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“when people do fight, they sometimes win…”

Jul 31st, 11 / 0 Comments

rick snyder gtfo You may have heard about Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s moves to supersede the authority of local governing bodies. Public Act 4, passed this year, gives the state the ability to replace and even dissolve local governing bodies during times of fiscal emergency. It has already been implemented in the city of Benton Harbor, where emergency financial manager (EFM) Joseph Harris has suspended the decision-making authority of city council members, and in the cities of Pontiac and Flint–as well in as the Detroit Public School system, where EFM Roy Rogers has used his state-given authority to modify union contracts for district employees.

Rachel Maddow explains the problems with this law beautifully:

Three things about Public Act 4 and Rick Snyder:

In the Maddow clip above, writer Naomi Klein says that the “well-kept secret” about political protests is that “when people do fight, they sometimes win…[e]specially if you’re willing to do more than just go to a march once.” Michiganders need to fight to either recall Snyder or make extra sure he’s a one-term governor.
We cannot let the right wing use the current national debt crisis to push through an anti-democratic political agenda. And even as this crisis gets resolved, we cannot let the right wing trick us into agreeing that when the sky is falling, any sort of protection will do.
However: Some people are getting a little fast and loose with terms like “fascism” and “dictatorship.”

While it’s clear to most that Snyder has violated the public trust in his office and trampled on the rights of Michigan’s citizens, he’s not quite a dictator. Here are some dictators for you; typically, they trample on rights through use of force, imprisonment, and terror; and the thing about dictators is that they quite often change laws to ensure their continued reign of power. In Michigan, people are organizing a petition to recall Snyder; if they are successful, a special election will be held during which the people will have a chance to decide whether they want him to go away. Certainly, corporate and right-wing interests will send their lackeys to the polls in force; it is up to the clearer heads to rally the rest of the citizenry into making their opinion count.

As reporter Samantha Power explains, “fascism — unlike Communism, socialism, capitalism or conservatism — is a smear word more often used to brand one’s foes than it is a descriptor used to shed light on them.” In fact, fascism is a political ideology that originated with Benito Mussolini; he explains the ideology in his 1932 Fascist Doctrine. Public Act 4 is certainly in line with at least some of the tenets of Mussolini’s fascism, most notably in his description of the Fascist State as

not reactionary but revolutionary, for it anticipates the solution of certain universal problems which have been raised elsewhere, in the political field by the splitting up of parties, the usurpation of power by parliaments, the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the economic field by the increasingly numerous and important functions discharged by trade unions and trade associations with their disputes and ententes, affecting both capital and labor; in the ethical field by the need felt for order, discipline, obedience to the moral dictates of patriotism.

But let’s reserve fascist for the people who are willing to embrace violence, institutionalize oppression, and wage war to stop others from pursuing alternate political agendas. Ok?

In the meantime, Michigan, I’ll be waiting for you to take care of business. I’ll be waiting for you to successfully recall or reject Rick Snyder at the polls.

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gay wedding planning for straight people

Jul 17th, 11 / 0 Comments

Some queers have chosen to boycott opposite-sex marriages in protest of discriminatory laws on who can legally marry in the United States. I agree with writer Charles Purdy that boycotting loved ones’ ceremonies is both selfish and ineffectual. Purdy writes that

using another person’s wedding as a soapbox for your political viewpoints is indeed tacky. It reeks of self-important grandstanding….[B]eing cruel is no way to bring anyone around to you point of view. (After all, that’s what the other side does with their constant slanderous, mean-spirited attacks on gay people as human beings.) We need to be strengthening alliances, not shredding them…. We have to stay engaged in dialogues with our friends and families — not hide in our rooms like sulky teens when we don’t get our way.

For politically engaged/enraged queers, I think the best course of action is to attend the straight wedding you were invited to, and to bring a queer date, and to get your gay on, visibly, publicly, and respectfully–after all, another couple’s wedding is not about you. A visible queer presence at a wedding can, however, get people thinking and talking about marriage equality.

