So, what gets me angry these days?
Well, for one, our “I’m alright, Jack” mentality. It means that we don’t look outside our own day-to-day lives, that we forget that “there but for the grace of god, go I” and it makes me mad. Living here in gay nirvana in San Francisco, it’s so easy to get trapped in that bubble - but we have a responsibility to see beyond the end of our own - erm - noses, and have a view on what's happening beyond The Castro or further afield than Old Compton Street.
I mean, you just have to take a cursory glance at the online news feeds to know that being GLBT in many parts of the former communist bloc (look at what's happening in Russia or Poland) or almost anywhere in Africa (such as recent developments in Cameroon or Uganda, where governments are actively and aggressively persecuting gays) or countries with governments based on fundamentalist religion (sharia law, anyone? Iran shows us the way!)..... and yet how much pressure are we GAYS putting on these countries to protect these minorities?
And, then I guess, the second thing that really gets my goat is the sense of complacency that goes hand-in-hand with those geographic blinkers.
We still need to fight
Looking into our own backyards, and it's clear that the battle has not yet been won. And the rights that we have fought for CAN be taken away. There are people in power in the US who want to take away the rights that LGBT people have fought for decades to secure. Just a couple of examples:
- The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) aims to enshrine discrimination against same-sex couples by actively excluding them from federal benefits that ‘traditional marriage’ allows. The Obama administration has announced it's dropping its defense of the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. Republicans have moved to defend the anti-gay act.
- Don’t Ask Don’t Tell when repealed last year - a historic end to the discrimination against gays serving in the military. (The first legal challenge was in 1975, by Leonard Matlovich, who’s tombstone is marked not with his name, but with the words: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one”) But there are attempts to delay implementation of the repeal, and to reverse this decision
Things can go backwards
And then further afield there are salutary lessons for us in what can happen - look at Kabul in Afghanistan. Last year, Liam Fox (UK Defence Sec) got into hot water for calling Afghanistan a “broken, 13th century country”.But, it wasn’t always like that. Afghanistan was developing into a modern and cosmopolitan state in the 1960s. It was the first Asian country to have women in parliament, and had already dropped laws requiring women to wear the burka. Afghan women pursued careers in medicine; men and women mingled casually at movie theatres and university campuses in Kabul. In the 60s and early 70s, Kabul was famed as an exotic stop-off point on the hippy trail between Europe and India. It even had M&S! The first Marks & Spencer store in Central Asia was built in the mid-60s in Kabul. But those rights (including, obviously, the right to M&S knickers) were rolled-back following the Saur Revolution and subsequent Russian invasion. And now we’re back to burkas, segregation, male-only education, sharia law, stonings...
Some things are getting worse not getting better.
Kids who are growing-up gay are experiencing an increasingly aggressive anti-gay environment in school. Increasing levels of visibility, means that we’re bringing homophobes out of the woodwork.
Make the personal political
- Join a campaigning group like HRC or Stonewall
- Write a letter
- Get out on the streets
Make the political personal
- Stand-up and be counted. As Andrew Sullivan says, the power of our lobby is that we are everywhere. In every country, in every family. Being ‘out’ is a radical step
- Challenge bigots to re-think. (I just love the excuse to repost this - but it works)
- BE ANGRY. And talk about it!
2 comments:
Hmmm... I get what you're saying Jono. There's definitely something to be said of "bad things happen when good people do nothing". And yet I wonder why there is apathy? For me it's in the postmodernisation of oppression. Sometimes I think its seen as patronising to fight for a cause that doesn't impact your personally - i.e. if you're not oppressed by it, how could you possibly get it?
Yeah. It reminds me of that famous quote about the need to stick-up for people outside your sphere of self-interest.
I think you're right Rodd. There's definitely a sense of cocooning - where people feel comfortable in their own life, and pull down the shutters on anything that's happening outside. Which seems paradoxical, as the world has never been so connected, and there's never been such immediacy in the reporting of world events. I just think that many people are overwhelmed, and choose to filter-out the uncomfortable stuff, or (as you say) that stuff that doesn't involve them directly.
I also think there has been a change in the way people engage with issues. Maybe it relates to the "Oprah-isation" of public discourse, our love of 'human interest' stories, our voyeuristic desire to see 'real' emotion... but we seem to need to put a human face to issues to get people involved. And if that human face doesn't look so much like us, then it doesn't seem to merit the same attention...
There's also something about attention span - and bite-sized chunks of analysis. I get the impression that people outsource their thinking more and more these days...so that if you watch Fox News, they do the thinking for you; they provide a comfortable (and easily digestible) interpretation of how you should view the news, rather than stating facts. (Maybe I'm just starting to get my conspiracy thinking started here...)
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