My answer to L.Z. Granderson

A 40 year history ??

Is Mr Granderson seriously suggesting that gay people didn't exist before Stonewall ? That black people weren't gay before Stonewall ?

Cos that's the only way what he's saying makes any sense. And there are a lot of far less charitable interpretations than that.

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by: helen @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 06:20:00 AM CDT

1,700 years of persecution

Gay people have been persecuted for much more than 40 years, even more than 400 years. Since around 300 CE, the corporate Christian Church has been torturing and killing gay people, including burning them alive. How does he think the epithet 'faggot' came about?

40 years ago is just when we started fighting back.

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by: Stephanie @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 07:03:00 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

re blacks at Stonewall

when you bring up the fact that blacks participating at Stonewall is rarely (if ever) mentioned, it might also be a good point to bring up LGBTs (of all races) being of the civil rights struggles and marches of the 50s and 60s as well.

I have been called out by many African Americans who refuse to believe and/or recognize this as they take their positions of not wanting to support LGBT equality now.  They will flat out claim that there were NO GAYS marching for civil rights.

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by: timNC @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 06:50:38 AM CDT

Um, let's not forget

Stonewall vet Marsha P Johnson was also a member of the trans community too!

Listen to "TransTalk" every Monday from 4-5pm ET on http://www.falconradio.org beginning January 11th!

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by: Marlene @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 07:21:24 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

MARSHA P JOHNSON DIED FOR YOUR SINS!!!

I knew Marsha. She was a total delight. She was a ay Activist Alliance member and was in the front lines of more demonstrations than I can mention. But she also had her own orga -- STAR.

Street Travestite Action Revolutionaries

Too Fabulous for words.  

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by: David Ehrenstein @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:46:39 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yup!

She and Sylvia Revera started STAR to help the teen hustlers with a place to crash, food to eat, etc.

They both went to the mainstream gay groups, begging for help and were more or less told "We don't care about you".

Listen to "TransTalk" every Monday from 4-5pm ET on http://www.falconradio.org beginning January 11th!

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by: Marlene @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 18:47:16 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

re: blacks at Stonewall

They will flat out claim that there were NO GAYS marching for civil rights.

Yep, I have one particular African American friend who is generally pro-equality for gays, but who makes the "my mom and dad say the gays didn't help us!" argument all the time. First the gays were forced into the closet the threat of violence, or jail or forced institutionalization, and now we get complaints that "the gays didn't help." When without Bayard Rustin, the March on Washington might not have happened at all.

It's frustrating.

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by: cbear @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:13:18 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

i've also heard the arugument

that even if LGBT's marched for civil rights you couldn't "tell" they were LGBT from looking at them, so it doesn't count.

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by: timNC @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:40:51 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Without Bayard Rustin NOTHING would have happened

Tell you friend that if he doesn't want Bayard Rustin we'll be galnd to have him.

And he and his kind can move directly to the back of the bus!

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by: David Ehrenstein @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:48:06 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Without Bayard Rustin the civil rights movement wouldn't have happened

Period!

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by: David Ehrenstein @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:49:29 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Amen and AMEN!

Will someone PLEASE send a copy of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D'Emilio to Mr. Granderson. I don't agree with 100% of its conclusions, but 99% of it will give Granderson what he desperately needs...despite having dropped Rustin's name in interviews: an education about both his gay AND black heritage. [The President could benefit from reading it, too.] Throw in a copy of John Loughery's The Other Side of Silence, for some additional gay POC 411 he seems ignorant of.

Then inform him that after the organizers of the dedication of the high school named for Rustin in his home town asked his surviving white partner, Walter Naegle, for a list of people to invite, which he sent them....THEY DIDN'T INVITE HIM!

Then remind him what the gay, black president of DC's Gay Activist Alliance, Mel Boozer, told the Democratic National Convention in 1980:

"Would you ask me how I'd dare to compare the civil rights struggle with the struggle for lesbian and gay rights? I can compare, and I do compare them. I know what it means to be called a nigger. I know what it means to be called a faggot. And I can sum up the difference in one word: none."

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by: Michael Bedwell @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 09:18:57 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

and James Baldwin.

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by: coram nobis @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 11:36:28 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

One Group's Civil Rights = ALWAYS Another Group's Civil Rights.

I'm white, so I can't every understand completely the full experience of being black. But I also have a disability, so I can understand some of the less overt forms of discrimination such as in employment - I lost my last job through my employer's lack of understanding about Asperger Syndrome. It wasn't intentional discrimination, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a form of discrimination. I would be surprised if there weren't many black people whose experiences are very similar.

