Wear Clean Draws  (’coz there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

This is a good point, although Savage doesn’t make the conclusion I’m going to: It’s bigoted to expect queers to adhere to a certain normative model of what activism is supposed to look like, what counts as the right kind of activism, etc. I guess you could call it a kind of heteronormative bigotry or, more mildly, heterosexual privilege: the demand that queers pursue that organizing and protest strategies that hets feel are the right ones, that fit some normative model of how activism should proceed.

I’m thinking of the complaints I heard on television last week, Bill Mahar’s show and Rachel Maddow (I think; I watched so much I can’t remember). Anyway, two women pointed the finger at gays for failing to organize against prop 8. One was on the show to speak specifically about the black vote in CA. The other was just one of three other guests, none of whom I recognized, on Mahar’s show. I don’t remember why she said it, but when she did, on the heels of the other woman excusing the much higher rates of heterosexism among blacks, I got steamed.

If you take intersectionality seriously and don’t privilege one oppression over others, then it’s inapprorpriate to explain that people aren’t going to stop being bigoted until the other groups stops being bigoted first. doesn’t work that way. of course, the woman on Maddow’s show didn’t say that. She acknowledged that there’s a problem that needs to be discussed, but she spent more time pointing the finger at gay activists and, in doing so, made an implicit demand that they fit a model of activism that may not be appropriate given the nature of heterosexist oppression in this country.

Gay people generally aren’t the placard-waving, bomb-throwing, chaps-wearing, communion-wafer-stomping radicals we’re made out to be by the Bills O’Reilly and Donohue. Most gays and lesbians are content to be left to alone; many gays and lesbians go out of their way to ignore political threats and political activism and political activists. Only when gays and lesbians are attacked—only after the fact—do gays and lesbians take to the streets. Remember: the Stonewall Riots were are a response to a particularly brutal and cruelly-timed (we’d just buried Judy!) police raid on a gay bar in New York City; ACT-UP and Queer Nation were a response not to the AIDS virus, but to a murderous indifference on the parts of the political and medical establishment that amounted to an attack.

Most gay people grow up desperately trying to pass, to blend in; most of us flee to cities where we can live our lives in relative peace and security. We don’t go looking for fights. And most gay people walk around without realizing that they’ve internalized the dynamics of high school hells some of us barely survived: it’s better to pass, to stay out of sight, to avoid making waves, lest you attract negative attention, lest you get bashed.

But once you get bashed, once someone else throws the first punch, then you fight back—what other choice do you have?

Gays and lesbians were active in the fight against Prop 8—thousands of us. But the great gay masses marching in the streets over the last week didn’t perceive Prop 8 as an attack until after it was approved. Which was idiotic not just in hindsight but in foresight—lots of gay people were screaming bloody murder about Prop 8, and pouring money into the campaign, before the damn thing passed. So now we’re in the streets—now when some would argue that it’s too late. But as with past attacks that galvanized the gay community—Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk’s murder, the AIDS epidemic, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, Matthew Shepard’s murder—the energy will be harnessed, new leaders will emerge, and we will emerge stronger.