babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
I think this is brilliant, but...
October 17, 2010 - 7:47pm
...some of my friends say this clip, an attack on Proposition 8, the California law that bans same sex marriage, is offensive, mainly because of the children dropping the f-bomb.
I said, these children hear worse language on the playground when they are being bullied about their gay parents. I'm curious what babblers think.
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watc...
I love it because its funny and its not apologetic.
The only thing offensive is that queer phobic Youtube flagged the video,
What's up with it being flagged? The "F*ck You" song has no such warning.
I saw it on Joe. My. God.'s blog page and I think it's brilliant and really, really funny. You can short circuit You Tube here:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/10/fckh8.html
So good to see so much love for Joe's blog.
It's not brilliant, it's fuckin brilliant... bagkitty seal of approval.
I fucking love those kids.
Is gay marriage the only issue that Babblers can discuss when looking at gay rights? I've been on this message board for seven years, and the right to marriage is the only LGBT issue that board members have become really upset about. Yes, gay marriage is important, but so are anti bullying campagns, and not just the urban centric "it gets better" campagn, which encourages rural gay kids to get out of the back woods, but also those that encourage rural gays to stay in the backwoods and fight.
Or perhaps Babble is to bourgois to discuss issues faced by gays who aren't urban, white and middle class....
CMOT, the above post is exactly why you should post more. I agree that the gay subject as a "citizen of rights" is extremely problematic and exclusive. I don't think that babblers *only* get upset about marriage rights, but you are totally justified in raising this concern.
CMOT, the above post is exactly why you should post more. I agree that the gay subject as a "citizen of rights" is extremely problematic and exclusive. I don't think that babblers *only* get upset about marriage rights, but you are totally justified in raising this concern.
Citizen of rights?@Catchfire:
Criticisms of the rights strategy that the LGBT communities has been pursuing worldwide for last 40 years can be made, but somehow I do have a problem with it coming from people who already enjoy those very rights: locally, nationally and internationally. If we are going to have critiques of the strategy per se, perhaps they shouldn't be coming from such a position of privilege.
Just saying...
Why did you address your complaint at me, bagkitty, instead of CMOT, who introduced it? Unless my privilege forcloses me from agreeing with CMOT. Furthermore, why do yoiu think this criticism is mine, rather than one I have learned from talking with and learning from my LGBT friends, mentors and allies?
Catchfire, I think you have seriously misread CMOT's posting. I hope he will correct me if I have misinterpreted him, but I took his post to be addressing the the perception (one I largely share) that it is only this single facet of the rights struggle that babblers seem willing to discuss. I see nothing in his post that calls the rights strategy itself into question.
As to why I addressed my particular response to you - well I interpreted your reference to:
as a criticism of the rights strategy itself. Perhaps if you would
de-jargonizeclarify your statement I might be tempted to reconsider my interpretation.bagkitty, I really like you. But you can be insulting sometimes.
Agreed totally, I can be very insulting on occassion, it is one of my special talents.
However, again if I am reading CMOT correctly, I am not the only one who has questions about how to interpret the citizen of rights phrasing I quoted above (indeed, I would suggest that is the most valid interpretation of his post #8). Observations about my tendency to give short shrift to the conventional social graces does not really go very far in clarifying the original statement.
Perhaps if you entered this discussion with less hostility, I'd be more inclined to indulge you, bagkitty. As it is, you haven't exactly set the stage for a productive exchange. Why would I persist if only to be told that a) my criticisms come from a place of privilege (which I never denied nor questioned) or b) that they are filled with "jargon" (itself a mostly meaningless, entirely pejorative term)?
Gentleman! gentleman! My post was criticising the seeming inability of Babblers to discuss any other gay rights issue besides gay marriage. I could be wrong, after all, I haven't spent that much time in the LGBT forums.
However, the LGBT movement in North America seems fixated on issues that primarily affect Urban, middle class gays. Being able to marry doesen't matter if you can't get three square meals a day. Funding issues sourounding pride celebrations don't matter to working class gay rights activists getting death threats in deepest, darkest West Virginia.
Of course, the cry of the gay middle and upper middle class, when confronted with these issues is, get the fuck out of West Virgina! Come to our gay urban Shagrila, where buying t shirts stands in for real activism and the place where you were born and bread can be disparaged over cocktails.
People shoudn't have to move from there hometowns in order to live with dignity.
So true CMOT and so universal. If we had fair and equitable societies, LGBT teens would not be told to move to large cities for life to "get better" or struggling workers in developing economies would not be told that the only way to provide for their families is to move to the developing world. People should be free to live their lives fully and with security no matter where they live.
I agree, CMOT, except I'd replace "LGBT movement" with "mainstream LGBT support," or "the part of the LGBT movement which mainstream society affirms and legitimizes." The LGBT movement is as diverse as LGBT people in general. And if there's one thing that capitalist culture hates, it's diversity. Without taking away anything from the power of the SSM movement, it's easier for neo-liberal culture to turn "acceptable" gays and lesbians--like Annette Benning and Julianne Moore (not actually lesbians) in The Kids Are Alright or the gay friend in Sex in the City, or Will from Will & Grace--into consumers and economic units through marriage; easier than recognizing the full humanity of queer folk in all their diversity.
For example:
This is only to point out the lack of completeness campaigns like SSM and to some extent, "It Gets Better," not to take away from their very forceful and life-changing aims. It comes down to (as usual) what you and laine lowe just said: people should just be able to live themselves with dignity everywhere and always.
A lot of my thoughts on the matter stem from my distrust of "human rights" as such anyway. It's a fiction built up around liberal capitalist culture, ahistorically applied to destitute "third-world" countries who don't have these rights--in fact, all they have is their humanity, because everything else--clothing, food, security--has been stripped from them. And, like the rest of our excess clothes, canned goods, etc--since we don't need our own human rights, we ship them overseas like charity. It's this kind of justification that leads to wars of aggression, "humanitarian" intervention and all that. Similarly, rather than recognize queer folk for who they are, according to their own social narrative and history, we (heterosexual, gender-normative folk) dress them up to look like us in all our "rights" and other social fictions. It's a living, i guess, but it's not the best.
Without taking away anything from the power of the SSM movement, it's easier for neo-liberal culture to turn "acceptable" gays and lesbians--like Annette Benning and Julianne Moore (not actually lesbians) in The Kids Are Alright or the gay friend in Sex in the City, or Will from Will & Grace--into consumers and economic units through marriage; easier than recognizing the full humanity of queer folk in all their diversity.
The Kids are Alright was a good movie, but it had a shit ending. Why did the main characters have to put the boots to Paul? He was the most admirable character in the whole damn film.