Any time one group is discriminated against in a particular way and the discrimination goes unchecked it makes similar discrimination against others more acceptable and therefore more likely. People who discriminate against people because of their sexuality are more likely to discriminate against people because of a disability, their religious beliefs or their racial or ethnic origin, and vice-versa. Ignoring or encouraging discrimination against one group makes discrimination against others more likely to be viewed as acceptable, so for a frequently-discriminated-against group like gays or blacks to discriminate against others makes no sense.

____________________________________
Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

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by: tavdy79 @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 07:23:04 AM CDT

two cents

They 'gay is the new black' was nonsense from the moment it came out of some idiot editor's mouth at the Advocate and made its way to the cover, and I say this as a white gay man.  It's a false comparison.  Having said that, black is not nor ever was the new Jew, yet African-Americans appropriated Exodus, the Egyptian enslavement, and the entire mythology of the bible for themselves as if they were the Hebrews wandering in the desert toward the promised land.  If gay is not the new black, black is not the old Jew, yet I've never heard Jewish people complain about blacks comparing themselves to them.  In the 'my oppression is greater than yours' game it just goes round and round.

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by: gunit @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 07:24:39 AM CDT

lol

Christians have been stealing mythology from the Jews for centuries, why would the Jews have to single out the black churches to be mad at?

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by: Eshto @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 11:19:59 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

"Gay is the new black"

has always hit me as nonsensical phrasing at best and deceptive or divisive phrasing at worst.  

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by: Louise @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 07:47:31 AM CDT

"Gay is the new black" ? HELL --

BLACK IS THE NEW WHITE!!!!!

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by: David Ehrenstein @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:52:39 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Let's You & Them Fight

I remember this from the playground.  Whenever the reigning group of little QueenB girls or Alpha boys didn't like a particular kid, it wasn't ever the Bs or the Alphas who went after that kid directly, it was always some lackey they managed to convince to go start shit.  The lackey in question usually wanted to be accepted by the Bs and/or the Alphas and so would do their bidding without realizing they were being taken advantage of, that the whole game was structured specifically to keep the hands of the Bs & Alphas clean while someone else did the dirty work necessary to push others down, which was exactly what kept them in power as Bs and Alphas.

This?  Looks like that all over again.

People of color, whatever their sexual orientation, and GLBTQs, whatever their race/ethnicity, are generally and broadly oppressed by very similar cultural and institutional forces, and for similar reasons.  It creates a hierarchy in society that allows a small group of people (who are predominantly neither of color nor queer) to control most of the wealth and power.  The class of people that benefits from our collective oppression loves nothing more than when they can successfully pit people they're oppressing against each another instead of us uniting against them.  This fight only helps those who want to keep us all down.

I wish people like Mr. Granderson and those folks at The Advocate who write that polarizing nonsense would stop falling for this tired manipulative tactic.  But it's also true that I wonder if the reason why they fall for it is because it's more important to them on a personal level to become one of the Bs/Alphas than it is to secure equality for everyone.

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by: Rev Jane Ignatowski @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:03:19 AM CDT

I completely agree...

Especially regarding the Bs/Alphas. I believe that African Americans, particularly those that are very religious, find it offensive to put gays at the same level as them. Most consider being gay an immoral lifestyle that deserves no recognition and should never be compared to the civil rights struggle that blacks went through. Unfortunately I this viewpoint is very ingrained, and will take decades to change.

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by: obtusegoose @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 09:40:06 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

ugh

That should read "I think this viewpoint is very ingrained..."

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by: obtusegoose @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 09:42:59 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yep, and it goes both ways

And on the white queer side, there's a rampant sense of unexamined entitlement because of coming up white in a racist culture and being raised with the expectation that the world is one's oyster (of course this has a lot to do with economic class, as well, but poc are still way too disproportionately underrepresented in the privileged classes), only to have all that upended when/if one comes out.  It's all too easy for people on every side of these fences to just start pointing fingers at whatever scapegoat groups society has deemed Other.

To expand upon the general idea, I think it actually operates in multiple directions and in many configurations, but the hierarchy, the ranking, is almost always there.  I've seen the exact same structure of hierarchies playing out solely among white (& black, & Hispanic) lesbians, for example.  One might think that in a group that is homogenous in terms of both race as well as sexual orientation, hierarchy would at least pipe the hell down, but ime it often doesn't.  It's just that the terms around which everyone is jockeying for power become different, like, in some cases it will be a butch/femme exclusion or hierarchy, or it will be about who's a Gold Star lesbian (if I never hear this phrase again it will be too soon) or whether or not a particular lesbian is REALLY a bisexual and therefore "not really one of us".  Bam, right back to ranking people in terms of their identities.

