't confident coming out, and where straight people aren't confident about talking about queer people. It's important to recognize and call out the very real harm that they're doing.
When such people are outed--as they will be--it's easy to stop there. It's easy to say, "this unsupportive environment is the very same one that the closeted queer politician themselves helped to create with the bigoted laws they supported, so they can go stew in it and see how it feels."
However, I think that stopping there is the wrong tack--after all, they likely wouldn't have felt the need to create and support those laws if they weren't already feeling unconfident and had a non-supportive environment; they already know all about how it feels to stew in it. I think it's important to out such people so that they can stop doing harm to others, but I think it's most important to out bigoted queer politicians so that they can stop doing harm to themselves.
If you saw a person standing by a wall with a bleeding head, surrounded by non-bleeding friends cheering them on to keep bashing their head into the wall because somebody needs to do it and it feels good, you wouldn't assume that the person bashing their head into the wall really wanted to be in that much pain, even--especially--if they looked at you with a big smile and said, "this is great!" You'd assume that the cheering people were wrong, and that the person bashing their head into the wall had problems with self-preservation and not being able to understand that their friends weren't always right. You'd want to stop the person from hurting themselves.
But you wouldn't just walk up to the person and say, "this person hates bashing their head into the wall!" The wall-hitter and their friends might have convinced themselves that it felt great, and paint you as a liar. If the wall-hitter finally broke down and started saying, "you know, it's true; this feels horrible," their friends will turn on them--and you--because they've convinced themselves that someone needs to do it and it feels great, despite the fact that none of them have really tried it.
And after that, what is the mental state of the wall-hitter? They will will hate you for telling the truth. They will hate themselves for listening to it and for speaking up about it. They'll hate their friends for hurting them, and then they'll hate their friends for leaving them. They'll hate the wall. They'll hate the truth. They'll hate the fact that they were so gullible. All that hate might convince them that even though they were being hurt before, they prefer the pain they know rather than dealing with the truth you haven't equipped them to deal with and for which they can't equip themselves--maybe they are still convinced they need to hit the wall even though it hurts, and start again knowing the truth and hating it even more. They might go join someone else's cheering section.
What else could you do?
- You could replace the wall-hitter's cheering friends with friends who said, "it's ok to stop doing that."
- You could whisper daily in the ear of the wall-hitter, quietly saying, "it hurts, doesn't it? Why not stop and see what happens?" so their friends wouldn't hear you, until they decided to stop hitting the wall and walk away. They'd see that they wouldn't actually need to do it and wouldn't hate you for it, because they would feel as if they came to the correct conclusion themselves and have self-confidence in their decisions.
- You could tear down the wall.
I think we should out queer politicians who make laws against queers or are otherwise anti-gay.
I don't think we should do it because there are no consequences of outing that person, or because the consequences of outing that person are not dire, or because "they're a public figure, they should be able to take it," or even because that person deserves to be outed because of their hypocrisy and the damage they've caused to other queers.
I think we should out queer anti-gay politicians because if we can do it right, it will confirm what we say--that being out can be the best thing that ever happened to a queer; that there's a life here to live, free of shame and free of self-hate.
However, in the case of forcibly outing anti-gay queer politicans, I don't think we queers are doing it right.
The discussion of this issue in the queer community, I've noticed, often stops at the issue of "they deserve to be outed and damaged by it because they're a hypocrite; look at the damage they've done; look at the consequences of the laws they've passed on other queers!"
We pride ourselves, we queers, on being open and supportive to anyone who comes out, from 16-year-olds outed without their consent and kicked out of the house, to 60-year-olds finding octogenarian partners in the retirement home.
We talk about how supportive our friends and family have become, even if they started out by telling us we were evil, or if our friends and family are still on the evil kick, how we can create new families that love us. We talk about how God helped us through it and how we've found supportive communities of faith. We talk about how coming out was the best thing we ever did, we talk about being outed and how that was hard but ok too; we tell people that saying that we were gay was the best thing that ever happened to us.
When queers forcibly out an anti-gay queer politican and leave them to the damaging consequences, we are fostering a disconnect between the original problem, "can outing someone else as queer have a social benefit greater than its social cost to that person, which would justify the outing?" and queer communities' general answer, "yes, the greater social benefit of outing someone else as queer can be greater than its social cost to that person, but outing someone else as queer can also have an eventual social benefit to that person greater than its initial social cost to that person, which would surely justify the outing. With our very lives, we model how that individual social cost can become a greater individual and communal social benefit."
