http://toolbar.google.com/I bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you about this… Its a good question, but I’ve discovered that Google’s come out with a new version of the toolbar that includes a pop-up blocker and a nifty “blog this” button. Which made me jelous, untill I realized that I have it so much better than blogger, but that It might be kinda cool to write a bookmarklet for quarto. Anyway, if you don’t have the toolbar, I really like it so maybe you would too!
It’s easy enough to see that our culture and society oppresses entire groups of people, and most of it happens so covertly and so automatically, that we don’t even allow it to register. Dismantling this oppression is a long and never-ending process; we’re working towards an ideal after all, and so it’s hard to announce victory, ever. On a more positive note, we can make progress towards dismantling the oppression within and around ourselves, and bit by bit, this can change the world.
The first step in dismantling oppression is learning to see oppression. We can see it around us, and that’s easy enough to learn, but it takes some time to learn to see the oppression, the fear, the hate, the ignorance, and the justifications, that live within all of us. This isn’t the same owning your own biases and judgmental behavior, that’s the second step, the first is simply learning how to be aware of them.
Then the second step would be owning and acknowledging the parts of you that are oppressive, and that support the system. Graduates of the NCCJ’s Anytown program will know this affectionately as “owing your own shit.” If we ever want to overcome oppression, we have to make the first step and look deep within ourselves and be able to acknowledge to ourselves and others that we’re oppressive; and that oppression lives within ourselves. So not only do you have to know how to see hate, bias, discrimination, oppression, you also have to see it in yourself. Because it’s there, even in the best of us. And that’s not a bad thing; it’s just part of life and the system; to deny its existence is only stalling the pursuit of change.
The third step is interrupting and acknowledging oppressive, hateful, and discriminatory thoughts, actions, and language both in the environment around you and in your own life. Steps one and two combine and “calling people out” is something that takes practice and that you get better and better at. This step also doesn’t fit in linearly with the other steps as it’s omnipresent in the process, and logically belongs here. For the third step, in addition to outright oppression, you also have to call out collusion, or actions that unknowingly support the oppression.
The fourth step is a simple repeat: you have to work on all three steps all the time, and slowly you’ll improve, slowly we work through our ‘own shit’ slowly we improve, but we’re never done. This isn’t to say that it’s a lost cause, because progress is welcomed and needed, but for us to declare victory would be complacent at best, and we can’t allow that to happen.
The people who who will have the biggest impacts on our lives are the ones who come along when we least expect them.Josh
[Editor’s Note: The title isn’t original, and it doesn’t really have to do with anything David wrote about in his entry, it’s just a good title, and appropriate for what I want to talk about today.]
I suppose that despite the voyeuristic nature of the weblog, I’ve always tried to remove myself from actually showing too much. As defense I’ve intellectualized damn near everything on this site, and by some wacky coincidence it’s actually worked, and I suppose I’ll keep doing it, even here. This is the entry that I don’t really want to write, that I don’t really want to have to write. Enough with the vague ramblings.
From the onset, the gay community looks like this inclusive grouping of targeted people, and in some senses it’s really is, but in other’s its not. We’re not inclusive of anything more than surface level cultural and racial diversity, and the community is barely inclusive of all its members, and that vision that you find at the onset very quickly begins to splinter, and fall apart.
Why?
Good question. The term internalized homophobia is something that a lot of people know, a lot of people even acknowledge it, but until very recently I haven’t really known what it means. And even then, I haven’t rid myself of this curse, and while I’m making progress, I’m not there yet, and given the nature of the curse, I kind of doubt that I will be.
I was talking with David at some point and he said that people will say “I didn’t know you were gay” or “You don’t act gay” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) as if it’s a compliment. Acceptance in our culture apparently means “I can accept you for what ever makes you diverse, as long as you don’t act, look, sound, think, or smell diverse.” That’s not true acceptance, and is only a short cry away from tolerance, and in some ways is even worse.
Which brings us to this statement: Gayer than thou.
This implies that someone can be *more* or *less* gay, which depending on what we mean, might be possible, but by quantifying someone’s gay-quotient, we establish hierarchy, and as hierarchy’s are prone to doing, they exclude people, the push people away. After all, people are either gay, or they’re not; they’re either bisexual or they’re not, they’re either lesbian or they’re not. There isn’t a “kinda” box. There really shouldn’t be boxes of any kind by, as Kinsey said “ Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigion-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.” That’s as evident in my own speech as it is in the rest of the world.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the categories didn’t hurt people, but they do. They hurt the people that we try and force into categories they don’t belong in, but they also hurt us. By separating and ‘ranking’ people, the community loses cohesion and a splintered community is ineffectual and incapable of caring for the members of the community as a family should. We’re not just hurting our friends we’re hurting ourselves.
I just read something in our paper about how supporters of the Chief Justice of Alabama’s display of the 10 commandments on state property are claiming that a federal court order to remove the display “violates Christian’s freedom of religion”
Before I continue, allow me to give the best example for constitutional freedoms that I know of (the fist swinging one): That is that we all have the freedom to swing our fists as much or as wildly as we want; however, your right to swing your fists ends at my nose. You can swing your fists as much as you want, but you can’t hit some one. Freedom of speech has a few limitations which the Supreme Court established in a series of cases. I’m not sure I remember all of them (sorry Mr. History Teacher) but they are: The Incitement Standard (you can’t say stuff that will cause imminent lawless action; ie. You can’t start a mob.) National Security (You can’t say stuff that’ll hurt the country’s defensive strategy. Treason is lumped in here). Slander (you can’t say things that intentionally hurt the reputation of another person when what you say is untrue.) These relate to free speech, but similar judgments exist for the other freedoms.
Back to Alabama and supposedly disenfranchised Christians.
People have a right to believe whatever crazy shit they see fit to believe in. That’s freedom of religion and everyone has it. You have the right to believe in a system of morality that guides your actions; however, you *cannot* claim that by failing to believe as you do, that others are violating your right to believe. For example, I spent some time with a woman who believed that swearing went against her Christianity. Fine, then don’t swear; but if I chose swear, I’m not doing a damn thing to infringe on your freedom of religion. Another Example: If your church doesn’t believe in performing gay marriage ceremonies, then your church can refuse to perform those ceremonies, but If I want to get married by a judge or by a minister, priest, or rabbi at a church that wants to perform a ceremony for me, then I’m not infringing on your church by getting married. Likewise, if your church doesn’t believe in non-procreative sex, then by all means don’t have sex without the clear intention of reproducing, but don’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my bed with my boyfriend. My sex life can not possibly interfere with your religion.
It seems that we have the first definition of unilateral freedom. That having the freedom of religion, or speech, or press allows us to practice our own religion, speech, or press without fearing retribution. We don’t have the second part of the definition, which is, that in order to maintain our freedoms we have to continually work to ensure the freedom of all others. That our freedom’s aren’t truly unilateral, that your right to swing your fist ends at my face.
http://www.hit-or-miss.org/I’m forced to think of Mathew Kingston as the center of the gay webloging comunity. He’s the guy who runs QueerFilter.com and maintains the best dirrectory of GLBT weblogs, and he does a prety good job on his own website as well (wink) In any case, he reciently moved from Kirksville MO to New York City, and has only reciently put his sites back on line, and it’s really good to have him back.
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