Tag Archives: rightwing

A Day of Pink and the Stupidity of the Transgender Bathroom Argument

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A t-shirt proclaiming, "It's time to talk about bullying, homophobia, transphobia. Day of Pink, April 13, 2016."
Today is the Day of Pink, an International Day against Bullying, Discrimination, Homophobia, Transphobia, and Transmisogyny across the world.
I’ve been noticing a theme in the search terms bringing people to my blog lately—many variations of “stupidity of transgender bathroom argument.” Which is understandable. We have certain states falling all over themselves to pass anti-gay and anti-trans laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, and the argument which seems to get the most traction with voters (or will get a certain type of person who isn’t a reliable voter to turn out) is the argument claiming that laws protecting trans people leads to sexual predators lurking in public bathrooms. So the laws that are getting passed include specific language demanding that people use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate, or that “matches their genitals” and so forth. Which in turn means a lot of people who want to figure out how to debunk those arguments are searching the web for an answer.

And it makes sense that some of those searches will land here, since I’ve written about this topic at least once or twice before:

Setting aside some of the other ludicrous claims, the one take away that we need to return to, again and again, is that many states and cities have had laws that specifically allow transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, and in none of those places as there been a single documented case of someone using that law in order to try to commit a sexual assault. Not one. Which is summed up nicely in the chart below.

mediamatters.org
None of those bathroom or locker room horror stories have a basis in fact. (Click to embiggen)
This chart (which was included in one of those previous posts) is a bit over a year old. Now, in addition to the original Media Matters nice compilation of statements from law enforcement officials and other experts from the 12 states that have had laws protecting transgender people on the books for year (some going back to 1993!) showing that there has never been an assault in a bathroom because of them, we have even more! Media experts, law enforcement, and real live trans people explain why the fear of men “pretending” to be trans to attack women and children in bathrooms has no basis in reality, and More Republican Lawmakers Arrested For Sexual Misconduct In Bathrooms Than Trans People.

But it’s important to note that in the 200 cities and 17 states with laws like this [allowing trans people to use the bathroom that matches their identity] already on the books, there are no examples documented of someone using it for nefarious purposes, of a transgender person who is this sex predator in the bathroom. It’s got no factual foothold. If anything, the irony in this is that it actually would require — and North Carolina now requires transgender men who have beards, who are muscular, to use the women’s restroom. So it actually creates the very problem that it claims to solve. —Dominic Holden, speaking on PBS’s Newshour

Why have I chosen today, the Day of Pink, which is supposed to be a day to raise awareness of bullying to come back to this topic? Because any time a law criminalizes or otherwise penalizes people because of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender, it encourages bullying. Businesses, school officials, hospital workers, and so on will reference the law as justification when they discriminate against someone who is queer or gender-non-conforming. The laws foster the notion that it is okay to mistreat, demean, and bully some people.

Ironically, these bathroom bills increase the likelihood that there will be assaults in bathrooms. It’s just that the victims will be the queer kids (or kids who are perceived by their peers as being queer). And it’s not as if school bathrooms aren’t already a place of terror for kids who are perceived as gender non-conforming, let along openly gay or trans children! In my early elementary school days, most of the teachers were women, and so the boys’ bathroom was a place where other boys could gang up on the class sissy or freak (usually me) with impunity. It got so bad for me at one school, that I simply stopped going to the bathroom at school. I avoided drinking anything all day, to try to stay out. My mom kept asking why I was running home from school and rushing straight to the bathroom.

So you can imagine the horror I felt when I read the headline: Kansas Bill Would Pay Students A $2,500 Bounty To Hunt For Trans People In Bathrooms! Geeze, talk about dehumanizing children!

"More United States Senators have been arrested for sexual misconduct in bathrooms than trans women."
It’s not just a meme…
I quote Dominic Holden (who used to write for one of our local weekly alternative papers, so I’ve been a fan for years) for his appearance on PBS’s Newshour above, and I’ve embedded a Youtube video of a snippet below (the link after the embed leads to a longer video and transcript, by the way). And while I agree with most of Dominic’s points, I think he gets one little bit slightly wrong. “…it’s really put LGBT advocates in a difficult place because they haven’t figured out how to respond to this. And for the most part, they have not taken it on directly.”

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

The part I disagree with is where he says that these laws have put advocates in a difficult place. No, we put ourselves there.

We were so giddy at the Supreme Court ruling, that we allowed ourselves to think the battle was won. I say “we” even though I was raising this concern back then. I raised the concern, but what did I do about it? Most of our official advocacy groups have been avoiding taking the issue on directly. They responding half-heartedly, if at all, to some of the earliest instances of backlash. They deployed a really generic fairness response in the Houston equal rights repeal, for instance.

And to imply that we don’t know how to respond is simply wrong. The current trans bathroom bill arguments are not substantially different than the arguments they have always made against queer people. The bigots have always claimed we are delusional—our orientation or gender identity is a choice we’ve made for sinful or other nefarious reasons, not an inherent characteristic. They have always claimed that we are dangerous sexual predators. They have always claimed that acknowledging our existence will cause confusion and harm to children. Exactly how they couched those arguments has changed. Which segment of the non-heterosexual population they were demonizing has changed, but the essence of the arguments are the same.

