Dear White Women Again

Dear White Women…Again,

I won’t be striking with you.

I could. I finally have a job with actual Paid Time Off so if I wanted to, I could probably have taken off and participated in your little outing. But I won’t be.

Why? Because your strike isn’t for me. It’s an exercise for you. It’s a performance and I’m not here for it.

Now, before you get all up in your feelings and insist on posting your Social Justice CV, I’ll explain.

(For real though, why do you do that. I don’t care if you participated in the actual marches for Women’s Suffrage. White Feminism TM is for white women. If you don’t like that, get to work changing it.)

If the white women organizing this strike had really wanted to be intersectional they would have supported the Day Without Immigrants. Those of you participating in the strike on the 8th could have supported and participated in that. You could have put yourselves at risk to serve a group that has multiple levels of marginalization. But no. Instead, the people organizing this, and those of you who follow them, decided to wait until the eve of the Day Without Immigrants and start advertising a Day Without Women.

Because that didn’t come off as petty and grasping for attention at all.

And, of course, a not small number of you are lecturing Women of Color, Disabled Women, Trans, and Non-Binary Women about how we need have solidarity.

Really? Really, Becky? This is what your solidarity looks like from over here.

If you try to explain how this is really an image of solidarity I will mock you unashamedly.

Seriously, stop with the solidarity bullshit. I’m unimpressed.

What happened to your solidarity at your last little outing? What happened after?

Let me tell you what happened to me.

Foolishly, I decided that I would give my local Beckies a chance. I went to their after march meeting. I was ready to help. I was interested in the rise of a new group of activists.

I found the same old racism. I found a group of women who honestly thought going to a restaurant and paying to be served was a display of cultural competency and respect. I found a group of women who literally shouted down one of two Black women in a room when that Black woman…me, it was me, when I made it clear that they had to challenge the primary employer in our town to be more overt and aggressive on racial justice issues.

I have heard variations of that story over and over from WoC, trans and disabled women who tried to move the self-centered and congratulatory nature of the Women’s March toward real action.

We all faced racism, ableism, cisexism, and transmisogyny.

Do better. Do better right now and continue doing better. Prove to us that you’re interested in intersectionalism. Support those of us with intersections of marginalization. Stop pretending this is a new movement. We’ve been out here for years doing this work. Find organizations that are led by others and give them your time, energy, and labor.

There is a massive job of work to be done and we’re already doing it. Help us or get the hell out of our way.

We’re busy.

 

 

What Makes A Woman?

 

This is not a question I thought anyone needed to address, but Facebook this week has shown me how wrong I am. Because wow, there was so much anti-trans bullshit happening among Black people, especially Black women this week.

So, to answer the seemingly uncomplicated question with a really simple and straightforward answer…

she does.

Her.

If she says she’s a woman then she is a woman.

This is uncomplicated.

Transwoman are women. End of fucking file.

The number of people who took it upon themselves to deny this and question the gender of hundreds of women directly this week…I wish I could say it surprised me but no, I wasn’t surprised. I was just disappointed.

The excuses these people used! Ugh and the really sad thing is that there was some actually valid criticism in the depths of all of the transmisogyny but you would be hard pressed to find it because it got drowned out in the misgendering and anti-everything-that-isn’t -heterosexuality. Yeah I saw that. Don’t think you got away with it.

Look, you can disagree with someone without misgendering them. You can even insult someone without misgendering them. Watch.

 

Caitlyn Jenner is the worst. She is absolute trash. I can’t stand her.

 

See what I did there? Identified the awful human as an awful human while still using the correct gender identifier.

Again, not that fucking complicated.

But no, rather than just type the most basically humane and decent thing a remarkably large percentage of Black people spent the week calling Black (trans)women Black men and pretending that they were doing so out of love for Black people.

That quickly segued into generally anti-Gender and Sexual Minority sentiment, which is actually a huge problem in Black activist circles. Unless they are specifically GSM led, they have an unfortunate tendency to be aggressively heteronormative. People who claim to be intersectional do love to open up their comments to “BLACK WOMEN ONLY” on relationship issues and then ignore and silence any Black women who point out that not everyone is in a relationship with a man.

