Small Pieces of Paper

book!Grace, who i just transported into a pocket universe specifically to rant to him: RYAN GOSLING??? I'm RYAN GOSLING??

me: yes obviously, now stay on topic here. what im trying to tell you is that all art is political, no matter its supposed intentions. the global trolley problem of it all, ortiz's portrayal of rocky as an alien who gets to be as weird as he wishes he could be, the world's decision to choose a woman to be the scapegoat of humanity's survival--

I turn to the chalkboard and carefully write out

WORKIN' HARD

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

A patient comes in with a flesh eating bacteria that is rapidly spreading up their leg. The only way to save their life is to remove their leg.

So what do you do? To help the patient is to accept that you must also harm them.

You're a good doctor. Of course you remove the leg and save the patient's life, because trying to exercise a choice that will result in no harm is impossible where there are only two bad outcomes, but one is unquestionably worse.

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

But how they actually worked was manipulating racist policies to cause as much of a delay as possible. They'd sit down at the bar to order (that's how those restaurants worked, you had to sit down to order and there weren't many tables) and when the waiter said they couldn't serve them, they'd respond that they would wait until they could be served. And then all their friends who they organized this with would do the same, and they would sit there at every seat until they're holding up the whole line. Then nobody could order and the restaurant was forced to either close, serve them, or try and fail to work around them. It wasn't just to make a point, it was to cost them money and time.

Does this look quiet, peaceful, nondisruptive?

And the struggle didn't stop after formal integration, once the Civil Rights act had passed. Because even when they are legally required to serve you, they can make you really fucking uncomfortable and threaten you and the cops probably will take their side.

For one example, there was a cafe that would serve Black people, but would then publicly break the dishes so that no white customer would ever have to eat off a dish a Black person had eaten off of. This was done publicly, right as the Black diner was done eating. The waitress takes the plate and smashes it. This is a signal both to the white diners "see, we hate them just as much as you do, you're safe here" and also a threat of violence to the Black diners. "If you're not careful we'll smash you just like we did this plate."

But at the same time, if Black people go there and eat every day ... how long before the cafe can't afford to do that? How long before they have broken so many dishes that it's eating into their profits? How long before the white diners start getting used to eating alongside Black people and simply don't care as much any longer, or start getting annoyed at the noise and fuss and mess?

1. Folks in these movements trained. They were disruptive and they were strategic about it and they trained so that they could stay calm in terrifying situations and create the targeted disruptions they wanted to create and not get goaded into deviating from that. Absolutely badass.

2. Not at all a criticism of OP because I think their description of people thinking it was "quiet self-sacrificial non-disruptive christ-like activism" is dead on, but I think that description itself speaks to the same kind of revisionism re: the Christ of the Gospels and how disruptive he was and why, and it's important to remember that, especially in this era of renewed christofascism. Rev. Dr. King was a prophet and you will never convince me otherwise.

Nonviolence is not a goal, it is a strategy. A deliberate strategy at a calculated time in response to violence of the oppressor, which can be effective if it shames the perpetrators. See: why Selma or Montgomery was chosen by the SCLC (they had the most racist unhinged sheriffs who would deploy maximum force, which got shown on nationwide broadcasts and finally moved the public).

Nonviolence doesn’t mean you don’t carry weapons if necessary, as many organizers in Selma did. Nonviolence doesn’t mean that you accept that people will throw bombs into your family’s home, as they did to MLK.

And yes, the absurd simplification and bastardization of this strategy is deliberate. It went from being a tool for fighting for liberation to being a justification for more violence and oppression used against future generations of protestors who didn’t meet the standard of perfectly obedient nonviolent non disruptive protestors. Which of course there is no such thing.

Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.

Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.

You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.

Sex is not what makes someone an adult.

Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.

Sex is not equally important to everyone.

You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.

You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.

Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.

The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.

However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.