That is what they are claiming now. We’ve dealt with those arguments before. We have won battles in the court of public opinion against those arguments before. We can do it again. We just have to actually try. Marriage equality was only one touchdown out of a very long game. And it directly benefits only some of us, and only in some situations. The fight still belongs to all of us.

Another anti-gay politician caught molesting children

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When the former Republican Speaker of the House was a high school wrestling coach he sexually molested male students.
When the former Republican Speaker of the House was a high school wrestling coach he sexually molested male students. (Click to embiggen)
If you’re an adult queer person trying to live openly in this so-called land of the free, Republicans want to be able to discriminate against you with impunity, while telling you that your very existence is destroying America and that you are going to burn in hell. But, if you’re a retired Republican congressperson who used to molest high school boys (the youngest identified by prosecutors was 14 at the time of the abuse) back when you were a high school teacher (Hastert Molested at Least Four Boys, Prosecutors Say), well then, of course, they want people to forgive and forget: While former House Speaker Dennis Hastert asks for leniency, media recounts corruption allegations. His lawyers have gone so far as to contact the family of one of the boys he molested, and asked them to write a letter asking for leniency because of all the “help” Hastert gave to the man later?

Excuse me? No, the fact that he paid out millions in hush-money doesn’t make up for the original offense! I think this headline puts it mildly: Dennis Hastert’s embarrassing, unforgivable offenses don’t deserve leniency

Some months back I first linked to those reports about former Republican speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert indicted for paying out millions of dollars in hush money to a man who Hastert had some sort of sexual relationship (sexual misconduct) with back when Hastert was a high school wrestling coach and the other man was a high school student. As I asked when I linked to this, “When do we get to acknowledge that sexual hypocrisy is in fact a constant theme of conservative politics — that every single time a Republican or ‘family values’ representative speaks to the bigoted mythology of homophobia or transphobia, they are closeting skeletons of their own?” Don’t forget Dennis Hastert had a terrible voting record on gay rights, and when Hastert was Speaker he tried to cover up the fact that Congressman Mark Foley had had sexual interactions with male members of the Congressional page program (high school age students).

But perhaps the worst is how, when he met with the parents of Matthew Shepard and sobbed as he promised the parents he would do everything he could to pass the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill… and then, of course, he actually did everything he could to obstruct the bill.

I really don’t understand why anyone, particularly in the media, doesn’t immediately assume that a legislator or prosecutor or governor who pushes for anti-gay bills has a scandalous sexual secret. I mean, when someone can create an entire web site to chronicling the prominent anti-gay folks who are later caught in a gay sex scandal: GayHomophobe.com, it’s time to stop turning a blind eye to the issue!

Which part of ‘love thy neighbor’ confuses you?

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Billboard that went up in Jacksonville, Mississippi this week after the new anti-LGBT law was signed. “Guys, I said I hate figs and to love thy neighbor.”
Billboard that went up in Jacksonville, Mississippi this week after the new anti-LGBT law was signed. “Guys, I said I hate figs and to love thy neighbor.” (click to embiggen)
Lots of us have been predicting that there would be many, many more of these so-called “religious freedom” laws passed with an intent to discriminate against queer people, and that there would be more of the anti-trans bathroom bills passed in states since the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. Some people thought that the swift backlash from both regular citizens and the business community which prompted the repeal of the Illinois law and then a similar Arizona law’s governor’s veto last year would put a damper on the anti-gay legislation fervor. I was not one of the latter. I knew that the bigots would keep doing this for years to come. The war for equality isn’t over. We’ve made a few touchdowns, we’ve stymied a few of the other side’s scoring drives, but there is a lot of struggle still ahead.

Mississippi’s governor signed a bill this week that is pretty awful. It protects any individual, business, or organization (including hospitals) that want to refuse service to gay people due to a sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, that sexual relations should take place only inside such marriages, and that the terms male or female refer to individuals’ immutable biological sex. So it specifies which “religious beliefs” are protected. That is not religious freedom, that is religious imposition. That’s not protecting someone’s right to a belief, that is forcing a very specific set of so-called religious convictions upon everyone.

Yes, the law later has specific language that says that it shouldn’t be construed to imply that anyone can be refused emergency medical treatment, but it will be construed that way, and people will die. We’ve had situations like this before. A lesbian couple was vacationing in Florida some years ago, one member of the couple was in an accident, her partner had their medical power of attorney paperwork, but was refused admittance to the hospital room, was not allowed to give consent to her partner’s medical treatment, and the partner died while the hospital was trying to track down a blood relative. There was no legal basis for the hospital to refuse the power of attorney. Personnel at the hospital refused because they thought that Florida’s ban on same sex marriage invalidated the power of attorney (it did not). Florida courts subsequently ruled that the hospital had been wrong to do that under the law, however they also ruled that the hospital and employees weren’t liable for the death or any sanctions, fines, or lawsuit because they had thought they were acting in good faith.

And that is part of the reason that these “religious freedom” laws are so dangerous. People will decide that their bias is more important than the life of a “sinner”—and other people will be harmed and sometimes even die. Often the person who let them die will get off despite those caveats in the law because it will be decided that they were acting in good faith.

