What Needs to Be Said About the Orlando Shooting

I’m about to say a lot of things that will not be mind blowing. People have already said all of them, probably better than I can. But I try to think of myself as an ally, and ally is a verb not a noun, which means I need to do something. So if more straight, cis folks like myself need to keep repeating basic truths until America pulls our collective heads out of our asses, then I will do it. Repetition is a key to learning, and straight America has some learning to do.

The shooting in Orlando was a hate crime against the queer community. Gay bars are safe spaces for many people, where they go to find community, support, and acceptance. The shooter has made homophobic comments before. The choice of location was not an accident. This was an attack on the queer community. If you believe that with marriage equality the GLBT community is fine and should stop asking for more, stop and look at what just happened. 50 people were murdered for their sexuality and gender identities. People in the queer community die every day, of suicide and violence and poverty and AIDS left untreated and homelessness. This community is vulnerable, and that vulnerability was exploited in this attack.

The shooting further targeted one of the most vulnerable populations in the US: trans women of color. The club was a popular place for Latinx individuals, and hosted drag shows. It just so happened that the night of the shooting featured Latinx drag performers. This is not a coincidence. The fragile masculinity that pervades America says trans women are a threat to everything we care about. It’s not a surprise that they are the target of so much violence when their very existence is a symbol of fucking the patriarchy.

The shooting in Orlando was a product of toxic masculinity. When physical strength and violence are lauded as the symbols of masculinity, we create people who deal with their problems through violence. The shooter had a history of domestic abuse. When we excuse rape, intimate partner violence, and domestic abuse, we make it so much easier for the violence to just keep escalating. We send the message that violence is how to deal with problems. Toxic masculinity demands that men don’t show emotion and affection, which makes two gay men openly kissing a terrifying and horrifying prospect. It says that men have a dominant role, and any man taking on the woman’s role is a disgusting perversion, giving rise to further homophobia and violence against GLBT individuals, in particular trans women.

The shooting was related to the homophobia rampant in many Islamic communities. The shooting is not an excuse for Islamaphobia. This is where things get a little bit complicated, but I think we can all hold these two truths together. There is homophobia in many Islamic communities. It can contribute to the attitudes of the members of those churches. This is not unique to Islam. Many Christian churches contribute to negative attitudes towards queer people. We need to be able to criticize the damage that religious beliefs are doing without jumping to full blown Islamaphobia that says this man was an extreme terrorist sent by ISIL to destroy America. See the difference? Homophobia in Islam contributed. Every Muslim every is not an evil terrorist.

The shooting is further evidence of America’s gun problem. Yes, America is a unique place and we cannot wholesale import solutions from smaller countries or from Australia. But it is a fact that our gun violence far outstrips other comparable countries and we need to do something. It remains true that guns are dangerously unregulated, and individuals are capable of purchasing unnecessarily high powered weapons that can kill at a rate that knives or homemade weapons cannot. It remains true that guns are less regulated than cars or chemicals or all kinds of other things that are less dangerous. We need to face up to the fact that our obsession with guns is killing people, and we need to start actually doing research into how to make it better.

The shooting is not evidence that the shooter was mentally ill. People with mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. There are many complex reasons that an individual chooses to commit horrific acts, but dismissing it with “they were insane” lets us off the hook for the ways that we have built a society that fosters violence. It also throws mentally ill people under the bus and makes them responsible for violence when in fact they are an already vulnerable group of people. We do in fact need better care for the mentally ill, but now is not the right time to talk about it.

Finally, and most importantly, if you consider yourself an ally, now is the time to show it. Speak up. Tell your queer friends they can rely on you for support right now. Give blood. Give money to GLBT organizations. This event was horrific, but if you are an ally then you need to step up. I am actively calling on my fellow straight, cis individuals to mop up our mess. Take care of the queer people in your life. It’s the least we can do.

Marriage is What Brings Us Together Today

Today the Minnesota Senate will be voting on marriage equality. There is a high likelihood that it will pass, and my lovely state will finally move forward into something slightly more resembling equality. I’m pretty excited about this, I think understandably, but occasions like this always make me stop and wonder why marriage equality is the huge push in the GLBT agenda. Obviously there are political and historical reasons for this: most of the people who organize this movement tend to be upper middle class and white, and the largest form of discrimination they tend to experience is marriage inequality. But in the larger picture of things, is it really useful to be focusing on marriage?

 

Many of the arguments that the right uses against gay marriage is that it will break down traditional family structures, and allow kids to be raised in different ways. They also are worried that it will destroy traditional gender roles, and leave us with a genderless society. Now to both of these things I say YAY. First and foremost, any family structure that allows for nurturing and caring of kids is a good family structure. Or even one that doesn’t involve any kids but just involves people caring for each other. Multiplying family structures is a great idea, because then people won’t feel frickin’ guilty for trying to appeal to different sources of help or building a family in the way they can. But a genderless society sounds even better! We’ll never get rid of the concepts of gender unfortunately (or at least I don’t think so) but the idea that we could allow for more fluidity, or the idea that both men and women could create identities that are both “masculine” and “feminine”, or the idea that people could be somewhere in between the two extremes of gender is great. People are suddenly not constrained by stupid arbitrary rules. People can go where their talents and interests lead them. Oh most beautiful of days!

 

But here’s the problem: marriage is not a particularly radical act. Getting married is about as stodgy and status quo as it gets. Continuing to create the family structure of two parents+children doesn’t really do a whole lot to expand the possibilities, and continuing the concept of pair-bonding with a single other person as your main form of commitment and connection doesn’t do a whole lot to multiply our conceptions of gender. The term gay even relies on the idea that there are two genders and you have certain relations to people based upon their gender. Marriage doesn’t do a whole lot to undermine a lot of the crappy structures we have in place. Particularly, it continues the idea that the government should reward those who choose to get married, which is a perfectly arbitrary thing to do. It continues to suggest that we can have only a single primary relationship in our lives and that it should be privileged above other relationships. And it continues a tradition in which women have been delightfully oppressed for centuries. LOVELY!

 

So while I think that marriage equality is a step in the right direction for society as it is now, and because it will make some people question things like the structure of family and the nature of gender, I hope that someday marriage will not be seen as privileged over other types of relationships, and that we can create a multitude of kinds of families and relationships that are viewed equally. I would love to one day see a family made up of a grandmother, a mother, and some children be treated equally to a couple who chooses to never have kids which is treated equally to a poly trio who adopted which is treated equally to a single individual who has many close friends. All of these are valid life choices and can probably lead to fulfillment and support in its own way. And I also hope that someday the labels gay and straight become fairly meaningless because gender is no longer our dominant form of identification. Maybe I’m red-head sexual. Who knows?

 

So kudos to MN for moving towards marriage equality, but for the rest of society…let’s try to be a bit more imaginative in our rebellion shall we?