let's face it

I recently turned 24. When I was 16 I wasn't sure I'd make it this far! Hell, when I was 23 I wasn't sure I'd make it this far.

Shit's still happening in my life that makes me feel helpless and unstable, but instead of turning my anger inward I'm turning it outward, exploring curses and shit. In a book that has sections titled "The Homewrecker: [for when] you want to destroy a marriage." The first sentence below that is, "Do you really?"

Do I really. Is it a marriage or just marriage that I want to end? To be sure it's one in particular, because the people involved in this particular marriage really fucked me over and I am angry. It's hard to know what to do with that kind of energy. A friend recommended that I make pretty things while thinking about the friend who got married and then moved away and then fucked me over, so that I would be able to move on. But I'm less convinced that I can make pretty things at all, and I'm not convinced at all that I was ever able to sublimate my anger into anything productive.

This girl, my friend, she got married to this creep. I will tell you what kind of a creep he is. He's one of those dominant dudes, like BDSM dominant. Did I ever tell you I give those kind of dudes a wide berth? They're fucking creepy. Something about dudes, especially white dudes, wanting to own women, control them. Explicitly, like it's part of their sexual identities that they've put a lot of thought and consideration into. (And BDSM isn't something that freaks me out or that I think is necessarily antifeminist or whatever. By the way.) How do these dudes not understand what the fuck it is they're saying and what kind of ideas they're promulgating?

I thought about all of this and I lost hope. I lost hope in women, I lost hope in men. I lost hope in friendship. I lost hope in love. I lost hope in kink. I lost hope in feminism. I lost hope in philosophy. None of these things will work because they don't make women stick together. As long as a woman is content to remain, psychologically, twelve years old, to abandon friends who care fiercely for her for a man who cares for her as long as she remains his property, it's all for nothing.

She told me before she left. She was afraid that she was going to lose something. She liked the person she'd become over the summer while she was hanging out with me. Something clicked for her, I guess, because I had never heard her say anything that even remotely suggested she liked herself. So I didn't want to let go of her and I tried to keep in touch with her. I didn't care if I was the one trying to call her and the one trying to hang out with her when she was in town. I made her promise to stay in touch with me before she left. A couple facebook messages, a couple posts on twitter and that was that. I started demanding she pay me the money she owed me and then nothing at all anymore.

What makes women do this?

I'm not a feminist anymore. I can't claim a label like that. Gender parity? I don't believe in it, because it doesn't exist, because we'll never get there. Not as long as women keep themselves under these structures. Not as long as they're willing to let dudes separate them from everything just for a little taste of approbation.

I don't want to change anything in this society. I just want to take a few women and get the fuck out because I am tired. There is nothing here for us anymore. There is no progress. We're just regressing, and not just along gendered lines, either. It's all lines. Somehow the powerful are just gaining more power. We got a black president here in the U.S. I think we've peaked. Somehow in a strongly Democratic, supposedly liberal executive and legislative branch we got campaign finance reform which basically said the pantomime is over. The rich have won. Arizona isn't the end of the immigration reforms that say let me see your papers. So the whites have won too.

And let's face it. The men have always been winning.

Pessimistic? Sure. But what exactly do I have to be optimistic about? The HRC has bought Harvey Milk's camera shop and now they're planning on selling mouse pads with his face on them, with the proceeds going to HRC, of course. Never mind the fact that when he was still alive they didn't exactly get along. Slow change and all that. Never mind that there could be a crisis center for gay kids there. It's much more important that the HRC inflate its wallet so they can more effectively fight for white, wealthy gay folks.

See? The same shit keeps getting kicked around. The same people keep getting kicked around. Back in October all we could think about was young white gay men killing themselves. But this months it's back to basics. DADT and marriage.

It's sure good to be back where we were.

I AM A VICTIM OF H8 AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE EVEN THOUGH SOME SHIT GOT DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL IN CALIFORNIA

God help me, I'm going to piss all over everybody's parade.

I wrote that post a couple days ago not realizing that the Prop 8 hearing was going to be yesterday. I thought I was just screaming into the ether, as I do.

I got mildly nauseated at the outpouring of sugary sentiments after the decision to overturn Prop 8. My RSS feed got blown up almost immediately. Same thing with my facebook feed.

Perhaps 'nauseated' is a bit strong. Now's not the time for hyperbole. Just honesty. I was majorly fucking irritated at all that young idealism that flowed like molasses just because one judge had the courage to say that maybe homos are people too and the desire to give them a different legal status than the straight folks is not exactly constitutional.