The idea that the law will protect you if you discriminate against certain types of people will encourage people to take it further. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in his famous dissent of the Supreme Court case that upheld sodomy laws, the mere existence of such laws, even when it was shown that they were largely unenforced, creates the notion that certain types of people are less than human. The existence of even a narrowly-focused law used to justify a plethora of other types of discrimination against people who the law is aimed at. A few years later, when the Supreme Court reversed that ruling and invalidation all sodomy laws, Justice Kennedy quoted Stevens’ earlier dissent in explaining the reason the court had changed course.

The most galling part of all of this is that these people are claiming to be following Jesus when the propose withholding medical care from queer people,  refusing to sell food to queer people, refusing the rent to queer people, et cetera. No matter how many times I read the gospels—especially the Sermon on the Mount—I can’t find anything that Jesus said that could be construed to condone such action, let alone command it! In fact, Jesus said that if someone sues you for the shirt off your back, give them your shirt and your coat, also. He doesn’t say change the law so you can shun and be cruel to some of your neighbors and be immune to being sued or legally punished for any of the consequences thereof!

This is why people are fleeing the churches, particularly young people. These folks have redefined Christianity, replacing Jesus’s teachings with condemnation of gay people. You can ignore any and all of Jesus’s actual commandments, but if you’re anti-gay enough you’ll be the hero of the Christian Right.

When laws like this are enacted, they don’t just hurt the people who get the services denied. They scare other people. They send a message that people who don’t conform to one group’s religious precepts are less than human, that they are not safe, that they cannot count on the police to help them if crimes are committed against them, that they aren’t welcome, that they won’t be treated fairly before the law. And that’s why businesses speak out against these laws. It isn’t because they are beholden to some mythic ally power queer lobbying force. It’s because employees—not just queer employees—don’t feel safe being sent to those states to work.

The truth is, no one should feel safe in places that have laws like this. Because the law gives judgmental people a license to punish anyone they think might be queer, or might be supportive of queer people. That makes these laws a form of terrorism—they are intended to scare queer people back into the closet, and with that stuff about biological sex and sex outside of marriage, all sorts of other people to lie and hide and pretend to be something they aren’t—and I can’t find any definition of love that condones that.

Weekend Update 3/12/2016 – there’s always silence

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CdSm6rvW8AAFaqQI already ranted last night about it: Blood stains on their hands, but it is really difficult to let it go. People I knew and loved went to early graves as a direct result of the indifference, contempt, and utter lack of compassion of an entire administration. It wasn’t just them, I know. One of the examples I gave last night was a preacher who had nothing to do with either one of the Reagans. But they were in a position of leadership. They were there when one of the world’s leading experts on epidemics made the case for why government action was desperately needed, and they responded by saying that it wasn’t actually a health crisis. Never mind that it is a virus, never mind that it was killing hundreds, then thousands of people. They laughed. Go listen to that recording I linked to last night, and think about it for a minute: hundreds of young people dying in horrible pain, and they laughed.

Why Is Hillary Clinton Trying to Rewrite Nancy Reagan’s Shameful Inaction on HIV/AIDS??

Hillary Clinton’s Reagan AIDS Revisionism Is Shocking, Insulting, and Utterly Inexplicable.

It’s hard for one ugly episode to stand out among so many ugly aspects of the Reagan administration, but Nancy and Ronald’s deliberate silence on one of the defining public health crises of the era is surely near the top of any list. What Clinton is saying isn’t just untrue, but erases the deadly legacy of the Reagan era.

I agree with each word of the headline. Especially the inexplicable part. Why? When Bill Clinton was running against George H.W. Bush for President in 1992, Bill and Hillary both talked publicly about the inadequate attention that the Bush and Reagan administrations had given to AIDS/HIV research, and assistance to people both inside and outside the U.S. suffering and dying because of HIV. Queers came out in unprecedented numbers to support and donate to Clinton’s campaign, because they made us believe that they saw us as human, which is something we didn’t see from either Bush or the Reagans. She knew that the Reagan administration had not just ignored AIDS, but actively impeded medical research and aid programs.

The Reagan Administration’s Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis Is Chilling.

Clinton Just Said Nancy Reagan Helped Start ‘A National Conversation’ About AIDS, Which Is Insane.

13 Times The Reagan White House Press Briefing Erupted With Laughter Over AIDS.

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan Watched Thousands of LGBTQ People Die of AIDS.

Hours later, Clinton offered a tepid apology: Hillary Clinton apologizes for praising Nancy Reagan’s response to HIV/AIDS. She misspoke? If it had been a brief comment where she had merely mentioned AIDS alongside Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, which were illnesses Nancy Reagan spoke out on later in life, breaking with Republican rhetoric against stem-cell research at the time, I might be able to believe that she misspoke. But Hilary had a long lead up to that. She said how difficult it was for anyone to talk about HIV/AIDS during the 80s, and so on. That wasn’t just a poor choice of words or a matter of mentioning one disease along with others. That was a well-thought out, planned talking point. And it was more than just a minor factual error, it was a whole pile of lies!

I know that there are other big things going on in the world that we could be talking about. The Nazi-salute throwing lady at the Trump rally, or the insane attempt by the big bully himself and his supporters to claim that their decision to cancel an appearance rather than face protestors means that they are victims (when they’ve been the ones literally attacking, punching, and violently tackling people who they only suspect might be protestors). Or people dying in floods in Louisiana and Texas. There are refugee crises and consequences and many more things to worry about, yes.

