Renee writes:
Say it with me, gay is not the new black. African-Americans did not cause the passing of prop 8, and the gay community does not have the right to compare its struggles to the black civil rights movement.
I completely agree that gay is not the new black, and African-Americans did not cause prop 8 to pass.
But I’m not sure I can agree about “the right to compare.” I’m not sure what that means. Is Renee saying that gay people don’t have the right to bring up Loving vs Virginia in legal arguments about equal marriage rights, for instance?
Despite all the differences between different struggles for civil rights and justice, there are some experiences that different groups will have in common. To pick a famous example, MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail has an unbreakable connection to the black civil rights movement. But I don’t think it takes away from that to say that it also contains practical and moral advice for anyone engaged in a justice movement today:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
There are few, if any, oppressed peoples who wouldn’t find a reflection of their own experiences and struggles in what King wrote, about how “wait!” in practice always seems to mean “never.”
As Ta-Nehisi points out, the Black civil rights movement itself often compared the black experience and the Jewish experience.
As a Jew, I think that’s fine, because although the experiences and history aren’t identical, many of the comparisons made were useful and relevant. No justice movement is exactly the same, and no two oppressions are exactly the same; but there are similarities, and movements can draw lessons positively from other movements. The trouble comes when the comparisons made are facile, or disrespectful, or ignore history rather than comparing history.
Posted in Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Race, racism, and related issues 
I think another problem comes because the struggle of black people is frequently treated as the “default example,” which acts to devalue it. That is, there’s a kind of token reference to black people quite common among various movements, without the kind of references you’ve mentioned. Which is disrespectful, as you’ve said.
I’ve found the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s to be a useful comparison point.
My (straight) eldest son, 40, said, “Can you explain to me this opposition to same-sex marriage? Frankly, the arguments against gay marriage don’t make sense to me. Is it anything like the civil rights movement?”
In some ways it sort of is, in that when people run out of logic they start to talk gibberish. When we went to Mississippi in 1964 to register black voters, the whites who opposed us were completely out of ideas. After all, what sensible argument can you make in a democracy that a whole class of citizens should be deprived of the vote because of the color of their skin? There isn’t one, everyone knew that, and so the argument of the opposition boiled down to, “Come down here to register voters and we’ll beat you senseless.”
Of course that’s not an argument. Several of my friends did get beaten senseless, but the southern whites who did the beatings had thus revealed themselves to be morons.
So also here. When people say they are defending the integrity of their own marriage by not allowing some strangers they’ve never met to get married, the only thing you can say is, “huh?”
When someone says that the gay community does not have the “right to compare” their struggle with the struggles of the black community, we’re back to “huh?” Who exactly holds the copyright on the civil rights movement, to “grant” or withhold the right to discuss it? Blacks who weren’t born yet even? Blacks who were born but had nothing to do with the struggle? Whites who weren’t born yet? Whites who had nothing to do with the struggle? Only the people who were on the streets in Alabama at the time? Which ones? Do we take a vote?
You may disagree with my arguments, but so long as they are just arguments and not, say, violence, your disagreement doesn’t add up to depriving me of the right to make my points. Not in a free society.
Obviously Renee wasn’t talking about the “right” to compare as in the right not to be arrested for speech making such a comparison. She’s talking about a moral evaluation of “right.” I hate it when people jump to free speech when the speaker is obviously not saying that someone should be put in jail for saying such and such thing.
I agree with Amp, and I think the problem arises with what “compare” means. I suspect, though I wouldn’t want to speak for her, that Renee may have been thinking more along the lines of “equate” rather than “compare.” – “the gay community does not have the right to equate its struggles [with] the black civil rights movement.” While comparison is useful, some of the rhetoric we’ve heard recently is not comparing, but equating. And in equating, subtleties are lost, history is lost, and it can be offensive or off-putting rather than constructive.
Well, if Renee was not saying that gays do not have the “right” to compare their struggles with the struggles of the African-Americans, why did she say, and I quote, “the gay community does not have the right to compare its struggles to the black civil rights movement”? I’m certain that Renee is acquainted with the words “equate” and “moral,” and if she wanted to include those words in her statement she very well could have.
