#but like what do they do for the greater gay liberation movement??? i think they do very little and people place too big of an emphasis of

[quenthel]

not a huge fan of pride flags (they do nothing like politically imho beyond the rainbow one, also the homonationalist connections i simply dont like) that being said people putting dinosaurs skeletons and dragons on the sunset lesbian flag are so funny i love those

[gatheringbones]

["When counseling women who are engaged in the act of sexual self-definition, therapists need to be aware of the variations in the process of identity formation. On the basis of the findings presented here, it is suggested that psychologists need to take a more serious look at the assumptions inherent in the phrase "coming out." It is not uncommon to hear clinicians talk about women who are in the process of coming out, or who have difficulty with coming out, as if they know what the "right" result looks like. We should begin to question not only whether there is a "right" way to come out, but also whether there is some static end point at all. Liberal teachers and clinicians often think their appropriate role with lesbians is to help them deal with coming out, but I would urge us to think seriously about the relationship between coming out and self definition. It seems to me that the aim ought to be to encourage each woman as she struggles to define herself. This may mean facilitating her search for authenticity rather than assuming a fixed sexuality that the therapist will help her discover. If being authentic entails accepting the fluidity of one's sexual feelings and activities and identifying as a lesbian, therapists should support this rather than convey the impression that the woman is confused or unwilling to accept a stigmatized identity.

These interviews suggest that sexuality is experienced by some women (both heterosexual and lesbian) as an aspect of identity that may change over the course of their lives. Although there has not been research on this issue from male homosexuals, from reading gay male literature, speaking with a small sample of gay men, and exchanging views with therapists who work with them, my sense is that gay men do not experience their sexuality in the fluid manner that some lesbian and heterosexual women do. I have no strong data on this, but I suspect that very few gay men could be characterized as elective homosexuals. Although this observation might at first seem puzzling and lead one to wonder why the nature of sexuality would be different for women and for men, I think it becomes more understandable with reference to psychoanalytic theories of mothering that place emphasis on the primary human need for social relationship and then examine the expression of that need in terms of the infant's first love object: its mother. Specifically, object relations theory can provide the framework for understanding how the conditions of early infancy might lead women to have a greater bisexual potential than men. Dorothy Dinnerstein has discussed how the first relationship with a woman establishes a homoerotic potential in women, and Nancy Chodorow has elaborated on the early psychic foundations of women's homoemotional needs and capacities. The writings of both these authors can provide the basis for formulation of a new question: Why do so many women become exclusively heterosexual as opposed to bisexual or lesbian?

One of the most important insights of the both feminist psychology and the women's movement is that our being born female does not mean that we automatically and naturally prefer certain roles and activities. We have recognized that the category of woman has been socially constructed and that societal definitions notwithstanding, women are a diverse group with interests, attitudes, and identities that do not always conform to what is traditionally considered feminine. We have long been told that are are not "real" women unless we are wives and mothers, and to counter this, feminists have been forceful and articulate in asserting that one's sex is not related to any inevitable or natural way to one's sexual preference or societal role. In a similar vein, I suggest, on the basis of my discussions with a select sample of college women, that sexual feelings and activities are not always accurately described in either/or terms, nor do they exist in a simple one-to-one relation to our sexual identities. Just as we have protested the constricting of social definition of what a real woman is, precisely because it has served to oppress women and to limit the expression of our diverse potentials, so too must we be careful in our social construction of sexuality not to construct categories that are so rigid and inflexible that women's self-definitions put them at odds with the social definitions. To do so limits the expression of the diversities and variabilities in women's sexual identities."]

carla golden, from diversity and variability in women's sexual identities, from lesbian psychologies: explorations and challenged, edited by the boston lesbian psychologies collective, 1987

[evilelitest2]

What is the dirtbag left? People keep talking about it but I have no clue what it is

Oh this answer is gonna suck.  Good question as always though.  

Ok before we can get into the dirtbag left, I want to talk about the major factions of leftist in the United States, and I am discounting Moderates/Centrist/Blue Dog Democrat's, I am specifically focused on people who support actual left wing policies.  Roughly speaking they can be broken up into the following groups though each group is a lot more complicated than I am implying here

The first and most dynamic faction are the progressives, people who are focused on the rights of marginalized people.  Sometimes they are called “identity Politics”  They are further subdivided into a bunch of specific interest groups, but their main unifying argument is “society is specifically persecuting towards certain groups and we need to address that” 

Civil Rights, who focus on the rights of African Americans 

Feminists who focus on the rights of women

The Queer Community, who are focused on the rights of Gender and Sexual Minorities (Gay people, Trans people, Non Binary people, Bi people, intersex, asexual ect

This group is really divided within itself but lets not get sidetracked

Groups focusing on the rights of Latin Americans, both citizens and immigrants

Groups focusing on the rights of Muslims/Middle Easterners

Groups focusing on the rights of Jews/Combating antisemitism

Groups focusing on the rights of Asian Americans

And finally groups focusing on the rights of the disabled 

The next major group is the labor movement, who focus on the rights of workers, focusing on things like Unions, increasing the minimum wage, addressing the wealth gap and very New Deal FDR policies, and tend to be anticapitalistic or at least Social Democrat.   

Environmentalists, who want the world to not die

Anti War advocates

Pro Education/Pro Science anti Fundamentalists' people who just want good goverment.  

And some post modernists thrown in because why not?

The two main groups that make up the left are the first two, the issues of Identity Politics and Class, and there is a LONG history of these two groups having trouble le working together.  One of the major issue is that a lot of poor whites would happily welcome a lot of leftist social policies, but vote conservative if they believes those policies will help black people, even if it hurts their own best interest.  I mean take the New Deal, which was among the greatest economic period of US history and was popularly supported by most Americans.  However a lot of poor whites supported it because Latinos and Blacks were not allowed access to most of its benefits.  ANd once the Democratic Party started to pursue desegregation and women’s rights, these poor whites abandoned the party which gave them a future and voted for policies that hurt their own best interest because of their extreme bigotry.  Which is the most frustrating part of American History.   

And among a lot of Democrats (mostly centrist) there is this idea that the best way to win elections is to stab marginalized communities in the back in order to win Republican voters.  When Bill Clinton won in 1992, he did so in large part by abandoning a lot of leftist principles, he embraced Third Way style Liberalism and deregulation (which led to the 2008 crash thanks Clinton) but he also happily supported Right wing ideas about trying to keep crazy radicals minorities from advancing too far in politics.  Basically try to rebrand the Democrats as “we aren’t as crazy as the Republicans, but we ditched all of that lame uncool parts of politics that makes your family uncomfortable”.  

So the Dirtbag Left (there term not mine) was like “Hey could we do this...but for communism?”  And like most bad things, its origin is with Nazis.

The Dirtbag Leftist are Marxists who think the best way to win Trump voters over to the left is to combine Socialist style economic/welfare policies with conservative styles attacks on “Free Speech” and “Identity Politics.”  The “nicer” version of these guys basically say “ok we win them in with the economic policies and once we implement that, we can work on the other issues”.  The cruelr version of that basically want a socialist state...for white straight men and nobody else.  

This happened because some communists were looking at how the Alt-Right was radicalizing apolitical young men and were like “wait we can do that too”  

See if you have ever had the misfortune of being in Nazi/Red Pill/Gamergate style spaces you will notice that they actually share a lot of the left’s complains about the status que.  They dislike both parties, they don’t like capitalism, and they think our current consumerist way of life is souless drudgery.  So some communists were like “What if we found the exact same demographic as these guys but tried to turn them to communism instead of Fascism?”  Which sounds like a good idea but here is the problem

The type of people who become Nazis had to already be bigoted anti intellectuals in the first place.  All you have done is given some of them Marxist Rhetoric rather than Nazi Rhetoric, they are the exact same toxic people.  And in trying to cater to them, you have allowed them to infiltrate's your movement.  

The other quality of the Dirtbag Left is that they think that the Centrist Democrats (Clinton, Obama, Biden ect) are a greater threat than the conservatives, and that if the Far Right and the Far Left can team up to destroy the center, the radicals can work out their issues.  Which has never worked ever in human history but they keep trying.  

Initially the DIrtbag Left was basically vulgar leftists who wanted to down play the issues that trigger conservatives (Abortion, minority rights, feminism, being nice to people) in order to get them to support their social/economic policies, but it quickly became co-opted by the Alt Right themselves, and now they are basically just advocates of a Herrenvolk style social state.  Or really...they are what would happen if the Nazis actually tried to combine Nationalism with Socialism.  

And  while they aren’t a large group, like the Alt-Right they are really really prominent online and are constantly engaged in wide spread harassments campaigns that are basically find/replace Gamergate harassments campaigns.  They attached themselves pretty hard to Bernie's Sanders campaign and did a really good job in ruining his chances in both primaries, and then attached themselves to Tulsi Gabbard’s fucking toxic campaign after that.  At this point they are basically just Alt Rightists with a socialist brand reskin.   Sometimes called the Red Brown Alliance

[king-of-the-issues]

🏳️‍🌈Happy pride everyone 🏳️‍🌈

I thought I’d make a ‘little’ (sorry, it’s going to be a long one and it’s going to be a bit of a mess) post about my own story and journey within the LGBTQIA+ community. Hopefully it can help educate some, maybe others will be able to relate, or you’ll just find out a little more about me.

I grew up in a fairly liberal family and area - although the area was technically conservative until very recently, I’ve been lucky enough to not have known anyone majorly homophobic or discriminatory (my grandad is a little stuck in his ways though). I’ve always been told that being ‘different’ is good and normal and there’s nothing wrong with liking someone of the same gender. Although we were never really taught anything about same-sex relationships and being the late 00s, sex education was very heteronormative. We were never told that being gay was wrong and we knew of gay teachers in the school and kids with two mums or two dads and it was never really a big thing.

I first started questioning my sexuality in my early teens, I wasn’t very ‘girly’ and I didn’t really have any crushes on boys at school. So I figured I must be gay, or at least bi. Looking back at this I can see that although I thought I was well educated, I was not. And though I may have been right in the long run, my justification and understanding of why it was so was definitely built on a lot of gender stereotypes and I wasn’t fully aware of what it meant to be gay or what my true feelings were. But I still wasn’t sure, so I just assumed that I was straight, I’d never had feelings for a girl, so why would I be gay?

I finally started to better educate myself when I joined tumblr in 2013 as a ‘Wholock’ fan blog. I started following other fan accounts who just happened to be part of the LGBTQ+ community and so would post things about themselves and their community. Through this I definitely learnt a lot more about sexuality. There wasn’t just an L,G and B, but there was a P and an A and a Q and so much more. I started watching more LGBTQ+ you tubers, tv and movies and educating myself further.

At this point I was doing my GCSEs (16 years old), I’d never been in a relationship hetero or otherwise. I hadn’t even had my first kiss and I still hadn’t really had any crushes. A boy hadn’t paid any attention to me in anything other than a platonic way in about 4 years. Some of my friends were in relationships and getting male attention, so I was still thinking, was there something wrong with me? If I’m not gay, do people think I’m gay and that’s why they don’t pay me any attention? So I started dressing more feminine and wearing more makeup in the hope that something would change. It didn’t.

