Two YouTube Videos Recommended for Progressives

This cartoon talks about the perils of even trying to tell stories about the work that people do, at great risk to themselves, to help women achieve reproductive justice. Via silk_noir.

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And this one — which is much more uplifting, and which I have now watched three times — is a video of a number of GLBTQQI (and allies?) teenagers lipsynching to Lily Allen’s “Fuck You Very Much” as a response to prop h8 being upheld. I particularly enjoy the use of phallic popsicles to create imagery that can be used as a weapon against bigots. Via ktsparrow.

UPDATE: Watching this second video a fourth and fifth times, it really grinds home to me how much the people in this video are the kind of people I consider “my people.” It’s beyond me how anyone can look at such joyful profusion, so much color and joy in the way they dress and act and exist, and see something threatening or disgusting.

Yet I know they do. When I was a teenager, my presentation — though abnormal for teenagers — was never enough to unsettle adults. In fact, I probably dressed in a more adult-friendly way than most teens. Long skirts, pseudo-professional clothes, often bizarrely formal for a high school student. But my friends didn’t.

There was one girl I spent a lot of time with. A pixie-like joy of a person, Dawna, who wore her blonde hair almost totally shaved, and strung chains on her jeans. People who saw her knew there was something unusual about her. They didn’t take joy in her oddness, in her willingness to sing in the middle of the street, in her humor, in her desire to leave strange and beautiful things in public places for strangers to find and puzzle over. They shouted “dyke!” at her from car windows; they deployed store guards to follow her around; they sneered and snarled.

When I was 17 and Dawna was 15, she went out with me and started acting very strange. “Is she on meth or something?” a friend of mine asked. I said, “I’m sure she isn’t” — but I was wrong. She was on meth. She called me that night, crying. She’d been taking a lot of drugs for a long time — to try to deal with the pain of her isolation, the pain of how people pricked and pained her, and othered her, and told her she was nothing.

I told her I’d help. I arranged for her to be transferred to my high school and set her up with the teachers who’d been best for me. Nothing worked; the teachers who were more than happy to deal with my casual attitude toward authority had no tools in their kits to handle a girl who was too depressed to go to class. I’d thought they would recognize in her, as they had in me, independence and intelligence. I suppose they did. But even if they wanted to, there was nothing they could do.

I always worried Dawna would die. I thought she would overdose or commit suicide. When I read a few years ago that she was dead, and the obituary hinted at a cause of death that couldn’t be announced to potentially scandalized ears, I knew I was right.

She was twenty-two.

Dawna lived twenty-two years in the toxic hatred of our homophobic, gender policing, joy-killing world. And then it murdered her.

When people stand with bigots to say that gay marriage is an evil to society — when they agree gay people should be excluded on the basis of their sexuality — when they doubt gay people’s goodness or morality — they contribute to the deaths of people like Dawna. Yes, I do mean you, individual Alas commenter who may be a good person in other ways. You participate in a culture that kills people like my friend, and “fuck you very much” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I hope that someday people will realize what they’re doing when they vote and act hatred. In the meantime, I can only be glad that there are still colorful, inspiring, joyous, unique people in the world, and try to give those people my love and support.

This entry posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Same-Sex Marriage. Bookmark the permalink. 

16 Responses to Two YouTube Videos Recommended for Progressives

  1. Pingback: Giving hate the finger « Gin&Comment

  2. 2
    PPR_Scribe says:

    Both of these videos are amazing in totally different ways. Thank you for showcasing them–and for your sad personal story.

    I have been thinking a lot about the connection between certain kids of speech and rhetoric and actual physical violence. We (by “we” I mean self-described progressives) still do not do a good enough job of making that connection real. (We also need to be more honest about whose speech we highlight as harmful, but that is another story.) After the last election, we educated ourselves about “framing” and using “values language” for our purposes and reclaiming patriotism and all that. But there is still a ways to go.

    As much as I love these two videos, I think they are mainly for those of us who already agree. They are too clever by half for those who oppose us. I think the power of simple, quiet, personal stories might be more effective.

  3. 3
    Simple Truth says:

    Perhaps there should be some sort of accountability for things like this. It could start off with conservative communities paying for the health care and depression treatment of the people they ostracize for having the audacity of being themselves. It wouldn’t be enough by a long shot, but perhaps if they started having to be fiscally responsible for a fraction of the damage that they inflict, they might think twice before casting their hateful attitudes towards someone who otherwise isn’t harming anyone.

  4. 4
    Plaid says:

    is a video of a number of GLBTQQI (and allies?) teenagers lipsynching to

    psst — not just teenagers.

    Thank you for sharing this with us.

  5. 5
    thedistributist says:

    Don’t havwe time to comment on video 1, but I thought I would comment on this.

    When people stand with bigots to say that gay marriage is an evil to society — when they agree gay people should be excluded on the basis of their sexuality — when they doubt gay people’s goodness or morality — they contribute to the deaths of people like Dawna. Yes, I do mean you, individual Alas commenter who may be a good person in other ways. You participate in a culture that kills people like my friend, and “fuck you very much” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

    Ok. I am a “dyke” who has attempted suicide multiple times.

    And according to you, I murdered your friend.

    Because I believe my life is meaningful without sex.

