Apr
28
“However, comments about trans folks, black people, lesbians and women will serve to further marginalize people who are already marginalized in our community. In addition to the recent controversy over Wang’s gay bar banning women at night, last summer’s Take Back Boystown movement told black youths they weren’t wanted in “our” neighborhood. That sort of thinking is upheld when black attendees at spaces like Minibar are denied entry, as many of my friends of color have been. In 2010, a group of lesbians sued Spin and a Facebook group popped up shortly afterward to protest the bar, containing a “raft of complaints largely critical of the way that its staff and management treat women and people of color.” In response to these protests, Windy City Times reporter (then an organizer) Kate Sosin summed up the controversy well: “You have people who are running these spaces that are not actively thinking about issues of privilege.”
And maybe that’s part of the problem. Issues of privilege and exclusion continue to be ignored in the larger Chicago queer community — one driven by upper-middle-class white gay males, who go to spaces where they hope to see others like them. (Melissa Harris-Perry recently referred to them as the community’s “One Percent.”) What that does is make other segments of the community not only invisible, but also powerless to speak up about their structural oppression — in a movement that’s supposed to include their voices, fight for their equality and be a shelter for those who might not have homes elsewhere. And when you instead build a neighborhood rampant with lesbophobia, misogyny, racism, ageism, slut shaming and transphobia, you only create more of the hatred, bigotry and intolerance that our community is supposed to stand against. This is not what equality looks like, and it makes us look no better than the Michele Bachmanns and Rick Santorums of the world.”
And maybe that’s part of the problem. Issues of privilege and exclusion continue to be ignored in the larger Chicago queer community — one driven by upper-middle-class white gay males, who go to spaces where they hope to see others like them. (Melissa Harris-Perry recently referred to them as the community’s “One Percent.”) What that does is make other segments of the community not only invisible, but also powerless to speak up about their structural oppression — in a movement that’s supposed to include their voices, fight for their equality and be a shelter for those who might not have homes elsewhere. And when you instead build a neighborhood rampant with lesbophobia, misogyny, racism, ageism, slut shaming and transphobia, you only create more of the hatred, bigotry and intolerance that our community is supposed to stand against. This is not what equality looks like, and it makes us look no better than the Michele Bachmanns and Rick Santorums of the world.”
Nico Lang: When in Boystown: Don’t Create Racism, Create Change
What is this? Gay, white men being oppressive asses? Shocker.
(via titotito)
Wow, we haven’t even gotten rid of mainstream oppression and this is going on and just adding to it.
Way to fight the power.
Yeah, talk about progress.
(via homostuckhomestuck)
(via shelfofawesome)