When I started Sixth form in 2014 (17) I saw a film in the cinema that truly opened my eyes and I think I can say that seeing that film was the turning point and the moment I started to educate and question myself further. That film was ‘Pride’, the true story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Something about this film really got me, like many other films and tv shows I fell in live with the movie and it’s characters. Only this time they weren’t just characters, they were real people, who played a huge part in LGBTQ+ history. So I learnt more about these people and their stories. I posted about it a lot on tumblr and found other lovers of the film and they taught me more about their lives. This film was also my first major introduction to pride, London Pride in particular. I had missed the parade that year, but was hoping to attend the next year. This was also the year that same-sex marriage was legalised in England and Wales. There was a lot of things in the news and on tv about the history and struggle of the LGBTQ+ community, including ‘Our Gay Wedding the Musical’. As a lover of musicals, I wasn’t going to miss this, but not only was it an excellent musical, but I learnt so much more about the history and ‘legal side’ of being part of the LGBTQ+ community. It also introduced me to a lot of LGBTQ+ musical artists, personalities and songs.

In both AS and A2 Level art, I completed projects focused on sexuality and gender identity. I explored a range of artists, historical figures and other influential people within the LGBTQ+ community. I was able to better understand the many different identities that existed and the work that has been made to get where we are now as well as questioning my own identity.

For A Levels I had picked Art as one of my subjects. I have always loved art and at this point it was the direction I was planning on taking my life and career. I was still very much continuing to educate myself about the LGBTQ+ community and was discovering LGBTQ+ art and artists. This was also the time that Grayson Perry’s second tv series ‘Who are you?’ was airing, which looked at various aspects that affect a person, including gender and sexuality. With Grayson discussing his own relationship with gender and sexuality. At this point in time, A Levels were all split into ASs (year 12) and A2s (year 13). Which at the end of both would be an exam in all the subjects you took (4 for AS, 3 for A2). In art we were given a selection of titles and had to pick one to work from. From this we would have to create research pieces and supporting work, leading up to a final piece, which we would complete in a 5 hour exam. At this point I had been looking for a way to represent the LGBTQ+ community in my work and when ‘Community’ was given as one of the possible exam titles, I knew what I was doing.

I began with studies of people I had learnt about through general media, Pride and Our Gay Wedding the Musical. On a side note, this was when I developed my love for graphite portraits, my first of which was of Nathan Taylor and Benjamin Till the couple who both created and were married in OGWtM. I continued my general research into artists and styles, when one of my teachers introduced me to the work of Paul Harfleet. Paul created the Pansy Project, where he would plant a pansy (historically a derogative term for a gay man) in a location of homophobic abuse (verbal or physical). He would also edit photos to put Pansy’s into the mouths of famous people who were homophobic or used homophobic language. I used this idea as my inspiration and my final exam piece featured well known people who have used such language or hold such views, with handmade pansies in their mouths, with Oscar Wilde in the middle, who was imprisoned for being gay, holding a bunch of pansies as if he’d put them there. My research for this piece had introduced me further to the political movements, fights and protests, the work that had been made and was still being made to help people just simply live their lives as themselves. When I finished my AS Level, I was hoping to carry this theme onto my work in my A2s.

Because I was hoping to do this I decided that I now had to go to Pride as it would be a great opportunity to take reference photos. I intended to go with some friends, but they all bailed, so I ended up going with my mum. My mum has always been reasonably liberal, but she never really had the knowledge to educate myself and siblings on the different types of relationships, gender and sexuality. By going to Pride, it definitely opened her eyes and she has since become a huge advocate for equal rights for all and as a childcare provider is trying her best to educate the children she looks after and make her environment inclusive. I absolutely loved Pride and collected so many great photos and saw so many inspirational people. Including the cast of the Pride movie and originators of LGSM.

In A2 art, we were required to complete coursework that would feature various pieces and research that would accompany an illustrated essay. In order to continue my focus on the LGBTQ+ community, the title I created was ‘How has art reflected society’s attitudes towards sexuality and gender’. I continued to look at the work of Grayson Perry as well as the story of Lily Elbe. During Pride I had taken a picture of a drag queen dressed as the Queen and used this as a reference for a painting. From this I edited picture of well known people to be the opposite gender. Looking back at this, I do regret doing this, as well as other aspects of my following work. I feel that although my intention was to show gender as fluid and present some ‘what if..’ questions, I feel that the way I went about it could have been insensitive and seen as mocking those with gender dysphoria and identity issues. Continuing from my queen portrait I decided to look specifically at the royal family and at monarchs and members of the family throughout history who are believed to be part of the LGBTQ+ community and how that has been ‘covered up’ or ignored. I also looked at drag artists and how the royal family who, though are typically seen as being very conservative and modest, have in fact historically been very flamboyant in the way they dress and present themselves, with the line between feminine and masculine clothing once being very thin. Again, although my intentions were good and the questions I was presenting were important, I don’t feel I went about it the right way. Although I did try to justify it at the time, I feel I shouldn’t have been presenting these people who may or may not have been LGBTQ+ as so, especially when suggesting that some monarchs who may have cross-dressed, could have in fact been transgender.

Aside from the artistic side my research greater deepened my understanding of the range and fluidity of gender and sexuality. Including gender non-conformation, gender-fluidity, gender-queer, demisexuality, polysexuality and being queer. At this point I was still confused about my own sexuality, but would tell people that I was just a straight ally. I remember being asked by both a classmate and university interviewer whether I identified myself as within the LGBTQ+ community and both times I answered no. Looking back, I wish I had said that I wasn’t sure, that I was confused. Because it is okay to not be sure and be confused, no matter your age.

After leaving school I was starting to look more at asexuality and wonder if I was on the ace spectrum. I didn’t think I was 100% asexual because I do want to be in a relationship, but maybe I just haven’t had the opportunity to explore that yet. I have been subscribed to Evan Edinger for about 5 years now and he has spoken openly about his own experiences and as someone who is on the asexual spectrum, specifically being demisexual. I started to consider that I could maybe be demisexual and watched more of Evan’s videos as well as reading about others who identified as demi. I felt comfortable with this label, it felt like it answered a lot of questions and gave an explanation for why I hadn’t experienced crushes like my friends for many years.

I then began to realise that if I was to imagine myself in a relationships, it could be with a guy or a girl, it didn’t really matter and maybe I was bisexual, or at least biromantic. This was something that I had considered in the past but I was only just accepting as a true part of myself.

I was able to go to my second London Pride in 2019, this time with my mum, sister and a couple of friends. We had a great time and I met and spoke to some incredible people. This further made me consider my sexuality and made me feel even more comfortable.

So, on New Year’s Eve of that year I came out as demi and bi to my friends, who were all very accepting and supportive. I am yet to come out to my family and I don’t really intend to, not because I’m ashamed or I don’t think they’d be supportive, in fact quite the opposite. Since going to pride, my mum has been very vocal in her support of the LGBTQ+ community and I feel that if I were to come out to her, she would make quite a big deal out of it, which as someone with anxiety who likes to live a reasonably quiet life, I don’t really want. I also never really talk to my family about my ‘love life’ and relationships, existent or not, so I don’t really feel the need to tell them this. If I was in a relationship with a girl, then yes we’d probably talk about it, but until them, I don’t intend on telling them.

Although I have come out, I still wouldn’t say that I am 100% sure my exact labels, but I think that’s okay. If I am asked I normally say that I am Queer as I find it sums up that I don’t identify as heterosexual without going into too much detail.

I think the main thing to take from my story is, it’s okay to not be sure about your identity. There is no age that you should have had your first kiss etc by. You do what is right to for you, maybe you’ll have the answer soon, maybe it’ll be a while, but that’s okay.

[outweek30]

Many Days of Courage

I want to talk about courage this afternoon — as we gather here today to commemorate that special courage that has come to be known as the Stonewall Rebellion. But before that explosive night in Greenwich Village 20 years ago, gay people were not just a silent people, were not just a submissive people. I know this from my own gay life, which started in the late ’50s, and from the voices that I live with in the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

Being a lesbian in this city in the ’50s challenged all my fears and shaped all my liberation politics. Whether it was taking my allotted amount of toilet paper in the bathroom line at the Sea Colony, or walking past the Women's House of Detention on a hot summer night and hearing the desperate cries of incarcerated lesbian lovers, or holding on to my butch's arm in the back room of a bar so she would not be goaded by the police taunts into a battle that would leave her bloody, I was deeply educated in the power of the state to control and dehumanize our lives. But in the face of this constant police surveillance and social bigotry went a thousand acts of lesbian courage.

Listen to this pre-Stonewall lesbian voice: "Things back then were horrible, and I think that because I fought like a man to survive I made it somehow easier for the kids coming out today, I did all their fighting for them. I'm not a rich person; I don't even have a lot of money; I don't even have a little money. I would have nothing to leave nobody in this world, but I have that, that I can leave the kids who are coming out now, who will come out in the future, that I left them a better place to come out into. And that's all I have to offer, to leave them. But I wouldn't deny it; even though I was getting my brains beaten up I would never stand up and say, ‘No, don't hit me, I'm not gay, I'm not gay.’ I wouldn't do that."

This is not the voice of a so-called famous lesbian woman, it is the voice of our everyday courage before Stonewall. It is a voice preserved because of the gay and lesbian history movement in this country, in this case the work of Liz Kennedy and Madeline Davis of Buffalo, New York. The Lesbian Herstory Archives is alive with stories of daily resistance from the ’50s and before: the butch woman who sewed lace on her socks so she would not be arrested for impersonating a man, the fem who took her lover's arm in the street marking them both as homos, the masculine looking woman who would not change her appearance even though no one would ride with her in the elevator of her early ’60s New Jersey housing project, the gay lovers who rode the subway to Riis Park and faced the taunts and fists of outraged spectators as they played in the sun, the early members of the homophile organizations that took on the McCarthy witchhunts, the early bar goers who carved out public territory for their own kind, and so many more small stories of a huge bravery.

But you know these stories because every step of coming out that each of you has taken in your lives — these are all Stonewalls, all moments of courageous resistance to homophobic tyranny.

We are not a people of one great moment of history, we are a people whose courage has been tested through the generations. Stonewall is a marker for a movement, a public political stance, and as such it heralded all the braveries of the ’70s and now. But gay courage was not born that day, and its form was not fixed that day; our history of courage is a complex thing, as complex as our lives and the conditions under which we live them. In the coming years, we will be called upon to find our courage time and time again, not just the courage of our public spokespeople, or ACT UP members, or our cultural workers, but every one of us who pursues the dignity and pleasure of our same sex touch.

An understanding of this rich and varied heritage of resistance will create bonds between us that their fists and laws cannot subdue; it will strengthen our alliances between ourselves as we work in different ways for sustained political and cultural change; it will guide us as we build our own institutions. Our courage, both individual and communal, is not the legacy of just one day nor of one decade; it has no single voice or face, no one membership card and because of this, we all can be creators of our history of liberation.

The one demand that is made on us is to be seen and heard for what we are — women who make love with women and men who make love with men. As we gather in greater and greater numbers so do those who hate us, those who would watch us die rather than touch our bodies, those who call our art a moral pollutant and want it pulled from their museums, those who want us to be sexually controlled and domesticated and yet declare our relationships illegal. Our most courageous answer to this barrage of exclusion is to go on living our lives without betrayal of our diversity, of our knowledge of our people's history and our way of loving. You are the spirit of Stonewall; you, your faces, words, touches are the living legacy of our people's history. "But I wouldn't deny it; even though I was getting my brains beaten up I would never stand up and say, ‘No, don't hit me, I’m not gay, I'm not gay.’ I wouldn't do that."