As Amp points out, a good deal of comparison between racism against blacks and anti-Semitism was in the air back in the day, and not too many people (except maybe the beat-your-head-in folks) said that was inappropriate, even though those two struggles are not exactly equivalent. (Not even close, actually.) No two struggles are exactly equivalent, so saying that it’s not acceptable to make comparisons anyway is saying that we’re not allowed to learn from history, which is nonsense.
If I don’t have a moral right to make any particular comparison, I’d think a pretty rigorous explanation of why not should be forthcoming then. (“The blacks in Mississippi were right and the gays are wrong” won’t cut it.)
“Right” is a pretty strong word, and in my book requires a pretty strong defense.
Oh, I’m straight, did I say that? Married 42 years to the same guy, four kids, three grandkids and one in the oven. I don’t have a personal dog in this fight. I just think the arguments I’m hearing against gay marriage are gibberish. In my considered opinion. And I was around in 1964, I was an adult even, so I remember all this other stuff too, and there is a certain sense of deja vu.
Analogy is never perfect–it’s a way of creating a link from something a person doesn’t understand to something a person does understand, from the unfamiliar to the familiar. Oprah Winfrey said she got more hate mail because she played the psychologist on Ellen in the coming out show than for anything she’d done up to that point.
It’s the hate content that baffles me, in both cases. Such a violent emotion, directed at people who are usually total strangers. And whose very existence is apparently perceived as a threat, even when sensible people cannot perceive any relationship even, much less a threat.
There are all kinds of psychological theories that purport to explain all this, but I don’t have the learning to evaluate them. It’s the element of violent irrationality that ties the two situations together in my mind.
This seems to be much like the issue of cultural appropriation in the other thread: the right to say “no, that is MY history and you cannot/should not use it as a comparison for you” is quite similar to saying “no, that is MY culture and you cannot adopt it.”
Both the CA post and Renee’s protest have as root ideas the concepts of
1) “owners” of something–membership in the civil rights movement, dreamcatchers, religion, memories of struggle, what have you;
2) “rightful users” of those things, and
3) “wrongful users/appropriators” of those things–gays quoting MLK, etc.
When people say you cannot compare a struggle they are asserting ownership over it, in the same way that they are when they address cultural issues.
I am going to tell you why the just like Rosa Parks or the black civil rights movement is so offensive to black people…It is because it is the only reference. It smacks of look how bad we have it we are being treated like the blacks. I would not take issue with it if this argument were continually interspersed with referencing different races and their unique struggles for freedom but know it always comes back to blacks. We are not the only peoples in the history of the world to fight in cause of justice. When a white led movement such as the GLBT community continually denies the racism within its ranks claims something like the civil rights movement yes it is problematic, and yet it is offensive on many levels. They don’t want to give us a voice to speak, they don’t want to fight racism but when it is convenient they can say look we’re just like the blacks..bullshit. We are tired of being used when it is convenient and thrown under the bus when it is not.
I will forever fight against homophobia because I believe it is wrong to devalue any human being, but in the process I will not allow myself to be used, abused, and devalued.
It’s not the only reference: when things get REALLY bad then the Holocaust becomes the reference.
But as things go, in the U.S. we have had only one huge national civil rights movement which was successful, and it was the black CR movement. Fewer people would use NA as a frame of reference for a successful policy, because the NAs got shafted by the government.
{edited: In no way am I trying to imply that any lack of success was/is the fault of the NA movement or its leaders/members. But people who are trying to lead political change often look to role models of group success. And because the NA movement was fought at different times between different people (i.e. not in 1960), and for a whole host of other reasons, it wasn’t nearly as successful at obtaining benefits for its members as was the CR movement.}
Also it is probably national. I do not live in India, but I suspect that Ghandi would be referenced there. That Ghandi (who would be a perfectly good comparison) is not referenced in the US is a reflection of the fact that lots of US citizens don’t realy know who Ghandi was, or if they do they think he looks like Ben Kingsley.*
*for those who don’t get the reference he played Ghandi in the 1992 movie.
