Life as Majority

(NB: Anything that is enclosed in brackets [x] inside of someone else's quoted work is my added opinion.)

So I've recently had some drama in my life, even if it is more of an internal struggle over my current situation. While I had hoped I'd be disciplined and kind enough not to open my mouth and spread the misery, I've already failed at that so I figured, fuck it, I might as well write about how I see this playing into a larger social narrative as well as how my past influenced this moment and where I'm pointing my compass from here.

In the last post that I wrote, I brought up the concept of PRIVILEGE. I'd like to start by talking a bit more about that. So last time, I wrote that wikipedia defined privilege this way: "A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth. By contrast, a right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all citizens or all human beings from the moment of birth."

Now I want to add a bit from Tim Wise, one of the foremost (white) American anti-racist thinkers out there. It's from "Denial - Privilege and Life as a Majority." Now I'm going to quote a great deal of it, but it's also worth it just to go to the page and read the whole thing.

"Sometimes it can be difficult, having a conversation with those whose political
views are so diametrically opposed to one's own.

But even more
challenging, is having a discussion with someone who simply refuses to accept
even the most basic elements of your worldview. At that point, disagreement is
less about the specifics of one or another policy option, and more about the
nature of social reality itself.

This is what it can be like sometimes,
when trying to discuss the issue of white privilege with white people. ...

Of course, what is ultimately overlooked is that denial of one's
privilege itself manifests a form of privilege: namely, the privilege of being
able to deny another person's reality (a reality to which they speak regularly)
and suffer no social consequence as a result."

For those who don't know, I am white and that is one of the areas in which I do have privilege. But I think that is why what Tim Wise writes speaks to me. I know I have this white privilege, knew it somewhere inside me long before I knew what the word meant in this context. Maybe I've always been a bit too overly empathetic, but even as a pretty young kid, I hated when things were unfair or unequal. These emotions became magnified when I was 7 and my family moved to a suburb just south of large Midwestern city. Unlike the large but mostly white student population of my former elementary school, black students made up probably 25% of the student body at the small private Christian elementary school outside of the large Midwestern city when I began attending. (The mix was probably 50-50 by the time we moved.) I had a big culture shock, as I'd never really been exposed to black culture. I wouldn't call my family racist, but, like many people of all colors, we tended to partake in culture that reflected us, or at least our skin tone. I could have sang you the soundtrack to the Big Chill, having listened to the tape so often in my mom's car, but I didn't even know what rap was. While the powerful white students in my class didn't give you a second thought if you weren't up to their level of pretty and well-dressed, my black classmates, even the most popular and powerful, would let you in with them, but only after you endured the push-pull of gaining their trust, which meant showing you didn't have a racist molecule in your body. Looking back, I wonder if it wasn't the friendship version of "you either like me for me & don't act like I should be any different, or you never really liked me at all and don't deserve my energy," something my mom drilled into my head about romance with boys, which I wonder if the black students' parents, kids during the Civil Rights Era, drilled into their heads. While I won't say that I left that school with a fully developed racial consciousness or a complete understanding of the psyches of black children, I do credit it with teaching me that minorities are both just like whites and not at all like whites, that every kid I knew was just as deserving of respect as me, whether they were white or black, but that the black students had a different reality, from our history of injustice to minorities to the higher incarceration rates of their older family members to how teachers treated them. It wouldn't be until college that I would actively try to develop my race consciousness, right alongside the gay consciousness I snuck in while in high school and the feminist consciousness that had bloomed during my first Women's Studies course. It's something I'm still working on today and probably will be working on until the day I die.

But being more aware of things means I see more, whereas before I might have had that little "something's off" itch, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Even having read just the same amount of things I have by authors of color, women authors, gay authors, disabled authors, about the ways they have been made to feel less than, about the horribly intrusive and ignorant behavior they've been subjected to, I have started to see that all around me, recognize it, felt my own heart hurt. But I've been a 'humorless, too sensitive, too PC, stick up her ass bitch' for as long as I can remember and I started calling people on using words like "gay" and "fag" as derogatory terms when I was a senior and just coming out. By my senior year, I had a modicum of respect from my classmates because I was the go-to study-buddy girl. I also came armed with facts. So when I challenged them saying it, bringing up that it often felt to a gay person like the equivalent of kike or the n-word, I also told them that, in this classroom with 15 people, statistically, there would be 1.5 gay people. If I was the .5, as a bi-person, who was that other person that they probably just hurt, that they probably dug the knife in everyday? Look, I have no delusions that it changed what they said when they were in the hall or another class. But it got the speaker to think and, if there was another gay person in that classroom, I hope they got the message that they were worth being stood up for.