— Joan Nestle, speech given at the Celebration 20! pride rally in Central Park on June 24th, 1989, as printed in OutWeek Magazine No. 3, July 10, 1989, p. 28.

[madewithonerib]

Douglas Murray on Chick-fil-A Controversy | John Anderson

     One of the reasons the new metaphysics,      new religion, I described in this book is      identifiable—is the people who follow it,      behave with all the zealotry that      religious fanatics behaved in the past.

     It’s not enough that they believe something,      you have to believe it too.

     I wrote in the spectator, recently, in the eyes      it’s a minor thing, there’s a restaurant in      America called Chick-fil-A.

     John Anderson: Yes I saw that article.

     DM: Chick-fil-A is a Christian family business.

     JA: Pretty big chain, though, I assume.

     DM: It’s the 3rg largest chain restaurant in America.      Opened for the 1st time in the UK in October &      announced shortly after that it’s closing—because      of protests by local appointed gay activists.

     Because Chick-fil-A in America, a Christian family      that founded it—gave donations about 10 years ago      to a family oriented charity, which included opposition      to gay marriage & so on & so forth.

     Now here’s the thing with that      like with the equinox gym controversies      in the summer, in the US.

     It’s not enough that these people choose      not to eat their chicken nuggets      at this place, you mustn’t either;

     & they mustn’t serve chicken nuggets      & they must close..lol

     Well even if the family that runs Chick-fil-A are the most      opposed to gay marriage ever,

     I still think if some people want to eat their chicken nuggets,      they should have the right to do so.

     But that instinct is not there.

     In the social justice warriors of our time.

     It’s not just that they don’t want it,      they don’t want you to do the      thing either, or      have the right to do the thing.

     Because only by total decimation of their enemies      can they win. That isn’t liberalism.

     JA: No.

     DM: In any interpretation of the term. Any interpretation

2.] JA: Now how does that fit with the insistence?      Of gays in America, for example, but also      we see this in Australia.

     That baker issue with the wedding cake.      Oh no no no, you cannot possibly exercise      your conscience—if a gay couple wants a      wedding cake, you must provide it.

     How does it fit with the right on the other side,      to close a business down—because it has a       different perspective?

     DM: How about getting back to the courage issue?

     Maybe these people are incredibly cowardly & lazy,      maybe that’s what’s going on.

     You see it’s quite easy to say, “I refuse to eat my      chicken nuggets in Redding.”

     That’s quite easy, I mean I’ve spent all my life ducking      eating chicken in Redding. I can keep doing it if I want.

     JA: LOL

     DM: But if you think that’s the main issue in that      rights issue, it means among other things that you      avoid the harder ones.

     Well here’s a harder one, there’s still dozens of countries      in the world where it’s illegal to be gay. There are still      around a dozen where you can be executed for being gay.

     If you’re a gay rights activist, mighten that be a place to      start? Mighten that be one closer to the boat?

     As it happens I noticed that nobody’s been commenting      at all, ah-um praising of him, as it happens Donald Trump      has said he wants to make it a priority—his administration      is looking at stop the countries which still make being gay      illegal, from doing so.

     That strikes me as being a very good laudatory      gay rights move.

     It’s also for many individuals, a bit of a hard one. Why?

     Well it means you have to make a value judgment, it      means you have to say, “Actually I think the way we do      things, in our society is better than the way they do it, in      that society.”

     JA: “That cultural imperialism.”

     DM: Deep cultural imperialism. Who are you to say they      shouldn’t shove the wall on the gays?

     And again, much of the lazy cowardly social justice      movements, who pretend they are incredibly brave,      don’t want to get into that.

     Run an awfully long way, very fast.

3.] JA: Power seems to be at the heart of this new, if I can      put it this way, anger. This sort of desire to uproot      everything. What is it that we don’t see in the pursuit of      power, for the ugliness that it is?

     Acton was surely right. We should be worried about it,      it does corrupt; & absolute power does tend towards      absolute corruption. We don’t seem to value things      like love, harmony, community, turning the other cheek,      forgiveness.

     They seem to be under ruthless attack, as belonging to      era we despise, which enjoyed a Christian consensus—      in terms of the way we viewed the world & our neighbour.

     DM: One of the striking things about going to societies      that are radically different from your own & why it’s      worth doing is because it can wipe you of some of your      presumptions about what the natural state of mankind is.

     JA: Yeah

     DM: You know..um a lot of people in countries like Australia      who think that for instance that loving your neighbour is the      natural default condition of people.

     Have an awful shock, coming to them, not just in their own      countries—where of course nobody can entirely live up to      that very strenous command.

     But in all sorts of countries & societies, around the world,      where people act & behave differently with a state of      nature as always is different.

     Our societies put a premium, or did put a premium in the      past—as you mentioned earlier—the example on      magnanimity & victory for instance: humility & defeat, or      graciousness in defeat (among other things).

     These are not the natural defaults, these are learned      behaviours—learned because there was a deeper      undertone beneath them that told you that these things      were worth while.

     Charity for instance is not the natural state, let alone to      be charitable to people you haven’t even met & are very      unlikely to meet.

     These are learned behaviours that are taught from a very      specific tradition. That isn’t to say that other traditions      don’t have elements through themselves, they do they      have versions of it.

     But our societies today have become fixated on power,      in the post Christian era, as the primary dynamic &      understanding mechanism for human society.

     And my view is as I say, in the part about the Foucault in      this book, I think this is a really deeply perverted way to      look at society.

     Where we interpret interest groups, & others as forever      scurrying to achieve power & we entirely ignore what      for most of us remains the more important drivers in      our lives.

     If you were to say to somebody: What drives you?

     If you went up to the average person in Melbourne &      said, “What drives you?” If they said power (lol), you’d      step away slowly.

     More likely they would say something along the lines of      love for my family & friends, they might have a wider      group of people they express that towards community,      perhaps even nation.

     Um they wouldn’t say power...

     Now the reason why we’re bad at talking about this, is      among other things because it’s a more embarassing      icky thing to talk about.

     To look purely at power dynamics:      Are the men powerful over the women?      Are white people powerful over people of colour?

     And so on, & so on, ad infinitum.

     Is it slightly easier to do than to talk about the flip side      of that which is love, forgiveness, charity & more?

     I think conservatives have been bad about talking about      some of this, as other people have.

     Conservatives in recent decades, after a great extent      thought that the point of their philosophy is to talk about      the marketplace & economics, and leave the rest.

     JA: That’s been a disaster.

     DM: Big disaster.

     JA: One thing that brought it home, I’m reviewing a book      at the moment, in which he (an economist has written)      about the collapse of Lehman.

     And when you actually..his thesis is essentially that the      abandonment of the classic virtues (prudence, integrity,      courage, so on & so forth) was what led to that frightful      mess.

     In other words the abandonment of morality,      has disastrous economic outcomes.

     And conservatives have by enlarge missed that.

     I think those who might have been classic liberals are      now smaller libertarians by enlarge missed it as well.

     DM: And short-termism.

     JA: And have played right into the hands of those      who disliked capitalism in the first place.

     DM: Yes well there has been because capitalism has      produced a better system than any other system we      know of—of course, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have      flaws within it.

     And one of its flaws has always been short-termism;      it’s why family businesses can so often be so successful      is because (as you know) if you were to raid the whole      thing & strip it, present a false version of itself, you’re      going to suffer for it.

     There’s a phenomenon I’ve often noticed of family      businesses, for instance, ending up in the hands of      outsiders—who squeeze & maximize profits because      they want to run off quite shortly afterwards.

     And having made their pile..

     A conservative approach to this is conservative prices,      among other things, would say this is an immoral thing      to do in itself because it’s not your right to simply      squeeze the value that’s been accumulated by others      run away with it. And then allow it to collapse.

     That’s not a decent thing to do.

     There are versions of this, & I’m sure there are in      Australia. There have been quite public versions of      people who are now being shamed for that kind of      behaviour.

     JA: Oh absolutely.

     DM: And it’s very, I think a positive step. People like      Philip Green, whose assets stripped a major high-street      chain here.

     JA: It’s a terrible thing that it’s happening & there’s a      sense, in which it starts to wind back freedoms.

     We had a (royal) commission of inquiry into the banks      in the financial sector in Australia; it revealed some      terrible behaviours.

     To be fair, a lot of people behave very decently & they      get tarred with the same brush—but nonetheless,      there’s a massive problem.

     And the reaction is people say thank heavens we had      the royal commission of inquiry. Now we can have 78      new sets of legislation, more surveillance, more      monitoring, greater fines.

     And then we find that credit starts to become a problem      because everybody becomes cautious.

     So the problem in essence is the bankers weren’t asking      themselves: What they ought to do, rather what can we      get away with.

     DM: There is an additional problem we’ve put upon our      shoulders, which is there are categories of problems      we don’t address because the only people who’ve been      trying to address them are people with the worse possible      answers. Capitalism I think falls into this basket.

     The people who have been critiquing it for many years,      have made a lot of other people not want to critique it.

     Because the answer is Marxism (?).

     JA: Yes, yeah.

     DM: So we avoid having the discussion because we      simply don’t want to say the same thing with inequality      discussion.

     I think. There are so many discussions to have about      inequality. Actually there’s been quite a lot of literature      about that issue over the decades.

     It’s sort of been run through already.

     It’s nothing new, the debate that we’re going through.

     It’s very striking that political rights tended to avoid      inequality debates. Why?

     Because the people who’ve been thinking about it      have an answer: it’s Marxism. 13:07

     JA: Yeah, sure.

     DM: We want to be absolutely sure when we have that      conversation, that they’re not going to smuggle Marxism      in when we’re not looking.

     JA: If I can go back to this issue of why in which we’ve      actually completely turned on its head now, the      beliefs & values that underpinned Western society?

     I mean we really have, I mean the Christian model of      relationship with your neighbour is established by the      idea of CHRIST dying on a cross.

     Not for HIS friends even, but for HIS enemies, you know      turn the other cheek, do unto others as you’d have them      do unto yourselves.

     And then I suppose this sort of minimalist version of that      at least do no harm, out of Miller. But it’s all gone.

     We’ve actually reversed it altogether, in the interests of      the big me, of selfism, of radical autonomy that says,      “I will do with my life & my body & my money & my time       & my relationships—what I choose.”

     We’ve actually inverted the worldview, if you like, that      drove our freedoms; & I think for me—as someone of      Christian beliefs—the greatest question & I accept that      people have absolutely the right to choose or reject faith

     But the greatest checkered question of all the greatest      challenge for the secularists is on what basis will we      establish a workable respect for others?

     Because no society—of a democratic tradition—can      possibly survive (I believe: it’s impossible to survive)      if you can’t find a basis (a rational basis) that’s powerful      enough to change people’s behaviour.

     So that we break free them, & you make the point that      we’re reverting to type progressives say we’re moving      endlessly to a better future.

     But in reality as you say, from looking at other societies      as you travel the world, we’re losing (if you like) what      we had & reverting rather than progressing.

     DM: Well what’s the single hardest commandment within      Christianity? You can get almost everything in Christianity      from earlier or other sources.