The Black Sheep. May, 1990 - April 1991, First Avenue between 1st Street and Houston. Photo © Dona Ann Mc Adams
The Black Sheep. May, 1990 – April 1991, First Avenue between 1st Street and Houston. Photo © Dona Ann Mc Adams
And I know if I keep giving in to my anger over this, it does me no good. Fortunately, I was reminded yesterday that there are other ways to remember and mourn those we lost. Other ways to indict those who sat silently by, or laughed, or offered public prayers thanking god for giving such pain and suffering to us. A friend reminded me of this poem, which was published on a bronze plaque mounted in a park in New York City for many months back in 1990-91, where it was erected by Creative Time, an organization that sponsors public art. The friend actually saw the bronze plaque while it was on display.

“Black Sheep” was written by Karen Finley and intended as a public poem. It opens with:

After a funeral someone said to me –
You know I only see you at funerals
it’s been 3 since June –
been 5 since June for me –
He said I’ve made a vow –
I only go to death parties if I know someone before
they were sick –
Why?
cause – cause – cause I feel I feel so
sad cause I never knew their life –
and now I only know their death
And because we are members of the
Black Sheep family –

In the middle it observes:

We’re related to people we love who can’t say –
I love you Black Sheep daughter
I love you Black Sheep son –
I love you outcast, I love you outsider
But tonight we love each other –
That’s why we’re here –
to be around others like ourselves –
So it doesn’t hurt quite so much –
In our world, our temple of difference –
I am at my loneliest when I have
something to celebrate and try
to share it with those I love but
who don’t love me back.
There’s always silence at the end
of the phone –
There’s always silence at the end
of the phone –

The full text is available at the Creative Time archive here.

Blood stains on their hands

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Silence = Death became a rallying cry that led to the formation of ACT-UP as the queer community declared, ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people must be broken as a matter of our survival.’ "
Silence = Death became a rallying cry that led to the formation of ACT-UP as the queer community declared, ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people must be broken as a matter of our survival.’ “
I included three links in this morning’s link post that were less than complimentary of former First Lady Nancy Reagan. That was a limited list. A whole lot more went across my social streams this week. I tried to limit it only to criticisms of things she had been directly involved in. I wasn’t going to say anything more about her. I hoped to avoid any coverage of her funeral. I tried. Oh, I tried.

Every year on December 1st, because it is World AIDS Day, I post a list of names. They are the names of people I knew personally who died from complications of AIDS. Those names are: Frank, Mike, Tim, David, Todd, Chet, Jim, Steve, Brian, Rick, Stacy, Phil, Mark, Michael, Jerry, Walt, Charles, Thomas, Mike, Richard, Bob, Mikey, James, Lisa, Todd, Kerry, Glen, and Jack.

Let me be clear, that isn’t every single person I knew who died from the disease. Those are only the ones I knew well enough that I cry when I type their name. Yes, I’m crying now. I have been alternating between crying and shaking with rage since reading that Hilary Clinton said, “The Reagans, particularly Nancy, helped start ‘a national conversation’ about HIV and AIDS.” And then went on to describe her as an advocate for AIDS research!

I get it. Nancy Reagan just died, and Hilary’s a politician on a national stage and is expected only to say nice things about the recently deceased. Fine. Compliment Mrs Reagan on bucking the rest of the Republican establishment and coming out in favor of stem-cell research. Never mind that it was for selfish reasons, at least it was for a worthy goal. But the Reagans absolutely did not open a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. We in the queer community had been shouting, begging the powers that be to do something, anything about it for five years (while tens of thousands in the U.S. were infected, and thousands died) before President Reagan actually mentioned the name of the disease in public. It took another two years before he referred to it as a health crisis—and don’t forget that Reagan recommended a $10-million cut in AIDS research spending the same year that the U.S. death toll reached 5,500.

When the Reagans’s close friend, Rock Hudson, was dying of the disease, trying to get into a hospital in Paris to try an experimental treatment, Nancy, after receiving a desperate telegram asking for her help, wouldn’t even authorize a staff member to call the hospital on her behalf to ask if they might let Hudson (who wasn’t a French citizen, of course) in.

Listen to this recording of a Whitehouse press briefing when a reporter asks about the Whitehouse’s reaction to a Center for Disease Control bulletin about A-I-D-S, “also called the gay cancer” officially labelling it an epidemic:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

You almost can’t hear the reporter ask, “In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?” because everyone keeps laughing.

As I mentioned above, that list I post every year consists only of the people I knew well enough that I still cry thinking about them decades later. Through the early nineties, my late husband and I went to more funerals and memorial services than I can count. Many of them were people he had known before we met. Some of them were friends, lovers, or relatives of people one or the other of us knew, but we hadn’t been particularly close to the deceased ourselves. We went to the services to support the people who were mourning the death. We went to the services because sometimes the deceased’s own families wouldn’t attend. Sometimes we held services separate from the family’s because the partner/lover/life-long companion was barred from the official funeral by the family.

There was more than one time that we had to choose which memorial service to go to, because more than one was happening at the same time, and too far apart for us to attend a part of both. So many people were dying, we had to choose who not to comfort, because at the point when research and medical intervention could have limited the spread of the disease, people at the Whitehouse had been laughing at our suffering and dying.