Now: let’s say you’re an engaged opposite-sex couple, planning your legally sanctioned wedding. Let’s say you’re an engaged opposite-sex couple that believes, deeply, that marriage is a right that should not be limited based on bigoted beliefs about sexuality and morality. Here are some suggestions for planning your wedding!

Choose to hold your ceremony in a locale that has legalized gay marriage. In doing this, you get to feel good about sending your wedding costs and your attendees’ tourist dollars to the coffers of a place that’s getting it right on marriage equality, AND you get to tell people “Yeah, we decided to make you all trek out to New York because it’s one of only a few states that’s doing the right thing on marriage equality.”
State your position on marriage equality. I recently attended an opposite-sex wedding in which the officiant began the ceremony with a recognition that not all people–not even all the people in attendance at the wedding–had the rights being exercised by the engaged couple. It was cool like bow ties. (Though not everyone agrees; here’s a gay activist who equates this gesture to a white person joining a whites-only club and making a short statement of support for nonwhites.)
Watch your language. The ceremony itself could crib from this gender-neutral ceremony script I just found, though I don’t see a point in removing all opposite-sex markers from a ceremony. I mean, if you and your partner use opposite-gender pronouns, then there’s no reason to act like it’s otherwise. You might also think about how to phrase your invitations and other wedding-oriented text to embrace a range of gender orientations and couple arrangements.
Consider registering with an organization fighting for marriage equality. Here’s a link to the Human Rights Campaign’s wedding registry, which allows people to make donations in your honor to their efforts to legalize gay marriage.

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on snobbery and digital literacy instruction

Jul 17th, 11 / 0 Comments

cross-posted from HASTAC.org

I’ve been thinking lately about Roger Ebert and digital media snobbery.

I found out through my colleague John Jones that Ebert, a blogger and film critic, recently attacked the publication of “easy reader” editions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. His main concern appears to be that these abridged versions of Gatsby omit the poetic language of the full text:

Fitzgerald’s novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby’s lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald’s style–in the precise words he chose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all. You have been imprisoned in an educational system that cheats and insults you by inflicting a barbaric dumbing-down process. You are left with the impression of having read a book, and may never feel you need return for a closer look.

Is Ebert correct? Sure, I guess. You know, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove is my favorite novel not because of the plot, but because of how the plot is conveyed. Same thing with another favorite, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. We pick our favorite books and movies and songs and so on in large part because of a nebulous feature we might call style. Clearly Gatsby is one of Ebert’s favorites, and he wants others to experience the novel like he did and does.

This desire to bequeath to others our magical interaction with a text iis what leads us to force people to watch our favorite TV shows, even though we know they’re just going to get distracted or bored and stop paying attention because they need to check their email or grab some chips from the kitchen or they just got a text from someone they sort of like and they have to figure out how to respond and meanwhile DONNA NOBLE IS ABOUT TO ASK THE DOCTOR THE NAME OF HIS PREVIOUS COMPANION AND HE’S GOING TO SAY IT WITH SUCH TRAGEDY AND PAIN IN HIS VOICE THAT YOU’RE GOING TO KNOW EVERYTHING YOU NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW HE FEELS ABOUT ROSE TYLER AND jeez never mind let’s just watch Parks and Rec instead.

So I’d be on board if Ebert said he wanted others to experience Gatsby and other canonical novels as he did, and left it at that. But no. Ebert takes it a step farther:

I never read a simplified text of a novel in my life, and to the best of my knowledge neither did any other graduates of St. Mary’s Grade School or Urbana High School — not in school, anyway. The first book I read was Huckleberry Finn, and I got through it just fine, encountering hundreds of words I didn’t know.

It’s not snobbery to say “I did things this way and you can too”; it’s snobbery to say “I did things this way and if you don’t do things my way you are not as smart as I am.” The latter seems to be precisely what Ebert wants us to hear in his argument.