     You can get almost everything in JESUS’s teachings from      the ancient Greeks. A lot of wisdom is very similar.

     What is the thing that is totally revolutionary about what      JESUS says?

     It’s the commandment to love your enemies. 15:53

     JA: Yes

     DM: And that is a..

     JA: And demonstrated in Christian belief.      “I’m actually dying” (for example) HE was dying.

     DM: This is a world historical change. A command that      demands a world historical change.

     My own view of this is that it is possible in individuals      on occasions with exceptional grace.

     And that it is almost impossible, for most people      most of the time. But the commandment to do that      at the very least, reigns in the worst of our nature.

     That knowing how we should behave, ideally, means      that we can step back from the worst of ourselves.

     Which we know intuit (understand or work out by instinct)

     This is not an easy thing to replicate, without it’s      foundational claim, which is a foundational claim in      the truth claim of Christianity.

     It’s what I quote in the strange death of Europe.

     The German jurist (Erbaken Forde) who posed this      question in the 1960s:

     Can a society continue in the same manner      if the thing that gave the source to      the society is itself now cut-off?

     And as I say (in the Strange Death of Europe) possibly      for a time—when you’re running on the fumes still.

     JA: Yeah.

     DM: of that invocation. Can it sustain forever? NO.

     Because if you don’t believe in the driving force of it,      then once the people who did believe it have died out      —you’re still going on a memory of it, & then that dies      out. So this is a very big challenge.

     It’s a challenge which I think the intersection lists & the      social justice warriors & so on, have knowingly or      otherwise recognized—which is why they’re trying to      dig in a new metaphysics fast.

     The metaphysics of LGBT, women, grace, etc.

The Honorable John Anderson, AO Former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

Hypocrisy and double standards abound where social justice movements are concerned. Douglas Murray sums it up well.

[swampgallows]

Honestly, warcraft rave culture would probably be better for the characters to just, express themselves without worrying about their duties. Sons and daughters of no one, just let them be.

i feel like it would be a natural response to a lot of the war and strife azeroth has gone through in the last few decades, especially politically. like as much as i love garrosh, his character is awful and his reign certainly would have inspired rebellion in much more than the darkspear. there were a lot of factors that led to the rave movement irl—the advancement of and accessibility to new technology, economic disparity/thatcherism, the dot com bubble, queer liberation and the aids crisis—and while these arent necessarily replicated in azeroth there are a few parallels in terms of industrial revolution (new technology), land expansion and new allies (greater diversity and opportunities for growth), and class warfare/community (deposing corrupt governments, faction conflict, class identity, etc.)

i think if not during the darkspear rebellion, then definitely legion into BFA would have a lot of everyday citizens exhausted of faction warring and wanting a more neutral stance on things; we’ve even seen it echoed in the playerbase, and pandaren and pvp mercs are kind of a ‘taste test’ imo. but in-universe, populations are gaining new allies and dissolving more barriers, allowing for more technological development and exchanging of ideas that are fertile ground for a rave scene.

see, the marked difference between clubbing and raving is that raves are, by nature underground/grassroots events. they’re events by the people, for the people, and especially at their inception they inspired people from all walks of life to come together under one roof to enjoy some totally new, out-there, crazy experimental music. so that meant rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, all together for the unified purpose of rave. and that’s where PLUR comes from too; when you get so many different kinds of people together coming from environments where they would otherwise never run into each other, there was bound to be some friction. so PLUR was a reminder to maintain peace, love, unity, and respect, that we are all there for the same reason and sharing the moment together. clubs were exclusionary events barring and separating people and were very regimented in their operation. a DJ had to play what the club owner said to play, and nobody was there to see the DJ anyway. most discotheques kept the DJ out of sight on purpose, making the bar and the dancefloor the feature of the event. 

at raves, DJs get notoriety from being able to experiment and bringing their own sound instead of just functioning as a faceless PA system to play top 40 all night. DJs would play totally unknown tracks, dropping dubplates and promos of unreleased tunes from underground producers, or favor obscure B-sides over the popular title tracks. they would play with their records, not just play them, scratching and cutting and doing tricks. at raves the music was not just a sound but a living, changing thing, and if you had a truly gifted DJ you were always surprised without ever breaking the groove. the DJ was not just beloved by the community, but was also part of the community. 

so yeh, with more power returning to the hands of the everyday people of azeroth and many dissenting from their ruling classes/governments (even within the government itself), i definitely feel that “horde and alliance” would be among the unified dichotomies of rave. if they can pull off neutrality at the darkmoon faire, then i’m sure some renegade would more than likely go down among the ruins of any of the several places the war swept through and left disused. 

tl;dr, now more than ever has azeroth been in a stage where neutrality is attractive enough to birth a rave scene and rebel against a corrupt government. hell yeah

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

How do you think Napoleon would react to modern day politics? Especially in Europe?

Oooh playing with fire. 

I’m going to go high level because there is a lot happening everywhere, all the time. 

I think he’d be disgusted by, or just generally against, Trump, Le Pen, Ferage, the alt-right, tea-partiers, mega-church movement, putting children in cages, the free press, the internet, late-night television, anti-vaxxers, anti-climate change movement (once climate change is explained to him), Franco, feminism, most modern literature (though I bet he’d like LOTR), extremists of any kind, this whole “women in politics” business, Faith Goldy, Catalonia independence movement, Islamophobia, isolationism, anti-intellectualism, anti-arts and sciences, cover up of abuses by the Catholic Church, modern fashion etc. 

For Trump especially, I think he’d find him disgusting on a personal level. Uneducated, incapable of holding a real conversation, gauche, anti-intellectual, anti-fact-based discussion, anti-science, anti-art etc. He also feel that Trump is disgracing the position of President and that he is unworthy of leadership. Napoleon would also find Trump physically repulsive as he could be a wee bit shallow in some of his assessments (though, very early modern to 19th century to assume your physical appearance is a manifestation of your interiority).

Things Napoleon would potentially support include the European Union, globalization, increased access to education, increased access to healthcare, free museums, easier immigration, modern science (imagine explaining to him that we landed a man on the moon, he’d be so chuffed), NAFTA and other trade deals, proliferation of literacy, modern medicine, Arab spring, vaccinations!, dentistry, automated manufacturing, trains planes and automobiles, a lot of our tech, modern bathtubs, hot tubs, Jacuzzi tubs, office supplies, mocking people in the college admissions scandal, reduction of religious influence in politics, national parks etc. 

QU’EST-CE QU’UN BREXIT? They sure as hell don’t know. 

So, Napoleon would probably be pro-EU, he’d just think that France should be in charge. “Hey, how about France is the hegemonic power here? Has anyone thought about that? What do you mean Luxembourg is independent? They’re so tiny. Go on Macron, take them back.” 

Napoleon at a philosophical level was fine with immigration, if not outright pro-immigration as is captured in his “it doesn’t matter which side of the Rhine you were born on, if you decided you were French then you were French” (paraphrased) encapsulating his view at a high level. (However, his de jour policies were a bit stickier.)  

He’d be against any political approach that sought to cut people off from each other. The latest isolationist swing in global politics he’d disagree with, quite vehemently I imagine.

On Brexit Napoleon’s exact words are, “Yes, go on England. Shoot yourself in the foot while you set yourself on fire. I am getting popcorn and a front row seat.” (Trust me. Those are his exact words. I asked him myself.)

Slightly more seriously, he would disagree with the Leave position. While Napoleon had respect for the UK as an economic power, things have changed drastically since 1800. I think he’d argue that, in terms of a cost-benefit-analysis, it makes greater sense for the UK to remain than to leave, regardless of one’s desire for “sovereignty” and “independence” and “idk what a Brussels is but I dislike that they have opinions about the British sausage.” 

Things I’m not sure what his opinion would be, mostly because the world has changed so radically since his life and he’d be playing a lot of catch-up if he were to be brought to life include: Putin and Russia, Syria, gay marriage, trans rights, Iraq War, nuclear weapons (I’m leaning towards Against simply because of the MAD effect. He’d see them as a pointless exercise as war is supposed to leave you ideally with something gained, not mutual destruction), carbon tax, Fake News (as he heavily regulated and controlled France’s press during his reign I think he’d be wary of the modern free press, but at the same time, I think he’d dislike the blatant anti-intellectualism and dishonesty of crying Fake News every two seconds), Israel (I’m leaning towards Support, but maybe not. Really hard to say. He’d have to have the holocaust explained. In his own time, he wanted Jewish people to fully integrate into society and become “more French.” One of his motives for liberating them from the ghettos was to encourage assimilation into broader French society), reparations (probably Against), the ICC etc. 

He would be appalled that he is sometimes compared to Hitler. Once someone sat down and explained Hitler, the Third Reich and the Holocaust to him. 

“So this uneducated, stupid, disorganized, fear mongering, hate filled, cowardly little Austrian is compared to me? This man who is no better than a picculu cani sicilianu? How Dare.” 

One thing I want to witness is someone walking Napoleon through the Cold War and nuclear arms race. He’d be so appalled at the stupidity of it. “Well that was a waste of time, energy and resources. Eternally dumb. I expected better from America!” 

Thank you for this FIERY ASK. I hope I get 0 hate mail. But we will see. 

That said, I love Hypothetical 19th Century Napoleon In Modern Day asks. 

[a-wandering-fool]

Question: “Do you believe that the government is the solution to many of our societies problems?”

My answer:

One of the best books I read in a while about the various philosophies of governance was Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions. In this book he outlines two general competing “visions”; core philosophical ideas which give rise to the major political movements we see in the world.

The first is the unconstrained vision of mankind. The idea is that human nature is essentially good, that human nature is essentially unconstrained, fixable, and can be collectively elevated to higher and higher levels of perfection. Those who follow the idea of the unconstrained vision of mankind often believe there is an ideal solution, that compromise is unacceptable, and are often impatient with institutions and processes which constrain action. And in the process, some ‘collateral damage’ is acceptable in order for mankind to progress.

They also hold that there are those who are farther along the moral arc of history than the rest of us; people who have overcome their self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers in order to help us move forward along the arc of history towards a greater perfection of society.

The second are those who hold to the constrained vision of mankind; those who believe in man after the fall. They believe essentially human nature is unchanging and man is inherently self-interest, regardless of best intentions. (Individuals may progress to higher levels of self-awareness and personal self-improvement–but that does not translate to the entire species.) Because mankind is imperfect they prefer the rule of law and the experience of tradition to help constrain behavior. Unlike those who hold to the unconstrained vision, those who believe in man “after the fall” believe compromise is essential since there is no perfect solution–only trade-offs.

They are also highly suspicious of the idea that there are those who are supposedly “farther along the moral arc”–since power corrupts. (Or, more precisely, we are all corrupt; power simply gives us an opportunity to act in our own self-interest.) Because of this, they believe in checks and balances and limits to power, and believe anyone who claims they can set aside their innate self-interest may just be trying to pick your pocket.

I write all this to frame what I’m about to write in answering your question.

I hold to a constrained vision of man. I may not be a Christian, but I believe in the “fall of man,” and in the idea of “original sin”–the idea that we are born outside of the “grace of God” (for some definition of “God” which is not important here), and that it is up to each of us to find our own “grace.” I am highly suspicious of anyone who claims a higher moral compass than my own, just as when I look at someone materially worse off than me I can’t but help think “there but with the grace of God go I.”

