If someone is alienated by seeing a person in a pup mask marching at pride, they were never an ally in the first place and have a lot of work to do to deal with their internalized sex negativity/queerphobia before they can become one.
You do realize, don’t you, that the people who don’t necessarily want us dead but do want us to suppress ourselves are still homophobes, right? “I don’t mind gay people, I just don’t want them shoving it down my throat” is also homophobia. Those people are also our enemies who must be fought.
There’s a secret the right knows that the left (or at least liberals) still haven’t cottoned onto: Respectability politics is bullshit. You cannot push someone to the left or right by acting too radically right or left. (They’ll claim that by being loudly left you are pushing average people to the right, but this a lie and they know it. They are merely trying to shut you up.) Moreover, the louder and with more conviction you say something, the more the general public will agree with you. Why do you think election lies are so popular? They’re horseshit, but Trump says them with his whole chest. An unapologetic lie is more appealing than a meek truth.
If you still think that being “respectable” matters, consider, again, Trump. Everything about him seems like it should alienate voters. He breaks every norm of our political system. He says the quiet part loud. He’s openly bigoted and got caught on tape admitting to sexual assault. He’s a boorish, unpolished moron with no filter. And people fucking eat it up. People don’t just not care about respectability, they actually respect people more when they flout it.
That’s why we have to be loud and freaky and in-your-face. No movement has ever gotten anywhere without fringe radicals and militants pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. To quote Assata Shakur, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” Some ideas are not to be negotiated with; they are to be defeated. Queerphobia is one of those ideas.
The establishment knows the radicals are the dangerous ones, too. The ones who will actually change things. There’s a reason you’re taught about MLK in school but not Malcom X. But remember–even MLK, the most respectable and peaceable black man imaginable, was still too radical for white people. They still killed him.
It does not matter how respectable you are. It will not save you.
If someone is alienated by seeing a person in a pup mask marching at pride, they were never an ally in the first place and have a lot of work to do to deal with their internalized sex negativity/queerphobia before they can become one.
You do realize, don’t you, that the people who don’t necessarily want us dead but do want us to suppress ourselves are still homophobes, right? “I don’t mind gay people, I just don’t want them shoving it down my throat” is also homophobia. Those people are also our enemies who must be fought.
There’s a secret the right knows that the left (or at least liberals) still haven’t cottoned onto: Respectability politics is bullshit. You cannot push someone to the left or right by acting too radically right or left. (They’ll claim that by being loudly left you are pushing average people to the right, but this a lie and they know it. They are merely trying to shut you up.) Moreover, the louder and with more conviction you say something, the more the general public will agree with you. Why do you think election lies are so popular? They’re horseshit, but Trump says them with his whole chest. An unapologetic lie is more appealing than a meek truth.
If you still think that being “respectable” matters, consider, again, Trump. Everything about him seems like it should alienate voters. He breaks every norm of our political system. He says the quiet part loud. He’s openly bigoted and got caught on tape admitting to sexual assault. He’s a boorish, unpolished moron with no filter. And people fucking eat it up. People don’t just not care about respectability, they actually respect people more when they flout it.
That’s why we have to be loud and freaky and in-your-face. No movement has ever gotten anywhere without fringe radicals and militants pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. To quote Assata Shakur, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” Some ideas are not to be negotiated with; they are to be defeated. Queerphobia is one of those ideas.
The establishment knows the radicals are the dangerous ones, too. The ones who will actually change things. There’s a reason you’re taught about MLK in school but not Malcom X. But remember–even MLK, the most respectable and peaceable black man imaginable, was still too radical for white people. They still killed him.
It does not matter how respectable you are. It will not save you.