Yes, GLBT People Need Protection Under the Law

 

I was reading Jezebel (don't judge me) when I came across the story of yet another bigoted bakery who refused to make a cake for a couple who are getting married.

An Oregon bakery owner, Pam Regentin of Fleur Cakes, has refused to make a wedding cake for two brides-to-be, Erin Hanson and Katie Pugh, soley because they are gay.

"I mentioned Erin in passing," said Pugh of her future wife, "And said a 'she' in passing too, in the email. A few days later she called back… and verified it was a same-sex marriage." That's when Regentin refused to bake the wedding cake the couple had requested, with a lovely, "Not from my kitchen." When pressed by a local reporter, Regentin stated, "I believe I have the liberty to live by my principles."

So apparently, Regentin stands behind her right be a bigot despite the fact that what she is doing is outright illegal. According to Oregon's 2007 Equality Act, Regentin cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  I can only hope that the couple who were denied a wedding cake will sue this bakery into the stone ages.  In this space, I don't need to talk about the damage of homophobia because regular readers are well aware of how oppression hurts marginalized bodies but I would like to address the following comment which I read on Jezebel on their piece about this heinous incident.

New Jersey Teens Create a White Girl Club

I recently came across a story about a group of teens who created a White Girl's Club. The club  became so popular that it quickly spread to other schools. Apparently, a group of these young women showed up at school on PI day wearing shirts identifying them as members of this club with a teachers permission no less. The teens communicated using instagram and twitter.  

 Another Franklin High School club member commented the club members aren’t offending anyone and tells others to “stfu.”

When another girl commented that the postings were offending people, a club member responded that they weren’t offending anyone.

“You’re choosing to take offense to statements that weren’t about you in the first place,” a club member responded.

Twitter postings by this student included comments such as “Al Sharpton ain’t gonna save your ass now” and “Sometimes I wonder if I crossed a line, but then I remember I’m white and I can do whatever the (expletive) I want.”That same girl sent out a tweet saving “Africa this way” with a arrow pointing down. (source)

Thankfully, the school board is disbanding the club and demanding that those involved get counseling.  The local NAACP is apparently going to investigate the club.  There are some parents speaking out about the club itself, but I am more interested in the parents of the teens involved in the club itself.  You see, attitudes like this don't just develop over night; they are carefully nurtured for years and represent a society which uplifts Whiteness in every agent of socialization.  The families of these girls in particular let them down because they didn't not confront their White privilege and in fact encouraged them to believe and promote their undeserved White privilege.

A White Girl's club is certainly not needed anywhere in North America.  Unsurprisingly, many of the comments on the linked article seek to defend the teams by claiming hypocrisy citing the possible intervention of the NAACP.  A group dedicated to the advancement of Blacks is seen as racist by many of the commenters. Groups like the NAACP can only be deemed problematic by those refuse to admits the historic privilege which Whiteness has lived with for centuries and how this privilege has negatively impacted the lives of POC.  They absolutely refuse to acknowledge that ongoing inequalities exist and claim that the pendulum has swung so far that Whiteness is now in fact systemically under attack.

 In recent years, we have seen an upswing in students wanting to form clubs to support Whiteness, which suggests that youths are being taught that Whiteness is under threat. What they perceive as a threat is actually a fear of a loss of privilege.  The irony is that this loss of privilege is largely in the mind because Whiteness still exists with massive social power and White people can always count on the colour of their skin to grant them access, opportunities, power, and wealth, relative to POC in the exact same circumstance. These children are being taught that they will not be able to benefit from their Whiteness like generations before them.

Please Don't Let it Be One of Us

If you are a member of a marginalized community, at some point a crime, or a ludicrous action will become public or go wildly viral and the first thought that will go through your head is, "please don't let it be one of us." We will follow up on the story, find out that it is indeed one of us, shake our heads and think about how the action of one individual will come to reflect upon us. If you are privileged, you have never had this experience.

The moment I heard about the Boston Bombing, I thought please don't let them be of colour and please don't let them be Muslim.  When I saw a headline about a man being arrested after calling 911 trying to order burgers and weed, I said, "please don't let him be Black." Certainly, whenever a mass murder happens, neurologically atypical people cringe because they are aware that the media will try to explain that the killer was "crazy" and that's why they acted in that fashion. Just look at the response to the Newton CT. shooting last December.  For many, the gun culture and the relative ease at which most can lay their hands on a weapon in the U.S. was not the problem but that a so-called crazy person had access to a gun. Tory MP Nigel Evans has been accused of rape but when you google his name, all you will find is article after article referring to the alleged incident as gay rape.  You better believe that there are members of the LGBT community who are cringing about this. This kind of thinking happens all the time.  It happens because if you are a marginalized person, though you are an individual, the world does not perceive you as such. Though we know it's a trap to think this way, it's impossible not to in a world determined to define us as a homogenous group with negative traits.

Privileged people don't know this feeling because they don't know what it is to be targeted for who they are. Even people who have privilege in one area and negotiate an ism in another, cannot always understand this feeling.  For instance, a White, straight, cisgender able bodied woman will be marginalized by gender but she cannot hope to understand what it feels like to feel concern that she will be universalized in this manner.  When a violent crime is committed by a woman, no one initially hears about the event and says please don't let it be a woman.  That is not to say that White, straight, cisgnder able bodied women aren't expected to conform to ridiculous gender expectations, or that they are not shamed for an inability, or a determined decision to thwart supposed norms. In fact, in the case of White, straight, cisgender able bodied  women, it specifically comes down to the fact that they are perceived as either delicate flowers who need protecting or as victims.  Certainly, this is damaging but it does not amount to the same universalizing pressure to be responsible for the actions of other women. This is particularly true if the criminal behaviour is performed by a WOC.