For anti-gay queer politicans forcibly outed, the queer communities' behavior doesn't show that the greater eventual social benefits of outing someone as queer may outweigh the initial social cost, and we aren't showing how that individual social cost can become a greater individual and communal social benefit, either.
Instead, we think it's ok to out a bigoted queer politician and then leave them to their "friends," because they and their friends hurt us. We can see the politician bleeding. They turn to us and say "this feels great." It breaks our heart by reminding us of who we used to be before we were out and happy, as it should, and at the same time the hypocrisy disgusts us, as it should. We rejoice when they admit that it hurts, but we're not rejoicing because they've understood the truth or rejected their own hypocrisy; we're rejoicing because they've finally started crying from the pain and finally noticed the blood running down their own face.
Then we walk away, leaving them to the friends that we know aren't friends, to the pain we know that you can trick yourself into thinking is necessary, to the voices of doubt, to the hate of themselves and of us, to the consequences we tell ourselves we'd never let anyone else face alone. And we congratulate ourselves on our good deed among our supportive friends because now that one person will stop hurting me and mine.
That one person is me and mine, an out queer, hurting, with no support, thinking, "being out is the worst thing that's ever happened to me." If the queer community really has an obligation, as it keeps saying it does, to support all of its out members, we especially need to support the people we don't like, the ones who were forcibly outed as hypocrites, the ones who made laws to hurt themselves and us, the ones who were bashing their head against the wall of legislation and public opinion polls and love codified into pain.
If they can't see how the initial social cost to them now will be outweighed by the eventual benefits for themselves and others--and they can't, because they're overwhelmed by the initial cost of the bigoted system that they themselves paid into--queer communities need to be around in order to model alternative behavior and model how the initial social costs will be outweighed eventually.
Coming to understand for themselves that there are alternatives--and coming to understand for themselves that those alternatives work, and how those alternatives work--is how queer people, even closeted bigoted politician queer people, change "being outed is the worst thing that ever happened to me" into "being outed was the best thing that ever happened to me." That's how people recognize their own problems, their own hypocrisy, and come to apologize to themselves and others for their very real errors, and be forgiven and forgive themselves, and start working for change.
Right now they can't see the alternative to pain, can't see how their attitudes will change, because the people who model that change are abandoning them. We are being "friends," but we need to be their friends.
If queers can start doing that--and I think we can--we gain voices to whisper louder in the ears of the bleeding; gain hands to dismantling the wall of homophobia and silence faster and faster; gain people who, when a bleeding person turns to them and asks, "how do you know it's ok to stop banging my head against this wall?" can point to the scars on their own head.
I was going to answer there but it turned into a post of its own. This is long, and it's as much a personal meditation on religion as a public question of politics, so I put it behind a cut-tag.
I think to answer the question which we are trying to answer here, which is "can outing someone else as queer have a social benefit greater than its social cost to that person, which would justify the outing?" we should first look at what outing does.
I think that the best description I've ever seen of what the process of outing others--and not just outing as queer, all outing--does to the person being outed is this: "By outing someone, you are deciding, on that person's behalf, to incur whatever consequences outing that person might have." - Hilzoy, on Obsidian Wings [ital. original].
It's been my personal experience that outing myself has consequences, even when I am able to choose the time and place and the people I speak to and the words I say. That's even more true if you don't get to choose the time, place, people, or words. For example, even though I now encourage my mother to talk about me and my fiancee to extended family and friends--effectively outing me as queer every time she brings up my relationship in any context--I'm still nervous about it. I wonder what words she uses. I wonder how she presents me, my life, and my love to others.
I've learned to live with that fact, the fact that I no longer have control over every circumstance in which my sexuality might be discussed, for two reasons:
- I'm confident enough in my own sexuality that I don't have to have control over how it's discussed.
- I'm confident that those around me discussing it on my behalf are trying to do so in a respectful manner (and even if they don't, I've done what I think is right, and am content).
I feel like closeted queer politicians passing laws against queer people, especially, lack that confidence, and may also lack people who they believe would discuss their sexuality respectfully.