Yep. All the time. Do better.

And while we’really discussing this, can we leave the term wombmyn and any variation thereof behind us forever? For real, y’all if your only definition of womanhood hinges on the reproductive system you’really just a misogynist in a slightly different outfit and you’re not fooling anyone.

So this is the point where a lot of the people who were agreeing with me are going to change their minds.

Remember when I said some valid criticism was lost in the fray? Yeah.

This is where you should imagine me making Tina Belcher’s uncomfortable groan. Because there was a hell of a lot of privilege being thrown around by white transwomen and a hell of a lot of overtly racist shit from non-Black women. In fairness, it came in reaction to serious transmisogyny but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Yes you were attacked but the fact that a Black person made you made doesn’t give you the right to devolve into racism. If you can’t avoid that under stress then you’re just a racist. Your gender doesn’t enter into it.

Please see the above example of how you can avoid being horrible while disagreeing with people.

It. Is. Still. Not. Complicated.

Black Lives Matter.

Trans Lives Matter.

Black Trans Lives are a thing.

Stop being horrible to each other.

 

 

 

 

So You Want to Wear a Safety Pin Part 2: Is it Really About Your Feelings?

No it is not. It isn’t about your feelings. In case you were wondering and a lot of you were.

Before I get all the way into this, let me welcome my new readers. Welcome new readers. I post intermittently about a bunch of things that range in subject matter from knitting and my cat to activism and politics. Sometimes I write about all of those things at once.

I’m skilled like that.

So, welcome new readers. Hope you stick around. Some of you won’t and this post will be why. I’m OK with that. Please see the tag line of this blog. It’s true.

Moving on.

There has been a lot of comment on my previous post which is great. I welcome commentary. I also strongly advise that anyone who wants to debate with me read the rules of engagement. It’ll just make things easier for everyone.

One of the comment trends I’ve seen is people pointing out to me that Alt-right/racist groups are co-opting the safety pin.

This seems to come as a surprise to some people; the idea that those who hold the most vile of ideologies would attempt to corrupt this symbol of safety. I am not surprised.

Of course they are. Of course, white nationalists are attempting to devalue this symbolic gesture. That’s what they do. They co-opt our symbols, they co-opt our language, they co-opt the concept of bias and racism and paint themselves as the victims.That’s the only way they can get anywhere close to being taken seriously.

As Progressives it is our instinct to pause and take into account the thoughts and feelings of others. That’s part of what makes us Progressives, that ability to understand a plurality of ideas and see more than one opinion on an issue as valuable to one extent or another. I generally think this ability is a good thing, except when people try to use it to shoehorn concepts like “white genocide” onto a list of opinions and points-of-view that any rational person considers valuable.

I’m not linking to the definition of white genocide. Look it up.

Because some points-of-view are not valuable. Climate Change is real. There is no Tooth Fairy. And the concept of white people being subject to racism is laughable. You should laugh at it.

So yes, of course white nationalists are attempting to co-opt the safety pin movement. So what? Wear it anyway. Or don’t. Whatever.

The most common response to this revelation is “what will people think if they see me wearing a safety pin if racists are wearing it?”

To which I say, “who cares?” Seriously. Who cares what people think of you? Do you think that as someone who carries privilege marginalized people are going to see a ten cent pin and suddenly trust you? Do you think the pin is some magical talisman that negates your privilege?

It isn’t.

It’s probably better for you to assume marginalized people aren’t going to trust your good intentions no matter what. Trusting good intentions and the better nature of the privileged is what got us here in the first place.

In fact, the idea that racists might see you wearing a pin and think you are actually on their side could be good. It could be the best possible weapon in a confrontation because when you step in and help the person being attacked the shock of your actions may rock the attacker further back on their heels thus giving you an opening to remove the marginalized person from the confrontation.