In the real world Coming Out is a risk

This is a guest post from Sparky, of Spark in Darkness.  Many of you are  familiar with him from Livejournal, as well as from his insightful and often hilarious commentary here. Each Tuesday, Womanist Musings will be featuring a post from Sparky. 

So another famous person comes out of the closet and there are many reactions. Some of which are great, some of which are awful for obvious reasons, some of which are awful for less obvious reasons – and there’s one that always annoys me: someone who wants to know what the fuss is about

This comes from two sources. Either the homophobe who finds all this GBLT stuff so very icky and would rather we hide it and not be so open and icky everywhere. Or the oh-so-progressive ally who wants to show just how NORMAL being GBLT is to them that they don’t understand why anyone cannot be so totally blasé about the whole GBLT thing, why they’re surrounded by GBLT people, have a full stable of GBLT friends and barely even notice sexuality or gender identity any more, they’re just so enlightened, precious.

I’m sure we’ve seen the lines:

 “Why is everyone making so much of a fuss?” “Why is it relevant?” “It shouldn’t matter whether people are GBLT or not”

No, it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be a big fuss. We should live in a world where a full range of sexualities and gender identities are fully accepted and integrated into our daily lives. We should live in a world where straightness and cisness isn’t assumed. We should live in a world where we could go into any industry, any element of the media, every place where human beings live anywhere on Earth and be confident in finding a full range of sexualities and gender identities happily part of society as full and equal participants.

We should also live in a world without people starving to death, people dying from diseases that can easily be cured and one without Tories, Tea Partiers and the alien creature on Donald Trump’s head that’s feeding on his brain. We should also live in a world where I didn’t see a picture yesterday of a gay teen who was starved, beaten, had his arms broken and was forced to eat faeces before he died.

We don’t live in this world, alas. We live in this world. The real world – yes it’s a very unpleasant place but it’s discouraged to take more than brief holidays away from it.

UFC fighter Touches ESPN anchor Sage Steele’s hair during interview

Since beginning this blog, I have written about the desire of White people to pet us at will.  I have yet to meet a Black woman who doesn't have a story to tell about this inappropriate touching.  In the latest public incident, Sage Steele was interviewing UFC fighter Chael Sonnen, when out of the blue he requested permission to touch her hair.



Steele graciously leaned forward and Sonnen took a huge hand full for her hair and said, "I love your hair btw. Has that every happened to you before? Because everyone that sits in this chair is thinking it I assure you.  That's real hair people and it's very soft I might add."

Introducing Loki

Hey everyone, a few weeks ago we opened our home to a new undog (shush it's not denial), very aptly named Loki.

 

He's high energy and pure trouble. Already he has declared himself above the dog and drinks from poor Sookie's water bowl.  He also has zero manners when it comes to human food but we are working on it. 

It's Time to Stop Fawning

This is a guest post from Sparky, of Spark in Darkness.  Many of you are  familiar with him from Livejournal, as well as from his insightful and often hilarious commentary here. Each Tuesday, Womanist Musings will be featuring a post from Sparky.

I’ve written a post before about low expectations and why we need to expect more from straight, cis people. There’s a bare minimum of decent adult behaviour they should grow up and start observing

Well, the first step to ensuring that is to stop fawning over them for every damn little thing. There are a ridiculous number of straight, cis people who expect parades, parties and baked goods in responds to every remotely kind word or just an admission that they’re not bigots (well, claim not to be). It’s a ridiculously low standard and we have some responsibility for this – because we do praise people (and, on a related note but one I won’t go into here – media representations) for even the most paltry, weak efforts.

Now, this isn’t something I say to other GBLT people as individuals because I don’t approve of that. People have to negotiate their circumstances as best they can and everyone tends to know their own lives better than outsiders. One of the many aggravating things about being a marginalised person is policing from fellows about doing marginalisation/activism right

That’s not to say I’m not going to throw lots of criticism at a Quisling, I most certainly will, but nor will I shame people for the accommodations they have to make in their own lives and in their own contexts. We all have to walk our own roads and no-one knows what potholes, road blocks and black ice that lurk down yours but yourself. And if that means you have to fuss a few straight people and hand out cookies, even through gritted teeth, well you know the people around you and how you have to survive among them best

That changes entirely for professional advocate bodies which, for a huge myriad of reasons, I just have no time for, I really really don’t, not any of them. For every good thing they do, there seems to be a monumental shitton of crap they pull (which turns into a twofer of annoyance since their arseholery is annoying and then you get further arseholes who decide that I need to apologise on behalf of an organisation based on another continent – because, y’know, all gay people are collectively responsible for what every gay person does, don’tchaknow, and individuality is something only privileged people get).

Anyway, before I got derailed a little, let’s get back to fawning, because this is one of the many many things that I hate about these organisations that purport to speak for us. It seems like, to be “relevant” these orgs are usually more interested in appealing to the straight oppressors, to be part of the system than they are to be advocates for the people they’re supposed to be advocating. And one of the classic ways they do this is by not just handing out Cookies – but Cakes, tarts and a whole patisserie of pastries for the slightest damn reason. And it has to stop – stop making us cheap, stop making us easily bought, stop pretending we have to be appreciative for basic humanity – you have, annoyingly, far too large a platform to be handing out ally cookies so casually.