(Snobbery, by the way, is also what has led lots of people to embrace the Core Knowledge approach to education.)

I have a touch of technological snobbery. I browbeat people who use Internet Explorer until they switch to Firefox or Chrome. I make fun of friends who live without smartphones, and–in a particularly low moment for me–I once made fun of a family member when she began an online information search at about.com.

That kind of snobbery is annoying but not necessarily dangerous–until it gets codified as an approach to digital literacy education. It’s easy, I think, to fall into the trap of believing one way of understanding social media technologies is the best way of understanding social media technologies. We say we want kids to develop an understanding of the complexities of digital technologies, but we mean that we want them to embrace digital technologies–to love new media like we love new media.

It’s literacy snobbery when we try to teach kids what to think about technology instead of how to think about technology. In this respect, I worry that educators who stand on very different sides of the digital literacy issue embrace a very similar, problematic attitude: I did things this way and if you don’t do things my way you’re not as smart as I am.

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I guess I’ll be submitting proposals for the 2012 AERA Annual Meeting

Jul 13th, 11 / 3 Comments

At the end of my last trip to the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), I decided I no longer wanted to submit proposals or attend the conference. I had lots of reasons, but here are some of the biggest:

The AERA Annual Meeting embraces mainstream (nonthreatening) research. As researcher and activist Jeff Duncan-Andrade pointed out in a session I attended, AERA offered up Diane Ravitch at its opening plenary session. Ravitch, after 30 years of supporting standardized testing and teacher accountability based on test results, recently reversed course and stood up against standardized assessments. “Which is super,” Duncan-Andrade said, but added that Diane Ravitch should be spending the rest of her career in apology to all the kids whose lives she helped to destroy.
The AERA Annual Meeting does not support dissenting or alternative voices. It’s true that lots of individuals and a handful of sessions introduced radical or controversial theories or ideas, but those were drowned out by the plenaries, featured speakers, and sessions designed to promote the general mainstream of educational research.
The AERA Annual Meeting does not effect or result in any significant, lasting change in education.
The AERA Annual Meeting is expensive. Which wouldn’t be a problem if the membership and attendance fees resulted in any significant, lasting change in education. But it doesn’t.

So. Here we are, a mere 9 days before the submission deadline for AERA 2012, and I’m preparing to submit at least four different proposals, and I’m hoping to have at least one accepted so I can go to Vancouver in mid-April. I haven’t changed my mind about any of the points above. So why in the world am I spending so much time and energy on a conference that goes against everything I believe comprises good educational research?

Someone’s gotta be the chainsaw. I know lots of people who feel like I do about AERA, and some of them have chosen to no longer attend. It’s a good decision, choosing not to participate in the AERA circus, and it means those people can spend their energies in far more awesome ways. But we also need people to work on tearing AERA down, and I’m willing to do my best.
Someone’s gotta bring the heat. If accepted, I promise to introduce dissent, to introduce an alternative perspective in my presentations, in my participation as an audience member, and in my attendance at business meetings for the Divisions and SIGs of which I am a member.
Someone’s gotta bring the challenge. I am planning on organizing a protest against the fees and ineffectuality of AERA. Tentatively, I plan to organize attendees to commit to donating the $70-$205 they would spend on registration fees for the Annual Meeting to one or more local educational initiatives. Attendees could announce their participation in this protest by wearing an armband indicating their refusal to pay the registration fee. Let’s say that just 4% of the estimated 13,000 attendees donate their registration fees. That would result in a pool of at least $70,000 to support local initiatives–a drop in the bucket to some, but a much needed income source for others.

What do you think, dudes? Wanna join me in taking a chainsaw to AERA?

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Stephen Dobyns, ‘How to Like It’

Jun 27th, 11 / 0 Comments

from The Cortland Review, issue 26.

How to Like It

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept—
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

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on straight dudes posing as lesbians

Jun 14th, 11 / 4 Comments

As my pal Wessel says, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dude.

