Thoughts From The Peacock Angel

Families kick out their LGBTQ kids so fucking scarily often, leaving them homeless, scared, lost and without a support network.  But it’s not even just that that scares me (it’s illegal if I recall correctly to refuse to house and provide basic support for a minor you are the legal guardian of) what really fucking scares me is the fact that it’s legal to force your gay son into church sponsored counseling, that it’s legal to send your lesbian daughter off to a camp to be essentially tortured into behaving in a manner “congruent with your faith” well if your faith outweighs your child’s physical and mental well being, then FUCK YOUR FUCKING FAITH.  It scares me that it’s legal to put your kid who displays gender varient behavior in therapy to “fix” them.  It scares me that it’s legal to put your child in a faith based school that teaches them who they were born is wrong. 

It scares me that parents are allowed to teach their children that pansexuality doesn’t exist. It scares me that parents are allowed to force their children into programs that are essentially psychological (and sometimes physical) torture because of who they are.  It scares me that some people think that anti-gay/anti-trans* bullying will “fix” their already perfect children, and it scares the fuck out of me that there are people out there that love their non-existant god more than they love their children.

When I was twelve I came out to my family as bisexual.  My mother said “It’s just a phase” and you know what?  She was right, I’m a lesbian.

No more being gay from now on, it’s just too unnatural.  All of your other sinful sinful homosexuals should repent now or risk eternity in HELL! 

April fools!

I’ve been noticing a particular form of objectification of marginalized groups lately, the sanctification, idealization, and mythologizing of marginalized people is just as fucked up and patronizing as demonizing us.  

This next bit is my personal little rant about being idealized, but I think other’s may see some of their experience in it:

I refuse to be a martyr for your Oscar bid. I will not face pain or torment with the limp pacifism of a Christ analogy. I am not mystical because of my sexual orientation, gender-identity, the sex assigned to me at birth, or any other trait inherent to me. I am not mysterious for any of these reasons either.  I am no closer to god than anyone else (frankly I’m an atheist).  I am not an etherial creature too good for this world for any of the reasons I stated earlier, and I refuse to allow you to feel better about it if I were to die due to prejudice because I was “too good for this world.”

If I’m too good for the world, fix the damned world, don’t remove me from it.  I am not extra special, extra cool, or somehow superior because I belong to a marginalized group.  I am not heart warming.  I am not your path to redemption.  My struggle although righteous is not heroic.  I am not better than you because in some ways I have it worse than you.  We are equal, neither is better, neither is worse, now if only society would acknowledge that.  I am not a paragon of virtue, something to perch on your pedestal.  I am a human being clawing tooth and nail at the warped fabric of a bigoted society.

Do not patronize me by making me the little saint of a sentimental Victorian novel, the little saint who dies piously so that everyone else may learn a saccharine moral lesson.

My identity doesn’t make me incapable of cruelty, ignorance, bigotry, violence, prejudice, or any other vice.  Do not romanticize me.  I refuse to soothe your guilt, but I will say this, don’t feel guilty for being privileged, the guilt of the privileged too often leads to new faces on old bigotry.  Do not feel guilty for the mistakes of history, for the mistakes of your ancestry, they are not your crimes, but if you allow them to continue, if you allow the crimes of your fore-bearers to continue to have an effect, they become your crimes.  Do not idealize me or sanctify me to make me seem more worthy of justice, you are treated like a human being and you aren’t perfect either.

All in all, I just want people to think of me as me, rather than the aspects of me that make me marginalized.

So, I was just having a conversation with someone (straight cis male with racial privilege in his particular section of the world) and I was reminded by just how completely ignorant of the language of social justice most people (especially non-marginalized people) are in terms of the language and ideas surrounding social justice… and it’s fucking painful to try to argue with people who are so utterly ignorant of the issues they choose to debate.

I mean I feel as if I waste half an hour of argument explaining terms like “kyriarchy” and what “privilege” is in a social justice context… and they get to keep arguing while I try to make them even understand my points in the argument.  This guy, the one I was arguing with, had the nerve to say that I “stereotyped him based upon his genitalia” (when I merely pointed out his privileged position making it hard for him to understand what its like to be marginalized and systemically oppressed) and argued that “gender is just a function of ego and trans people are just looking for something to fight against” 

He then proceeded to mansplain how LGBTQ-ness is all just a function of ego and all sexuality is completely fluid so he should have a right to hit on as many lesbians as he liked and call me a woman (which I am not, or at least am not today) as much as he damn well pleased…. at that point I gave up.

I’m just so sick of people debating these topics with me when they don’t know anything about them, I mean obviously I can’t expect a straight cisgendered man to understand what its like to be a AFAB genderqueer femme dyke… but if you’re going to argue with me, it’d be nice if you at least bothered to know some of the terms surrounding these issues yourself rather than forcing me into a position where I end up ten steps behind in the debate because I have to define things for you.

Fuck it, I’m just not talking to people who don’t know about this stuff anymore.

Note, this is humor piece and not to be taken as a serious representation of my opinions.  I’m actually strongly in favor of stricter gun control laws (though not the illegalization of firearms in general) as well, I mean this in an LGBTQ positive way, and although I recognize the impracticality of actually issuing all LGBTQ people firearms, and the immorality of using intimidation to force people to be tolerant… it does sound tempting doesn’t it?:

Here’s the thing, as a liberal, I’m well aware that conservatives and even moderates think we’re wimpy, soft on crime, soft on terrorism, and generally whimpering bleeding hearts.  So, here’s my suggestion for a new liberal initiative: Arm The Gays.  Every out LGBTQ person over the age of 18 and without a record of violent crime should be issued a firearm, and allowed to generally use it to intimidate people into better behavior.  This effort should also be highly publicized.  It would have manifold benefits, including but not limited to:

1. Reducing violence against LGBTQ people because people will finally be scared of us.
2. Making the democrats look tough.
3. Who are you calling a nancy boy now, asshole?
4. An end to the fanny pack.
5. FTMs and butches will now be packing while packing, and that’s just delightful.
6. People will think a lot harder about using “gay” as a pejorative.
7. A vast decrease in straight men whistling at lesbian couples.
8. Gay college students won’t have to worry about being bullied anymore.
9. “Defense of marriage” won’t stand up to a good offense.
10. Trans people will ALWAYS be referred to by the correct pronoun.
11. Ze, hir, ey, em, and all other third gender pronouns will finally come into common use.

So, yes, we should arm the gays.

Can I make it anymore obvious?

She was a punk, he did ballet.

What more can I say?

He was gay.

Woot!  Let’s dance!  Let’s fucking dance!  I cannot even begin to express how happy I am about this.  I know we still have a long way to go, but at the very least we can now openly serve in the military (or well at least the government doesn’t say we can’t).

You know those ex-gay programs?  And how they encourage the “ex-gays” to hook up with the “ex-lesbians”?  If homosexuality has any genetic component, they’re just breeding tons and tons of homos.  

Weird thought huh?  By pretending to erase us they’re just making more of us.

Hedwig - Angry Inch

<3 this movie

I love Janis Joplin.  No one seems to remember how damn important she is to rock n’ roll anymore.  That woman, not just played rock n’ roll, but embodied rock n’ roll… and she was ugly as sin, face like a pie that’d been sat on, but she could SING.  Listen to Pearl, and try to insist that we should regard beauty as important in female recording artists… also despite not even being a little bit attractive… Janis Joplin looked damn cool, and was thoroughly aesthetically pleasing.