But now I'm older, have less clout, am a bit less likely to open my mouth. In part, it's because of this nifty little trick we blog people call derailing. This page, Derailing for Dummies, which is completely hilarious, sums it up pretty well:

"You know how it is. You’re enjoying yourself, kicking back and relaxing at the
pub or maybe at the library; or maybe you’re in class or just casually surfing
the internet,
indulging in a little conversation. The topic of the conversation is about a
pertinent contemporary issue, probably something to do with a group of people
who fall outside your realm of experience and identity. They’re also probably
fairly heavily discriminated against - or so they claim. The thing is, you’re
having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues.
This knowledge is incontrovertible - it’s been backed up in media
representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also
your own unassailable sense of being right.

Yet all of a sudden
something happens to put a dampener on your sharing of your enviable intellect
and incomparable capacity to fully perceive and understand All Things. It’s
someone who belongs to the group of people you’re discussing and they’re Not
Very Happy with you. Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about
that. They might be a person of colour, or a queer person. Maybe they’re a
woman, or a person with disability. They could even be a trans person or a sex
worker. The point is they’re trying to tell you they know better than you about
their issues and you know that’s just plain wrong. How could you be wrong?

Don’t worry though! There IS something you can do to nip this
potentially awkward and embarrassing situation in the bud. By simply derailing
the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their
experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and
you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down
inside!

Congratulations You Have Privilege!

Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised
People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing
every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits
of every privilege that you have."

Of course, the dynamic also gets trickier when you are a privileged white person telling another privileged white person to please stop using a specific word. It's difficult enough to be, say a gay person politely asking a straight person to please stop using "gay" when they mean "stupid," with the tried and true "but gay people do it!" and "well, I didn't mean it that way, you know I love gay people." When you aren't a part of that marginalized group and can't speak for a majority of ALL OF THEM being offended, and you really don't want to say they are racist, which you might not believe anyway, well, sometimes it just feels like a losing battle. I think this video by J Smooth sums it up pretty well.




But finally, sometimes you just don't want to be the educator, the activist acting civilly. Though Sparky, writing at Womanist Musings, is writing about being a gay man trying to educate straight people, I think it's just as fitting for people educating on ablism, feminism, or racism. (Emphasis mine, not the authors.)

"The point is, I knew where this conversation was going within the first 10
minutes - gods, the first 5 minutes. The opening lines, even. I knew that I was
heading into a long, unpleasant and awkward conversation that was likely going
to throw a lot of straight privilege at me, push a lot of painful buttons and
generally leave me frustrated, tired and feeling like shit. In short, within 5
minutes of the conversation starting I wanted it to end.


How do I know this? Because I've had exactly the same conversation and
variations of this about a squillion times before. All completely
unoriginal, all tiring, all painful and all immensely frustrating. And I'm quite
sure over half have been utterly, completely pointless wastes of my energy and
mental health.

My point?


My point is sometimes I can't do it. And that's a shame because, even if
most failed, I know some of these conversations HAVE worked. I know some
ignorant people who bought a clue, listened and did their best not to do it
again. Yes, it can be productive. Yes it has worked. Yes calmly and reasonably
answering all the ignorant questions you've answered a thousand times or
politely objecting and explaining why something was offensive can and does work.
It's half the reason I ramble so much about sexuality on this LJ.


And sometimes I can't do it. Sometimes I'm tired, I'm in a bad mood or I'm
just sick to the back teeth of the whole damn hetero-normative world, it's
ignorance, it's insensitivity and it's endless reminders that I don't
belong. Sometimes I'm annoyed because it should be damned OBVIOUS
why I don't find that joke funny, or why I get angry at being called
"fag."

These conversations are painful and tiring and frustrating. They're
very personal (they can't help but be), they force me to confront
homophobia and homophobic ignorance head on. They force me to endure it and slog
through it. They force me to be vulnerable. They force me to expose that
vulnerability to someone who, at best, may clumsily trample all over me and at
worst may deliberately do some stomping."