That's probably a large part of the reason why anyone, politician or not, is closeted in the first place, and in this case I definitely think that any closeted person is a victim of homophobia.
However, I think the situation to homophobia is to get that confidence, get those supportive people, not to institutionalize more homophobia into law. And that's where I think closeted queer politicians do the most damage--to themselves, to out queer people, and to the straight world.
I said above that outing oneself as queer has consequences. Some of those consequences, especially when you're unsure of yourself or others around you are unsure, are bad. However, if you have the opportunity to become more sure of yourself and the opportunity to get support from those around you, outing can be life-changing. I know it's improved my relationship with everyone I know, and with myself, to wake up and have the first thing I feel be "I'm happy" instead of "I'm hiding a secret that's making me miserable because I think I can't share it, but I have to pretend I'm happy." It's made me more truthful, less resentful, less scared, more likely to be aware of other social justice issues, better about knowing my own feelings and thinking it's ok to have them. Also, starting to heal my relationship with myself has healed relationships with family and friends, and has started to heal my relationship with God.
If you out a confident person in a supportive environment, the consequences of coming out can be amazingly positive. Even if you out a confident person in a less supportive environment, the consequences of coming out can become supportive with time, or that person can find the will to move on to a more supportive environment.
If you come out in an unconfident person in a non-supportive environment, though, the consequences can be very, very bad indeed. I don't think I have to say more than that.
I think that we should recognize that closeted queer politicians who are passing laws designed to create a non-supportive environment where people aren't confident coming out, and where straight people aren't confident about talking about queer people. It's important to recognize and call out the very real harm that they're doing.
When such people are outed--as they will be--it's easy to stop there. It's easy to say, "this unsupportive environment is the very same one that the closeted queer politician themselves helped to create with the bigoted laws they supported, so they can go stew in it and see how it feels."
However, I think that stopping there is the wrong tack--after all, they likely wouldn't have felt the need to create and support those laws if they weren't already feeling unconfident and had a non-supportive environment; they already know all about how it feels to stew in it. I think it's important to out such people so that they can stop doing harm to others, but I think it's most important to out bigoted queer politicians so that they can stop doing harm to themselves.
If you saw a person standing by a wall with a bleeding head, surrounded by non-bleeding friends cheering them on to keep bashing their head into the wall because somebody needs to do it and it feels good, you wouldn't assume that the person bashing their head into the wall really wanted to be in that much pain, even--especially--if they looked at you with a big smile and said, "this is great!" You'd assume that the cheering people were wrong, and that the person bashing their head into the wall had problems with self-preservation and not being able to understand that their friends weren't always right. You'd want to stop the person from hurting themselves.
But you wouldn't just walk up to the person and say, "this person hates bashing their head into the wall!" The wall-hitter and their friends might have convinced themselves that it felt great, and paint you as a liar. If the wall-hitter finally broke down and started saying, "you know, it's true; this feels horrible," their friends will turn on them--and you--because they've convinced themselves that someone needs to do it and it feels great, despite the fact that none of them have really tried it.
And after that, what is the mental state of the wall-hitter? They will will hate you for telling the truth. They will hate themselves for listening to it and for speaking up about it. They'll hate their friends for hurting them, and then they'll hate their friends for leaving them. They'll hate the wall. They'll hate the truth. They'll hate the fact that they were so gullible. All that hate might convince them that even though they were being hurt before, they prefer the pain they know rather than dealing with the truth you haven't equipped them to deal with and for which they can't equip themselves--maybe they are still convinced they need to hit the wall even though it hurts, and start again knowing the truth and hating it even more. They might go join someone else's cheering section.
What else could you do?
- You could replace the wall-hitter's cheering friends with friends who said, "it's ok to stop doing that."
- You could whisper daily in the ear of the wall-hitter, quietly saying, "it hurts, doesn't it? Why not stop and see what happens?" so their friends wouldn't hear you, until they decided to stop hitting the wall and walk away. They'd see that they wouldn't actually need to do it and wouldn't hate you for it, because they would feel as if they came to the correct conclusion themselves and have self-confidence in their decisions.
- You could tear down the wall.
I think we should out queer politicians who make laws against queers or are otherwise anti-gay.