What other people think of you doesn’t matter. Helping people does. If you’re not in it to help, then wearing the safety pin isn’t about the marginalized, it’s about your ego. Your ego doesn’t matter. And if you’re suddenly feeling the urge to post your social justice CV in an effort to convince me that wearing the pin isn’t really about your ego, don’t. Because all you’ll be doing is proving it really is about your ego. Don’t wear the pin.

Because it’s not really about the pin either. It’s about the promise. It’s about recognizing that marginalized people are and have always been in danger. The election didn’t change that. The election didn’t embolden anyone. It didn’t make privileged people more bigoted or more aware and comfortable with their privilege. Nothing is different for the marginalized. Only one thing has changed.

Privileged people are noticing. Yes, the SPLC is saying that they have over 200 reports of violence against the marginalized since election night but the key word there is “reports.” They are tracking the data more closely and calling for submissions of incident accounts as a result of the election. But these things were happening before. They’ve always happened.

If you are among the marginalized, especially if you live on the intersection of several marginalized groups, the threat of verbal or physical attack is just something you live with every day.

When I see a vehicle full of white men I don’t think “OMG they might be Trump supporters!” I think “White men are statistically the most violent group in the US and that statistic rises sharply if you are only tracking bias crimes and domestic terrorism.” Because that is the nation in which I live. I don’t think white men might target me for violence because of Trump. I think they might target me for violence because they are white men and I’m neither of those things. That’s all it takes.

I am in no more danger now than I was on Monday, by which I mean I was always in danger. A safety pin doesn’t change that. It doesn’t make me feel safer. A safety pin is a symbol. If that symbol doesn’t carry with it a plan for action then it has no meaning. In which case, don’t wear the pin.

 

 

 

So You Want to Wear a Safety Pin

Great. This is a necessary behavior in the face of the election of the most overtly racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti- gender and sexual minority candidate in the history of the modern United States. You know the rhetoric of his campaign was wrong. It was the very worst thing about America and you want to do what you can to combat the result. Good. Do that.

But don’t do it without a plan. Because the very last thing a tense situation needs is someone full of good intentions but with no knowledge of de-escalation tactics or self-defense. Your intentions are not a tangible shield. If you don’t make a plan, you will get yourself or the person you are trying to defend very killed.

Let’s avoid that.

So make a plan.

Some of you can stop reading now. You have, or know how to make a plan and you don’t need help. Cool. Go forth and make a plan on your own. For those of you who have little or no experience in this realm, I am here to help you.

• Know What The Pin Means.

It is a sign that you are a safe person. A marginalized person who is being harassed will look to you to help keep them safe. By wearing the safety pin you make a public pledge to be a walking, talking safe space for the marginalized. All of the marginalized. You don’t get to pick and choose. You can’t protect GSM people but ignore the Muslim woman who needs help. You can’t stand for Black people who are dealing with racial slurs but ignore the disabled person who is dealing with a physical attack.

This is all or nothing. If you aren’t willing or able to stand up for everyone, don’t wear the pin.

• How Many Plans Will You Need?

Are you single? Do you spend most of your time in public with a significant other? Do you go out with your kids a lot? Are the people you spend time with willing to get involved? If not, do they know not to step in and try to stop you if you get involved? Can you trust them?

Assuming you’ve got a good crew, you need to know beforehand who will engage the aggressor and who will film. If you’ve got more than two people, those people need to have a role. Otherwise they will try to help and that can be bad. They become just another source of noise and confusion in an already confusing situation. Give them something to do. They can corral bystanders, or act as another layer of protection. They can call for help, if the person being attacked thinks that will help.

What about your kids? Are you willing to put your children in a potentially violent situation? Are you willing to have them see their parent in a physical altercation? Are they old enough and do they know who to call in the event that something happens?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, especially if there are children involved, maybe don’t wear the pin.

• How Much Are You Willing to Risk?

This is the most important question. Before you get involved, you have to decide how much you are willing to risk in the interaction. Depending on how privileged and/or sheltered you are, you may be unaware that these kind of interactions can get violent and they can get that way fast.