And I'd like to add that I shouldn't have to do that with my friends, with people who know me. Wait, let me sort of take that back. If I have a friend who actually wants to have a conversation about these things, I'm usually up for it. But, when it's not going to be a conversation, when I ask you to please stop using a word, at least around me, especially when you know that there's nothing you are going to say that's going not make it hurt me and nothing I can say to change your opinion about the propriety of that word, do me a favor and just don't fucking say it anymore. "I didn't mean it offensively/racist/sexist/homophobicly" doesn't really matter to me in that context, because intent is not all. Effect factors in and it did hurt or offend someone. And "I'm sorry you were offended" is not actually an apology. It's a deflection which says that the offended party is the one with something wrong, being overly sensitive, reading too much into it, not having a sense of humor, etc. Real apologies admit wrongdoing. Don't try to offer an apology when you aren't actually sorry and/or think you did nothing wrong. I could go on and on, but, in the end, I still get the very clear picture that I'm just an overly sensitive, too PC, humorless bitch. And if you think that's what I am, why would you want to be friends with me?

A friend recently seemed upset that I would want to go out and find friends who shared the same political and social views as me. Her assertion was that she wouldn't want to be friends with people only like her. I agreed then and I still do, in that I wouldn't want all my friends to be replications of myself. (Anyone who thinks that would be cool should see the movie Moon, where Sam Rockwell's character gets into a knock down drag out fight with his... well, I'll just say a man who looks just like him.) But that's not what I want. I just don't want the paragraph above this and I'm hoping that won't happen with people on my own wavelength. Don't know if it'll work out, but I gotta try.

"I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
...I'm moving on"

District 9

District 9 (2009)

Directed by Neill Blomkamp

Cast includes
Sharlto Copley as Wikus van der Merwe
lots of cgi aliens

I just watched this movie earlier today on DVD. When it first came out last year, I really wanted to see it, thought it sounded very unusual. But I think that this was definitely a case for me where ignorance might have been bliss, as I've read so many commentaries and blog posts, especially questioning whether the racial allegory was really as redeeming as it might seem on the surface, that it ruined the cool, new factor of it all. Then again, I also made the mistake of watching it with my folks and my step-dad was kinda a spoil-sport. Boo. Just Mom is a much better movie companion.

Alright, so for those of you who don't know about the movie, here's the plot. An alien ship comes to Earth in 2001 and hovers over Johannesburg, South Africa. After three months of nothing happening, the government busts into the ship, finds severely malnourished aliens, who they shepard into a holding area, which quickly becomes fenced in, militarized, and then slums called District 9. For years, there is a sort of stasis, with the aliens living in their district, scrounging for trash and cat food, but never really doing anything to leave. While most of the humans consider the aliens the lowest of the low, no one in the government or the company in charge of relating to the aliens (which is primarily a weapons manufacturer who want to take advantage of alien technology) seems to know how to get them to go back home. Hell, no one seems to even be trying to learn the alien language, though the aliens seem to understand ours. Things come to a head when it is decided that the aliens must be moved out of their current slums into a specially built refugee camp hundreds of miles outside of the city. While serving the evictions, a dweeby bureaucrat becomes "infected" and starts to turn into an alien. He teams up with an alien trying to put a ship back together to go home to solve both their problems.

I think that, in the beginning, what made this movie different was that it falls into the category of oppressed alien movies, which is a smaller category than the scary aliens who come to Earth to take over and kill or enslave humans category of science fiction movies. Now, originally, I was going to add the word "sympathetic" to "oppressed aliens," but I think this is another place where the movie tries to do something it thinks is great, but it misses the mark for some people. The movie presents the aliens as more of a worker bee class, who resort to base instincts when they don't have a command presence, so they steal (not that they have an opportunity for legitimate work), fight, and scavenge. This behavior makes it difficult for many to root for these aliens to live in free society. This is often used as the excuse to segregate and hold back those of other classes and races, "Look what they do in their own neighborhoods? Look at how many of them are criminals?" without taking into consideration the lack of legitimate opportunites. Especially coming from and setting the film in South Africa, I'm sure that the writers and director were acutely aware of this. But sadly, the film never really changes that view of the aliens. The alien who helps Wikus, named by the government Christopher Johnson, only works to be the exception that proves the rule, the smart black or poor man who makes good and gets out. In the end, the aliens are still just rabid, destructive animals that must be herded together, far away from humanity. (And, yes, there is a name that the humans call the aliens, one that the movie even calls a derogatory term, though all the characters use that term thereafter. As I see that word, in the coontext of the movie, as the same as other words used to refer to other minority groups, I will not use it to refer to them any more than I would use the n-word.)