And then to have Clinton, who has tried to portray herself as an ally of the queer community, praise Nancy for being an advocate for AIDS research? That’s when I lost it.

I was deeply closeted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I had only a very small number of sexual encounters with other men during the time when so many were getting infected with the virus that no one knew existed. Even with that limited exposure, it is shear luck that I’m alive to bear witness to those years. Even though I wasn’t out, once the illness had been identified, I was keenly aware of how ordinary Americans perceived it. One of the most chilling moments for me came while sitting in a pew of a church in 1984. Our heads were all bowed in prayer, and the visiting pastor leading the prayer actually thanked god for the “plague of AIDS which you have sent to exterminate the homosexuals.”

Reading Clinton’s comments took me back to that moment. People like Nancy Reagan were not having a conversation about how to save people from AIDS, nor were they advocating for research for a cure. People like Nancy Reagan were thanking god for our suffering.

Never mind that Jesus commanded his followers to take care of the sick. He didn’t say to care for the sick that we deemed worthy. He didn’t say to care for the sick that lived a specific lifestyle. He specifically said to care for the sick, and people in prisons, and other outcasts of society. He said that the way you treated those outcasts was how you treated him. And he said that anyone who came to him on the day of judgment and had not cared for the sick, prisoners, outcasts, and the other “least of these” would be cast out of heaven and into the eternal fire; because they were not following his commandment.

But we’re not supposed to say anything like that about a famous person who has died. Even if she refused to raise a finger to help one dying friend get medical treatment. And apparently especially if she helped impede access to treatment for hundreds of thousands of people who were sick and dying. We’re apparently supposed to lie and say that she helped the very people whose blood is on her hands.

Trigger Warning: misogyny, racism, Frank Miller (but I repeat myself)

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Five years ago when Miller compared Occupy protestors to terrorists and filthy lazy hippies, Ty Templeton responded with a comic that included these panels. https://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/special-bonus-frank-miller-bun-toons-extra-yay-yay/
Five years ago when Miller compared Occupy protestors to terrorists and filthy lazy hippies, Ty Templeton responded with a comic that included these panels. https://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/special-bonus-frank-miller-bun-toons-extra-yay-yay/
I had somehow missed that fact that we’re at the 30 year anniversary of The Dark Knight Returns, a comic story by Frank Miller that told of a dystopian future Gotham City where various events cause Batman to come out of retirement. It was a big deal, everyone who had any interest in comics read it. There were rave reviews. And it changed the course of Batman comics for years afterward.

I was 25 years old when The Dark Knight Returns miniseries came out, and although my comic reading had entered the long decline from the days when I would visit a comic book store as regular as clock work to pick up my weekly latest issues, I read the series and generally loved it. Generally. There were things about it that bothered me. But then, there had been things about Frank Miller’s writing and artwork that both compelled me and repulsed me for years.

He revived Daredevil, taking over as penciller and writer in 1979. By the time he left the series in 1983, he had definitively transformed a character that had been a B-list hero at best in Marvel’s pantheon, into a top tier character. But he had transformed the character through one of the most brutal acts of senseless murder of a female character apparently created for the sole purpose of becoming the hero’s mysterious love interest to be then brutally murdered to imbue the hero with the necessary man-pain to justify a lot more brutal gore-splattered comic frames later.

I could go on, but Susanna Polo has a great article about this whole thing up at Polygon.com, and you really ought to go read it: THE WRITER WHO MADE ME LOVE COMICS TAUGHT ME TO HATE THEM.

I found the article thanks to a tweet that came through my timeline, which included the tag line, “TW: misogyny, racism, Frank Miller.” Even before I clicked on the link to read the article, I thought, “But you repeat yourself. ‘Trigger Warning: Frank Miller’ already tells us about the misogyny and racism. And you left out the homophobia!”

I mean, Miller is the guy who told the story of the Spartans by completely removing every hint of their well-documented homosexuality—it wasn’t just that such relationships were tolerated, it was considered tactically vital that soldiers be lovers! And Miller turned their enemy into a sissy villain straight out of a bad 1950s story!

And don’t get me started on what he did to the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns! It makes the portrayal of Baron Harkonnen in Lynch’s Dune look like a nuanced macho, misunderstood anti-hero!

As the final panel in Ty Templeton’s comic about Frank from a few years ago notes: I used to love his work. In my case, when I was still closeted and so deeply in denial about myself that I had no clue about just how deeply messed up and hateful some of those recurring tropes that Miller used again and again were.

Weekend Update 3/4/2016 – When a dog whistle becomes a bullhorn

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Trump wearing hat that says "Make America Hate Again"
Make America Hate Again (Click to embiggen)
Often my Saturday posts are about news stories I saw after posting my regular Friday Links that would have gone into the links if I had seen them earlier. Others are literal updates to a news story I had linked to on Friday which has had further developments. This is sort of the latter case, in that I had several links about this yesterday, but this isn’t really about new developments. Rather, I want to more explicitly gather my thoughts about the Frankenstein’s Monster that the Republican party has been creating for about fifty years.

Look back to the 1964 Presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. As a Senator, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while claiming that he didn’t oppose civil rights for racial minorities. He just wanted civil rights to be handled at a state’s level (sound familiar?). A lot of his campaign rhetoric was about state’s rights and law and order. These were dog whistles for those white voters who felt their personal safety and economic security were threatened by non-whites.