Like I said before, just because I oppose gay marriage doesn't mean I oppose equal rights. Of course it's good that the straight people are slowly - slowly - chilling out and giving people the rights that should have been theirs all along. I suppose when I say I oppose gay marriage, what I really mean is I oppose the fact that this is our cause. I oppose the fuck out of that. Simply put, I'm looking around at all this excitement and I'm wondering if I'm just not gay enough because it's not hitting me in all the right emotional centers. I am not particularly excited about my people - and god help me, that's what all those freaks and queers and all the rest of you are, I'm right there with you, no matter how many tokens you willingly accept from the straight folks - being political pawns again and again and again and willingly stepping onto that chessboard. Willingly taking to the streets over this shit with big old signs that say EQUALITY and some rainbows and other shit on there too.

There are some very specific people that are benefiting from this particular kind of equality. It is the people who are willing and able to fit into a scripted role, a role that puts them somewhat above the rest of us who cannot or will not fit into that role. The role of property holders, heads of nuclear families. Who willingly take all the rewards you get for staying in character and who can blame you. I certainly can't.

Marriage does solve some problems. A person who has no health coverage can ride on their spouse's policy (if they have one). Jointly-held property is protected in case one person dies and their family members want to pitch a fit. Not to mention the tax breaks married couples get. Living wills and hospital visitation rights and the rest of it.

But people who aren't married or in a long-term monogamous relationship have problems with health insurance. And this certainly won't help the transfolks who get shafted constantly by the medical industry. People are still poor and sick and down and out because they're black or undocumented or mentally ill or or or.

And I guess that's what my point is. Intersectionality. Enjoy your equality, gay people, because the rest of us sure as fuck ain't seeing it. There is a social justice movement that is entirely separate from the gay rights movement, because the gay rights movement is all about these few little things to create nice communities of wealthy gay people. Soon the homos will be happy. Soon they will put away their banners and placards because their work will be done.

From Dorothy Surrenders: We won, finally, we won. After so many defeats, so many bitter rejections, so much heartache and so much needless hate, the simple truth won out. Our love is no different. Our love is not wrong. Our love deserves protection. Our love is just love.

Maybe I'm just not gay enough, because I don't see how adding more leverage to the institution of marriage, under the auspices of love, is going to help anything much. It takes more than love to keep a revolution going.

It's just that. Revolution for some people. We can forget about the rest. As long as we have enough equality and rainbows we'll know we're in the right. Couch it all in the language of human rights, disregarding all those other humans who have rights, those humans we don't exactly have a stellar track record with. People of color. Transpeople. Low-income people. And jesus, that's just the people in this country that we're totally disengaged from.

What intersectionality means is that oppression does not occur along a single axis. It's not just gay vs. straight. It's not just men vs. women. It's not just white people vs. people of color. It's not just rich people vs. poor people. A variety of different factors play out in the oppression of different groups. And while one group is still oppressed none of us are truly free of oppression. It's why gay men are not free of the oppression visited upon women by misogynistic society, for example. By having sex with other men, gay men fail to fulfill gender expectations and fall victim to patriarchal culture in the same ways women do.

That's why NO H8 isn't revolutionary enough. You will all take this little bit of validation from the straight people - validation of something we knew all along, that we aren't fucked up and wrong, at least not because of this whole, y'know, gay thing - and you will hold it close to your hearts and it will be the thing that they wanted. Now the homosexuals and their money can be subsumed into straight society and everything will be alright.

Maybe I'm just not gay enough, because I'm not going to quote Harvey Milk and I'm not going to celebrate this. There is nothing to celebrate. The oppressed are going to become the oppressors, as newly-privileged people invariably do.

the Great White Hope of San Francisco

I don't update much because I don't have a lot to say.

This is not to say that I don't have opinions. I have a lot of those.

Opinions about gay folks, for instance. I am one. Hopefully you know this.

That said, I've noticed that "gay issues" in recent times comes down to two things: fags wanting the right to serve openly in the US war machine I mean military and how a gay teenager can't go to prom with her girlfriend.

Fact: Fags are butching it up army-style! Oh I know it's not just fags who want to play army - the dykes want all up in there too. Wanting to do their patriotic duty. Military service is a career option for people who otherwise might not have many options. It's kind of like the Roman Empire, where the disenfranchised or completely unenfranchised folks can get themselves some social mobility by killing for a country that hates them and is all too happy to let them get themselves maimed and killed in straight white people wars. Patriotism! Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and proper to die for one's country. Even when that country is always looking for ways to make sure you're as irrelevant as possible because your very existence offends a small minority of your fellow citizens!