I think the bigger theme, one all too common in scifi movies these days, is how much bullshit everyone will accept from the government, large corporations, and the mainstream press, so that it is easier for them to go on with their everyday life. But that's not really anything new.

Oh, but I did really like the aliens. The farther we get away from humoid aliens in movies, the happier I am. I recently read an article that said scientists have found higher levels of methane loss than there should be on Mars and one of their hypostesis is that there may be methane based lifeforms on the planet. (FYI: Lifeforms on our planet are carbon based.) Reading that made me wonder how methane based lifeforms might look different from us and what other elements could be the basis for lifeforms. Hmmmmm.......

So I'm not sure whether or not I recommend it. If you've read this, you can decide for yourself. Just don't blame me either way.

THE Psuedonym Post (Vol. 3)

There is only really one person that I feel the need to introduce, but, like always, I have copy and pasted the rest of the psuedonyms, just in case anyone needs a refresher.

TyRoy- A mid-30s man who has been the primary benificiary of my open marriage. I met him on CL through an ad simply looking for someone to talk to, though our relationship evolved into a "rough sex in the box" relationship, in addition to the original friendship, when I answered a different ad looking for some kinky sex stuff a month later, not knowing that it was from the same man. The sex and the friendship were both great, but it seems to be developing into something more, especially since I finally decided to leave BT. Of course, BT always thought that he wanted something more, was always very distrustful of him and his intentions. And, to make matters worse, TyRoy is an army officer and enlisted men, like BT, hate and detest officers. Explanation of Name: First of all, this is the psuedonym that he chose. As one may have guessed by now TyRoy is black. But, on the other hand, he doesn't seem to gravitate especially towards stereotypically black things. He listens to heavy metal, for Chrissakes! But right around the time he met me, he had developed what he called his "bling" name- TyRoy. Under this theory, his mother didn't know if his father was Tyrone or Leroy, so she combined the names and named him TyRoy. (Yes, I am aware of the internalized racism that lurks in this whole scenario. I am also aware that I am subscribing to certain racist stereotypes as well in some of my interactions with him. I try not to dwell on it.) Then, he started a running joke, a riff on the Chappelle Show character Tyrone Biggums, only TyRoy is not addicted to crack, but to pussy.

From Vol. 2
Boy Toy (BT)- A late-20s Army boy who is shipping off for Iraq soon, but that I'm having great sex with until he does. He lives in the nearby college town in the same communal home as a friend of mine and my uncle's, which is how I met him. He is amazing, sweet, and makes me feel safe and wanted all the time we are together. I just wish I got to see him more. While he's away, I plan to send him lots of care packages. Explanation of the Name: When I first met him, I thought that he could only be 21. He had, still has, a cute baby face. In fact, when my grandmother first met him, she told him that he must be full of shit about having served in Kosovo because he couldn't be more than 18 or 19 years old. In the month between when I met him and when we had our first date, which turned out to be a whole weekend together, I called him "my boy toy" or "my conquest" to all my friends. Then, I found out the sad truth that he was a year and a half older than me. **Update: We got married in Vegas a week before he left for training. As of this post, he's in Iraq. We've had lots of issues, mostly surrounding honesty, openness, and trust, all key components in a marriage with such distance between the partners, especially one that is open as well. Oh, and there have been lots of issues with money. But I still love him. Stupidly, irrationally, in a way that hurts all the time.

The Keeper- A mid-30s professional businessman who I met by responding to his Craigslist post looking for a mistress and "kept woman" who he could help financially in return for having a reliable, intelligent woman he could spend time with. He's not a "sex in a box" yet, but I'm hoping that this relationship develops more.**Update: One date and nothing more. Kinda disappointing.

Stewart- An unhappily married man that I'm have a "sex in a box" relationship with. He's a mid-30s professional businessman as well and I really enjoy how he looks like your average suburban dad/businessman, but has already revealed a little kink. It's just sex, but good sex. And, of course, Stewart isn't his real name, but the name he used when he first contacted me in an unsolicited IM. **Update: Tried to end things completely after I got married, because I stopped seeing the fun in fucking people I didn't particularly like, though he still pops up from time to time, wanting a little bit of action.

