Book review: Against Equality

I picked up a copy of Against Equality at the 2010 Richmond Zine Fest. I had heard about it, and was too busy to go see a presentation about the book at U of R a couple weeks ago.

I just wanted to let people know that Against Equality is really worth reading. Even if you have been keeping up to date with the radical queer response to the mainstream Gaygenda to legalize Gay Marriage, Against Equality manages to collect essays and interviews from a wide variety of sources, some of which you probably missed.

The essays in general do an excellent job of bringing issues of intersectionality, social justice, and privilege to light in regards to the Gay Marriage campaigns.

The discussion about immigration and immigrant rights in regards to gay marriage explains very well how it is not enough to support imimgrant rights only in the context of one type of partnership. Gay marriage is diluting the immigration issue.

Blade as allegory for dealing with privilege

OK OK, I’m being serious here.

I’ve been thinking about issues around privilege a lot lately. And I watched Blade last night, and the third Twilight movie a couple of weeks ago. These two movies combined have created some weird connections in my brain. This is my attempt to convey these connections. It will probably make better sense if you have seen both of the films, but I wouldn’t spend money on it.

The third twilight movie is a good example of colonialism/racism and how the vampire concept plays into it. In that movie they actually show white, colonist vampires engaging in genocide of indigenous people. Who happen to have the ability to turn into werewolves. The werewolves are indigenous people of color. The vampires are almost exclusively white- blindingly glittery white. The movie itself is full of racism in terms of the representation of the indigenous people. The movie also contains a lot of promblematic content in terms of how emotionally and physically abusive etc. the relationship is, as well as the Mormon points of view about sex, marriage, and monogamy that are very clearly promoted in the content.

Basically I am bringing up Twilight only to explain why I was originally starting the think about silly vampire movies in contexts of racism and privilege. Twilight is pretty racist. And so I started thinking about vampires as having a lot in common with white people.

In Blade, Blade is a person of color who was born right after his mom got bitten by a vampire.

Sexual Assault *Trigger Warning*

I am probably going to write more about this later, but I just really have to say that I think in many situations of calling out an accused perpetrator of sexual assault the people doing the calling out are more after the satisfaction of a witch hunt than the solution of an accountability process.

I find this problematic.

I am not talking about the survivor. I support the survivor’s right to feel any way they want to. I  am specifically talking about people who are NOT the survivor, but who might be friends of them or just somehow became involved in calling someone out.

I understand the satisfaction that comes with being mean, I think we all do. But I also understand that it is a short lived satisfaction that will not lead to positive results for our communities.

It is hard enough to get perpetrators to be involved in an accountability process. I believe immature behavior on the part of accusers and others makes it less than likely for a perpetrator to want to get involved. Ultimately, yes, of course it is always the perpetrator’s responsibility to take on accountability and work through their shit. But it is unnecessary and unhelpful to make that more difficult than it already is. And doing so creates more risk for our communities.

I think that if the demands for accountability are not genuine the odds of getting a perpetrator to be accountable are slim. You can’t expect someone to take a demand for accountability seriously when it comes wrapped up in insults.

Queer

I think I came out as ‘bisexual’ to my parents when I was 15 or 16. They weren’t happy.

Despite that, and my later identification as queer, I have had primarily heterosexual partners of the opposite sex. I have dated a lot of straight men. And I have had a really hard time with relationships and with my relationship towards sex. I have spent a lot time bouncing back and forth between monogamy and polyamory. I have all the baggage from being raised by a Catholic father. I live in a society that makes it easier to be straight than to be queer.

Despite identifying as queer, I have kind of let that play only a background role in my life. I have concentrated on other things, other politics, other movements. And because of that and my lack of critiquing my own behavior, I just dated a lot of straight men. I don’t hate men or hate dating men. But more often than not, the dynamic I have experienced in these relationships has left me feeling disconnected, annoyed, or just off about the relationship.