Are you willing to have violence in your life? Are you willing to be violent in defense of the marginalized? If you’re not willing, that’s fine. Not everyone is. But you need to be realistic. If you wear the safety pin, you are telling people you are willing to confront violence on their behalf. And if you’re not willing to do that, don’t wear the pin.

• Does the Person Want Help?

Don’t just jump in and engage the aggressor. DO NOT DO THAT. Do not assume that the person being attacked wants you to get involved at all. The fact that you are white, or male may make you suspect. No matter how helpful you want to be, or how willing you are to put yourself forward, the person you are trying to help may look at you as just another aggressor. Don’t add to their trauma if they don’t want you involved. And above all, do not forget the reality of being marginalized in America. Calling the police may not be something the person you are trying to help wants. The police don’t make all of us safer and bringing them in could get someone killed. Do not assume that you are going to step in and make everything OK. Allow the person being attacked to lead by their behavior. Follow their lead.

• Do You Know How to De-escalate?

Marie-Shirine Yener did an excellent comic on how to de-escalate a situation in public. The comic itself speaks specifically to anti-Muslim violence but the skills are useful in situations beyond that. Try this first.

• What Will You Do if De-Escalation Doesn’t Work?

If you are also a marginalized person, and by that I mean, not a person who reads as male, cis, het, and white, it is entirely possible that the aggressor will attempt to bypass you or physically engage you to get at their target. Are you prepared for this? Remember how I asked before how much are you willing to risk? This is where the rubber meets the road. Because talking can be hard for some people but violence hurts. That’s kind of the point of it.

• What Will You Do if The Situation Gets Violent?

So, no one like to think about this part but we need to. Can you throw a punch? Can you take a punch? Can you win a violent altercation? Can you hold your own long enough for the authorities to get there, assuming that the authorities can be trusted to help you? Are you willing to be beaten in place of another human being?

I am not judging you if you are not. Most people aren’t. A~ and I were in the military and once you are in, you’re never not a soldier. We are, and always have been willing to lay down our lives for others. Not everyone is us. Not everyone is able to risk what we risk. And that’s OK. But you need to know that if you step up for part of the responsibility the rest of the responsibility may be thrust upon you. It’s an uncomfortable fact but it is a fact.

• Practice!

You’ll feel like a fool but it’s necessary. You can imagine, or you know, watch on YouTube, the sorts of attacks that people have been subject to in the past few months. They are hard to watch and can be triggering but they are significantly less troubling than being in the actual situation with no idea what to do. You need to practice or you are in danger of freezing up and failing to keep your promise. And that’s worse than not wearing the pin at all.

Don’t get me wrong, the safety pin is a good idea but if you are going to wear it, you need to know that it is more than an idea. It is a visible, tangible announcement of your commitment to defend the rights and dignity of your fellow human. If you are not willing to follow that announcement up with action, rethink making the announcement.

National Coming Out Day: This Closet

Let’s talk about this closet, y’all.

I don’t remember coming out of the closet. I know there was a moment when I said the words, “I’m bisexual,” for the first time, but I don’t know when that was. It’s been a while, let’s say, since I “came out” and I’ve been living out and out loud for at least a decade.

Yay me?

What I do remember, is the process of seeing the closet built around me.

When I was a little girl I recall watching an episode, every episode, of the Wonder Woman television show with Lynda Carter. That show actually went off the air when I was four, but through the magic of syndication I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every single moment of magic and Amazonian badassery.

When I was about five or six I turned to my mother during one episode and said “I want to marry her some day.”

Look at her. you’d want to marry her too.

My mother’s response was “No. You want to be her.”

OK well yes that too. But I really wanted to marry her. Because as  little kid, it never occurred to me that wasn’t allowed.

I was bi. So I thought everyone else was bi too. Somehow I got it in my head that when you grew up and got married you would just decide on a gender to attach to. I don’t know, kid logic. Don’t ask me.

In that moment, when I was corrected on what I wanted and how I felt my eyes were opened and I started to really look around at the way other people treated the concept of bisexuality and the first nail went in to my closet.