Many of my gay boyfriends have told me the same thing goes down whenever they're in homogenous race/sexual orientation groups, too.

I think you're right that it'll take a lot of time to effect change in these kinds of deeply ingrained attitudes, and that's one reason why I think attempting to have some substantive and civil conversations about it are so important.  The best alliances are built on trust, and trust only comes through hard work and lots of communication.

This equality thing ain't a sprint, it's a marathon -- maybe even best said to be a relay marathon, where each generation does what it can and then passes the wand forward to the next.

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by: Rev Jane Ignatowski @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:09:31 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

You have privilege

Unless you're a poor developmentally-disabled physically-disabled orphaned female Jewish Black Latino Native-American Asian Muslim Atheist Homosexual Transexual and Transvestite[1] ex-con substance-addicted mentally-ill homeless sex-worker with AIDS, you have some sort of privilege.

Playing "more oppressed than thou" as some sort of justification for "my tribe is better than yours" or "this tribe of mine is more important than this other tribe" is self-defeating.

If we focus on those who truly have the hardest time in our society, we will focus on the poor developmentally-disabled physically-disabled orphaned female Jewish Black Latino Native-American Asian Muslim Atheist Homosexual Transexual and Transvestite ex-con substance-addicted mentally-ill homeless sex workers with AIDS. These people need help in every dimension, not just the one dimension we think is most oppressed. And, in helping those oppressed in every (or many) dimension(s), we help all of the oppressed.

Isn't that what we should really be about?

[1] I know at least one person who is a female-to-male transexual gay male who crossdresses for fetishistic reasons

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by: cindik @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:41:48 AM CDT

This is true up to a point...

The thing is though that some are more privilledged than others.

On the whole gay white men are FAR better off in this society than almost any other one of the groups you mention.

The rest of us are at an immediate disadvantage the moment we walk into the door or write down our name.

A gay white male is not going to be denied a job, or a loan or housing, before they walk into the door.

A big part of the discrimination that people endure in the United States is based exclusively on differences that can be seen. A woman may experience discrimination the moment they walk in a room. A disabled person may be faced with structural challenges even getting into the room. An ethnic minority may not even get an invitation to the room if their name is too obviously ethnic. Trans person may not even be let into the building.

This is not about the opression olympics. Its about the reality that opression is often harder on some people than others. Those of us that are not gay white men never have the option of myopically focusing on one issue. We do not have the privilledge of forgetting that other struggles matter. A lesbian will always face the fear of rape and harassment that other women share. They don't get to walk away from that. A disabled person can never walk away from the fact that they live in a world that is not always designed to accomodate them. Trans folks manage to face hostility for vitrually ever angle.

I've always looked at it this way...everyone carries their own baggage. However, some of us are carrying hand bags while other of us are lugging around steamer trunks. Thus it gets annoying when the "struggle" is led and defined by those not facing the crushing weight that the rest of us have to deal with.

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by: SciFi Geek @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 09:30:48 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

WELL SAID

I've always looked at it this way...everyone carries their own baggage. However, some of us are carrying hand bags while other of us are lugging around steamer trunks. Thus it gets annoying when the "struggle" is led and defined by those not facing the crushing weight that the rest of us have to deal with.

I rate this a 4.0.

God save ornery old queens! - kevinchi

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by: Keori @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:08:46 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Great comment

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by: joneke @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:26:50 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Gender Non-Conformity is Very Visible

The one issue I have with your comment is the assumption that no white gay man is going to face immediate discrimination. As a relatively masculine-acting, sports-loving, so-not-trendy-dressing gay man, I certainly don't, but those gay men (and those lesbians) who fail to conform to gender stereotypes are very likely to be identified and discriminated against in the exact same manner as you describe.

Just as with any other arbitrary characteristic, you cannot generalize about the experience of white gay men any more than you can about black straight men or any other group. The foundation of bigotry is the assumption that any one characteristic that puts an individual into a group therefore defines that individual at any level.  

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by: CPT_Doom @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:42:08 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Depends

It depends on whether or not that gay, white male is gender typical.

If he's got a lisp and a swish, he'll be treated like a transgender person.

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by: Eshto @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 11:22:42 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

"I know at least one person who is a female-to-male transexual gay male who crossdresses for fetishistic reasons."

I am SEETHING with jealousy!  I am totally serious.  And here I thought I had interesting friends!

And I totally agree with your post.

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by: diablorobotico @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 13:41:30 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

When my mother died in 1987

My remaining relatives on her side of the family took the opportunity to dump on my gayness like there was no tomorrow.