You may have heard of these two recent stories:

1. Gay Girl in Damascus is really a Straight Guy in Scotland:

The life of Amina Arraf was a good story. On a website called “Gay Girl in Damascus,” this purportedly Syrian-American lesbian blogger wrestled with issues surrounding her national identity, her sexuality, her faith, and the future of her country at a time of open revolt. At a time when most of the information coming out of Syria comes in the form of choppy, graphic YouTube videos or breathless tweets about the Assad regime’s crackdowns, here was a young woman writing from Damascus in flawless English about her country’s social and political turmoil.

And then it all fell apart.

It fell apart because the blog’s author, who turned out to be a straight American man named Tom McMasters, decided to add in a kidnapping plot: He had “Amina Arraf” disappear, had her “cousin” write a post notifying readers of “Amina”‘s disappearance. Readers sprung into action, mobilizing to search for their missing Gay Girl in Damascus. At which point it became increasingly clear that there was no gay girl in Damascus.

2. LezGetReal editor IzRealStraightGuy.

Only days after we learned that the author behind A Gay Girl in Damascus was a straight man from Georgia, The Washington Post is reporting that the purported DC-based lesbian mother who edited the lesbian news site Lez Get Real (“A Gay Girl’s View on the World”), which re-published Gay Girl in Damascus posts and helped the blog get started, is actually a 58-year-old former Air Force pilot and construction worker from Ohio named Bill Graber (pictured at right)….
Garber and MacMaster have offered similar explanations for their actions. Garber, like MacMaster, explained that he started out with the best of intentions–to demand the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and advocate for other gay issues–and assumed the identity of a lesbian woman because he didn’t think people would take him seriously as a straight man. And, just like MacMaster, he rationalized his actions, pointing out to the AP that he helped reveal the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax by tracking the blog’s posts to computer servers in Edinburgh. MacMaster ”would have got away with it if I hadn’t been such a stand-up guy,” Graber said.

Based on the general tenor of responses across the web, I surmise that I am supposed to do the following:

1. Register my disappointment and anger.

2. Reassure my readers that I am, indeed, the precise person I purport to be.

(See: Shakesville. Michellebird on the DailyKos.

I guess I’m a little annoyed, but I don’t feel the level of anger that, for example, these writers (Shakesville. Michellebird) do. For one thing, I wasn’t invested in the story like they were–I only heard about the Gay Girl in Damascus blog when it was mentioned in the comments section of a recent post (to argue that there are more serious issues for LGBTQ folks worldwide than those that American queers experience! Ha!).

I’m also firmly in the identity-is-slippery camp. A few years back, when I was first coming out as a queer, I identified as cisgendered. (The term means that my gender identity aligns fairly well with the features that are built into my body: that I am a biological female who identifies as a female.) [Note: I'd link you to that post, but I can't find it!] But later, I came out as genderqueer. I wasn’t “lying” early on; I simply didn’t understand myself in the same way then as I do now.

Of course, the identity-is-slippery camp does not assume that the LezGetReal and Gay Girl in Damascus bloggers are simply struggling with their own gender and sexual identities. They’re straight white guys who posed as dykes. Which is annoying.

Here’s an interesting take from CurrentMom:

People are messy. The technology we invent is messy, too. Deal with it.

Here’s an even more interesting take, from Something the Dog Said on the Daily Kos:

What we have here are two white guys running up against that fact that their gender and sexuality are going to make it harder for them to have an impact in a certain area. So instead of busting their asses to build their credibility to speak in this area, they take on the role of a someone who automatically has some credibility. The expectation that it is okay to do this just screams that they feel entitled to jump to the head of the queue with their opinions.

What do you think?

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weighing in on Edward Albee

Jun 6th, 11 / 0 Comments

Edward Albee is gay and he’s a writer, but he wants you to know he’s not a gay writer.