Both the (admittedly few) gay people in my life and the straight people looked at bisexuality as if it were simply a stepping stone to being gay or straight, as if the only real, adult choices were on either side of the spectrum but nowhere in the middle.

Bisexuality was a punchline at best. And there was zero representation aside from the periodic predatory bi on television. There was another nail.

Being gay was vilified among my peer group and even the teachers joined in at the jokes told at the expense of the only gay teacher in my elementary school. More nails.

So I decided to be straight because that seemed easier.

Pssst…it’s not easier. I just thought it would be. I was wrong.

For at least 30 years I did my best to kill half of myself. That didn’t work, clearly but the attempt was still harmful.

Then at some point, which as I mentioned I don’t remember, I came out.

And you know what? Coming out did not magically make everything better. I was still in a relationship with an abusive narcissist. I still didn’t really know how to be in a good relationship. I didn’t know who I was.

All of that knowledge took a further ten years. And, you know, it’s still a work in progress.

So, what’s the point of all this?

The point is, coming out isn’t an ending. It’s not the solution to a problem, it’s the first step in problem solving. And it’s not a thing you do just one time. It becomes part of your life, like breathing.

If the closet is safer, then good. Stay safe. if coming out is the best choice then do that. But, we have to be equally supportive of both. If not, we’re failing as a community.

 

Luke Cage: Don’t Believe the Hype

I wanted to love this series. I wanted it to be what Jessica Jones was for me; a feminist conversation and lesson. Except, you know, about Blackness. I wanted to see the iconic Black hero, doing what he does, being invulnerable and full of integrity while unapologetically Black. I wanted that. But I didn’t get it.

Instead I got the shell of that. Worse, I got, we all got a show that is pretending to be unapologetically pro-Black while actually reinforcing the worst kind of stereotypes. We deserve better.

Look, part of this can’t be helped. The source material is made of racist stereotypes. That’s just factual.   A Black hero in the 1970s had no chance of being anything other than Blaxploitation and that’s pretty much all Power Man has ever been. The comic was racist. The villains were racist stereotypes just like the hero and the story was made of racist tropes. It’s generally not a great comic and has always been problematic. It’s just that, at the time, that was all we had. So we accepted it, bad as it was because representation matters.

But Marvel and Netflix had managed to make Daredevil not terrible and Jessica Jones really good, so believe me when I say I went into this show prepared to sing its praises like most other people are doing.

But I can’t.

Because this show is racist as hell and as I mentioned we deserve better.

It started out racist and it stayed racist the entire time.

Literally, the very first thing we see Luke do is blow off the darkest skinned femme protagonist, well non-antagonist, in the entire show who is hitting on him in front of her son, of course she has a son. Of course we can’t have a professional woman with sort of dark skin simply being awesome and owning her sexuality. Nope. There are whole levels of why she’s not attractive to him in the few scenes she has and they’re all centered on colorism and misogynoir.

But he hooks up with Misty Knight, who is lighter than the first woman, that same night.

And he ends up with the lightest woman.

Because, of course he does.

Let’s be clear, the “darkest” woman isn’t all that dark. Every woman in the show darker than her is a villain.

Not all that dark. Photo by James Devaney/WireImage.comTo license this image (7974859), contact WireImage:U.S. +1-212-686-8900 / U.K. +44-207 659 2815 / Australia +61-2-8262-9222 / Japan: +81-3-5464-7020+1 212-686-8901 (fax)info@wireimage.com (e-mail)www.wireimage.com (web site)

Lighter

Lightest

 

 

This is Misty Knight, by the way. Much darker than her actress.

Luke himself is also a problem. He is the quintessential “good” Black man and a large part of the narrative presented as to what makes him good is that he is tame in the beginning. He is the most physically powerful Black human in the Marvel TV universe. He could be a costumed hero. Or, you know, not a costumed hero because all of his costumes are awful. But he could be anything. Except the person they created is properly diffident; head down, voice soft, eyes generally cast down. And no matter how good the fight scenes are, and they’re not actually that good, he is tamed in the end as well. The extremely powerful Black man is, in fact, caged as the resolution of the entire story arc.