Chimera- And last but not least, my long-distance "sub in a box" relationship. He's a 20 year old dad in Ohio who is going to marry the mother of his child soon, but has yet to even really fully explain his desires to be dominated to her. Though their relationship is kinky, it is mostly him fulfilling her desires to be submissive. I met him on a 3D avatar chatting site when he was looking to be the slave of the Alpha Female in the Pack. Thought we started as friends, fellow subs sharing what we desired, I've since come to really enjoy dominating him.

Original Post
A friend and regular reader suggested that they have been confused about my psuedonyms for different people so I thought I'd start a psuedonym post that I'll put in the Important Posts section and update as I get more psuedonyms and more people in my life, so that there is an easy index for all readers.

Sir- Sir is my most recent ex-boyfriend. We were together 5 years. His psuedonym of Sir is one that he came up with because, whenever he is out with male friends at restaurants, the waitresses always call his friends "sweetie" and "honey" but they always call him "Sir." We broke up February 2005 and have remained good friends since. **Update: I sabatoged that friendship by revealing what I felt was his hypocrisy on my blog. But I also revealed a secret that I shouldn't have, largely out of spite and anger that I felt towards any and all men who cheat.

Ex-T- My first real boyfriend when I was 16. He lives in bigger Midwestern city where I travel to see my grandparents. We are still friends and talk quite often. T is his first initial and I was very lazy in coming up with a psuedonym for him.

Ex-J- My second real boyfriend. He was a great guy that I fucked over royally. But I think he has a good life now. Or at least I hope he does. Once again, J is his first initial and I was lazy.

Anna- My good straight male crossdressing friend, who I have developed a "switch in a box" relationship with. Even if we were to stop "playing", we'd still hang out and watch movies, get really drunk, and just have a good time.

Mon Parrain- The name is French for sponsor, godfather, advisor. I wanted to pick something that would fit his initials, MP. He is a "sex in a box", but is also fast becoming a very good friend who is teaching me about myself, my sexuality, and life in general. He has a very complicated life, but is very honest and caring. I hope that soon our relationship will move more towards "dom in a box." **Update: He disappeared, for the most part, shortly after I got married, though I know he still watches over me. I think he disappeared largely because he was afraid he had become too big of an influence in my life. That might have been true then and it might still be true if he came back, but I miss him and he made an indelible impression in the short time that he was so close to me.

Cassie- She is a friend that I've had for a year or more now. A frenemy tried hooking us up, but nothing really happened so we decided to become friends. I have thought that nothing was happening between us because she didn't like me. On paper we would have been a perfect match, but she never made any ANY move towards me. Turns out she is just painfully shy in the romance department. She recently became a "sex in a box" after I got really flirty with her. **Update: That "sex in the box" didn't last very long as she felt I was taking advantage of her. While I thought I had explained what I was looking for, it obviously didn't really set in. But, despite all that, we are still friends and she has just gotten with a great girl who she's in love with, so I'm happy.

The Pack- This is a family that I have met recently and seem to becoming part of fairly quickly. I answered a CL ad from a couple looking for a third, though they didn't really specify whether they wanted just a third domestically or both domestically and sexually. They offered me sanctuary when I was worried about a guy coming after me and I'm completely taken by them and the life they have to offer. It might just be infatuation, but, right now, I want to be a part of their pack, their beta female. Individually, since I'm not very inventive right now, they are Alpha Male(AM) and Alpha Female(AF), and their two beautiful amazing children are Female Cub(FC) and Male Cub(MC). **Update: This has since blown-up, for many reasons.

Casting

One of the biggest movie premieres at the recent Cannes film festival was that of A Mighty Heart, starring Angelina Jolie. It is based on the book (and true-life story) of Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, who was pregnant at the time of his kidnapping in Afghanistan. I have to say that I think this is an amazing story and the movie looks like it is amazing and really highlights all of Mariane Pearl's efforts to find her husband.

But something has been really bothering me since they announced that Angelina Jolie would star in this movie as Mariane Pearl. It is quite obvious to me that Mariane Pearl is not caucasian. She is a bi-racial woman. I have heard several times that Mariane Pearl personally chose Angelina Jolie to play her and that the two families have grown very close. But, despite Mariane Pearl's preferance that she be played by Angelina Jolie in this movie adaptation, I find it somewhat disturbing that a black woman or a bi-racial woman was not chosen to fill this role. While large strides have been made in the past few decades to cast more people of color in movies and television, there is no doubt in my mind that minorities are not represented (and especially not accurately represented) in popular media in the same percentages as they appear in our country. This is why I feel like, more than ever, popular culture should, when trying to recreate a part of a real person of color's life, cast people of the same color.