I believe there are things that only the government can do.

We need laws. We need law enforcement. We need judges and juries and a system of punishment to punish law breakers–because there will always be criminals and crooks and broken people who need to be held accountable.

We also need the grace to temper our desire for vengeance, a process that is easily raised by law enforcement activities and others–so we need those who watch the watchers. We need teachers to help remind us of what grace looks like, what the seven virtues are and what they demand of us.

We need regulations. We need a way to help establish standards which (for example) assure the safety of airlines and to help establish the rules of the road–such as “airplanes traveling east to west flying VFR must fly at even-thousand plus 500 feet altitudes, west to east fly odd thousand plus 500 feet altitudes.” We need someone to establish the fact that we drive on the correct side of the road, to test the grip of tires so we know how fast we can safely corner, how one is to respond to stop signs. When we should stop so we don’t accidentally run over children.

However, I also do not believe we are perfectible (the best we can ask for is a little more grace)–which means I am extremely suspicious of those who would like to regulate what are, in essence, personal decisions which have little influence on our neighbors.

I am strongly suspicious of moral arbiters who tell us who we may love, who we may marry, where we may live, what we may eat, how we may act in the world. And moral arbiters exist on both sides of the aisle: conservatives who think gay marriage is immoral, and liberals who think gun ownership is immoral–to me–commit the exact same sin.

They think they can make this judgement of me and others because they are elevated above me, farther along an imaginary moral arc WHICH DOES NOT EXIST.

So there are–to me–certain areas of human activity for which the Government has no moral authority to govern, areas which, as we’ve seen elsewhere in the world, when the Government gets involved, things turn into a royal cluster-fuck.

Areas such as economic activity: my freedom to buy what I wish, to sell what I wish, to work as I wish–those should only be regulated as necessary to protect property rights and to protect contracts and to prevent me from misrepresenting the products I sell. (And those only exist for the practical reason that economic transactions are inherently based on trust–trust which for an audience greater than a few hundred people cannot be had without external standards.)

The problem is, for those in power–politicians, business leaders, the self-annointed elite in the media and experts–the feeling that they are superior to the rest of us, that they are farther along the moral arc is a feeling more addictive than cocaine and heroin.

So government is constantly intruding in areas where it has no business. Like telling people what we should or should not eat or drink.

I wish we’d just stop doing this sort of foolishness–because it never works out.

And in fact, when it goes to the extreme, often for supposedly good and moral reasons–such as when governments try to dictate how much food can cost and how much a person can charge another for his work–we get Venezuela.

A country where people have literally resorted to cannibalism in order to not starve to death.

===================

[gatheringbones]

[".... When we develop our understanding of this community as a predecessor to the gay liberation movement, our analysis must include sexuality. For these lesbians actively sought, expanded, and shaped their sexual experiences, a radical undertaking for women in the 1940s and 1950s.

[...] In the forties, there were at least two social groups, focused in two prominent bars, Ralph Martin's and Winters. According to our narrators, the sexual mores of the two groups differed: The former group was somewhat conservative; the latter group was more experimental, presaging what were to become the accepted norms of the fifties. The lesbian patrons of Ralph Martins did not discuss sex openly, and oral sex was disdained. "People didn't talk about sex. There was no intimate conversation. It was kind of hush, huh... I didn't know there were different ways." By way of contrast, this narrator recalls a visit to Winters, where other women were laughing about "sixty-nine." "I didn't get it. I went to [my partner] and said, "Somebody says sixty-nine" and everybody gets hysterical.' Finally her partner learned what the laughter was all about. At that time our narrator would have mentioned such intimacies only with a lover. It wasn't until later that she got into bull sessions about such topics. Not surprisingly, this narrator does not recall having been taught about sex. She remembers being scared during her first lesbian experience, then found that she knew what to do "naturally." She had no early affairs with partners older than herself.

The Winters patrons had a more open, experimental attitude towards sex; they discussed it unreservedly and accepted the practice of oral sex. These women threw parties in which women tried threesomes and daisy chains. "People would try it and see how it worked out. But nothing really happened. One person would always get angry and leave, and they would end up with two." Even if their sexual adventures did not always turn out as planned, these women were unquestionably innovative for their time. One narrator from the Winters' crowd reminisced that it was always a contrast to go home to the serene life of her religious family. She also raved about two fems who were her instructors in sexual matters, adding, "I was an apt pupil."

During the fifties the picture changed, and the mores of the Ralph Martin's group virtually disappeared. Sex came to be a conversation topic among all social groups. Oral sex became an accepted form of lovemaking, so that an individual who did not practice it was acting on personal preference rather than on ignorance or social proscription. In addition, most of our fifties' butch narrators recall having been teachers or students of sex. As in the Winters group in the forties, an important teacher for the butch was the fem. "I had one girl who had been around who told me. I guess I really frustrated the hell out of her. And she took a piece of paper and drew me a picture and she said, 'Now you get this spot right here.' I felt like a jerk. I was embarrassed that she had to tell me this." According to our narrator, the lesson helped, and she explains that, "I went on to greater and better things."

The fifties also saw the advent of a completely new practice— experienced butches teaching novice butches about sex. One narrator remembers that younger women frequently approached her with questions about sex: "There must be an X on my back. They just pick me out...." She remembers one young butch who "had to know every single detail. She drove me crazy. Jesus Christ, y'know, just get down there and do it— y'get so aggravated." The woman who aggravated her gives the following account of learning about sex:

"And I finally talked to a butch buddy of mine.... She was a real tough one. I asked her "What do you do when you make love to a woman?" And we sat up for hours and hours at a time... "I feel sexually aroused by this woman, but if I take her to bed, what am I gonna do?" And she says, "Well, what do you feel like doing?" and I says, "Well, the only thing I can think of doing is.... all I want to do is touch her, but what the full thing of it... you know." So when [she] told me I says, "Really," well there was this one thing in there uh.... I don't know if you want me to state it. Maybe I can... well, I won't... I'll put it in terms that you can understand. Amongst other things, the oral gratification. Well that kind of floored me because I never expected something like that and I thought, well, who knows, I might like it."

She later describes her first sexual experience in which she was so scared that her friend had to shove her into the bedroom where the girl was waiting."]

Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, from Oral History and Study of Sexuality in the Lesbian Community: Buffalo, New York, 1940-1960, from Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, edited by Martin Duberman, Matha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr., Meridian Press, 1989

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Secret Identity, our regular column on identity and its role in politics and policy.

In the days after Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the two people who seemed like the Democratic Party’s most obvious 2020 candidates, then-Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, hinted that Clinton had gone too far in talking about issues of identity. “It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman; vote for me,’” Sanders said. Other liberals lamented that the party had lost white voters in such states as Ohio and Iowa who had supported Barack Obama, and they said Democrats needed to dial back the identity talk to win them back.

But that view never took hold among party activists. Liberal-leaning women were emboldened to talk about gender more, not less, after the 2016 election. We’ve had women’s marches and women running for office in greater numbers than ever — all while emphasizing their gender. President Trump’s moves kept identity issues at the forefront, too, and gave Democrats an opportunity both to defend groups they view as disadvantaged and to attack the policies of a president they hate.

The Democratic Party hasn’t simply maintained its liberalism on identity; the party is perhaps further to the left on those issues than it was even one or two years ago. Biden and Sanders are still viable presidential contenders. But in this environment, so is a woman who is the daughter of two immigrants (one from Jamaica and the other from India); who grew up in Oakland, graduated from Howard and rose through the political ranks of the most liberal of liberal bastions, San Francisco; who was just elected to the Senate in 2016 and, in that job, declared that “California represents the future” and pushed Democrats toward a government shutdown last year to defend undocumented immigrants; and who regularly invokes slavery in her stump speech. (“We are a nation of immigrants. Unless you are Native American or your people were kidnapped and placed on a slave ship, your people are immigrants.”)

Sen. Kamala Harris has not officially said she is running in 2020, but she hasn’t denied it, either, and she’s showing many of the signs of someone who is preparing for a run, including campaigning for her Democratic colleagues in key races and signing a deal to write a book. The Californian ranks low in polls of the potential Democratic 2020 field, and she doesn’t have the name recognition of other contenders. (Her first name is still widely mispronounced — it’s COM-ma-la.) But betting markets have her near the top, reflecting the view among political insiders that Harris could win the Democratic nomination with a coalition of well-educated whites and blacks, the way Obama did in 2008.

Whatever happens later, the rise of Harris and her viability for 2020 tell us something about American politics right now: We are in the midst of an intense partisan and ideological battle over culture and identity; the Democrats aren’t backing down or moving to the center on these issues; and politicians who want to lead in either party will probably have to take strong, clear stances on matters of gender and race.

An opportunity

Harris, who went from district attorney of San Francisco to attorney general of California, was a heavy favorite in her 2016 Senate race. But once elected, she was expected to become a virtually powerless freshman senator in Hillary Clinton’s Washington. In fact, she might have been only the second most important person in Washington from her family, since her younger sister, Maya, was a top Clinton policy adviser on the campaign and in line for a senior White House job.

But Clinton’s loss created an opportunity for Harris. The Democrats had the normal leadership vacuum of a party without control of the White House but also a specific void of people who were well-versed in immigration issues and were willing to take the leftward stances on them that the party base wanted as Trump tried to push U.S. immigration policy right. Meanwhile, Biden and Sanders were not natural figures to defend Planned Parenthood when, as part of the repeal of Obamacare, the GOP sought to bar patients from using federal funds at the nonprofit’s clinics. African-American activists went from being deeply connected to the White House to basically shut out of it, as Trump had few blacks in his Cabinet or in top administration posts. And, electorally, while Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren were obvious potential presidential candidates for the populist wing of the party that backed the Vermont senator in the 2016 Democratic primaries, the coalition of minorities and more establishment-oriented Democrats1 who had backed Clinton didn’t necessarily have an obvious standard-bearer, particularly with the uncertainty over Biden’s status as a candidate in 2020.

While veteran party leaders like Biden may have wanted the party to move to the center on identity issues, Democratic voters had moved decidedly to the left, a process that was happening under Obama but may be accelerating under Trump. For example, a rising number of Democrats say that racial discrimination is the main factor holding blacks back in American society, that immigration is good for America and that the country would be better off if more women were in office.

“The Democrats are the party of racial diversity, of gender equality — and there’s no going back from that,” said Lee Drutman, a political scientist at the think tank New America, who has written extensively about the growing cultural divide between the parties.

Harris has seized the opportunity. From attending the annual civil rights march in Selma to pushing legislation that would get rid of bail systems that rely on people putting up cash to be released from jail, she has seemed to try to lead on issues that disproportionately affect black Americans and to position herself as their potential presidential candidate. She was one of the earliest critics on Capitol Hill of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies, and her push for a government shutdown over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program delighted party activists (even if the strategy ultimately failed). Harris was among the first Senate Democrats to call for Minnesota’s Al Franken to resign amid allegations that he groped several women, and she has been a strong defender of Planned Parenthood.

A different moment

You might be thinking, “Didn’t we just have a biracial person (who was often described as and embraced being a ‘black’ politician) who was fairly liberal on cultural issues as a major national political figure? Wasn’t he president of the United States?”

