Category: LGBTQ

Posted on

Allied

My friend Dylan found this article on what it means to be an ally – and therefore given more power & privilege than the group you’re working for, and I find it echoes a lot of my experience.

These four points especially:

  • We don’t *need* the movement: we can leave at any time.  This means we are more free to piss people off etc
  • Outsiders to the movement will reward us more.  We’ll be seen as more generous, heroic etc for our efforts in the movement, and probably given more respect, airtime and resources as a result.  Sometimes this results in really tangible benefits like research grants, book deals, employment.
  • Insiders in the movement will reward and value us more, knowing that outsiders will value us, and that therefore we’re useful spokespeople and a legitimising presence.  This means that sometimes we can get our way by threatening to leave.  Even without threats, people will be eager to appease and placate us.
  • Because we’re usually still able to access the various kinds of support and resources open to us outside the groups we are allies to, that means we have two areas to draw on, whereas non-ally activists have only their own communities’ support and resources.

Very, very good thoughtful stuff, and unlike many other articles on the subject, it actually provides useful ways of defeating, or subverting, those kinds of power.

Posted on

Sugarbutch: Because

For pride month, I thought it might be cool to put up some of my favorite internet queer; although I’ve got links in the right column of this site, I haven’t always said something about the site.

So first up is the Sugarbutch Chronicles, which are, according to author Sinclair Sexsmith, “an online writing project (aka “blog”) which explores sovereignty, healing, and communication through the personal examinations of sex, gender, and relationships, while celebrating queer sexuality, gender, culture, and identity in ways that are expansive rather than restrictive, liberating rather than limiting.”

You can read more about Sexsmith, of course, but the reason I thought to post about Sugarbutch was this hot little story about the 3-minute game. Some of Sexsmith’s stories get a lot heavier than this one – which you’d expect from a self-described “kinky queer butch top” – but this one was just so sweet, wasn’t it? It might be a nice way to indulge your partner’s desire for something you don’t always love doing, or to suggest something you’ve always wanted to feel but haven’t ever asked for.

We both have stories in Tristan Taormino’s Take Me There, which just happened to win itself a Lambda Literary Award (or Lammy) for best trans fiction.

Posted on

How It’s Done

I’ve never been a fan of Jason Alexander per se, but damn, I am now. He did a joke about cricket being gay on The Craig Ferguson Show, got called on it, and wrote one of the most lovely apologies for conflating gay with effeminate, and a joy with the very real discrimination LGBTQ and those with non normative genders face everyday, and threw himself in as someone who was taunted for similar reasons. Here’s a snippet:


And the worst part is – I should know better. My daily life is filled with gay men and women, both socially and professionally. I am profoundly aware of the challenges these friends of mine face and I have openly advocated on their behalf. Plus, in my own small way, I have lived some of their experience. Growing up in the ‘70’s in a town that revered it’s school sports and athletes, I was quite the outsider listening to my musical theater albums, studying voice and dance and spending all my free time on the stage. Many of the same taunts and jeers and attitudes leveled at young gay men and women were thrown at me and on occasion I too was met with violence or the threat of violence.

What a class act.

Posted on

Welcome to Pride Month

June is Pride month, so to get us started, an interview with artist Jordan Orleans, whose art is LGBTQ-themed:

You say you make love and humanism art. What do you mean by that?

Well, mostly my art has to do with love, people, the love of people, and people loving. And, hopefully, it somehow contributes to the advancement of humanity and the human condition.

Some of your paintings, like “Soul mates in Bed” feature pink and blue images and then variations with two blue and two pink. Are these meant to convey celebrations of both heterosexual and same-sex love?

Yes, they are meant to celebrate both heterosexual and same-sex love, and that’s a good way of putting it. Though, I’m a little self-conscious about people thinking I may be trying to maneuver them into liking particular images, depending on their preferences, or perceived preferences. I want people to like or dislike what they want, and I’m just offering choices, and possibly suggestions, that’s all.

( It’s also wearable art which you can buy if you’re looking for new & interesting pride gear!)

Posted on

Boston DOMA Ruling

In Thursday’s opinion, a three-judge panel in the First Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law couldn’t stand. Writing for the court, Judge Michael Boudin, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, observed that Supreme Court precedents limit government’s power to take action against “historically disadvantaged or unpopular” groups, including gays and lesbians. The 1996 law imposes “serious adverse consequences” on them, he wrote.

Justifications offered for the law—”defending and nurturing the institution of traditional, heterosexual marriage” and “traditional notions of morality,” among others—were insufficient to justify such discriminatory treatment, Judge Boudin said.

Six states plus the District of Columbia currently authorize same-sex marriages, and more than 100,000 same-sex couples have been married. Thirty-nine states have passed laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

More here.

Posted on

NC

North Carolina looks to pass a law that will make it impossible for same sex couples to have anything that even resembles marriage – a law that’s referred to as a super DOMA. Wisconsin has one in place, too, and I understand, for some, they are meant to uphold a traditional Christian marriage of one man + one woman.

What they do, sadly, is make LGBTQ feel less welcome, cause an increase in bigotry and violence against queer people, and put many children of LGBTQ people further into legal limbo when their parents separate, amongst other things.

I do not understand why civil recognition of my partnership offends people so deeply that they would pass this kind of law.

I don’t understand why people hate gay people so much.

Posted on

Alan Turing

Here’s a nice piece by Radiolab on Alan Turing, who was convicted of “Gross Indecency” in England. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what Oscar Wilde was convicted of, both of them a result of the Labouchere Amendment which was part of the Criminal Law Amendment of 1885.

He didn’t go to prison like Wilde but instead endured chemical castration via estrogen and eventually committed suicide by eating an arsenic laced apple.

In the meantime he invented computers and won WWII. (I’m not overstating either claim.)

Imagine what he might have given humanity if we weren’t such homophobic assholes as a culture.

But hey, he’s got a stamp now.