Nixon carried on the tradition. Nixon is often credited with formally crafting the Republican’s Southern Strategy, which was to convince white working class “Dixiecrats” to abandon the Democrats and support Republicans by appealing to their racial anxieties. Nixon’s talk during the 1968 campaign of state’s rights, local control, and law and order in regards to civil rights questions and so forth seemed almost tame because George Wallace was mounting an openly segregationist campaign as the American Independent Party nominee. In private conversations with his campaign manager and supporters, Nixon worried that Wallace would capture too much of the anti-desegregation and anti-civil rights vote for the Republicans to win.

Reagan capitalized on the racial dog whistles even more, giving his strongest pro-state’s rights speech on the 1980 campaign trail in the very county in Mississippi where three civil rights activist had been murdered in 1964 for protesting the state right to segregate the races. By dog-whistle I mean political messaging using coded language which appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different and more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*gger, n*gger, n*gger.” By 1968, you can’t say “n*gger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. …I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*gger, n*gger.”

— Lee Atwater, Republican Party strategist in an anonymous interview in 1981

I could go on and on about how the Republicans have played a wink and nod game of saying things that didn’t sound racist in a way that clearly communicated to the racists that they were welcome in the party. Which brings us to this: Polite Hypocrite Angry that Rude Hypocrite Might Become His Party’s Nominee .

Mitt Romney lecturing Trump for being racist! Mitt Romney, who used the phrase “self-deportation” to politely say that he thought all those darn Mexican workers who are here doing jobs American citizens actually won’t take (at least that the pay that the American employers want to pay) that they aren’t welcome. Mitt Romney, who said that Obama only beat him by promising poor and black voters “free stuff.”

Here’s the thing: at no point in the campaign before the recent kerfuffles did any of the other Republican nominees differ with Trump on the notion of opposing any pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Heck, earlier in the campaign they were all fighting to show which of them was willing to be tougher about things like “anchor babies” and securing the border. At no point did any of the nominees differ with Trump on the notion that the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality was wrong. At no point did any of the nominees differ with Trump on the notion of using enhanced interrogation techniques.

They’re been upset that he’s been blatant about it.

But every one of them is just as racist, just as misogynist, just as homophobic, just as eager to bomb entire countries out of existence, just as eager to torture people, and so on.

They aren’t upset about his beliefs. They’re upset that he isn’t talking in their polite code phrases. They’re upset that instead of using dog whistles, he’s using a bullhorn.

We have always been here, part 2

science fiction, , , , , ,

Cover, Astounding Science Fiction, July 1954.
Cover, Astounding Science Fiction, July 1954. The prevalent belief, at the time, was that the vast majority of readers were men. What does that tell us about the intention of this artwork? (Click to embiggen)
I get tired of having to defend my wish that stories include diverse casts of characters. Not just because I’m a gay man who wishes that my favorites shows, books, and stories would include people like me, but because I remember what it was like being a queer child and having no idea that there was anyone else in the entire universe like me. And therefore, I can empathize with other children who aren’t straight white cis males who never see people like themselves as the heroes of any story, and thus grow up not thinking that they have a place in this world.

But as I’ve said before, it isn’t just about having characters that various readers in your audience can relate to. It is also a matter of portraying a believable world. The real world has people of different genders, races, sexual orientations, and so on. It is simply unrealistic that a random sampling of any fictional world is going to consist solely of white, cisgendered, straight people. Especially the overwhelming majority of them male.

And there’s one other aspect, but award-winning sci fi/fantasy author, Saladin Ahmed explained it in a succinct set of tweets:

https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/703399564926193668

Ahmed is referring to the likely fanboy reaction to this article: J.J. Abrams says Star Wars will get an openly gay character. And the word “likely” is wholly unnecessary, as I’ve already seen angry reactions to the article around the net.

https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/703401268320952320

https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/703402190602440704

https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/703403468871081984

https://twitter.com/weirdoanansi/status/703402810914680833

https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/703404412522401793

As he said, the people who object when a non-white person is cast in lead role in a movie that isn’t about race issues, or queer characters are included in a story, and so on, always argue that it’s just furthering a political agenda to include any non-white, straight characters. Especially when it comes to queer characters, they angrily ask, “Who cares who is having sex with who?”

Well, obviously, if you’re getting angry, you do.

But let’s go back to the original Star Wars trilogy, for a moment. I was in a very crowded theatre on opening weekend for Empire Strikes Back, and when Leia declared, “I love you!” then Han replied cooly, “I know!” there were whoops and lots of exclamations of, “YES!” from all over that theatre. Three years later, at the first showing of Return of the Jedi, when Leia and Han have their big kiss at the end, there were even louder cheers and clapping. So a lot of people did care about who was in love with who, who was kissing who, and so on.

I want to repeat that: fanboys cheered and applauded a kiss near the end of a special effects-laden space opera adventure story.

So, they did care and they still do care about who is in love with, who is kissing, and yes, who is wanting to have sex with who.

It goes back much further into the history of science fiction and fantasy than Star Wars, of course. The reason that those earlier examples almost never included any same sex relationships is not because there weren’t any queer writers or readers of science fiction, it was because everyone was closeted. They weren’t closeted because they wanted to be, but because they often had to be. Remember, until the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that intimate consensual sexual conduct was a fundamental freedom protected by the Constitution, same sex activity was a criminal offense in many places.