Well, yes. But here’s the big difference: Obama didn’t emerge as a presidential candidate by highlighting his strong stands on these divisive, complicated cultural issues, as Harris is attempting to do. In fact, his rise was in large part because he implied that America was not as divided on those issues as it seemed — and that those divides were diminishing. The 2004 Democratic National Convention speech that launched him to the national stage seems, now that we are in the Trump era, almost crazily optimistic. (“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America,” he said back then. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”)

Whatever the reality of such statements, the political strategy behind them made sense: It’s hard to imagine that America a decade ago would have embraced a nonwhite politician who wasn’t downplaying cultural divides and emphasizing unity. Back then, someone regularly talking about his or her ancestors being kidnapped and enslaved probably had no chance at being elected president.

But 2018 is much different than 2004 or 2008 in terms of the national debate on identity issues. For example, compared with a decade ago, a much higher percentage of Americans, particularly Democrats, see racism as a major problem. Over the past decade, Americans went through the birther movement, shootings of African-Americans by police captured on video, Black Lives Matter protests, Trump’s racial and at times racist rhetoric and Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark. And it’s not just race — think about #MeToo, the legalization of gay marriage and new debates on the rights of people who are transgender.

Harris can’t take the Obama “Kumbaya” route to the White House — I’m not sure at this point that a white Democrat could, either. By the end of his term, Obama didn’t sound particularly hopeful about America getting beyond its cultural divides. Clinton spoke more directly about race and racism in 2016 compared with Obama in 2004 and 2008. Sanders and other white Democrats are already talking taking fairly liberal stances on these issues, and I expect that to continue into next year.

I’m not sure Harris had much choice anyway. She is a Democratic senator from heavily Latino California with Trump as president, so it’s a virtual job requirement for to her to take leftward stances on immigration issues. She is a minority woman at a time when minorities and women are trying to gain more power in national politics, particularly within the Democratic Party — and she is the only black female senator. In other words, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama are, of course, different people. But they also arrived on the national scene at much different political moments.

“When you speak truth, it can make people quite uncomfortable,” Harris told a group of Democratic activists earlier this year in a speech in Henderson, Nevada. “And for people like us who would like to leave the room with everyone feeling lovely, there’s sometimes a disincentive to speak truth.

“But this is a moment in time in which we must speak truth.”

This is a bit longer than our normal Secret Identity column, so let’s skip “What else you should read.” But please contact me at perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com for your thoughts on this piece or ideas for upcoming ones.

[plurdledgabbleblotchits]

This is an excerpt of that page which covers a lot of other current news analysis:  

The Democrats, under current circumstances, are always going to have a tougher time "getting on the same page" than the Republicans will. There are at least half a dozen major reasons:

Size: The Democratic Party is considerably larger than the Republican Party; if we include independents that lean one direction or the other, there are something like 130 million Democratic/Democratic-leaning voters as opposed to 100 million Republican/Republican-leaning voters. It is a lot harder to speak to the needs of 130 million people than to speak to the needs of 100 million.

Diversity: The Democratic coalition is also more diverse, culturally and ideologically, with the result being that different elected members need to occupy very different places on the political spectrum. Consider the gap between the most right-wing GOP senator (probably Jim Inhofe R-OK) and the most moderate GOP senator (probably Lisa Murkowski, R-AK). Then consider the gap between the most left-wing Democratic senator (probably Bernie Sanders, I-VT, or Elizabeth Warren, D-MA) and the most moderate Democratic senator (probably Joe Manchin, D-WV). Surely the Democratic gap is much greater. And so it's true that it would be political suicide for Slotkin to campaign on Black Lives Matter and "defund the police." But it is equally true that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) would not get far if she spent all her time talking about prescription drug prices, strengthening national security, and shoring up people's 401(k)s.

Single-issue Voters: As a general rule, Republican voters are more willing to swallow hard and vote for a candidate if that candidate is "right" on one or two key issues, even if that candidate is very wrong in other ways. And the Republicans have done very well at identifying key issues that keep their coalition happy and unified, including abortion, gay marriage/culture wars stuff, and gun ownership. Democratic voters are much less likely to cast their ballots based on just one or two issues. And even if they were, one struggles to think of an issue that 80% of 90% of Democrats feel strongly about and are in agreement upon. The Party's signature issue these days is health care, and while most members agree that issue is very important, they are strongly divided on the next step, whether it's an Obamacare expansion, or Medicare for All, or something even more radical.

Alternative Facts: Similarly, today's Republican voters have proven to be considerably more willing to accept "alternative facts"—lies, distortions, conspiracy theories, and the like. Do we really imagine, for example, that QAnon only caught on only because nobody thought to point out to millions of believers that Democrats are not, in fact, pedophilic Satan worshipers? When people are willing to believe just about anything nasty about their perceived opponents, regardless of how nonsensical it is, that is difficult—if not impossible—to push back against.

Dirty Tricks: As an adjunct to the previous point, the reason that some Democrats were hurt this cycle by "defund the police" and Black Lives Matter and Antifa and socialism was not because of AOC or the Squad or Sanders (who are, at most, useful symbols). No, they were hurt by these things because the Republican Party has a finely tuned propaganda apparatus that smears all Democrats as wild-eyed, raving, loony communists/socialists who are personally connected to whatever the left-wing outrage du jour is (Antifa, or ACORN, or the Gay Liberation Front, or Black Power, or the Civil Rights Movement, or the Soviet Union, or whatever). The GOP has been doing this, with great success, for more than 75 years. Recall, for example, which party included Joseph McCarthy as a member, and which party's members he was in the habit of pointing the finger at.

Right-wing Media: The GOP's pro-Republican messaging, on abortion or guns or whatever, and its anti-Democratic messaging, on socialism or Antifa or the "Clinton Body Count" or whatever, has had the support of a highly effective right-wing media establishment that has been in place for nearly 40 years, from Rush Limbaugh to Pat Robertson to Fox News. There is no real equivalent for the Democratic Party.

End of excerpt

(lets not forget that- except for the Far, or “radical left”- the liberal party, ipso facto, is the less ideological, authoritarian, and reactionary party ..  just by being the left wing (and that makes it a lot like herding cats!) If you have ever read and compared conservative journals and books with more left/liberal leaning ones, you will know what I mean. It’s hard for an educated person to think so narrowly and to be hard line/ reactionary about most issues like they are. Basically, I found that their reading material doesn’t require much critical thinking or to be very knowledgeable. The radical /Far- left  is more or less just the other side of that coin. They are similar ideologically, and think in absolutes, and “take no prisoners.” They have an agenda, and if you are not 100% on board with it, or dare to raise legitimate critical thinking questions, you will be bulldozed just like the right wingers... think of the “cancel culture” mentality, or the inappropriate use of extreme political correctness.)

[canadianabroadvery]

Canada's Conservatives are “completely clued out” about the unpopularity of hard-right social policies and are essentially “campaigning against themselves,” two leading political commentators argued in an online panel discussion last Monday.

Answering questions from Canada's National Observer editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood, columnists Bruce Livesey and Sandy Garossino spent an hour tackling wide-ranging questions about why today's Canadian conservative movement has moved so far to the right, its hopes for retaking power in the face of an increasingly progressive populace, and how evangelical Christians and Big Oil got a stranglehold on the right.

“The social conservative base is enormously powerful,” Livesey told Solomon Wood and the audience of 100 participants on the Zoom webinar, part of Conversations, sponsored by Canada's National Observer. “The reason (leadership rivals) Peter MacKay and Erin O'Toole have taken the positions they're doing — which are ludicrous in terms of ever trying to get elected — is because the base has this enormous social conservative element. In order to win the leadership, you've got to pander to them.”

But that's precisely what has lost them repeated elections, and will only worsen their chances over time, he said.

Livesey — an award-winning investigative journalist with experience on CBC's flagship shows The Fifth Estate and The National, Global News' 16×9, and PBS's Frontline — most recently did an analysis on the state of the Conservatives for the National Observer entitled, How Stephen Harper is destroying the Conservative party.

He said he interviewed between 25 and 30 sources for his story, and other than a couple political scientists as experts, focused almost entirely on hearing from Conservative members past and present.

“I tried to basically interview just Conservatives … people within the party, both from when they used to be called the PC (Progressive Conservative) party all the way up to the current generation,” Livesey said. “There's a lot of people who wouldn't talk to me … It was a big challenge; given that I was going to talk to them about Stephen Harper, there seemed to be a bit of a concern.”

But some did want to talk, and could be broadly lumped into two camps: the long-ousted progressive wing of the party, once nicknamed “Red Tories”; and the more recent alumni and strategists of the Harper era.

“If you talked to the sort of Red Tories — the 'liberal' wing of the party — there was no surprise there that they think the party's stuck in a ditch,” Livesey said. “The more interesting thing was finding the younger generation who were around Harper in some capacity, who are beginning to realize — having lost two back-to-back elections — that something was wrong.”

What exactly is wrong, however, he found divisive amongst loyalists. Some expressed hope to find a better leader than Andrew Scheer to save their flagging fortunes. But others, Livesey said, had started to see problems in the party's offerings to voters altogether.

“That's the contradiction the party's in at the moment,” Livesey, author of the book Thieves of Bay Street, said. “The base just thinks, 'We just need the next Stephen Harper to lead us back into power.'

“Abortion and gay marriage — those are the two issues that get social conservatives all agitated, and they want to have something done about them. Harper was brilliant at keeping that element under a lock and key. Scheer was not … nobody trusted him on those issues. The social conservative base is an enormous problem for that party.”

Whoever wins the leadership of the party, Livesey predicted, must “basically ignore what the base is” if they want to win enough seats outside Alberta, the Prairies and rural Ontario.

Hard Right

Garossino, meanwhile, agreed that infighting over who can be the most hardline on divisive issues such as LGBTQ rights and abortion is only hurting the party more with each utterance and campaign plank.

The popular longtime columnist with Canada's National Observer spent years previously as a Crown prosecutor and trial lawyer and Vancouver community advocate. She is also a keen observer of Canadian and American political trends, admitting Monday she's a big nerd for electoral data and crunching riding numbers. While she and Livesey admitted few Tories are likely paying heed to this publication, they ought to at least pay attention to the dismal electoral data.

When it comes to hard-right social issues, the numbers don't lie.

“They're actually campaigning against themselves the more they play to that,” Garossino said. “It doesn't play in any of the areas that the federal Conservatives need to take power. They have got to get into the 905 — the (Greater Toronto Area) — and they've got to get into Quebec.”

According to the most recent polls, the Conservatives are indeed trailing behind the Liberals — despite Scheer's repeated attempts to portray Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a reckless spendthrift, contemptuous of accountability and the rule of law.

A new poll released June 28 by respected pollster Léger Marketing placed Liberals at 40 per cent support, double-digits ahead of Conservatives in voter intentions compared to the Tories' 28 per cent. (The survey of 1,524 Canadians gave the NDP 17 per cent support, the Bloc Québecois seven per cent, and Greens one point behind; the online poll's margin of error could be considered equivalent to 2.5 per cent.) The results mirrored another opinion survey last week.

But yet another poll by Ekos Research found an even starker divide when it comes to gender last week, with Liberals leading among women with a staggering 24 per cent lead over the Tories, which held a slight lead over the Grits among men.

