It turns out that it's easier to write about privilege when you don't have it - everything you need to know can be gleaned from watching those who have it. Then all you need to do is compare: this is what they have and this is what I... um... have. Yeah. Go me. Most important is that privilege is the knowledge that you don't ever have to do anything to fight the injustice of others. For the privileged, in fact, fighting for those lesser people is stepping out of your comfort zone.
I'm white and I'm certainly privileged in that regard. I don't have to think about racism if I don't want to. Heterosexuals don't have to think about LGBT people if you don't want to. And just getting people to understand and empathize enough with our fight when we both already know they don't have to do it is enough of a struggle. Getting help from the heterosexual privileged masses at what may be perhaps an inconvenient time is nearly impossible.
Gay people have wanted to serve in the military for awhile. We want the government to stop taking away our right to fight and die for the country that we love - the country we love, I might add, despite its horrendous treatment of us for a very long time now. This has for some reason been an immense struggle. We have had to fight our Democratic White House, our Department of Defense, and it has been an uphill battle until recently in opinion polls.
Given the pushback by the White House, and given the Congress who's still terrified to move on absolutely any LGBT legislation (which is stigmatizing in itself) groups of protesters decided to band together and try a different method from the HRC's "be really nice to those in power and we'll get some crumbs" idea. These people are loud. They're in your face. They're shouting and holding up traffic and appearing in public at very inopportune times for the government.
This is our last resort. This is our last option. We have no other choice. People are still being kicked out of the military for being gay. People still have to undergo unfair investigations. People are still hurting. And now in another humiliation, the Department of Defense has sent everyone a humiliating and stigmatizing survey which is basically a push poll against LGB people. It's no surprise that only 10% of the troops have even bothered to fill it out. They don't care and they haven't cared for a long time.
Well, these kinds of "uppity" protests have brought out, once again, the ugly side of America and even, sadly enough, the progressive movement.
We LGBT people have been trashed left and right over these protests. First it was because we were targeting the president. Then when we targeted Congress it was the wrong time to do so. Then when we stopped targeting Congresspeople at fundraisers, well, it was just indecent.
And these are our progressive friends and allies.
Yesterday, after nearly being in tears at another lesbian soldier's discharge under DADT, I decided to take the drastic(ally evil, apparently) action of asking for DADT messages on the President's 49th birthday card. OFA not only asked for signatures and personal messages via a political website but there was a donation page after you signed it. And plus the man has had 48 other birthdays in which he did not receive messages asking for an executive order for a moratorium on discharges.
People are losing their careers and lives and are still unable to serve openly in our nation's military so I would have thought anyone and everyone, even those privileged people who never have to worry about this, would either help or commend us for fighting to make the country more equal. It was not to be.
Most prevalent, of course, was the argument that oh, man, you know, we really, really do love LGBT people and support you... but... here's A List of Appropriate Protest Methods We Feel Comfortable Supporting.
Tacky.
It's the mans birthday, it shouldn't be about politics. If you want to send him a letter or a petition i'd sign it. Not a birthday card. It's classless.
And:
Geez,. we are quite the nation
the man has a birthday and we bust his chops. Flame a way, but that is the height of tacky. Send an e-mail through White House.gov, call, whatever, but a birthday card is for birthday wishes, not politics. Perhaps they should not have asked for donations afterwards, but geez, if it is not possible for you to sign and say a simple happy birthday, don't frickin' sign.
Among others.
The idea is that the privileged get to decide in which ways we are allowed to influence policy. They know that we can't get our message across without their help so they enforce guidelines on us. We do it their way or we just don't get help. We don't get to serve in the military. We have to suffer through more discharges. Because heterosexuals do not have to worry about this, therefore they will only help if they are comfortable enough.
Secondly, the privileged always demean what we are doing by namecalling. With blacks it's words like "uppity" or words like "rioting", racially tinged words meant to eliminate support from them. With LGBT people, it's stuff like, well,:
I've already signed the president's card as well. and I also made a donation. Those that don't want to do that,don't, but stop bitching. A birthday card is not for making some kind of political statement.
And, hey, women as well as LGBT folks know what this means:
don't get emotional because i think its in poor taste
And again:
you are looking at this in an emotional way
i am not. so emotions aside,the act of bombarding someone's birthday card with my own personal agendas imho would be and is tacky, no matter who the person. time and place....that is all. if you feel comfortable doing so then by all means. shrugs
That "I am not" is very telling. The privileged never have to get emotional. They never have to worry. They can be comfortable thinking about the right of gay people to fight and die for our country in abstract terms. They do not have a stake in this whatsoever. They can help us or not, and they can criticize us. All the time. No matter what they're doing or not doing.
Because this is "our" fight. They can stand outside of it and tell us what we're doing wrong even as they say they will not help us. And make no mistake, people actually said they will not help us.
I will not. It is rude and crass for a worthy (2+ / 0-)
cause as DADT to be used this way.
This is not unlike the masses who threaten to withdraw support from the LGBT community almost daily here on this blog and out in the real world, for whatever reason. People can just afford to say "screw it I'm done" if they get the least bit upset or uncomfortable. That is privilege I can't even dream of.
We, as LGBT people, can't abandon anyone like that. Women, blacks, latinos, anyone. It is admittedly partially because we're such a small minority that we need as many supporters as we can get and the best way to do that is to support others.
It is also because we're so often seen as one issue types. For a long time one couldn't think of LGBT rights without the icky "gay sex" association. Our movement was build on sexual liberation and not much else. Now, we're trying to serve in the military, trying to get married, trying to keep our jobs. Some people see things as "those icky gays are trying to sexualize the military, the workplace, and ruin traditional marriage." By sticking with everyone else no matter what, it shows that LGBT rights are human rights. We are part of the black community, the latino community. We're part of the civil rights advocates and antiwar activists.
Simply put, we don't have the privilege to abandon any groups in any way and having lived through what we do, I can't really imagine a significant portion of LGBT people ever abandoning one segment of the population, especially not in their time of need.
Sometimes we need to recognize our privilege. We need to look at what we don't have to do, ever, and we need to understand methods we will never, ever have to use and why some groups might need to resort to using them. We all need to fight alongside each other.