They love us in chains.

To be fair, I will acknowledge the power of seeing a Black man in a dark hoodie walking through a hail of bullets but I also have to acknowledge that Luke Cage is, and has always been the embodiment of the unstoppable Black beast, a stereotype that regularly gets actual Black people killed.

A good writer would have used that contrast. They would have shown us the trap that Black people are forced into by the stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Black men are either rampaging monsters or properly emasculated. Women are either light, bright, and damn near white Mammies, dark Jezebels, or Sassy Sapphires like Black Mariah.

I will admit that Black Mariah is a vast improvement over her comic character but since her origin is an elephantine monster made of African American Vernacular English as filtered through white ears, that’s not saying much.

This show suffers the same issue that so much mainstream entertainment aimed at Black audiences suffers. It doesn’t examine or deconstruct White Supremacy. It just accepts its tropes and uses them to enforce its structure.

Luke Cage isn’t our superhero show. It’s a show about white fear. It’s a minstrel show.

Minstrel shows are offensive. Always. Doubly so because it is presented as for us, by us. We presume that our own people have our best interests at heart. This is forgivable, especially when the entertainment is advertised as if it is revolutionary or progressive or groundbreaking or anything other than more of the same.

For me, the biggest problem is the conversation on policing that happens throughout the show. The pro side of the self-policing argument is a white cop who turns out to be corrupt. The person he’s arguing with? Misty fucking Knight who is given the pro-police side. The inevitable police violence is perpetrated by a Black cop. The only person who steps forward to lead the community against police violence? Is Black Mariah who is doing so for her own reasons and advocates greater arming of the already militarized police.

The conversation is muddled and plodding and badly written as is the rest of the show.

And we deserve better.

We have to stop simply accepting anything that is served to us as long as the hand doing the serving is Black. Because all of our skinfolk ain’t our kinfolk. They don’t have our best interests at heart. Neither do they have any motivation to do their jobs well unless we motivate them.

 

We were all thinking it.

 

We deserve superheroes who are heroes. We deserve Black entertainment free of the restrictions of White Supremacy and which fight the tropes systemic racism has trained into us. We deserve better than this and the absolutely worst thing we can do is embrace this show. because if we do, we’ll end up with more of the same and we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame.

Run And Tell That (Alec Satin, Ravelry, and Why I Can’t Stop Giggling)

There are two things (minimum) you don’t step to if you want to survive in the fiber arts world:

1. Another fiber artist’s tools without permission.
2. Ravelry.

Guess what happened?

If you choose not to click yet you guessed that a cis (imma guess) het white guy felt the need to step to the largest fiber arts website on earth to admonish them posting a tiny rainbow flag with the scroll over text “We love you.” Give yourself a gold star.

If you further guessed that said guy doesn’t appear to understand what words mean given that he thinks that  respecting and valuing the lives of other humans somehow equates to “losing” and that respecting and valuing the lives of other humans is both “divisive” and “offensive,” give yourself two gold stars. Or like, a gold start and some rum. Whatever is a good extra treat for you.

If, finally, you guessed that his justification for all of this was his understanding of his holy book, you’ve probably been dealing with people like him for a while.

For real, now is a perfectly fine time to reach for the rum.

He also claimed that adding a tiny rainbow was somehow “defacing,” the logo.

This, by the way, is what he’s freaking out about…

 

HIS REACTION IS PURE COMEDY GOLD PEOPLE!

And you know what the best part is? I don’t even have to drag him.

Because as I mentioned previously, he broke one of the very few rules of the fiber arts community. Other people are going to do that for me. And it is going to be so good, so petty, so whip smart, and unforgiving, I may never stop giggling.

It’s already started.

And that’s good because I am busy mourning nearly 50 dead members of my community and hugging my girlfriend and trying to function as a Black, bi, femme, person in a world that hates me for a not small number of reasons, not one of which includes anything I did wrong other than being born.

I’m glad to see other people do the work. I’m proud to be a part of a community that will not accept that kind of bullshit in their name. I’m also sad, that this conversation even needs to happen.