Albee received this year’s Pioneer Award from the Lambda Literary Association; this honor is described on the Lambda website as one that is bestowed

on individuals who have broken new ground in the field of LGBT literature and publishing. Established in 1995, the Award honors those who, through their achievements and passionate commitment, have contributed to the LGBT literary community in significant and tangible ways: through works of literature, or by establishing publishing houses, publications, archives, bookstores, or other institutions.

Albee then stunned the audience at the awards ceremony by saying this:

“A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay.”

Defending himself to NPR’s Renee Montagne, Albee added: “Maybe I’m being a little troublesome about this, but so many writers who are gay are expected to behave like gay writers and I find that is such a limitation and such a prejudicial thing that I fight against it whenever I can.”

Here’s what I think: if Edward Albee wants to present himself as a writer who happens to be gay, and not as a gay writer, that’s his absolute right. We all make our own decisions about how we want to face the world, and if Edward Albee would rather not put his orientation in front of his vocation, that’s cool.

The real fault is with the Lambda Literary Foundation, which appears to have genuflected to celebrity and forgotten its own mission:

The Lambda Literary Foundation nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility and encourage development of emerging writers.

Albee has said that he strives to create work that is not about–or not specifically about–LGBT issues and concerns. He has insisted that he is not in the business of engaging with or “breaking new ground in” LGBT literature or publishing. So where in the world did Lambda get the idea that Edward Albee was the right choice for the Pioneer Award? There are not enough honors for queer writers and publishers. Let’s make sure we’re handing them out to the people whose work actually merits the recognition.

Relatedly, and strangely, there is no mention of Edward Albee’s sexual orientation on his Wikipedia page. brb editing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albee

update 6/6/11 10:38 a.m.: Wikipedia page edited to include details about Edward Albee’s sexual orientation.

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on a related note…

Jun 5th, 11 / 1 Comment

There are times when I feel very happy and comfortable with fighting for equal rights for all humans alongside all humans who care to take up the fight, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. There are times when I am awed and humbled by the work of my nonqueer friends, family, and colleagues to understand, embrace, and support the rights of people whose lives and choices and needs and interests they don’t and can’t ever fully understand. There are times when I see straight allies as (almost) as heroic as the queers whose rights they’re fighting for.

This does not happen to be one of those times.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me. I’ve been attacked, stigmatized, and bullied because of my gender and sexual orientation. I’ve been accused of horrible things. These accusations began as I attempted to start a conversation about the role of straight privilege and male privilege in academia. I wanted to begin from my experience of feeling silenced and harassed, of being on the wrong end of both of these forms of privilege.

It was suggested that I’m seeing things that don’t actually exist.

Yes, we know that in conversation males are more likely to silence females than the other way around. Yes, we know that heterosexism is insidious and hard for nonqueers to recognize, just like the signs of White privilege are hard for white people to recognize. Yes, we know that the dominant group is likely to dismiss the experiences of marginalized groups, is likely to explain that it’s all in your head.

We are sympathetic to these truths and want to work to change these things. But, really, Jenna–these things you think you’re experiencing are all in your head.

It was suggested that my real issue isn’t that I’m struggling against heterosexism or anti-womanism, but that I’ve probably had some bad experiences with men, possibly quite recently, which is making me oversensitive.

Well, yes. I’ve had some bad experiences with men, and some of those experiences were quite recent–and that’s utterly beside the point.

I think black people have had a few bad experiences with white people and that has made them oversensitive about how white people interact with them.

It’s not fair for the differently abled to think that our entire country is against them, just because they’ve had to deal with a few ignorant people.

You feminists are just touchy because you don’t like men.

So I’ve written a series of posts recently about my frustrations with people who identify as straight allies but who behave more like an enemy. Right now I’m not feeling conciliatory, and those posts don’t strive to appease or make peace.

I’m tired, you guys. Right now I’m just tired.