Oh. Well, Renee, if you’re objecting when the gay community are being racists, I’d say you’re right, but that’s not what you said the first time around, you didn’t reference the racism of the gay movement. If any. (I don’t know whether the gay movement is racist or not, that would be for others to figure out.)
As a flip of the same coin, the gays will and do object when they think the racial equality folks are being homophobic, and I’d say they’re right too in that case. Assuming again that they’re not just making the whole thing up.
Being gay doesn’t make being a racist OK; being of color, or being involved in the civil rights movement doesn’t make being homophobic OK. This should go without saying, but if it doesn’t I’ll say it.
Sailorman is right. The fight for equality by people of color is our national fight. It’s unrealistic to think that Americans will cast all over the globe for other examples. We’re pretty insular here, in case you haven’t noticed, and most people don’t know much about other battles by other people. Which is OK I think. Anyway, it is what it is. So when Americans are looking for examples of minorities battling for fair treatment, it’s natural for them to think of the great struggle for equality that was the civil rights movement. Also there are a lot of people around who actually remember the 1960’s and who were involved in that fight, like me, and it’s sort of natural that it would occur to us.
Right again, I’d say. The problem with this whole analysis, of course, is, who exactly is it that has this ownership? Renee personally? Tim, who is black and claims that he’s never experienced racial discrimination in his whole life? My client Terry, who is both black and gay, and who feels very differently about the use of the comparison between the CRM and the gay movement than Renee does (to say the least!!)? Why would Renee’s opinion on this be any more valid than Terry’s? Or Terry’s than Renee’s, for that matter? How do we arrive at The Real Thing? Do we take a vote?
It’s offensive to some black people. Not to all black people, which is why sweeping statements get us into trouble here. Terry doesn’t find it offensive, not in the slightest; he thinks it extraordinarily apt. In fact he makes that comparison quite frequently. One out of eleven or ten or something Americans is black. We can hardly expect unanimity out of so large a group.
Great big flat statements like “X does not have the right to say or think Y” can be brought back to rationality by the simple expedient of tacking the phrase “in my own opinion” onto the end.
I would not be surprised if the issue is that the comparison of the civil rights struggle to the attempt by gays to gain the right to marriage, etc. is seen as equating blacks as a group to gays as a group. Some blacks may resist that due to feelings they may have towards homosexuals or homosexuality, but a more general case is that a great many people fail to see that it is a valid analogy. They do not consider the two groups themselves as having a comparable basis.
I’d argue that feminism was similarly huge, and had some similarly-scaled successes.
That said, let’s remember that neither the black civil rights movement, nor feminism, are successful in the sense of being finished. Anti-black racism hasn’t been eliminated, as recent events in Oakland have made all too clear.
I don’t see an open thread, but feel free to move this elsewhere:
Racism isn’t gone and may well never be gone, but the civil rights movement cannot but be said to be successful: it engendered wholesale and permanent change in the laws and policies of the entire country, and created significant precedent protecting race as a class, which was a huge aspect of its goals. And i’m also unsure that the wholesale elimination of racism was really a realistic/expected goal in the mid 1900s. Do you think it was? From my perspective the goals of the modern CR movements are (happily) set higher.
Take Oscar Grant. In the south in 1950 one might just be happy to have the REST of the blacks alive, or to have at least the thought that the cop would be charged with something, or that there might actually be a white on the expected all-white jury who would think less than well about the shooting of an unarmed black man. Now, we have reason to believe that the cop will be charged, hopefully convicted (of something serious); that we can demand explanations from those in power; and so on. The fight is there, but on a different level.
I agree that feminism has also had some significant wins, though of course the difference between the legal status of women and that of slaves was IMO pretty significant. Also, from a national civil rights standpoint I’d bet that people would choose suffrage as the example of a “big win” for feminism–and that was much less recent than the civil rights movement, and has been eclipsed by it.