Because 49 people died and over 50 more were wounded and this guy, this fucking guy had to make it about his fucking feelings and not about their lives and the fact that they had and continue to have, value.

That’s the core of this.

Some cis, het, Christian dude got all up in his feeling because the Ravelry Powers That Be reacted to an attack on human beings with compassion and basic human decency.

Somehow that is a problem for Mr. Satin.

Christianity. I think he’s doing it wrong.

 

If Bernie Loses @ShaunKing @KillerMike @CornelWest and Too Many Others

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

If your chosen candidate loses, which the delegate math seems is most likely to happen, you’re going to owe a lot of people an apology.

Not your fellow Bernie supporters for not winning. I mean, OK you could do that, but a candidates failures are their own. So yeah, don’t apologize for that.

Rather examine the overt, relentless, glaring racism and sexism flowing through your social media in support of Bernie Sanders. Now examine the fact that you’ve not only let it ride, you’ve perpetuated or created some of it. And if you’re not ashamed, examine it again because you should be.

You’re not allowed to be anti-racist leaders or “woke” Black leaders speakers of the truth or teachers of the facts or leaders, or speakers or teachers  at all if you aren’t willing to fucking lead, fucking speak, fucking teach. Which maybe lets Killer Mike off the hook because I don’t know that being a “leader” or a “speaker” or a “teacher” is so much your thing as opposed to being an entertainer. So fine, but you’ve still got to answer for the patently false, deeply sexist characterization of what Ms. Willaford and Ms. Johnson did in Seattle. Let me count the ways:

• They are not “little girls,” they are women.
• Senator Sanders did not give, hand, or in any way welcome them to the stage.
• They took the stage and held it in conjunction with white accomplices.
• Those white accomplices were necessary to protect them from the largely white crowd who, among other things, were calling for them to be attacked and tazed.
• Senator Sanders stood there while those calls happened and said nothing.
• After Senator Sanders rage quit the crowd got even more unruly and those white accomplices were necessary to keep his fans from physically accosting those two Black women.

No matter how hard you try you can’t whitewash the facts and since this happened in August, since you have some store of funds and fame and and I can only presume a cellular device of some kind, you could have put forward the least amount of effort and fact checked that shit before speaking. You lessened their agency and denied their victory in service to a white man who can barely speak two sentences about Blackness before he pivots back to whiteness or colorblindness which is still whiteness.

You should be ashamed and you you owe a lot of people an apology, not the least of which being Ms. Willaford and Ms. Johnson.

And you Shaun, oh Shaun. I used to like you. You’ve spent an inordinate amount of time defending your place and your voice as a defender and spokesperson for Black people and the value of our lives. You’ve also spent a not small amount of time highlighting the threats of violence ad death that you and your family have been subject to. Your failure in this case, your, deliberate failure to address and act against the relentless sexist and racist commentary coming from fellow Sanders supporters on your feeds. This is not stuff you missed. These are people you interacted with and responded to and let slide because you value their support of your political candidate more than respect for women or Black people.

You consistently place your support of a white male politician over that of Black people and women and, you know, Black women.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

That shame should make you stop.

You should reassess and change your behavior.

You won’t. You’re already attempting to pivot away from possibly voting for Clinton and encouraging people to do the same in an effort to build another party. Which, of course you are. Of. Course. You. Are. You are well off and educated and assimilated and you will be the good Black man to protect what you have. I don’t actually begrudge you that. It’s a choice people make to protect themselves and their families. Fine.

Other people, the people you’ve been allowing your followers to belittle and degrade for months? We will suffer to a far greater degree than you will. Those of us on the intersections? We will die.

But why should you care at all about that? Well, there are a lot of reasons that you already know. The issue is that you don’t appear to care. And let’s not ignore the fact that, you’re maneuvering for a high placed position in whatever that party turns out to be.

Yep. I said it. It’s true and we all know it. If you don’t like it, then change it.

Personally, I think both Democratic candidates are pretty much equally worthless. But as an activist, I am an adult who recognizes that great harm is worse than very little good. That’s how adults work.