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what being a straight ally really means (part 3 of 3)

Jun 5th, 11 / 0 Comments

a multi-part series of posts about what straight allies can learn from Critical Whiteness Studies

As I wrote in part 1 of this series of posts, I’m taking a summer course called Critical Perspectives on Whiteness. I explained:

In addition to helping me start working through my own relationship to White privilege, Whiteness, and racism, this course is helping me think more deeply about the role of Straight privilege, Straightness, and heterosexism. Because I’m conditioned not to recognize so much of the privilege I receive as a white person, I’ve been finding it helpful to use my experiences as a gaylady and outsider to Straight privilege as a tool for trying to see White privilege. And that, in turn, helps me to think better about Straightness and Straight privilege.

The first part of this series focused on the dangers of turning the debate over gay marriage into the emblematic issue of the gay civil rights movement. The second part considers a second danger: “straight heroism.” This third and final part focused on anti-heterosexism as charity and discusses what to do / what not to do as a straight ally.

antiracism as charity / anti-heterosexism as charity

Hook adds a third danger: Antiracism as charitable act. He explains:

What I am referring to as ‘charitable’ instances of anti-racism do not result in a levelling of the playing field, in a necessary increase in the equality of society, but instead in the affirmation of a different order of privilege. They involve a trade-off: the declaration of a past racism – or admission of racialised privilege – is offered on condition that the speaker, the agent of the declaration, is able to claim the position of the redeemed subject, or gain something by way of liberal social capital.

There is a danger, he argues, in doing “humanitarian violence” through charitable antiracism: It turns the antiracist into the benefactor, the Other into the subservient recipient of charity. “We” must rescue “them” from “their” cruel lives.

Biko writes:

[White]liberals, leftists … are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism … these are the people who say that they have black souls wrapped up in white skins … They want to remain in the good books with both the black and the white worlds … They vacillate between the two worlds, verbalizing all the complaints of the blacks beautifully while skilfully extracting what suits them from the exclusive pool of white privileges … [The white liberal] claims complete identification with the blacks … [H]e moves around … white circles … with a lighter load, feeling that he is not like the rest of the others. Yet at the back of his mind is a constant reminder that he is quite comfortable as things stand.

I struggle to make peace with some of what I’ve seen from Straight allies because so much of allied behavior also smacks of charity. Being pro-gay–being a true ally–means being willing to give up Straight privilege that results in unfair and unequal distribution of resources and benefits. Pro-gay behavior that is not accompanied by an effort to redistribute unfairly distributed resources is behavior that does not work in the service of gay rights. I’m giving these clothes to charity because they don’t fit / they’re not fashionable / I want room for better clothes! What? Work to change the institutional forces that construct and maintain poverty? I just told you that I gave clothes to charity!

what not to do / what to do

Here’s what South African activist Andile Mngxitama has to say about what he wants from Whites:

for myself, as a black person, I don’t want:
(I) Acknowledgement of whites’ culpability
(2) Disclosure and remorse for what happened during colonialism and apartheid
(3) I wish for no dialogue
( 4) Whites owe me no apology or washing of feet
(5) Please, not another conference on racism
(6) No pledges confirming our collective humanity.

For myself, as a gay person, I don’t want:

(I) Straight allies claiming space on the public stage of gay civil rights when it comes at the loss of space on the stage for queers. If your words and actions are silencing gays, then you need to step aside.
(2) The suggestion that I might get farther if I tried to look a little more “mainstream” (read: straight). It makes you sound like you want me to “pass” as straight, which is something that I have chosen not to do.
(3) The suggestion that gay rights are better served by “mainstream” (read: straight-looking) queers and queer couples than by non-normative queers and queer couples. It makes you sound like you prefer your gays to be as straight as possible.
(4) To be asked my opinion on a gay rights issue by a straight ally, only to be interrupted and argued with before I’ve finished giving my opinion. If you really wanted to know my thoughts, you’d spend your time trying to understand and not trying to show why I’m wrong.

As a result of the readings and discussions I’ve had as part of my summer course on Whiteness, I am currently at a complete loss for how to proceed as a White antiracist. I’m confused and frustrated and anxious and sad–which, I think, is precisely how I should be feeling as I explore my own complicity in a system that unfairly benefits me through no effort of my own.