In many ways this argument taps into another area in which I disagree with Hollywood casting: the casting of LGBT roles. As gay and lesbian roles go, there is a double edged sword here. Many actors/actresses do not want to come out of the closet because they feel they will forever be known as that gay actor/lesbian actress and that they may only be offered gay/lesbian roles in the future. So there are very few openly gay/lesbian actors/actresses. This in turn leads, many times, to big studios casting straight actors/actresses to these roles in big pictures that they hope to make loads of money on. They want well-known, big name actors/actresses to fill these roles, hoping that their names alone will bring in a significant amount of viewers. But if there are no well-known, big name gay actors/lesbian actresses, they tend not to cast an actor/actress who is openly gay or lesbian. It's a catch-22 for gay actors/lesbian actresses.

What bothers me just as much is the way that most transgendered characters are cast. I don't think I've ever seen a transgendered person cast in a transgender role. Never. For movies about MTF transgendered people, usually they cast people who are biologically female, like Felicity Huffman in Transamerica. This is especially true the more mainstream the movie or tv show is supposed to be. When a bio male is cast in the role, it is usually to bring attention to the fact that the character can't pass as female, and is thus not really sucessfully transitioning into a female. Here I'm thinking of To Wong Foo, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Hedwig. On the other hand, I can think of very few movies about FTM transgendered people, though they almost always cast bio females who are able to sucessfully pass in the movie, which seems to be to be a little bit better, but they still never cast transgendered people.

While I know that Hollywood casting is based on financial concerns surrounding how much money that actor/actress can bring in as well as their acting ability, their ability to accurately portray that character/person, I really wish that casting was truer to a character's ethnic background and/or gender expression.

Race

Several things recently have got me thinking about race. And generally about racism, sexism, homophobia, all those forms of bigotry and hatred out there, especially in those instances when it is just dismissed out of hand or ignored, seen as the norm for society anyway. Because of a friend I've made recently, I've also had an opportunity to discuss these issues and hear her views, which often open my mind to new lines of thought, to the (often unconscious) reasons behind using certain derogatory words, phrases, or imagery.

So, I suppose the issue I'm dealing with right now is what do to about all this. What can I do to make any difference in this big world? There are obvious answers, such as getting involved in organizations. But my rhetoric class is often driving me to ask if any of these things are enough without dismantling the larger systems that support these things. I guess I'm just wrestling with how ineffectual I feel.

Please please PLEASE leave a comment about what you think.

Amazing Blog Post about Race and Whiteness

http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/elgrito/2007/03/the_white_lens_iv_the_white_idea.html

I just really thought this was an amazing post about the idea of "whiteness" as a construct of absence and how this affects the thought process of people of color and mixed people of color. I guess this just really feeds my current interest into minority studies.

Civil Rights

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=E3D7A88114B9D44B121C2D9ABD3AC051?diaryId=878

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=E3D7A88114B9D44B121C2D9ABD3AC051?diaryId=884
These are really great posts about the convergence of the fight for LGBT civil rights and African-American civil rights in the United States, which were prompted by financial advise guru Suze Orman's revelation that she and her long-time partner are very worried about what will happen to their money when one of them dies and the assertion that (gay) marriage is a civil right that gays should enjoy as straight couples do because of these concerns. I really love this quote as well and wanted to post it on my blog because I think it describes how I feel about it all. Or how I think I feel, as everything is kinda jumbled up right now.

Of course, there's a bigger issue here than money. I've heard it expressed before by Leonard Pitt.
"I know also that some folks are touchy about anything seeming to equate the black civil rights movement with the gay one. And no, gay people were not kidnapped from Gay Land and sold into slavery, nor lynched by the thousands. On the other hand, they do know something about housing discrimination, they do know job discrimination, they do know murder for the sin of existence, they do know the denial of civil rights and they do know what it is like to be used as scapegoat and bogeyman by demagogues and political opportunists.

They know enough of what I know that I can't ignore it. See, I have yet to learn how to segregate my moral concerns. It seems to me if I abhor intolerance, discrimination and hatred when they affect people who look like me, I must also abhor them when they affect people who do not. For that matter, I must abhor them even when they benefit me. Otherwise, what I claim as moral authority is really just self-interest in disguise.

I believe in moral coherence. And Rule No. 1 is, you cannot assert your own humanity, then turn right around and deny someone else's. "