We have always been here. For instance, in the 1920s and 1930s, Edgar Pangborn wrote a lot of pulp stories in the mystery, fantasy, and sci fi genres which featured very passionate male “friendships.” The relationships were never overtly gay, but clearly were meant to imply it. He wrote those stories under a variety of pen names. He didn’t start publishing stories under his real name until the 1960s.

Jim Kepner was the publisher of one of the first magazines advocating for gay civil rights, ONE Magazine, beginning in 1953. But before that, operating under the fan name, Jike, he was an active member of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society. During the 1940s he published a sci fi fanzine called Toward Tomorrow. Within that ’zine, and in other fanzines, he was only one of several fans who wrote speculatively of how society might evolve to include greater gender equality, racial equality, and acceptance of various sexual orientations.

A page from a science fiction fan zine from the 1940s, with Tigrina (Lisa Ben); not to mention Ray Bradbury. Courtesy ONE Archives/USC
A page from a science fiction fan zine from the 1940s, with Tigrina (Lisa Ben); not to mention Ray Bradbury. Courtesy ONE Archives/USC. (Click to embiggen)
Another member of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society back then, Edythe Edye operated under the fan name Tigrina. In 1947, using the pseudonym Lisa Ben, she founded Vice Versa, the first lesbian magazine published in the U.S.

In 1953, when straight author, Theodore Sturgeon, explored gay themes positively in the short story “The World Well Lost,” it caused at least one editor to try to organize a blackball system to prevent it, or anything like it ever being published. The blackball scheme didn’t work. The story was published. Some people liked it, some didn’t. Sturgeon and other writers occasionally returned to the subject over the next couple of decades.

It was far more common, yes, for queer characters to be portrayed negatively. In some works, you could tell how far into the depths of evil a character had plunged by how much bisexual or homosexual activity they engaged in—Dune’s Baron Harkonnen being a prime example. My point is that queer fans and writers and artists have been around for as long as science fiction and fantasy have existed. The argument about whether or not we should be allowed to participate or be portrayed has been around just as long.

Queer people have been around for as long as people have existed. They will exist in every fantasy and science fiction world. Whether they can safely live openly in those societies will vary, just as it does now in the real world, and has varied in different historical periods. If your fictional world doesn’t include us, it is unrealistic. If your fictional world doesn’t include us, you either really suck at world building or you suffer from heterosexism. If you claim you can’t include us until the right storyline comes along, you may be in denial about how much homophobia (subconscious or not) you harbor.

Not every story will include romance, obviously. I have discussed with some folks the fact that in my current series of fantasy novels, while there are several characters I know who are bisexual or pansexual, most of them aren’t obvious. There is at least one clearly identified gay couple, and several clearly identified straight characters, but that’s it2. So, I’m a queer writer who isn’t sure I’m representing queer characters enough. Therefore, I’m not saying that writers who don’t have a lot of obviously gay characters in their work are bad people.

I am saying that if you have absolutely none at all, that is just as much of an “agenda” as anything certain people accuse queer people of pushing when we ask for inclusion. Whether consciously intended it, or not, that’s at the very least enabling an anti-gay agenda.

Footnotes:

1. Yes, that is an anagram of lesbian, and she did it intentionally.

2. There are shapeshifters in my universe, and at least one shapeshifter who has appeared prominently could be interpreted as a trans character. There are other characters in the world that are definitely transgender, but haven’t yet appeared in a story3.

3. I’m not advocating quotas. As Mr Ahmed said above, quotas are bad for art, but so is monotony.

Weekend Update 2/6/2016 – Can love conquer hate?

news, , , , , ,

An exampled of Atlah World Ministries church sign messages, "Many of these homos moving to Harlem are looking for black meat"
Can’t you just feel the Christian love oozing from the sign?
I’ve been talking about it and linking to the stories about it all week. The infamous Harlem church with its even more infamous hate-spewing church sign has been ordered into a foreclosure auction due to over a million dollars in unpaid utility bills, plus ten of thousands in unpaid building permit-related fines, and hundreds of thousands in tax-related liens. And the Ali Forney Center, a charity that provides support, shelter, and nourishment to homeless youth and a safe place for LGBTQ youth, is trying to raise the money to make a bid on the building and turn it into a shelter and a retail operation to raise funds and provide job training to homeless queer kids: So close: Ali Forney Center has already raised $186,073 towards buying antigay ‘Harlem hate church’ I just checked this morning, and they’re over $190,000!

I really like this story about it: GAY GROUPS SEEK TO BUY NYC CHURCH KNOWN FOR HATEFUL MESSAGES because of the quotes from the neighbors of the church, including the lady who lives across the street who started fundraising for the Ali Forney’s bid as soon as she heard about it.

Donate to the #HarlemNoHate campaign today!

Meanwhile, just a few days after Donald Trump had vowed yet again to overturn the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling if elected, he’s suddenly claiming that he would be a champion of gay rights. Seriously. Not surprising, since New Hampshire republicans actually boo-ed Republican candidates at debates as far back as 2008 when they started making anti-gay statements. New Hampshire only had civil unions back then, but those had passed with overwhelming Republican and Democratic voter support. New Hampshire Republican voters have been far less anti-gay than Republicans elsewhere for a long time.