They wouldn't have DARED while she was still alive.

I haven't spoken to them since.

And they're very typical middle-class African-Americans.  

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by: David Ehrenstein @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 08:55:39 AM CDT

This is SO tedious

Watching people play "We're-more-oppressed-than-you" is so depressing. What a screwed-up way to self-define. Why not put energy towards a works where NONE of us are oppressed? Oh, wait, I know: because that would mean taking a real look at one's current stupidity, and responsibility for issues more easily blamed on others.
Th white gay men who came up with "Gay is the new black" illustrate the jaw-dropping insensitivity that typifies the racism in the white GLBT community. It's a flippant & careless statement that on top of everything posits that blacks  no longer suffer the effects of racism, which is a crock. These fools owe ALL of us an apology; they owe themselves some hardcore education (not holding my breath there, though).
Straight black people who hide behind their god to excuse their hatred as as cruel & hateful as their white counterparts. The fact that their intolerance makes them willing to cast out members of their own community is, frankly, chilling. They're deliberately ignoring history in their haste to separate themselves from anything/anyone queer and to set themselves up as the Arbiters of Oppression--again, is that really a desirable goal?
This conflict just shows how we've all been damaged by the system, which is designed to make everyone think that in order to get ahead, they've got to push someone else our of the way. Civil rights are NOT an endangered resource., and the proper target of our rage should be the system that deceives us in this regard, and its self-appointed guardians.
Tl; dr, maybe. But I don't see ANYONE behaving well in this conflict, and it just seems such a waste.      

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by: hardcorps80204 @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:07:26 AM CDT

"The new black" is so old

"Flippant and careless" barely touches on it. Doesn't anyone remember the origin of the phrase? To fashion designers black is the eternal color, always in style, and generations of women were taught that the "simple black dress," with proper accessorizing, could be worn anywhere from a wedding to a funeral to a riot to the opera. Phrases like "Plaid is the New Black!!" were deployed by designers to co-opt the timelessness of black, to convince people who actually cared about fashion that whatever hideously ugly thing they were pushing that season was cool.

It is a fundamentally trivial phrase. To apply it to a subject as serious as civil rights makes me cringe.

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by: gumbopie @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 18:28:39 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Correct

I read his piece and while I understood where he was coming from, I am not sure the point was at all relevant.  Who gives a shit about who was oppressed worse?  Guess what, there is ALWAYS someone who has been oppressed worse than you if history is to be our guide.  The fact is, AAs are still oppressed in this country notwithstanding the election of an AA president, and LGBT folks are also oppressed in ths country notwithstanding the election of LGBT people to public office and a few states with same sex marriage.  End of discussion.  In the end, the piece was a waste of valuable space for something meaningful.

I attended a month long seminar several years ago at Harvard's Kennedy School, and one of the exercises was to split the group into their ethnic, racial, gender, or sexual orientation groups.  If you happened to fall into more than one group, you had to select which group you identified with that in your opinion had been most oppressive, that is the one in which you personally had suffered the most discrimination.

Not surprisingly, white LGBTs chose the gay group, both male and female.  However, one AA gay male chose the LGBT group, which caused quite an uproar from the AA group, and another AA female chose the female group, as opposed to the AA group, which also raised a lot of questions.

The exercise was fascinating, and it invited a lot of dicussion.  The truth is, as we learned in that exercise, oppression/discrimination occurs in all of the minority groups, and each has its story.  I've never forgotten the lesson that simple exercise taught.

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by: salemlawyer @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:44:54 AM CDT

First we get rid of dumbass catch phrases

Trying to reduce the complexity LGBT (of all colors) and African American struggles to saying "Something is the new something" Is just BULLSH*T.
Second, no one group has the patent on Oppresion, and it isn't based on the length of Oppresion to validate what was suffered. Genocide, Slavery, being relegated to being defined as property go back through ALL human History.

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:45:20 AM CDT

Equal Rights for ALL is the continual struggle

Until equal rights and equal protection is the reality for everyone, everywhere, we all still have work to do.  Participating in the oppression olympics is exceptionally counterproductive.  Yes, it is important to know history so we don't repeat the worst parts of it.  However, there is no need to relive it to "prove" how worthy we are of basic human rights.  We must work in the best way each of us can to contribute to freedom for all, never forgetting that even while we may be working in a specific area of the struggle, equality for all people is the overarching goal.

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by: freestyle @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 10:48:28 AM CDT

My Last Word

Latest FaBlog: Tongues Still Tied

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by: David Ehrenstein @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 20:19:39 PM CDT