I have a hard time believing that my own uncertainty, indecision, and immobility are good things–until I think about what I want straight allies to feel about gay rights. As a straight ally, you should never feel certain or decisive about your position and role in the gay rights movement–for the movement to succeed, your role must be in flux, must always be conferred upon you by your queer peers. It’s only fair, then, that I feel the same anxiety about my role as a White ally that I want Straight allies to feel about their roles in the effort toward destabilizing and deconstructing heteronormativity and heterosexism.

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what being a straight ally really means (part 2 of 3)

Jun 4th, 11 / 6 Comments

a multi-part series of posts about what straight allies can learn from Critical Whiteness Studies

As I wrote in part 1 of this series of posts, I’m taking a summer course called Critical Perspectives on Whiteness. I explained:

In addition to helping me start working through my own relationship to White privilege, Whiteness, and racism, this course is helping me think more deeply about the role of Straight privilege, Straightness, and heterosexism. Because I’m conditioned not to recognize so much of the privilege I receive as a white person, I’ve been finding it helpful to use my experiences as a gaylady and outsider to Straight privilege as a tool for trying to see White privilege. And that, in turn, helps me to think better about Straightness and Straight privilege.

The first part of this series focused on the dangers of turning the debate over gay marriage into the emblematic issue of the gay civil rights movement. This part considers a second danger: “straight heroism.”

white heroes / straight heroes

In defining “white heroism,” Lacanian psychologist Derek Hooks offers the example of Peter Gabriel performing ‘Biko,’ a song about the assassination of the Black South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, at a Live Aid concert in the 1980s

before an audience of 25 million people. Despite the obvious political potential of such an act, it is difficult not to feel a slight sense of unease in watching this footage today, in an era where such political anthems are less in vogue. It seems harder now to deny that such a performance holds Gabriel himself up to the limelight, securing for the singer and his audience a kind of anti-racist social capital. One might adopt a psychoanalytic perspective here, by asking whether such a gesture, no matter how well-intentioned – and which certainly can be read as a laudable form of consciousness-raising – does not risk tipping over into an instance of ‘anti-racist narcissism’. We should not be blind to this possibility: that at the very moment in which one is fully immersed in publicly applauding the sacrifice, the heroism of an other one is simultaneously reaping the rewards of the attention thus called onto one’s self. Although he directs his comments at white South Africa, Chabani Manganyi’s (1973, p. 17) words nonetheless seem pertinent here: ‘liberalism can only be a form of narcissism – a form of white self-love’.

This is the rocky path of White Declarations, of public statements of antiracism that release a person from the responsibility to actually change behaviors, attitudes, or actions that maintain the (White) status quo. This is the joining of an MLK Day march, the writing of an antiracist letter to the editor of a local newspaper. This is the “I have a black friend” declaration, the “I have a gay friend,” the “I have a Muslim friend.”

Here's one way to be pro-gay without running the risk of having people actually think you're gay

Let’s go back to the rhetoric surrounding gay marriage for a minute. I’ve seen lots of public declarations from straight allies that go like this: I have gay friends who are in love and are happily married / who are in love and want to get married and I demand / request / suggest that you support their right to legally marry. Which is super and awesome but which risks ringing somehow false. Too often, those declarations seem a little too full of magnanimity, of I-am-open-minded-and-therefore-an-awesome-liberal, of pat-me-on-the-back-for-being-an-awesome-straight-person. This is another reason why gay marriage has become an emblematic issue: Because it’s an easy way for straight people to support gays without risking any loss of their own Straight privilege. This has even become an official part of the gay marriage rhetoric: Gay marriage helps straight marriages. Also, Glenn Beck is not threatened by gay marriage.

I believe in gay marriage precisely because I think it does threaten straight privilege. In my view, if gay marriage does not threaten straight privilege, then it’s not part of the solution. If it’s not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.

The third and final part of this series of posts will be published on Sunday, June 5.

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