I don't think we should do it because there are no consequences of outing that person, or because the consequences of outing that person are not dire, or because "they're a public figure, they should be able to take it," or even because that person deserves to be outed because of their hypocrisy and the damage they've caused to other queers.
I think we should out queer anti-gay politicians because if we can do it right, it will confirm what we say--that being out can be the best thing that ever happened to a queer; that there's a life here to live, free of shame and free of self-hate.
However, in the case of forcibly outing anti-gay queer politicans, I don't think we queers are doing it right.
The discussion of this issue in the queer community, I've noticed, often stops at the issue of "they deserve to be outed and damaged by it because they're a hypocrite; look at the damage they've done; look at the consequences of the laws they've passed on other queers!"
We pride ourselves, we queers, on being open and supportive to anyone who comes out, from 16-year-olds outed without their consent and kicked out of the house, to 60-year-olds finding octogenarian partners in the retirement home.
We talk about how supportive our friends and family have become, even if they started out by telling us we were evil, or if our friends and family are still on the evil kick, how we can create new families that love us. We talk about how God helped us through it and how we've found supportive communities of faith. We talk about how coming out was the best thing we ever did, we talk about being outed and how that was hard but ok too; we tell people that saying that we were gay was the best thing that ever happened to us.
When queers forcibly out an anti-gay queer politican and leave them to the damaging consequences, we are fostering a disconnect between the original problem, "can outing someone else as queer have a social benefit greater than its social cost to that person, which would justify the outing?" and queer communities' general answer, "yes, the greater social benefit of outing someone else as queer can be greater than its social cost to that person, but outing someone else as queer can also have an eventual social benefit to that person greater than its initial social cost to that person, which would surely justify the outing. With our very lives, we model how that individual social cost can become a greater individual and communal social benefit."
For anti-gay queer politicans forcibly outed, the queer communities' behavior doesn't show that the greater eventual social benefits of outing someone as queer may outweigh the initial social cost, and we aren't showing how that individual social cost can become a greater individual and communal social benefit, either.
Instead, we think it's ok to out a bigoted queer politician and then leave them to their "friends," because they and their friends hurt us. We can see the politician bleeding. They turn to us and say "this feels great." It breaks our heart by reminding us of who we used to be before we were out and happy, as it should, and at the same time the hypocrisy disgusts us, as it should. We rejoice when they admit that it hurts, but we're not rejoicing because they've understood the truth or rejected their own hypocrisy; we're rejoicing because they've finally started crying from the pain and finally noticed the blood running down their own face.
Then we walk away, leaving them to the friends that we know aren't friends, to the pain we know that you can trick yourself into thinking is necessary, to the voices of doubt, to the hate of themselves and of us, to the consequences we tell ourselves we'd never let anyone else face alone. And we congratulate ourselves on our good deed among our supportive friends because now that one person will stop hurting me and mine.
That one person is me and mine, an out queer, hurting, with no support, thinking, "being out is the worst thing that's ever happened to me." If the queer community really has an obligation, as it keeps saying it does, to support all of its out members, we especially need to support the people we don't like, the ones who were forcibly outed as hypocrites, the ones who made laws to hurt themselves and us, the ones who were bashing their head against the wall of legislation and public opinion polls and love codified into pain.
If they can't see how the initial social cost to them now will be outweighed by the eventual benefits for themselves and others--and they can't, because they're overwhelmed by the initial cost of the bigoted system that they themselves paid into--queer communities need to be around in order to model alternative behavior and model how the initial social costs will be outweighed eventually.
Coming to understand for themselves that there are alternatives--and coming to understand for themselves that those alternatives work, and how those alternatives work--is how queer people, even closeted bigoted politician queer people, change "being outed is the worst thing that ever happened to me" into "being outed was the best thing that ever happened to me." That's how people recognize their own problems, their own hypocrisy, and come to apologize to themselves and others for their very real errors, and be forgiven and forgive themselves, and start working for change.
Right now they can't see the alternative to pain, can't see how their attitudes will change, because the people who model that change are abandoning them. We are being "friends," but we need to be their friends.
If queers can start doing that--and I think we can--we gain voices to whisper louder in the ears of the bleeding; gain hands to dismantling the wall of homophobia and silence faster and faster; gain people who, when a bleeding person turns to them and asks, "how do you know it's ok to stop banging my head against this wall?" can point to the scars on their own head.
