107: Pride

Filed under: Podcasts — marina September 12, 2007 @ 10:18 pm

Bayard Rustin as opposed to Larry Craig and why you can’t expect anybody else to treat you any better than you treat yourself.

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Re: friends’ attitudes towards transpeople, one thing to do (if they’re open to it) might be to watch documentaries about transpeople with them. Like, it’s not quite as good as actually meeting and getting to know transpeople, but at least they can get an idea that transpeople are *real* people with full, complex lives, rather than relying on stereotypes about transpeople that come from the mainstream media–you know, that all transpeople are deceptive, uberfemme M-to-F’s who just want to fuck with people’s heads and sleep with our straight men!

Unfortunately I’ve mostly gone through this with people about race–it’s really scary and sad to see the casual racism (and in your case, transphobia) that your loved ones can exhibit. The only thing you can do is confront them on it.

Regardiing Craig, I don’t know if he’s gay or not. I mean, look at the Kinsey scale–it doesn’t go from one to two, it goes from zero to six (I think). I mean, there’s behavior and identity, which are two seperate things–you could be bisexual and meet your true love or whatever at 18, and therefore only end up sleeping with one sex for the rest of your life, but that doesn’t make you less bisexual; you could be straight (as in, you define yourself as straight and claim that as your identity) because you only fall in love with men, but occasionally enjoy sleeping with women. I don’t believe in the “one drop” Rule of Gay–I think you’re gay (or straight, or bi, or whatever) if you claim the label, because who else but you gets to decide your identity? I also believe people should have the right to claim no label at all.

But on the flipside, the closet is still a powerful force. I don’t think that anybody has an *obligation* to come out, given that homophobia is still a powerful force (and given that he wanted to go into politics? conservative politics? I doubt it was an option for him, not to mention, who knows what his family was like. Yes, living an open life is important, but when weighed against his family, or his career, I’m not surprised that he chose secrecy). But I do find his hypocrisy pretty sickening–just because YOU live your life according to a DADT policy doesn’t mean everybody else should be forced to. And it’s pretty disgusting to fuck dudes and still expect to benefit from homophobia–the same way it’s disgusting for hetero politicians to gain points by trying to police people’s sex lives while engaging in the same kind of behavior they publically condemn.

Comment by Katy — September 13, 2007 @ 1:43 am
I agree that I can’t justifiably identify Craig as gay, but I don’t think that family or environment can be used as an excuse. My point in this show was that he grew up in the same country as not only some of our best civil-rights leaders, but a number of well adjusted, completely normal everyday queers as well, and he decided to be a spineless douche instead. The man made the choices that lead to him being so hated.

Comment by marina — September 15, 2007 @ 12:00 am