Fact: It sucks to be a gay kid in America! Not news, people. Stop the gum-flapping and the arm-waving. Jesus Christ Superstar, do you know how many teenagers don't get to go to their prom with their homo significant others? Why the fuck is this a big deal now? What is so special about this one particular case? Why is everyone surprised this has happened? In Mississippi, for god's sake! Has the American South become some bastion of progressivism and I just haven't noticed at all? Because let me tell you, I live here and it hasn't exactly been an overnight metamorphosis of tolerance for the homos up in here, even in liberal-ish North Carolina. It does blow my homo lady brain cells that local parents would have an entirely fake prom just to psych her out and humiliate her. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that the parents who organized this two-prom event were the ones who spawned the kids who are giving this girl a bunch of crap! It's almost like homophobia is a learned set of attitudes!

I'm not saying that this is something that can safely be ignored. All I'm saying is there are a few pieces here that show a bigger picture of what it means to be a homo to mainstream people, and that picture is not really illustrative of what happens in real life. I'm also saying that facebook status slacktivism is not the way to keep this from happening. What will it accomplish when you change your facebook status to "let Constance take her girlfriend to prom!" All that will say to straight folks is that once people finally come around and get over this prom bullshit, they'll pat themselves on the back and say to each other, gosh look what we've done.

And the homo kids who are homeless? Well no one really thinks too much about some hoodlum street kids. For that matter, what about all the rest of those kids who are homeless? Hoodlum street kids.

It's not a secret that the Homosexual Lobby (by which I mean, the Gay Rights Movement, sponsored by Bud Light) has limited itself to a very exclusionist agenda. 1. Spend time with family. 2. Be treated equally. 3. Buy milk. 4. Assimilate into respectable straight society.

Assimilate. There are lesbian couples and gay couples and we're just like you straight folks! We're white, and attractive, and wealthy and have cable and we read all the right magazines and if you would just let us get married we'll shut right up.

Meanwhile the rest of us fags and dykes and people who are outside fags and dykes are just shit out of luck because we don't have all those pretty white people speaking up for us.

Marriage can suck my asshole. I don't want it. I never have. I understand that some people do and I can respect that, because my way of being does not have to be your way of being. It probably isn't a lot of people's way of being. Of course I'm for equal rights. Of course I want that. Who doesn't want to be treated equally?

But y'all is suckas if you think that selling out to the straight people is going to make it all better for all of us homos. When I said marriage can suck my asshole I meant the HRC can suck my asshole. I meant the Courage Campaign can suck my asshole. What a fucking joke. Did I ever tell you about the time Equality NC invited me to their annual conference/banquet? This was when I was just coming into it as a queer kid. I'd read some books. Wore some rainbows. Went to Pride. It was awesome.

They wanted me to give them $150 for the privilege of listening to some rich homos talk about what great work they were doing for equality. Listen homos, I thought to myself, I'm 19 years old. I don't have half that much money. I live with my dad, for chrissakes. I felt excluded.

Listen homos. You have got to snap out of the post-Pride afterglow. It's awesome that Obama gave us our own month. It's in the middle of summer and as we all know, homos love a parade.

He's hoping we'll all die of heatstroke. He's hoping we'll shut up and take to the streets and melt into a fabulous puddle of glitter and feather boas.

He wants us to settle. They all want us to settle. There is so much more than marriage that we need. It just so happens that the things we need are the things that everyone needs.

I keep coming back to this whenever I think about the Gay Rights Movement, sponsored by Bud Light. It was some gay youth org that published this. 48% of homeless youth are homeless because they got kicked to the curb for being homos or trans.

Gavin Newsom, the Great White Hope of San Francisco, cleaned up San Francisco in the 1990s. By "clean up" we mean gentrify. We mean get the riffraff off the streets and make it nice and shiny and safe for the rich people. The poor people will find somewhere else to go. They're like cockroaches, we'll never really get rid of them.

Homeless kids. Street hoodlums. Instead of helping these people we sweep them under the rug. Or throw them under the bus. Get them out of the way so the rich folks feel better.

That's what the Gay Rights Movement is about. Making homosexuality nice and shiny and safe for the rich people. The ones we're trying to convince to let us get married. Because once we can get married, and protect our health insurance and estates, we'll finally have arrived. That's equality.

There's that weird hobo on the corner again. Should we call the cops?