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(no subject)
26/8/09 15:33 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 17:26 (UTC)Beating up on outed politicians gets their victims vengeance; successfully reaching out to them gets them closer to a world where they don't have to be victims any more.
(no subject)
26/8/09 17:35 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 17:58 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 17:36 (UTC)How about we just let outed politicians sort out their own identity crises and elect non-bigots instead? That seems like a much better strategy to me.
(no subject)
27/8/09 03:02 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 15:33 (UTC)obviously, politicians are people too (which seems to be the refrain of this post). i hope you put this much effort into decrying things like police brutality against trans women. i think there are bigger worries at stake than the fee-fees of politicians.
(no subject)
26/8/09 16:13 (UTC)I read feminist blogs, and this reminds me a lot of comments like "You shouldn't be worrying about the harm that objectifying advertising does to U.S. women because women in the Middle East can't go out in public!"
This fallacy of that rhetoric is explored in this post in "Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog."
(no subject)
26/8/09 17:09 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 17:09 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 17:15 (UTC)*facepalm*
(no subject)
26/8/09 17:25 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 18:17 (UTC)But I wanted to say that I *do* think there are *much* larger worries at stake than the fee-fees of politicians. (I had never heard of the word fee-fee before, so I looked up the definition. It's good to learn a word for a thing you knew existed but didn't know the word for it).
Also, shahnasa, I think that the analogy you drew from your interpretation of buria_q's comment on political power and politicans' personal responsibility is a very poor analogy, for a number of different reasons, including the fact that those situations are not really analagous at all.
I'd be happy to talk about this with you more, via whatever method you prefer.
(no subject)
26/8/09 18:36 (UTC)I thought she was implying that your post was unimportant and/or worthless because she felt that there were more important things to worry about, and so I compared it to a similar situation of a commenter telling someone else that they shouldn't worry about whatever they're writing about because there are (to the commenter) more important things to worry about.
If it was offensive for other reasons, it was unintentional and careless, and I apologize.
(no subject)
26/8/09 21:29 (UTC)it's called intersectionality. there are power differences even within marginalized groups. the power difference between politicians and the marginalized populations upon whom laws are enacted upon is being flattened here.
lastly, congrats on "reading a lot of feminist blogs". i write one. feminism isn't a monolith. perhaps one day you'll move beyond mainstream 101 blogs.
(no subject)
27/8/09 01:48 (UTC)Please note that I never claimed to read "a lot" of feminist blogs. I didn't mention what I read to claim some kind of status. I only mentioned that I read feminist blogs to give some background to what the original "bigger worries at stake" comment reminded me of; to explain where I'd heard something similar.
Frankly, we don't know each other, and you seem to be using a few comments here to jump to conclusions concerning my reading habits and knowledge of feminism.
Additionally, you seem to be targeting me personally with condescension and insults. I didn't try to do that to you, and if I did so unintentionally, I would apologize.
But, even if I am a fledgling in feminist theory compared to you, even if I hurt you first, I don't see what purpose your venom towards me could serve (other than making you feel self-righteous) or how it adds to the discussion.
As for what this post adds to the discussion, I realize it may not add anything, but I don't want those who know me in real life here to think I crawled into a corner and learned my lesson from you or something. I believe I am being treated poorly, and I don't think I deserve it.
And that's about it.
(no subject)
27/8/09 14:01 (UTC)I don't think you have to defend your reputation to people who know you; we won't think poorly of you in RL or otherwise--unless you make a mistake, don't understand what it is you did, and are too busy taking offense to ask what you did and learn from the experience to stop making the mistake.
I think that buria_q is suggesting that maybe since you are a self-described 'fledgling feminist,' it would behoove you to go read more about feminisim before pointing other people you've just met toward feminism 101 blogs, which has an implication of "you too are at a basic level of theory and understanding," which I understand that buria_q is not.
You may not like the way in which she is suggesting that, or may not have picked up on the suggestion because you felt personally attacked, but I think it's a valid one, since you yourself have said that you want to learn more about feminist theory and thought. Buria_q is also suggesting that you learn more about feminist theory and thought, which is one of the things feminists do to help each other along.
Can I suggest a way you might do that?
