An Open Letter to Legislators on “Small” Bureaucratic Barriers

I want lawmakers to stop thinking in terms of a small amount of money, a small hassle, a small barrier to a Constitutional or human right.

Lawmakers, you represent the people, but you are not The People.  You are the privileged few.  Some of you are more aware of this than others, certainly.  I’ve been moved in particular by several recent videos from the House floor, where women of color Representatives have used their own experiences as narratives to illustrate their arguments on social issues.  But as a group, you are the privileged few, and I need you to stop thinking of barriers to rights as “small.”

An additional identification requirement at the voting both may seem simple to a lifelong citizen whose birth certificate, passport, social security records, and medical history have always lived in a metal filing cabinet in the office of a mid-sized suburban home, but it is not the case for those whom these laws affect.

A 24-hour waiting period for an abortion may seem small to someone who drives a car that gets 34 miles to the gallon and has always had an employer that allows for at least ten vacation days a year, but it is not the case for those whom these laws affect.

A $100 filing fee for a name change petition may seem small for someone who has always had at least a few thousand in the bank, someone whose very humanity, dignity, and ability to get through life without a constant fear of harassment has never been in question because a name is just something given by parents that sticks to your identity over time, but it is not the case for those whom these laws affect.

I need lawmakers to start thinking seriously about the impact of fees, waiting periods, documentation requirements, and other “little” bureaucratic considerations on the actual people who are affected by these laws.  And I need you to start thinking about the kinds of fundamental rights these people are trying to access, and I need you to sit with that for a minute.

Thank you.

Gendering Humanity with the French Concept of Etat Civil

Recently, I read a news story (I can’t even remember what it was, to be honest) that got me thinking about the concept of etat civil.  Etat civil is a French legal concept that, roughly translated, means “civil status” or your legal state of being.  The French Wikipedia describes it as “a person’s position in the family and society, resulting from a written procedure of administrative identification.”  It comes up in the contexts of births, marriages, and deaths, pretty much, but it also encompasses things like your name and gender, so it’s relevant in transgender identity context.

The idea bothers me because although the practical meaning of the term is more like what we call “vital statistics” in the United States, and is dry and deals with demographic data, the actual French term implies much more.  It bothers me that one’s very being, one’s “state” or existence in the public arena is gendered.  Not only is it impossible to escape the gender binary in France due to the gendering of nouns and adjectives in the language, but your being in the eyes of the state must be either male or female (and is exceedingly difficult to change).

Sadly, this is not surprising.  I am not surprised that discrimination is so important to us as a society that it bothers us not to be able to gender someone, because I live this every day.  Nor am I surprised that we aren’t sure how to treat someone “as a human being” with no other data.  We’re obsessed with gender as a framework to tell us how to behave, and many among us are deeply bothered when we get gender “wrong,” are confused about someone’s gender, or find that someone’s gender is changing.

I would be curious to know if anyone’s done a study on human interaction in online spaces where gender is not known, though I imagine it would be difficult to find many where gender isn’t stated fairly early on in an interaction.  I do find it interesting that among queer and trans Twitter friends, I often don’t know someone’s gender, and am sometimes surprised when I learn it.  I imagine that some assumptions are made based on the online space–gaming, for example, being principally male; Pinterest being principally female–but it’d be interesting to know how many spaces there are where that isn’t the case.  I would love to learn that, even in tiny niches, human beings are simply taken as that, end of discussion.

Why You Should Loudly Support Westboro Baptist’s Free Speech Rights

I support the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Westboro Baptist Church’s right to picket funerals and just generally be douchebags.

When I was a junior in high school, I had a math teacher who was a brilliant woman and taught me a lot of what I needed to know about life, if not much about math.  The thing she said that stuck with me the most was about free speech–she told me that she, a very liberal Jewish woman, strongly supports a Nazi’s right to stand on a hilltop shouting at the top of his lungs, because that is absolutely the only way she can defend her own rights with a clear conscience.

And let’s face it–this case is free speech gold.  These are the most disgusting, reprehensible people you can imagine, people who picket funerals, who absolutely loathe me and want me to die in the most gruesome possible ways, who firmly believe that I deserve to rot in hell for all eternity.  This is why queers, liberals, and human rights activists need to stand up and cheer for the Supreme Court on this ruling, and defend Westboro Baptist’s right to tell everyone that God hates fags.  If we don’t jump on this case, we have no credibility.

Of course, at the same time, we should absolutely condemn Westboro Baptist’s actions, beliefs, and thoughts using our own free speech right.  But you have to pick the right enemy.

