Moonlit Eyes

{Photo credits: first one was screen capped by me. Second one at the bottom was screencapped by queerdeparted} 

Lets have a real grown up conversation about the notion of #solidarityisforwhitequeers for a hot second (HT credit goes to lowsell on twitter) 

Non-black queers, specifically white queers in this instance, are not above perpetuating antiblackness when speaking about the comparisons or differences between Ferguson and various parts of early and even present day U.S queer history. 

It’s hilarious to me when folks wanna vehemently deny any comparison between Ferguson and U.S LGBTQ history because apparently nobody ever use violence or burned anything down during the early incarnations of the gay rights movement, the early gay rights movement was a fight for “actual rights”, and the icing on the cake: nobody acted like animals in order to gain marriage equality. 

Pretending as if U.S queer history is a narrative of winning rights through suits, ties, and tea parties is not only patently incorrect, its flat out erasure. Stonewall was a riot started by trans women of color to protest mistreatment by the police that had become a constant in the lives of queer and trans new yorkers in Greenwich Village. The compton’s cafeteria riots- again started by trans women of color to protest police harassment + brutality. There are numerous instances of folks using violence to combat systematic violence throughout U.S LGBTQ history.

Marrying respectability politics with anti-blackness to pretend as if marriage equality is on some sort of moral high ground in comparison to Ferguson perpetuates a multitude of myths at the same time:

the myth that U.S queer history never used violence as a tactic of resistance towards the state/systematic oppression

the myth that non-violence is a more “respectable” form of protest and all other modes are unacceptable (forgetting once upon a time non-violence was seen as a threat to the state and met with deadly force. if anything Ferguson is an indication that the state continues to see non-violence as a threat and meets it with militarized deadly police force no matter what protestors actually do)

the myth that marriage equality is a non-violent movement. folks might not be lighting shit up in order to gain the right to get married, but the erasure of everyone else who isn’t white cis marriage or heteronormative minded is its own form of violence. the absence of a mainstream agenda that conceptualizes LGBTQ rights & needs outside of the framework of marriage is its own sort of violence because of the countless shit that gets left off the table and the people it subsequently leaves behind. funneling money into marriage equality to the exclusion of everything else has real life consequences for members of the LGBTQ community. it affects the ability of the queer community to utilize resources in order to adequately address homelessness, labor rights, access to affordable + culturally competent medical care, ableism, mental health services, the school to prison pipeline, the prison industrial complex, and HIV/AIDS. its a form of violence that has a body count, that leaves blood in the streets, and silences dissenting voices. 

queer history is not impervious to using violence as resistance or even using violence to further exclusivist agendas. 

(blood covered john lewis and jim swerg stand at station, waiting to find somebody who could take them to the hospital. jim swerg has his fingers in his mouth like he might be removing a broken tooth)

(close up of jim swerg and his condition after be beaten by a mob during non-violent protest blood is all over his suit, pants, and face, there appears to be blood still profusely dripping from his mouth onto his hand)

and of course, these two were beaten so brutally, with swerg finally ending up in the hospital, because they ‘incited’ this:

(hordes of white men beating the hell out of one single person with their feet, fists and sticks)

they weren’t sweet naive innocent little christians that decided to drive down to alabama one day—they were trained organizers that spent weeks training in how to non-violently resist the ‘riots’ they started. which earned them the endless wrath, disgust and non-support of endless law enforcement, politicians, and clergy. this is what mlk’s letter from birmingham jail was addressing. how the clergy refused to support the non-violent resisters. because in spite having the moral high ground, the clergy felt the civil rights movement was inciting turmoil needlessly. that they should slow down. do gradualism. let (white) people slowly change their minds. instead—they were inciting turmoil on purpose. and thus deserved what they got.

so—folks who are all ‘mlk would be ashamed’ or ‘why can’t u do this peacefully like mlk?’ really need to sit down and do some serious reading on movement organizing. 

So I noticed something in the shower today. I was halfway done with shaving my legs, and they kind of looked like the picture above (couldn’t take an actual photo of mine, cause, yaknow, I was IN THE SHOWER- so I googled a good approximation). And instantly I understood why people shave, and why it’s so, so problematic. 

It’s racism.

Hear me out. Yes, it’s also patriarchical beauty standards, but why did that one come about? Look at the two legs- look how much lighter the shaved one looks. It’s the same trend as skin whitening and other things that let people prove that they’re definitely not PoC. White people too, shaving so they don’t look like they have dark skin. Because obviously dark skin would be terrible, amirite?

Every single one.