Finally, the feminist successes are spread out over a longer time, do not have a single message, do not have a single leader (much less a single and charismatic one) and so on. It’s just harder to reference for the general public. Perhaps if suffrage had happened in 1980 we’d be talking about it, instead.
I’m a bit uneasy about this topic. Several of the disability rights groups I’m a part of often point to the gay rights movement–and sometimes the Black civil rights movement, women’s movent–as models. The LGBTQ comparison can be particularly apt because homosexuality was once classified as a psychiatric disorder and there are some parallels with invisible disability issues. My campus group has thought about doing something like a “coming out” day for invisible disabilities. Some members are very uneasy about using that kind of language because of the possible appropriation and offense. I see that. Yet, at the same time, I can’t help but wonder if this (hypothetical) offense is because non-disabled members of oppressed groups just don’t want to be compared to disabled people. Obviously, not everyone who raises these kinds of objections about movement appropriation does so because of racism/ableism/whatever ism, but the issue is there.
I’d agree, Sarah, that’s my anxiety too.
Sarah, what you say makes sense.
On MWMF forums, I was once accused of appropriating the concept of PMS, and the main objection was that “they didn’t like my [group as a class]”, or in short, transphobia. One needn’t even examine the proposition that what I actually felt was similar to PMS (cramps, nausea, dizzyness, all crammed in a short period of time – and due to a known hormonal shift). The claim was that, since I couldn’t have a period, the comparison was wrong, period.
Sorry if I make puns with this, it’s not really intended. I’m not sure this goes in cultural appropriation thread, or here, but it seems to be about both.
Anti-black racism hasn’t been eliminated, as recent events in Oakland have made all too clear.
True. Racism is not dead in America. But while racism is present on an individual basis the election of Barak Obama as President means that America is not a racist country.
If you truly want to understand why comparisons of gay civil rights to African-American civil rights are upsetting to many black people, it would be good to go and read what black people have written on the subject rather than trying to reason it out in a white-dominated echo chamber, or in the confines of your head when you already know what you think. Black people have been exceptionally clear in why they object to the comparison, and what the differences are that they feel are minimized or erased by equating the two.
I had to learn this, as a white queer woman, by shutting my mouth (which I can run nearly endlessly when it comes to my own opinion) and seeking out the words of people who disagreed with me, who were telling their own story, instead of just seeking out sources that confirmed what I “knew” to be right, who were often telling people’s stories for them.
I also know how it feels to object to having my metaphors co-opted – I am filled with rage that has only increased over time every time a polyamorous person tries to equate their issues with LBGT civil rights; every time pagans want to steal the language of “coming out” for themselves, every time a mainstream Christian wants to put their discomfort with an increasingly religiously-diverse culture in the same terms as the marginalization I’ve felt as a woman or a queer person.
The white LBGT community has been given an unambiguous message: if you want to gain the trust and support of people of color, stop talking about your struggle in these terms. (And deal with the racism and privilege in your own ranks, stop talking about “queer people” and “people of color” as if the two groups never overlap, show up to march for racial justice and protest civil rights violations based on race, do some work in minority communities instead of just in your own white upper-class enclaves, etc. etc. etc. But let’s not get too complicated here.) Every time white queers ignore that request, we sabotage our own best interest by alienating potential allies.
Schala – your attempt to claim an experience you don’t have is pretty irritating, I’d agree. It seems like here and on the cultural appropriation thread, you’ve made it clear that it doesn’t matter to you whether others object to your co-opting, because it’s all about you, and just taking someone else’s experience is easier than explaining your own. But you’ve also made it clear, in that thread and elsewhere, that you refuse to acknowledge that you do have a culture and traditions – it just seems that you don’t LIKE them. Looks to me like you’re pretty close to a Bingo. And it frustrates me to see how you seem to manage to make just about every thread you comment in, all about you.
RonF, I wasn’t aware that there was an objective definition of what a “Racist country” is, and that definition was “a country that has not as of yet had a person of color in the highest executive position.”