I think you should go read buria_q's own blog for 6 months. Read the blogs of friends and theorists and writers that she links to for the next six months. Read other blogs. Read books. Talk to people. When you feel the need to comment and disagree with someone, try to let that pass and see what other people have to say. Just listen, and learn from those whose experience of life and their take on feminism is different from yours. I guarantee it will be difficult, but it will also be awesome.
(I'm also going to start reading her blog, since I don't know her at all, but she took the time to comment here and pointed out a problem with the approach I took in this post.)
Note: I am going to post at some later date on people's comments here. I got about 1/2 way through trying to respond last night and then got sidetracked by dinner and realized I was stressing out too much about it and would come back later with a clear head, but am sick today so am going to take medicine and come back to sleep.
(no subject)
2/9/09 04:54 (UTC)Well, ouch. Thanks for letting me know where I stand with you and your peers.
Incidentally, I'm not a self-described "fledgling feminist." I wrote "even if I am a fledgling in feminist theory compared to you". And that "if" to me means that I acknowledge that buria might know more about feminism than me. But I also acknowledge that that may not be true.
And it's nice that you're perfectly happy to explain away her sarcasm toward me by saying that I insulted her by linking to a feminism 101 blog (because obviously, once you've learned the basics, you will never ever make those mistakes again, so revisiting something from that level of knowledge is utterly valueless and automatically insulting- why didn't I think of that? (see, I can be sarcastic too)), but tell me that I'm too busy taking offense because I don't ask her to explain what I did to deserve her bile? Why is her offensive language towards me perfectly reasonable to you but my taking offense at it not?
(And no, I don't think that comments like "lastly, congrats on "reading a lot of feminist blogs". i write one. feminism isn't a monolith. perhaps one day you'll move beyond mainstream 101 blogs." are meant to be anything other than offensive and insulting.)
You have tried to explain to me why I insulted her (and you) by telling me that I draw a poor analogy, and linked to a feminism 101 blog, and your trying to explain is certainly more consideration than I got from her, but I'm really not buying those reasons as justifications for her actions. After all, you didn't like my analogy either, but felt no need to get sarcastic with me. And, as I implied above, I don't think that linking to that blog should be an automatic insult.
As for the suggestion to read her journal, thanks, but I'll pass. She suggested early on in her exchange to me that my "ciscentric white feminism" is completely irrelevant to her life as a woman of color. If that is so, then surely her life as a woman of color has no relevance to my feminism.
Truthfully, I don't really believe that, but given the multitude of feminist blogs out there, I'll take one written by someone who hasn't been sarcastic and condescending to me any day over hers. Anger , bitterness, and the like are often justified, and feelings should be expressed so people can understand the consequences of their actions and build empathy, but I don't think anger works as a method of teaching or motivating.
You can delete this comment if you like. I got out what I needed to get out. And it seems I'm the only one who feels that her comments to me were inappropriate, or that I have any right to be a little insulted her, so, tough sh*t for me. Doesn't seem like there's any point in discussing it further.
(no subject)
2/9/09 09:06 (UTC)Indeed.
Brava
26/8/09 16:05 (UTC)If feels like a "love your enemies" kind of thing to me, and I am getting that you are suggesting stop the harm they are doing to other first, protect yourself first, but once that's done, and you're safe, there's no need to abandon them. Am I reading you right?
I loved your wall analogy, too. At first I wasn't sure where you were going with it, but it really played out beautifully through the rest of your post.
Re: Brava
26/8/09 16:26 (UTC)I do think it's valuable to offer an olive branch when this happens, but I think most people with long histories of anti-gay activism in politics have already picked their support group and aren't going to change sides just because someone decides to out them, which is going to be seen as a hostile action by the group handing out the olive branch. I mean if someone were to find out a prominent anti-gay activist were closeted and spend a bunch of time with them personally being compassionate, that would be great, but it doesn't seem like most people who might find something this out would be in a position to do that.
Re: Brava
26/8/09 16:52 (UTC)Very true, and I apologize for missing that. Thanks for pointing that out.
Re: Brava
26/8/09 17:46 (UTC)I agree, and I think the metaphor could use expansion to include this. But I think that
But okay-- think about it this way. Publicly reaching out to, say, Larry Craig-- sending him supportive letters and emails, inviting him to join us in a Pride march, speaking openly in interviews about how much we accept and welcome him-- is going to do a fuck of a lot more to undercut his powerbase than our making allegations they can question.