Multi-poll aggregator 338Canada, meanwhile, ran 250,000 statistical election simulations using recent polls and predicted a 189-seat Liberal seat majority if an election were held now, with the Tories trailing at 94 seats (a party needs a minimum 170 seats to win a majority government).

But both Livesey and Garossino reminded participants in the Zoom event that key to electoral victory in Canada is commanding broad support across the most vote-rich, densely populated urban centres — particularly the Greater Toronto Area suburbs, Montreal, and B.C.'s Lower Mainland. It was a lesson former Prime Minister Stephen Harper understood despite his past social-conservative, Reform Party roots.

That's something Livesey believes the Conservatives have lost sight of completely. He has little hope the once-moderate stalwarts of the party will regain control any time soon because of the need to survive the hard-right base that serves as a gauntlet for would-be leaders.

“They're not taking into consideration the electoral math that plays into this,” he explained. “The Tories' base gets them about 30 per cent of the vote, but to win a minority, you need around 35, a majority around 40.

“That means you've got to convince ... the very seat-rich urban hubs like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal … that you represent their interests. That is the programmatic problem with the party now. They have completely clued out to the fact that those voters don't want to vote for that particular platform.”

Stuck on Harper

In his June 25 analysis, Livesey argued former prime minister Stephen Harper remains the most powerful force in today's party, but may be, in fact, undermining “the very thing he created” as his successor Scheer steers the party sharply towards the far right on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights.

It's something Tory supporters should be extremely wary of, particularly as the far-right administration in the pandemic-gutted United States faces “potential devastation of unbelievable proportions because of the failure of this one man,” Garossino said. But the roots of the crisis go back decades to Reagan-era right-wing neoliberal movements, she and Livesey agreed, as billionaires and corporations were effectively handed the keys to power in the U.S.

Today, with tens of millions of unemployed losing their private health benefits, the chickens are now coming home to roost in that country.

“If you look at the trajectory, this is the sum result of a program that began in the '70s and '80s to, in effect, ensure the state did nothing for the average American citizen,” Livesey said. “(It marked) the end of the so-called welfare state — the New Deal type of government — and the capture of the state by largely the billionaire class.”

But although the Tea Party hasn't taken hold to the same extent north of the 49th parallel, similar hardline right movements have found sympathy in many parts of Canada.

Canadians, and particularly those loyal to the Conservative party, ought to worry about similar political movements here gaining any more foothold than they have. But it was actually Canada's Reagan-era Conservative leader who garnered some positive attention in Monday's online discussion.

Faced with a stark ideological choice today, Tories might look for inspiration — and success — to former PM Brian Mulroney.

“The PCs recognized they had to be a centre party to win power. The person most genius at figuring that out was Mulroney, he won two solid majorities … and destroyed the Liberals in Quebec. They had the 'big tent' approach, that social conservatives, Red Tories, environmentalists, people from all walks of life, fiscal conservatives, could all be under the same umbrella." Livesey said.

“It worked until it didn't work.”

Mulroney was also considered a leader on environmental issues, and even stalwart Conservative architect Tom Flanagan told Livesey he hoped for some critical Tory reflection on their climate change and carbon pricing policies.

“There is increasing awareness they have to be better on that front,” Livesey said, “even if it is in a very cynical way.”

But it's not just the evangelicals trying to steer the Tory ship. Another powerful force in the country has leveraged influence extremely effectively. Livesey and Garossino said other than the Tories' social conservative base, the party also has been held “hostage” by the oil industry lobby and some of Harper's former entourage, such as Jason Kenney, now Alberta premier.

Garossino has frequently commented on the state of Canada's Conservatives, most recently in her May 27 column, Stephen Harper's power dissolves, in which she argued that Harper continues to “control his chastened party” from the sidelines, but as “the right’s energy and narrative has been seized by Trumpian ideologues,” the Canadian electoral as moved on and is no longer interested.

Canada's Conservatives ought to ponder those trends carefully before selecting their next leader, Garossino said, but she's not hopeful.

“To get to be a contender nationally, you have to get past the base, which is far more conservative than the Canadian public,” she said. “They're almost fighting against themselves.”

Could the Red Tories stage a Mulroney-inspired comeback — and retake the reins from today's increasingly unpalatable oil and religious party wings? That remains to be seen.

[michelecrowephoto]

In our lifetime, This has undoubtedly been a time like no other. Everyone has had to deal with the struggles of Covid-19, segue to the heinous murder of George Floyd that sparked anyone with a pumping heart to mobilize back into action in a way we haven't before, all the while trying to find the time to celebrate the always important Pride Month that I feel has unfortuately lost a little bit of it's voice this year. We'll have to celebrate doubly hard next year!

But Benny and Andrew were gracious enough to pose for some portraits in our neighboring park in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. In keeping with the tradition of The Universal Family portrait project I asked them "What does Family Mean to you?" I also asked them to talk a little about their thoughts, feelings, struggles, and anything they thought people should hear. Here is what they had to say:

BENNY:

"Family to me means warmth, confidence, support, and love, I've lived here in NYC for over 11 years from Puerto Rico, so here I have created a circle of good friends that I can call family.

...Right now we fighting for our rights, our safety, our lives... Being Negro, Queer and Latino, has made me stronger, much more educated and more careful... I have been very loved and many people have approached me with words of love and support which is also appreciated.

Times are changing and I’m pretty sure that these changes are gonna be for good. Social media has been very useful and I have been involved in virtual parties as well helping friends of the community, and I have also received that love and that helps too. So I have been celebrating in this new way. I can be fine with all that is happening because we are doing things together and we haven’t stopped. These movements are helping all communities. Thank the universe for the BLM movement, and during it we grab our brothers and sisters of our LGBTQ community."

ANDREW:

"I didn't have a particularly good experience with my family growing up. There was a lot of late night screaming in my house, and I have some sleep issues because of that, so to me, family is a group you choose to form in which members support each other and build up one another. I don't think anyone owes a persistently toxic relative anything at all. That being said, I remain close with one of my brothers.

I think that beyond the immediate, vital, and incredibly urgent importance of protecting Black People from the institutional violence being committed against them each and every day, the greater work of dismantling white supremacy (and the police force protecting it) offers every person a very real roadmap to a radically different way of living that serves LIFE, instead of this bleak meaningless drudgery that most people are forced to accept under the current system. Black liberation is the key to unraveling the lie of the American Dream. Once white people accept that the U.S. was built on stolen land via slave labor and genocide, they can get to work forcing America to make good on her broken promises. Dismantling white supremacy means a better life for ALL people, not just the 1% in this country, who use racism as their greatest divisive tool.

I can only speak to the experience of being gay, enby, and white in this moment, and striving to be anti racist in my life. That being said, when I moved here in 2016, I landed in a group of "cool" white gays involved in the fashion industry and nightlife here who criticized and frankly bullied me for being "a social justice warrior." They also told me and a close friend of mine that our nonbinary gender identities were tragic attention-seeking behaviors, and that New York City was a post racial society - if we wanted to be social justice warriors, we should "move to Portland" and get out of New York, because people weren't going to tolerate it here. I had just lost my mother to cancer, and didn't know many people in New York, so it put me in the incredibly difficult position of either acquiescing to their version of reality or trying to figure out New York on my own in the middle of intense grief. To this day, I deeply regret not pushing back harder against them.

Partially because of the ubiquitous and exigent nature of 45, and partially because of the hard work and insistence of protest movements like BLM, I've seen the kind of rhetoric I first experienced here shift over the past four years. Gays who wanted to ignore the realities of injustice here in NY, realized that it wasn't going to fly anymore. I want to believe that this shift is because they experienced a change of heart and really came to empathize with people experiencing discrimination and injustice, but the cynic in me knows that for many, they've adopted social justice in the same way big corporations throw a rainbow flag up in June.

But, I bring this up because the people who held, and still hold, these grossly misinformed, ignorant, and frankly, harmful opinions are GATEKEEPERS to Queer culture here in New York. These are the people who are on the list for big parties, who DJ at the local bars, and who dance on the floats at Pride. They decide who has a voice and who doesn't. So, we have an obligation, each of us, to make sure that we hold people in our community accountable all year around, and not just during Pride."

:: Brooklyn, NY

[hepworld-blog]

2017: confusion, hopelessness, and silver linings

Remember on January 1st of 2017 when someone altered the Hollywood sign to say hollyweed? Well I guess we should’ve known the year would be all downhill from there.

Ok that’s not totally fair. On the world stage it was a year of highs and lows, disasters and improvements, and it’s difficult to separate the good from the bad. If I had to sum up my year, I’d label it as in confusion. World events seemed to be one disaster after another all through the year. From a rise in gun violence in the United States, to a humanitarian crisis against the Rohingya people, a catastrophe in Yemen that the rest of the world has ignored to numerous natural disasters across North America, 2017 was a year of suffering across the globe. Not to mention and an increase in oppressive and chaotic policies from world powers: pushback against free speech in China, efforts to curb internet freedom from every major world power in human civilization, Turkey’s embrace of elected dictatorship, the United States’ rollback of protection on transgender individuals, Spain’s takeover of Catalunya, Russia’s imprisonment of political opponents, a genocide against gay people in Chechnya and the United States’ pullback on climate protections. Some claimed 2016 showed a rebellion of the working class against elites, and heralded populist policies as restoring rule of the common person. 2017 showed how misguided these ideas really were.

But in the middle of all the suffering, 2017 showed us a slight glimmer of hope for us to build our futures on. As an observer of humanity, I was very enthusiastic to see the rise and popularity of the #MeToo movement—that a substantial group of people in western society are willing to listen to the claims of women against harassment, and take a stand against anyone who perpetuates this violence. And this new intolerance of sexual crimes even drifted to the most conservative parts of the united states: a (small) majority of Alabama voters were willing to put aside the politically-divisive atmosphere that they’ve cherished in the face of a candidate whose unapologetic bigotry was overshadowed by his alleged pedophilia. After a tense year in most western countries’ politics, this showed some kind of hope that people would stand together to put what is right before their own pride.

Any discussion of 2017’s silver linings would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the strides taken by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to modernize the countries policies and eliminate corruption. From allowing women to drive, to a reopening of movie theaters, I am hopeful that the oppressive regime will continue its path towards acknowledging human rights to all people. These steps might be small, they may be small victories amidst a larger trend against human rights, but the most oppressed among us are slowly gaining their freedoms. Those people’s livelihoods are worth every struggle. Amidst a general feeling of hopelessness that has surrounded world events, we have a beautiful silver lining. That was a main theme of 2017: hope in the face of hopelessness.

I found it interesting how closely entertainment in 2017 reflected this. Memes became more ironic and cynical as the world seemed to lose its way forward. As life became more confusing and the truth seemed to drift farther away, surreal memes became popular showing the meaningless of the world. Even the newest movie in the Star Wars saga reflected our time, showing how small acts of kindness in the face of huge defeats for the resistance made the whole journey worth it, all while the film’s antihero urges us to put our losses behind us and embrace the uncertainty of the future.

Many of the reactions people had to all this trouble really bothered me, especially people who try to fight what they think is wrong, but aren’t sincere about it. I call it popular protesting, and I know I’ve played along with it sometimes. When there’s some outrage in the world, people speak out about it until its old news, and then they move on to something else. Meanwhile the people affected by the outrage are left to rot, just some pawns in a political game. It’s sick, and it has to stop. Meanwhile people totally ignore crises that are harder to take some fake moral high ground in (again why don’t more people care about the worst humanitarian crisis of the decade in Yemen?).