But Trump is not a gay ally. If you need a reminder, here’s a nice round up of The top ten worst comments Donald Trump has made about LGBTQ people.

I don’t know if he thinks the pro gay voters in New Hampshire are stupid enough to fall for it, not to mention how his current supporters will react to this sudden flip-flop. Maybe he just assumes that the majority of his angry hateful supporters won’t care? I don’t know.

I had an old friend from High School scold me this week for posting a link to a story critical of Trump. Not that he’s not critical of Trump; he was angry about the characterization that Trump is a Republican front-runner, because he believes that real Republicans aren’t fooled by Trump’s hatred.

Um…?

Every single candidate that has been vying for the Republican nomination this cycle is supportive of all of the same things Trump is spouting off about. They just try to make it sound less blatantly hateful. Unless they’re talking about gays, of course, then they’re blatant: Rick Santorum attacks Scott Walker as not anti-gay enough, or Three Republican candidates speak at anti-gay pastor’s rally or Iowa conservatives target Cruz for not being anti-LGBT enough.

The bottom line, for me, is that it doesn’t matter which clown gets the Republican nomination: they’re all anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-poor… it will be a disaster if any of them when the White House.

Confessions of a godless (-ish) homo devil

culture, , , ,

World Net Daily's graph of just how godless some cities are
World Net Daily’s graph of just how godless some cities are (click to embiggen).
World Net Daily has the headline (here’s the DoNotLink if you want to see it): “These are the most godless cities in America,” and I was a bit disappointed to find that my beloved home, Seattle was merely tied for second, falling behind Portland, Oregon. The World Net Daily and the American Family Association has made the determination of godlessness based primarily on the percentage of inhabitants who describe themselves as “religiously unaffiliated” in a recent survey. A whopping 42% of Portland residents say they are religiously unaffiliated, with Seattle and San Francisco tied for second at 33%, followed by Denver at 32% and Phoenix at 26%.

I have a few quibbles. At several points the original AFA press release and WND story conflate “religiously unaffiliated” with atheist. Even though other parts of the story make the distinction that only about 15% of of the nation’s population identifies as atheist. Conflating unaffiliated with atheist is simply wrong. I, for example, am not atheist—I’m taoist. But on a survey like this, depending on exactly how the question was phrased, I would almost certainly pick the religiously unaffiliated option because I don’t belong to any church or temple or similar organized religious institution.

I realize, since I’m:

  • a big homo,
  • have been a firm believer in the separation of church and state since at least the age of 10,
  • believe in science,
  • usually vote Democrat,
  • support pro-choice candidates and policies,

…et cetera—that the AFA would of course classify me as godless. But I suspect they would classify my queer friends who regularly attend Christian churches (decidedly liberal ones) as godless, as well.

My point, however, is that there are people who believe in god, and even believe in the same god the AFA claims to believe in, who would describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated because people like the AFA have done everything in their power to redefine Christianity to mean hating gays and people who support them to the point that they’re driving people from their congregations.

The original article also asserts as one of the harms of all this godlessness the following: “religious groups, spiritual environmentalists, and secularists… sometimes must cooperate with each other to address the region’s pressing economic, environmental and social issues.”

Horrors! People must cooperate with other people who may not agree with them on some other things to get things done? Say it ain’t so! Too bad we have all this cooperation going on! If we didn’t, we might have the insanely high infant mortality rates, childhood poverty, and teen pregnancy rates like the more godly cities in the Bible belt have. You just gotta love that strong religious culture, right?

I’ve known plenty of misogynist, racist, and/or homophobic atheists, just as I know a lot of Christians who are feminist, pro-queer, pro-equality, and otherwise in favor of most of the things of which scolds like the AFA disapprove. So we can’t use religious affiliation to unerringly predict someone’s stance on public policy issues. And as I observed a couple weeks ago (Confesses of a recovering evangelical), most of the religious right isn’t terribly devout. They’re far more motivated by their conservatism, which manifests as a reactionary opposition to change. And they don’t really pay that much attention to anything that the Jesus actually said, as evidenced by their breathless enthusiasm for military intervention, condemnation of any unarmed people of color who have the audacity to get wrongfully killed by police, and so on.

It’s why Bill O’Reilly was able to say with a straight face that Jesus promoted charity, but not to the point of self-destruction. Except, of course, since Jesus’ whole reason for coming to earth was to get killed on the cross for the sake of imperfect humans, he was indeed promoting charity not just to self destruction, but to literal self sacrifice.

The World Net Daily story is also interesting in that the comment sections is overflowing with homophobic comments, because of course no place can be godless without us homos there egging the nonbelievers on, apparently. Just like Pastor Manning who is insisting today that the foreclosure auction ordered on his church building because of more than one million dollars in unpaid utility bills has nothing to do with money. No, he claims, it’s an illegal plot of the sodomites to silence him. (By the way, the Ali Forney Center has raised more than 58% of their goal to attempt to participate in that foreclosure auction. If you can donate to this opportunity to turn hate into love, please do!)

Amazingly, New York City doesn’t make it onto the AFA’s list of cities with a higher unaffiliated percentage than the national average of 22%. I guess “New York Values” aren’t completely unholy, after all. Equally amazing, Las Vegas barely exceeds the national average of godlessness! Who knew?