I think that as long as, all else held equal, race has an effect on people’s life chances in this country, then it’s a racist country. Show me a country in which race doesn’t have anything to do with people’s chances of being arrested, shot, employed, promoted, etc., and I’ll agree that’s a non-racist country.
I think you’re right. For this reason, in my own arguments, I consciously make a point of making comparisons to disabled people, to American Indians, to Jews, to queers, etc..
I think you’re right. And I think saying “look we’re just like the blacks” is complete, utter bullshit.
(Although of course there are queers — both POC and white — who object to that sort of thing in the queer community. Not enough, but some.)
But there are still particular times when I think the comparison makes sense and can be used respectfully, and I think at those times people have the right — and more to the point, people can be right — to make the comparison.
Right, that totally makes sense. I hope you understood that I wasn’t accusing you of supporting homophobia in my post.
I only said it was *like* it. And I asked my mother (who knows personally) if it was, before I even thought it was the same more than in passing. It’s not the same, I know it. But its similar.
A very high drop in estrogen, followed by pain, unease and sickness. This is what I got back then. Due to medical stupidity (doctor didn’t know the heck he was doing when he changed my dosage).
The culture of being lower middle-class, and then working-class. The culture of being “officially” Catholic, but not more than barely pushed into it. The culture of anime fans who only have a moderate collection. The culture of gamers who are picky in what they play. The culture of people who like pretty clothes?
I’m white, but besides general averaged white North American culture of consumerism and capitalism, I doubt I’ve been shown any values or lead towards some sort of ideal in any meaningful way.
As for my traditions, they fluctuate so much. Let’s talk about the stable stuff: I have the tradition of living indoors, eating food, washing myself often enough, clothing myself regarding the weather of the region (which is very changing here) and having weekends on Saturday and Sunday. I also tend to sleep on mattresses, under bedsheets and with pillows.
Don’t typically do much for holidays that repeats itself over time enough to become a tradition. Sunday means “boring TV” to me, and not “church” (and I stopped watching TV a long enough while ago).
If I do have traditions that go beyond that, well I might not be aware of them or they are too new to really constitute a tradition. What do you propose they would be?
Ampersand, one particular, pointed objection to the LGBT’s use of civil rights language in mobilizing against Proposition 8 that I have seen in reading at Racialicious and Angry Black Woman: Loving v. Virginia was a court case, not a community-based direct action like voter registrations, diner sit-ins, or the Montgomery bus boycott. I’ve also read that interracial marriage wasn’t a particularly central battle in the struggle for Black civil rights. Ending employment- and housing-related discrimination, ending legal segregation, offering equal educational opportunity to young Black people, ending sanctioned police brutality of Black Americans, actually enforcing voting rights– those were central struggles. (Also, although I’m sure you’ve noticed, some of those struggles aren’t over yet.)
So while the No on Prop 8 campaign saw the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold same-sex marriage as an analogue (even a logical conclusion to) Loving v. Virginia, I think I can see why that analogue might not be persuasive to people who worked for civil rights.
This statement is almost as meaningless as saying that African-Americans did cause the passing of Prop 8. African-Americans who voted against Prop 8 didn’t cause it to pass, obviously, but the African-Americans who voted for it caused it to pass, along with all of the other people who voted for it.
What matters is that these particular individuals are not culpable for continuing hatred because they are African-Americans, but because they voted as they did.
Phil, in the context where too many people (in the lgbt community and in the media) immediately attributed the passage of prop 8 to African-Americans, it’s not meaningless to say that it wasn’t true.
Schala (and others), please don’t post in this thread again unless you can make your post at least modestly on-topic. Thanks.
Another Rachel, I certainly agree that it’s embarrassing or worse to see white people talk about Loving vs Virginia as if it were a central victory of the civil rights movement, when it just wasn’t.
That said, there are excellent reasons (some of them legal) for folks pursuing equal marraige rights to use the comparison. It is relevant. It just shouldn’t be misused. And yes, I agree that it probably isn’t the most persuasive comparison to use within the Black community (because I’ve read a bunch of Black writers argue that it isn’t.)