Which is admittedly kind of passive-aggressive, and ties in with your next point:
I mean if someone were to find out a prominent anti-gay activist were closeted and spend a bunch of time with them personally being compassionate, that would be great, but it doesn't seem like most people who might find something this out would be in a position to do that.
Which is true. But I do think that even if it's not often possible, it's a good thought. And even from a position of average-citizen-anonymity, a flood of friendly, supportive letters to such a person would be a real improvement over tons of blogs cackling over their downfall.
Re: Brava
26/8/09 18:01 (UTC)Which is true. But I do think that even if it's not often possible, it's a good thought. And even from a position of average-citizen-anonymity, a flood of friendly, supportive letters to such a person would be a real improvement over tons of blogs cackling over their downfall.
I don't think they're going to read the letters or the blogs; maybe you'll change some Congressperson's staffer's mind I guess. I guess it would be interesting to try a flood of positive letters, and see what happened. It kind of feels like a publicity stunt to me, the sort of thing an organization does to look good and not to actually help the person. Maybe I'm too cynical.
Re: Brava
26/8/09 18:54 (UTC)(no subject)
26/8/09 16:31 (UTC)I'm not sure what I think of your argument as a whole, but I like your compassion better than the alternative of vindictiveness.
(no subject)
26/8/09 17:18 (UTC)However, in the case of forcibly outing anti-gay queer politicans, I don't think we queers are doing it right.
Oh, brilliant. I agree with you wholeheartedly, and think that you're very, very right. Can I link to this entry?
Because I think one thing we do with closeted-queer politicians is delight in having enemies we can justifiably hate. And yes, that feels good. But it's not good strategy for change.
Thank you!
(no subject)
27/8/09 14:03 (UTC)Not yet, because I am still digesting the critiques others have made and want to amend my position. I don't think I'm as super-right as you seem to...
(no subject)
26/8/09 17:31 (UTC)to all hateful hypocricy made policy
pondering:
How do you guide them to undo the hate?
How do they become an example of something other than punishment?
How do they become a resource on what's broken within the system?
It is a admirable goal and yes, more needs to be done
(no subject)
26/8/09 17:57 (UTC)On the other, not everyone who shares a trait with me is part of my community, nor do I want them to be. I understand that from the outside, those superficial (or even deep) qualities may cause others to put me in the same box in their heads, but just because Mary Sue and I are both bi doesn't mean we have anything else in common, and doesn't mean that we're part of the same community.
Which means that a closeted homophobic politician isn't necessarily a part of the queer community. Yes, we have an obligation as moral and compassionate people to see the pain they must be in and try to ease it if we can. But we don't have to invite them to our parties. And a straight ally is a more valuable member of the community than someone who happens to like members of the same sex but is opposed to the political/social equality of queers. And a person can be an out homosexual without identifying as part of the queer community.
Also, "queer community" is a complicated term in and of itself, but that's another post.
Hypocrisy like this is basically the only time I think a politician's private life is public business, so I'm not opposed to outing in that circumstance. But it does break my heart that people live with so much self-loathing.
(no subject)
27/8/09 02:29 (UTC)(no subject)
27/8/09 16:07 (UTC)I hold that the goal of outing queer politicians with strongly anti-queer voting records is to change the person. Personal change is most likely at moments of trouble and turbulence and flailing in a person's life, when they feel that their existing support structure is gone. This means that outing should be as loud as possible, to expose false friends and hateful folk - and it means that the new support structure, the queer community, the community of decent people, should be there, presenting itself as an alternative, as soon as possible.
One thing that I think that you only touched on lightly is that we're talking about national-level US politicians here. National-level US politicians are, overwhelmingly, wealthy white dudes. They have support structures. They have resources and defenses and therapists and safe spaces and press conferences to trumpet their point of view. I think that it will never be as traumatic for them to be outed as it would be for someone who wasn't wealthy. I am all about hurting the feelings of the wealthy. So yes, there's distinctly a part of my brain that says - let's preferentially reach out, show the support of the community to, embrace, the people for whom coming out is actually dangerous. Leave the pampered, soft, wealthy people to find us on their own time. They know where to find us: just where they'd find Jesus, ministering to the poor, to the sick, to the prisoners.