Learn this. Do better or please be quiet, because you are making a lot of noise and taking up a lot of space that should be filled by people who are actually invested in fostering social justice rather than helping themselves.

All three of you, and all of the other people reading this who are equally guilty of this shit need to do better. Start right now.

 

Kind of Valentine 2016

We’ve reached the time when it’s harder for me to describe what I love about A~ becaause all of the things that I’ve written about in the years past are still true. A~ is awesome. Also, I love her which is why, going on 20 years in, we’re still together.

She is woke as fuck but I don’t want to write a post about how my white girlfriend is down for Black lives because of course she is.

And we’re both nerdy and like nerd things; although not the exact same nerd things because that would be dull.

There are a lot of ways I could explain how our love is special but then I realizedthere is nothing particularly special about us or our love except that it is ours and we’ve made it last.

That’s ewhat makes it the most remarkable thing of all. So, as ever, love you A-. Happy Contrived Romance Day. I love you all the other days of the year just as much.

 

These are our lives. It’s awesome.

On Paragons and Pedophiles

David Bowie was a rapist.

This is just a fact. Deal with it.

He had intercourse with multiple children.

A child cannot consent.

He knew these girls were children.

A child cannot consent.

These are simply facts.

David Bowie was also a musical genius whom many of my readers may have loved.

These two things exist at the same time and about the same person.

And that, people, is what we call duality.

Billy Cosby is a rapist.

He drugged women and had intercourse with them.

A drugged person cannot consent.

He knew they were drugged.

HE drugged them.

These are also facts.

Bill Cosby is also a comedic titan who was the creator of some of the most beloved and influential TV shows ever.

You can appreciate, hell even love, someone’s art and performance without cosigning every single aspect of their lives.

It’s OK to be sad that Bowie died. It’s OK to still like the Cosby show. You are not a bad person for recognizing the duality of art versus artist.

It’s OK to watch the Cosby Show because Cliff Huxtable is a fiction character who, one can only hope, isn’t a rapist.

If you can’t watch the show anymore that’s OK too.

It’s OK to love Bowie’s music because the Thin White Duke and Ziggy and pretty much every persona he put on including David Bowie were fiction characters.

That’s how performance works sometimes.

Duality.

That said, if your love of either man’s art extends to ignoring, excusing or attempting to mitigate their rapes then you have a problem.

Yes I said rapes.

Can we please not pretend that David Bowie in the 1970s only went after that one child?

There was a whole movie made about the so-called “baby groupies,” (fucking plural) of that era and it was informed by the lives of several women.

Many of them slept with him and, while we’re at it, pretty much every other singer/band that you love from the era. So Zeppelin fans, don’t get smug. Deep Purple fans? Take a knee. Every other fan of every popular band of the era? Stifle. Rapists. Deal with it.

All of the girls in this picture are children.

I don’t want to hear about how times were different. Because honestly? You’re excusing rape and if you want to do that you should really stop and look at yourself in abject horror and shame.

I don’t want to hear about how the women that Cosby raped should have done something to not get raped. Because once again, you are defending/excusing/apologizing for a rapist and if you are not ashamed of yourself there is no help for you.

And there is something ot be said for the racial double standard in regards to rape by famous people but someone else has already said it and done so better than I would so go read that.

Instead of posting meandering, illogical excuses pretty much anywhere take a moment to recognize the duality of humans.

Whatever good an artist may do for you through their art does not negate the harm they may have done as a person. These two things must exist at the same tie withing the same space in your mind or you are simply deifying a fictional character.

Sometimes we love art made by problematic artists. I would venture to say MOST times we love art by problematic artists. Because artists are humans and humans, more often than not, do something fucked up to some other person or group. It doesn’t matter why they do it. It could be through malice or ignorance or the systemic, grinding cultural paradigm. It really doesn’t matter.  The fact that all humans are flawed does not negate the feelings we have about their art. I really wish we, as a culture, could get over the idea that our idols must be paragons and that death somehow transformed a flawed human into a perfect memory.