Also, the Black civil rights movement didn’t just use sit-ins and community action; they also used other tools, like legislation and court cases, when that seemed like the appropriate move.
I don’t think the gay rights model can or should attempt to be just like the black civil rights movement, but there is a valuable lesson there, in not putting everything in one basket. It’s probably been a mistake that the equal marriage rights movement has been so reliant on courts, and I’m glad that the movement has spread a bit into the streets in recent months.
“I also know how it feels to object to having my metaphors co-opted – I am filled with rage that has only increased over time every time a polyamorous person tries to equate their issues with LBGT civil rights; every time pagans want to steal the language of “coming out” for themselves, every time a mainstream Christian wants to put their discomfort with an increasingly religiously-diverse culture in the same terms as the marginalization I’ve felt as a woman or a queer person.”
Hmm. I guess I would want to interrogate why each of these things makes you angry.
I would guess that there’s a difference between examples A and B on the one hand and example C on the other, in that example C is an example of a person using the example of the effects of oppression in comparison to the effects of losing privilege. That strikes me as a much more grievous offense than a polyamorous person saying, “OK… how can I explain to you what it’s like to be afraid that the government will take away my children if they find out that my husband and I have an open relationship? It’s kind of like what people go through when they’re gay, in terms of people having a lot of misconceptions about my lifestyle, and fearing me because of stuff that happens consensually and privately. That’s why I’m afraid to reveal my sexual identity, or ‘come out,’ at work or even to most of our other friends.”
“If I do have traditions that go beyond that, well I might not be aware of them or they are too new to really constitute a tradition. What do you propose they would be?”
The idea that a default category has no traditions or cultures is basically ethnocentrism; it’s the same as what makes men sometimes say “I have no gender” or white people say “I don’t really feel like I have a race” or straight people say “I don’t flaunt my sexuality.” You might consider reading some, any, anthropology.
I understand the context in which the statement was made, but saying that something is meaningless is distinct from saying that it is true or untrue.
To say that “African-Americans were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8” doesn’t really have a clear meaning that can be refuted. To refute it by saying the opposite, “African-Americans were not responsible for the passage of Proposition 8,” is to continue to spout gibberish.
African-Americans who voted against Proposition 8 were not responsible for its passage.
African-Americans who voted for Proposition 8 were responsible for its passage, as was everyone else who voted for it, regardless of race.
It’s possible that the statement you take issue with runs something like, “If African-Americans had opposed Proposition 8 in greater numbers, it would not have passed.” But that’s just math. Either it’s true or it’s not, and our opinions about it don’t matter. The implication is that African-Americans had some greater duty to oppose Prop 8 than everyone else, and that is untrue. Everyone had a duty to oppose it, regardless of race.
@ Mandolin:
I’m not talking about my race or how I was raised (as a boy) meaning I have no culture. I mean me as an individual, I have little meaningful things to hold onto, even if I genuinely wanted to. It’s only a situation particular to me (and maybe others like me, I don’t know) who had little guidance from parents and larger family.
With regards to gay people, I’d say their struggle is more than marriage and where the comparison makes sense is that its systemic power oppressing them. It’s not been that long that police could barge into your home, and arrest any gay people having sex, under sodomy laws. It’s not been that long that being gay or thought to be gay could get you fired in most places. Lack of housing and other things as well.
And it still happens that people can be legally fired for being “too feminine” or “too masculine” per their birth sex (and this includes gay people who are perceived to be that way a lot more than transgender people – because of the numbers difference). This is because the US law system where it concerns rights, is archaic. There’s even a standard of “different requirement, equal burden” for uniforms or dress codes, that is clearly sexist and supportive of stereotypes of gender roles. And discrimination based on gender expression runs into this wall whenever going against companies with dress codes, because the law is on their side.
Its not right to call them equal struggles, but they are similar struggles, affecting a significant minority of individuals for a characteristic they’re not responsible for (who willingly wants to be persecuted?), as well as backed by laws.
“I’m not talking about my race or how I was raised (as a boy) meaning I have no culture. I mean me as an individual”
Consequently, you have no language? No technology? When someone says “what words do you associate with the color black?” you have no response?