Of course for us, what makes a year good or bad is more about personal experience than that of world events that don’t affect us personally. And I know a lot of you had amazing years, spending time with friends and making memories. Ironically, I think my year directly mirrored the world’s. Some of the best memories of my life were formed this year, and some of the worst, I felt the general hopelessness and saw silver linings in my own life as in the world. Maybe we’re all just reflections of the world we live in, if we are willing to admit it to ourselves.

At the end of 2016, I asked a friend on Instagram what he thought the key to ethical behavior was. His response was “to accept that you are not any more special than anybody else and act accordingly.” I thought that was a pretty crappy answer at first, but I think he’s right: it takes realizing that you are no superior to anyone else to act in a way that isn’t selfish and act fairly. Everyone is just as confused and scared as you, nobody belongs anywhere, and everyone’s going to die, so you have the same consideration towards all people as you do yourself. So I went into 2017 with that attitude, spent a lot of time thinking about life, and after melding it with my previously-held beliefs, I thought I’d been enlightened or found some sort of key to life. I realize now how arrogant that was to think I had everything in my understanding. I guess if life was easy to figure out, someone else would’ve done it by now.

Here’s the thing. In Atlantis’s culture there’s something called the Jakanta, an ancient practice which refers to a way of living, where you constantly pursue a greater truth, discovering some sort of pattern to the universe. I’m not sure if there’s an allegory in human society but it’s something engrained in our history and I try to live to pursue it. For a long time I felt like I was getting closer to being firmly “enlightened” and gained understanding of reality, and then I came across information that started forcing me to dismantle what I thought were my hard-formed values. The thing is, it was my philosophy of Jakanta that was forcing me out of the ideas I’ve believed my whole life. Realizing that you’ve been wrong and letting go of your so-called sacred cows is probably the scariest thing a person can do. And it didn’t make me happier or feel liberated or anything, it only made my life more chaotic and confusing. Because I loved being that old Hep. That Hep was so passionate and driven, felt wise and validated, like I was going somewhere. I bet if that Hep met me now he would never guess I was once him. Maybe that Hep would rather die than become me, see me as some empty and purposeless shell. But the ironic part is that I came directly from that Hep’s way of thinking.

Anyone who has talked to me at any length knows I’m a more than a little obsessive about the concept of identity (If y’all want, maybe I’ll write a long paper about all I’ve learned about it someday). That’s one of the main reasons I’ve kept my account all these years lol, because constantly being asked who I am by all of you forces me to think about identity and I still don’t have it completely figured out. But this is what 2017 taught me: what defines you isn’t your beliefs or knowledge, because that is constantly changing (either that or you die stupid, like your politicians). Rather I think that what forms a person’s identity is how they think and allow themselves to grow. What are they willing to question? Do they have faith in something? I guess the beliefs that define your identity are the ones about how to grow, not conceptions of the world. So if any of us want to improve, we need to start by adopting a better way of thinking.

So this begs the question, is my way of thinking even good? Obviously questioning and overanalyzing everything like I do didn’t do me any favors, basically destroying whatever walls I’d built up to keep me sane! I feel like after the past year I’ve lost touch with a lot of reality, just drifting through some abstract space I don’t understand. Maybe I’ve gone insane, probably, even. But at least I am authentic to myself. Because it’s so easy to delude yourself, and I’m constantly worried that I’m pushing reality away in exchange for what I’d rather be true to feel secure and accepted. You can convince yourself of anything you want, if it makes you feel good. Maybe if “ignorance is bliss” I should just forget the whole thing and delude myself into whatever is comfortable. For several months I’ve been wrestling with a simple question: if knowing some truth makes me unhappy and sets my life askew, is it worth knowing? I’ve asked a ton of friends about this (thanks y’all). One of them told me what I’d feared: my good friend told me that nobody can never escape ignorance, so learning isn’t relevant. She told me that it’s best to live entirely in faith and not question things that may lead me down questionable paths. My gut reaction was to reject that, but I didn’t understand why. Because she’s right, I will never achieve complete understanding, I know it as did the monks who established the Jakanta in Atlantis 3000 years ago. Was it time to topple that final pillar of my identity and exchange pursuing knowledge for a blissful life?  

It took me a while to come up with a good answer: knowledge builds wisdom, and that helps others. A happy life lived only for itself is no meaningful life. However, I can use my understanding of the world to help others who are struggling with similar situations, and not often, but maybe, I can change someone’s life for the better. If I can help just someone, all the unhappiness in the world is worth suffering. How selfish is willful ignorance! Only those who suffer can sympathize with others. That’s why every religion claims their central figure “suffered in every way.” I’m no more special than anyone else, so if I can help someone through real physical struggles, my mental confusion is worth every second of it. So then knowledge doesn’t always make you happy, but it always makes you better.

See I don’t know when I’ll die. I’m just lucky to have survived for as long as I have. I think I don’t value that enough: I need to make a difference while I still can, in the name of those who didn’t make it through the past year. And most importantly, when my time comes I want to die where I stood, following what I believed in. I don’t want to die complacent, like a former hero who has become irrelevant while his work is undone. That’s why I try so hard to keep improving myself, so that I can pursue what I believe till the very end. Life is too short to check out and stop helping people.

I’m realize I’m rambling, and maybe you’re trying to think up some platitude to respond to me, but I assure you that’s the last way I want you to react. This is not at all a plea for sympathy or some way to evangelize my ideas to you, I’m just putting out there what I’m thinking because maybe it will help someone think. And because everyone always asks me what my “true identity” is: well, this is it. I’m Hep, because that’s how I choose to grow.

Is happiness a lost cause for those of us who question everything like I think is right? I thought so at first. But my good friend Taylor made a point that gave me hope: she says that whatever contentment I lost because of what I’ve learned this year will surely pass. Everyone knows that people resist change, that much has been obvious over the last two years. Missing my old state of mind and feeling less happy about life becoming chaotic and confusing is just that same fear of change. If I embrace the chaos, I’ll eventually find that contentment again. I expect this cycle of understanding and confusion will continue throughout my life. Thinking I know myself, losing it, and moving on. Maybe it will bring with it waves of depression or confusion, but all is worth it because with each cycle I will be better equipped to help others. And so out of this cycle of hopelessness and chaos, I have my silver lining.

You know, seems poetic to me that America, in a year full of politically-charged anger, would experience a full solar eclipse. As some of you know, I made the trek out from Atlantis to middle America to see the full eclipse, and maybe those of you who didn’t do the same will not understand this at all. When the full eclipse began, and the sky had darkened, a cold wind rolled over the plains relieving from a hot summer afternoon and the sun became a beautiful iridescent ring, circling a brilliant silver sphere of the moon. It hovered there in the sky, and for a minute it seemed to give peace to everything beneath it. I was reminded of the words of a certain future empress of Atlantis, 19 years old at the time, nearly 2500 years ago. “When nature reveals to us its full glory, it challenges us to imprint its beauty upon our souls.” She said this while leading a rebellion against a violent and oppressive government that ruled Atlantis, a movement which would result in the restructure of our government and issue in an era of prosperity, peace and stability. To me, the eclipse was a reminder that life and society are improved not by opposing anger with anger, but by individuals each harboring a determined peace and understanding as the foundation of their souls.

This thought is by no means original in the current climate, but while these ideas are often used as tropes to make the user feel righteous they are blatantly ignored in practice. Maybe many of them try to live by it. I know I’ve failed at applying this idea many times, because anger is such an easier response to fear and confusion than temperance and self-examination. It is my challenge to keep improving myself to approach this, and I expect I will continue pursuing this goal for the rest of my life.

I’m not a believer in new years resolutions. You can keep your “new year new me” crap, because one week in, you’ll realize you have no means to achieve your goals, give up and be twice the slob you were beforehand. Heck I bet a handful of you already gave up. Because you can’t just change your habits and beliefs on a whim, all you can hope to do is make an effort to grow. So in that spirit I’m giving myself a challenge to give myself a direction to improve. I probably will fail to follow it many times, but that’s okay as long as I keep trying.

Here’s my challenge, to start the year. For one, I’m not going to fall into the trap of popular protesting. If something bad is going on, I’ll either keep spreading awareness and don’t stop until it’s fixed—no letting go when the public stops caring—or I’ll let someone else carry the fight. There’s nothing worse than an insincere activist. And if someone is being unethical it does me no good to hate on them. The best reaction is to behave in the way opposite of them, acting positively instead of negatively. As my man Ghandi once said, you gotta be the change you wish to see in the world. I think I’m going to try to cut judgement out of my life altogether: whenever something happens or someone says an idea, my first reaction is often to identify it as good or bad. Just like I’m not a fan of names, I’m not a fan of those labels, and I’ll work to stop that response in myself. Every time you label something, you keep it from being properly questioned, and that’s unhealthy for me. And finally, as always, I will try to be a decent person, try to make an impact on those around me and work to acquire knowledge and improve my thinking.

That’s where I’m going in the next year. I’m not asking you to agree with it or adopt the same challenge, but I hope you ask yourself where you want to grow. Every day is another step in the journey to make yourself authentic, and I hope you all live to be the best versions of yourselves. Don’t be afraid to leave your pasts behind and look to the future, always find ways to be kind, and never stop questioning your thoughts.

Hep out.

[anonetc]

They Have Stolen Our Thunder

Yesterday, in Harvard Square in liberal Cambridge, MA, two giant pickup trucks, one beeping its horn, both laden with American flags and pro-Trump signs, drove through. It made me think of the kind of intimidation that the Nazi’s used in their earliest years. 

But, my complaint is not their protests. They have the right to do that. I am upset that we are not. We are protesting in our progressive neighborhoods and liberal cities and are still operating under the good-government Obama/Clinton rules, the misguided belief that the means matters in the end, that as long as we behave ourselves and play by the rules, eventually people will come to see things our way. That’s not how it always works. 

The war to end slavery killed at least 2 out of every 100 Americans, including Abraham Lincoln. 

The labor rights movement saw at least 1,000 striking workers killed between 1870 and 1920. But, the capitalists lost ground and we got the 40 hour work week, the end of child labor, Social Security, labor unions, and other worker protections. 

Winning civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s costs the lives of 40 activists and landed thousands more in prison. 

In the 1970s and 80s, the women’s rights movement staged massive rallies, marches, and protests to secure more rights for women against harassment, violence, and discrimination, and those on the side of feminism fought against an equally aggressive Phyllis Schlafly, the New Right, the so-called Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan.   

From the late 1960s through the 1980s, the LGBTQ movement included the Stonewall riots, radical Act Up! protests, as well as marches and rallies without any corporate sponsors. And these groups secured money to fights AIDS, to reduce discrimination, and secure greater rights and gay marriage. 

Since then, the good government Democrats, those who trust the system and believe in fairness, have watched as hard-earned voting rights, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, immigrant rights, and workers’ rights have been eroded.  

Yesterday’s left, like today’s right, understood that what matters in the end is the end. To stop the rise of Trumpism, we may need to disturb our neighbors, engage in civil disobedience, go where we are not welcome, and stand up to the mob with mobs of our own. One thing is clear, we can’t count on the Democratic Party to show the same ruthlessness that has served the Republican Party so well.