I believe that there is a war on free speech in this country, and it’s not being fought in the courts.  Initially, it was, but the obscenity laws are in place.  The Puritanical, stigmatizing laws, rules, ordinances, and regulations that supposedly are designed to keep children away from sex, drugs, and rock and roll are the real problem.  This is how cultural shifts happen, and look where we are now.  We’re afraid to say “fuck” in public.  We’re afraid to say lesbian in public.  Sexual expression is reduced to obscenity, and people who raise children in queer, kinky, polyamorous, sex positive, or radical households are condemned as unfit parents.  That’s where we need to turn our energies.

Is Voting a Responsibility?

Readers, I am sick and I am tired.

I’m sick and tired of people shaming those who don’t vote in this country, attacking young people for failure to get involved in politics, and saying that a decision not to vote is a vote for the “other side.”  For many of us, there is no “other side.”  The political atmosphere in the United States doesn’t offer truly opposing viewpoints on many issues, and hasn’t for a long time.  Politics is not a sphere of creativity, activism, and problem-solving.  It’s a charade.  And I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that a vote for a Republican necessarily is worse than a vote for a Democrat who will do nothing.  I believe that both choices are appalling.

In school, we’re all indoctrinated into the ideal of “democracy.”  In a democracy, we’re told, political participation is the right and the duty of every citizen.  Political participation includes voting, campaigning, and writing letters to our Congressperson.  Those are the boundaries of participation, and if we do not choose to exercise our rights in these neatly delineated ways, we are not participants and we have no right to object to what happens in our nation.

I call bullshit.

2010 Elections and the Need for Radical Social Action

I never get all that excited about national elections, to be honest.  I’ve worked on some specific issue campaigns related to abortion and gay marriage, but I tend to have difficulties with politics because my stances are significantly more radical than those of the available candidates.  If I had to select a party, I would go with the socialists.  I’m more interested in policy than in candidates, and so I’d like to use this post-election-day period as an opportunity to highlight the need for social action.

Politics has its uses.  Government cooperation is necessary for many causes.  But we can’t underestimate the power of social awareness for social change.  A coworker and I were just talking about the election and she mentioned that she doesn’t actually know that many Republicans.  I shared my theory that most Republicans our age probably come to the party based on economic issues, not social ones.  Many Republicans I’ve known have softened their stance or even switched parties after becoming aware of the importance of social issues such as gay rights, feminism, etc.

Most young Republicans I know, particularly those who are not evangelical Christians, consider social issues secondary and take a relatively weak stance on those issues.  I’ve known many young Republicans who weren’t active homophobes, pro-lifers, or anti-feminists, but simply didn’t consider these issues important in their own lives.  A lot of these friends had never met a queer person before me, or a person who’s had an abortion, or had never really thought about feminist issues.  Just talking about these things, or simply being aware of a friend or friends who are directly and substantially affected by these issues, led to a shift in these young people’s stances on social issues.

Remember this when you’re rallying for social change.  Visibility is important.  One-on-one conversations are very important.  It’s easy to consider an issue secondary when it doesn’t directly affect you, or to view a minority group as “other” when you think you don’t know any members of that group, and only recognize the group based on televised portrayals.  But a dinner table chat can break down barriers.  In the periods between elections, we should concentrate on these conversations and how to bring activism down to a person-to-person level.  Radical change starts at home.

Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Rape in the United States

I’ve been watching the webcast of a Senate subcommittee hearing on rape in the United States, and though I’m not able to watch the last panel, I wanted to note a couple of things.  One is that I’m actually encouraged by what I’ve heard, especially about the need to have better definitions of sexual crimes and the need for better reporting and police support.  Then again, the Senators present were Specter, Cardin, and Franken, so maybe that’s to be expected.

One thing, though, that bothered me, was that Specter seemed surprised that a public education and awareness campaign would be needed–what is to me one of the most important elements of eradicating rape culture.  He stated that “people are aware of what rape means [...] that it is violent and anti-social.”  Seems to be missing the point a bit.  There was some back-and-forth in this hearing between recognizing and seeming to gloss over acquaintance rape.  The problem isn’t that people don’t know what rape is, but that sexual crimes aren’t culturally stigmatized and survivors don’t get social support.  So yes, a public education campaign is vitally important, to change the way people think about sex and to prevent rape before it happens.