How does my language differentiate me from the 330 million people in North America, the overwhelming majority also speaking English? I said that I did have the North American culture of consumerism and capitalism imposed on me.
If there’s something special about my culture, its that I’m bilingual, and few people in the US know French fluently.
I’m not sure what you mean by “what word do you associate with the color black?” In general race is not the hot button issue it can be elsewhere here, and I don’t think of people of color as deserving of any less than I do. The first word that comes to my mind is the name of my cat, who ironically almost has 100% black fur.
Susan, you are so right… and when they start saying “What about the CHILDREN?”–I am reminded of one reason interracial marriages were supposedly outlawed, back in the day: for the poor children.
Those poor kids will have HORRIBLE LIVES AND NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING! (You know, like the president.)
The conservatives lose the argument on the basics, then up the ante to “the kids”… same as they did the last big argument they lost…
Sarah:
The other comparison is that every family has LGBT people and women; they exist in every community. So do people with disabilities. That explains why people say “Well I know someone who is ___(fill in disability)___ and they aren’t offended by blah-blah-blah!” –the familiarity can often be one of the hardest issues to transcend. This dynamic usually isn’t true for racial/religious discrimination, by comparison.
“My wife likes it when I treat her like the little woman!” was a common assertion, back in feminism’s early days. It’s hard to logically argue with that kind of ‘personalized’ statement.
This is that ownership thing again.
So: do blacks ‘own’ the civil rights struggle, and the resulting metaphors, examples, and references?
Or to use a more personal question, do Jews “own” the Holocaust?
Because it seems like there are really two factors here. One is the issue of ownership, or that which is referred to as using someone else’s experience as a reference when that someone doesn’t want it used at ALL, by you at least.
The other is the issue of downgrading, by which I mean using someone else’s experience as a metaphor in a manner which is completely different and significantly lesser than the reference should be: “I was lynched” when your boss fired you; “it’s a fucking Holocaust down here” when someone skins their knee. There, the problem is less one of who gets to use it, than it is a problem of how it is used.
I think it’s important to distinguish between those two issues.
Very clear, Sailorman, thank you for your discernment here.
I’m back to wondering why we all can’t get along better. If you’ve been unjustly denied housing or a job, if your marriage has been treated as illegal and your children targets for CPS, if you’ve been denied the vote, if your access to public buildings has been obstructed for any reason at all, then wouldn’t it make sense to stand in solidarity with other people who have had that very same experience rather than hugging your particular reason to your breast and thinking it “special”?
Isn’t it the main point that you’ve been oppressed, rather than the particular reason the majority culture picked this time?
I’m a straight, temporarily able-bodied, married white woman of 63, and I’m an attorney, which means a person of some power in this culture. People tend to be afraid of me, and they are quite often right.
But if a transgendered person is fired for being transgender, if a black person is denied the vote because of the color of her skin, if my lesbian best friend cannot marry legally, if a Jew is denied access public facilities because only Gentiles are admitted, if a person in a wheelchair cannot get into the courthouse or cannot hear what is going on when he gets there, and certainly if any woman is disadvantaged by reason of her gender, am I not threatened as well?
Make no mistake. People who are interested in oppressing the (relatively) helpless do not draw fine distinctions. As the old story says, they may be coming for you tomorrow.
Surely the “many” black people who are objecting to the use of the civil rights movement as a metaphor in the struggle for gay rights are not saying that it’s perfectly OK to discriminate against homosexuals. Surely LBGT people do not support the oppression of polyamorous people. Surely not.
I’m with Mandolin. I’d like to know that too.
DaisyDeadhead, thanks for the comment about the children, which always makes my blood boil.
Not just because it’s nonsense, also because so many of my gay friends do have children. If everyone is so falling-all-over-themselves to protect all the children in the world, why don’t they consider the legal and social insecurities suffered by these children?
Because they couldn’t possibly care less about the children, that’s why. This whole discussion is a shill for other concerns entirely. Yuck.