    Sex is mean to be a gift. It’s meant to be a sacrifice. Sex that’s just for pleasure, even with someone you love, is no better than masturbation (although I suspect you think masturbation is ok, too.)

    I oppose anyone who thinks people like me need curing, or are evil just for existing. I also oppose the idea that purely selfish relationships should be honoured by civil contracts.

    You think that the only way for me to be happy is to give in to my urges and destroy my own soul. You’re wrong.

    I tried accepting these urges as natural, as anything other than disordered. I tried acting on them.

    That made things worse.

    It is your belief that selfish sex is ok that almost killed me, and that will kill me if Ilisten to it.

  6. 6
    Ampersand says:

    You think that the only way for me to be happy is to give in to my urges and destroy my own soul. You’re wrong.

    But Mandolin didn’t say any such thing.

    I certainly agree that greater acceptance of people who choose to abstain from sex would be better, and I’m sorry you felt pain.

    However, the thought that “same-sex people who want to should be free to marry, and those marriages should be equal under the law” does not contradict the thought that “the decision to abstain from sex should be respected.” There’s no reason we can’t believe both to be true. And if you find that abstaining from sex is what makes you healthiest, I’d certainly respect that, and want others to treat you with all respect.

    Where I can’t agree with you, is your apparent desire to use the law to force your personal morality onto people who don’t agree with you. No one who favors same-sex marriage is arguing that the law should force you to marry. But you do argue that, because you’re happier abstaining, no same-sex couple’s choice to marry should be treated as legally equal.

    Your view is fundamentally aggressive and (if your views are rooted in religious convictions, as your use of the word “soul” implies) theocratic; you want the law to reflect your personal beliefs about what destroys the soul, what is selfish, and the purpose of sexuality. You don’t just want to control your own state of marriage or non-marriage; you also want to limit the ability of those who disagree with you to marry. And the way you’re proposing to do it — supporting unequal marriage laws — supports the longstanding bigotry against non-heterosexuals.

    So that’s the main reason I disagree with you.

    Mandolin’s view is superior to yours, not because sex with a partner is superior to a life of abstention, but because using the law to make other people live as you want them to, and to support longstanding discrimination against unfairly oppressed minorities, is morally inferior to a position that supports freedom and opposes discrimination.

  7. 7
    Myca says:

    But Mandolin didn’t say any such thing.

    You took the words right out of my mouth.

    I don’t want to speak for Mandolin, goodness knows, so I won’t say that she believes no such thing, but I will say that she certainly said no such thing.

    —Myca

  8. 8
    Mandolin says:

    I also oppose the idea that purely selfish relationships should be honoured by civil contracts.

    Well, fuck you very much.

    Do whatever you want in your own life. If “selfish” sex makes you unhappy, then voila! Don’t do it. See how easy that was?

    Now stop legislating morality on other people.

  9. 9
    Mandolin says:

    And seriously, super-mega-double fuck you very much for your decision to call homosexual sex selfish in this thread. Maybe you were having selfish sex in your bad old sex days, but don’t project that onto other gay people.

  10. 10
    Sebastian says:

    “Dawna lived twenty-two years in the toxic hatred of our homophobic, gender policing, joy-killing world. And then it murdered her. ”

    On some level it is worse even than that. It twisted her so much that it convinced her to murder herself.

  11. 11
    grendelkhan says:

    Sebastian: On some level it is worse even than that. It twisted her so much that it convinced her to murder herself.

    Indeed. The question, as I put it elsewhere, is whether our society values these people more as individuals, with all they have to offer, or as corpses. A society that picks the latter, that communicated this very clearly to Mandolin’s friend, is one that needs to be changed, and now.

  12. 12
    grendelkhan says:

    I’m unsure as to why no trackback has shown up, but possibly by following the referer from the link in my last comment, Eric Raymond has elected to post on the topic. The first commenter remarks that “I hope you’re wearnig your kevlar shorts”, which I think is the polite way to tell someone that they’ve said something horrifically bigoted.

  13. 13
    Mandolin says:

    Hi Grendel, I read the first sentence of his diarrhea. I’m basically unwilling to dignify his verbal excretions with linkage. I’m debating whether or not to delete this exchange, frankly.

  14. 14
    Mandolin says:

    More or less: if his hate speech is this triggering for ME, a bisexual woman married to a man who is fairly easy with feminine-read gender presentation, then I can’t imagine what the insinuation that people choose their deaths by “dressing funny” would do to someone who’s suffering that abuse on a regular basis. (Dressing funny! She should just dress normally! Amazing! Why didn’t she think of that? Why didn’t it make any fucking difference when she did?)

    Fuck that hate speech.

  15. 15
    B says:

    Props to the second video, enjoyed it.

    But the first video disgusts me. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of abortion, you should stand tall. Slinking away because there’s some threat of violence is more than cowardly, it’s insidious and complicit support for those that perpetuate the violence. Hold your ground. If someone does gets hurt, make another movie celebrating their sacrifice. And another and another. Only then will you show that your position on freedom is strong enough that no one will be able to take it from you, ever.

  16. 16
    grendelkhan says:

    B: But the first video disgusts me. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of abortion, you should stand tall.

    You’re more than welcome to, as you say, “stand tall”, but it’s not your call to tell someone else to put their life on the line. Not everybody signed up to be a martyr, and you’re in no damned position to demand that of them.