On the other hand, I was encouraged that particularly vulnerable populations were at least mentioned: indigenous people, immigrants, people with disabilities, people in institutions, LGBT people, the homeless, etc.  I don’t know how much hope I have for things improving, but this hearing has shown that journalism, and just talking about it, does mean something.

September 11th: Defining the Terrorized and the Terrorist

Here we are, nine years out from September 11, 2001.  Obviously, the acts that took place on that day were terrible acts of violence committed by desperate men carrying out a perverted form of religious belief.  But the terrible acts that get carried out in the name of patriotism are also deserving of some questioning.

Apparently, the burning of Qu’arans isn’t going to happen after all, but that doesn’t mean that things like that don’t happen everyday, in America and elsewhere.  The thing we have to realize is that we’re dealing with structural issues.  Imperialism, colonialism, war, corporate greed, capitalism… it’s a very thick net that many have woven, and it’s strangling us.

My mom is a very talented musician, and she put out an album years before September 11  was more than just a random date on the calendar, with a song called “Terrorist.”  There’s a line in that song that I think sums this point up very well: “Powerless gain power, and the power stays the same.”  And the song, as a whole, makes another important point: it’s not about good and evil people, and when we think of the world in good and evil sides, well, we miss that choking net entirely.

You can listen to “Terrorist,” by Mean Mad Momma, here.  The lyrics are below the cut.

Women’s Equality Day: What Is Suffrage, Anyway?

I think most of us who grew up in the United States in the late 20th century have a limited understanding of what the right to vote actually means.  As we celebrate 90 years of women’s suffrage this year, it’s interesting to look back to the founding of the US and consider what voting, and democracy, meant to early Americans.

I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States this week, and its chapters do a great job of putting democracy in perspective.  The Founders, lauded in our classrooms as almost omnipotent men, benevolent providers of justice and equality, were actually concerned at the founding of our country about making the Constitution too democratic.  The Founders didn’t want to risk the United States becoming a nation where rich and poor people alike had a share in the workings of state, and they certainly didn’t see blacks, women, Indians, or recent immigrants getting involved.  Property qualifications varied from state to state, but everywhere the voting population was a definite minority of the general populous.

Now, of course, people can vote without owning any property.  Blacks, women, naturalized citizens, American Indians, and the poor make up a large part of the total voting population.  But capitalism is still firmly entrenched in our ideas of government and society.  Children still sneer at “commies,” and those in power are ingenious at turning different groups against one another and stigmatizing any desire for socialism or communal living.  Our system of property ownership, our “rags to riches myth,” the institution of marriage–all these things perpetuate a capitalist ideal that focuses on the individual, not the group.  And who’s in power?  Well, the business interests still aren’t doing too badly.  Rich white men may be joined by women and people of color in the corridors of power, but classism in the United States is alive and well, along with racism and sexism.

So let’s continue fighting for equality, rather than resting on our laurels.  Let’s take this occasion to reflect on how we can use our activism, our writing, our entrepreneurship, our leadership, our coalitions, and yes, our vote, creatively to increase access to political life and economic well-being for more and more people in the United States.  And let’s think about how we define “well-being,” exactly, and consider how our hallowed institutions do and don’t meet our needs as individuals and a community.

Why Is Same-Sex Marriage a Priority?

I know I’ve mentioned here before that I get frustrated by the emphasis on marriage and the military in the gay rights movement, two issues that don’t really matter to me personally and in some ways seem less important than other issues (like decriminalization of sodomy around the world, like HIV prevention, like hate crimes prevention, like non-discrimination laws). But aside from that, I was just wondering, why marriage? Obviously it’s an important institution in our society, but I find it interesting that it happens to be the marker of how the gay rights movement is progressing around the world. A lot of countries in Latin America, for example, have really impressive laws about hate crimes and non-discrimination, but that doesn’t get emphasized in the news at all, while a new country getting same-sex marriage is automatically a big deal.

Prop 8 Overturned, Sort Of

Your blogger’s inner cynicism rears its ugly head, I’m afraid.  I haven’t had time to read the decision or anything else, so I’m operating on what I know from the news, which is that a California District Court ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional on Due Process and Equal Protection grounds and that a stay has been issued, though it’s not a very long one and so it’ll expire before an appeal and another stay will have to be issued.

Assuming that’s correct, this is definitely something of a victory, but it doesn’t mean people can get married again, and it doesn’t mean that Prop 8 was really “overturned,” at least, in the sense I use the word.  I sort of feel like you can’t overturn something if the next guy can turn it right back.  But despite that, I’ll feel some cautious sense of victory, and eagerly anticipate the result of the appeals process.