But even some progressive gay white men say they feel alienated from a movement they see becoming more radical, particularly online, where the tenor of conversation is often uncivil.
Hot take: I'm honestly, vocally sick of settler-gay men who demand that you handle them with kid gloves when their entire existence within the community is an existence blanketed in microaggression at best, when they're not being outright full-on macroaggressive about someone that 'doesn't fit their "preference"'; and I'm genuinely glad people are starting to talk about it.
Using broad statements like “white gay men are hindering our progress” is othering and alienating. I’d hope people would rightfully call that out if you wrote “black trans men are hindering our progress”.
As a white gay man I’ve been intimidated by police at my home and harassed and threatened for being gay as recently as a few months ago. I can’t be openly gay with my partner without fear of being killed.
It fucking sucks to be othered by leftists in an era where being visibly gay can get me hurt or killed.
I’m not asking to be handled with kids gloves. I’m asking leftists to not do the same thing as conservatives who paint entire minority groups as “guilty” of some offense with their words.
False equivalence.
No. You've be intimidated and harassed for being gay, being white or male has literally nothing to do with it.
When it comes to the patriarchal dominance over the lgbt community though, the being white and male part actually matters, because it's that group doing it. You're even doing it right now by getting upset that your dominance as a white male is being questioned. This is a supremacist reaction that should be looked at introspectively.
I strongly agree with you that the white maleness matters there. After calming down I realize I clearly said a lot of ignorant things in my argument.
There's a reason we call them reactionaries.
It's an interesting issue and talking people round from that reaction is difficult. Ultimately nobody wants to take away the fact that you definitely do experience expression for being gay but that the white men are overly represented and have overly dominant voices within the lgbt community to the point of harming other causes because they don't think to shut the fuck up from time to time, in fact they're happy to talk about what they think of other causes, even directly harming them with shit.
This happens in smaller subsets too. For example the same fragile reaction occasionally occurs among trans women, who are overly dominant within trans circles and some (not all) have a fragile reaction to this being pointed out rather than working to reduce that dominance and elevate trans male voices.
But the white male reaction is a very similar one to the same fragile white male reaction that occurs among cis people when you raise women's issues. Which is why the whiteness is specifically highlighted. There's different issues with black men, but their experiences and issues are quite unique to their intersection and their skin colour doesn't usually enter into their issues patriarchally unlike white men for example when you get into white men and racial fetishisation.
It's very difficult to have these conversations because people often have these reactions when their power is questioned, especially when it's power they don't want to acknowledge.
They are called reactionary because they think the past is better than the present or future.
Not because they are reactive
This is not the marxist usage. The marxist usage of the word is as a descriptor of the monarchist opposition to revolution, referring to the opposition as the reaction to the revolutionaries of 18th century france purely in a materialist way as a literal reaction to the existence of revolutionaries being a change in the material conditions provoking a reaction.
This in turn informs all other marxist usage of the phrase, referring to various forms of reaction to conditions that the left creates.
Not going to lie. What you wrote does not read easily
Sorry.
The point I am making is that the marxist usage actually IS about people having a reaction to something. Reactionaries are a reaction to certain material conditions, these conditions are produced by the left (marxists) in most cases. For example critique of white male dominance in society produces a viscerally angry political opposition in some people who recognise consciously or unconsciously that it means they lose power. These people are what we call reactionaries in this context.
Whether or not they believe in RETVRN is actually irrelevant. They don't have to believe that returning to the past is better. They just have to be reacting negatively to something clearly progressive. There are a tonne of people in our society who aren't regressive but are also definitely reactionaries that angrily oppose everything we want.
The liberal definition removes materialism and just tries to say "they're people that want to return to the past". Mostly because liberals do not want to do materialist analysis as they recognise it's not beneficial to them.
This is probably still difficult to parse. The point here is that the marxist definition is not really the same as the liberal definition. They do this to a lot of our language, much like "working class" means something different to liberals compared to marxists, "imperialism" too.
Your first paragraph in this response is much more clear and makes sense
Monarchist reaction to revolutionaries of 18th century France who represent a change in material conditions.
The primary point of the response, I think, was to refocus reactionary away from "the past" and towards material conditions.
In the case of this thread it has to do with white people reacting to their place being questioned. White queers benefit from increased representation, increased safety, even if it doesn't feel that way to us, and generally being the biggest ethnic group in queer spaces. And other stuff too.
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Yea it is because they are reactive. The origin of the word is the reaction against revolution.
Past isn’t magically bad and future isn’t magically good. Time isn’t linear progress
lmao i come in here and of course you're doing the stupidpol "but what if you replaced white with black" argument
Agreed. That is a terribly selfish argument for me to make, and I apologize for it.
Alright good response, sorry I was a bit rough on you but we’ve done this rodeo before a lot
They aren't broad enough statements. It's white queers generally too. I am currently watching white queers in union leadership ignore all union bylaws and undermine democratic processes while making it a very unwelcoming environment for bipoc. Guess who they blame for lack of participation? I'll give you a hint... It's certainly not blame directed at themselves. And after the 3rd and 4th time it's brought up there is still no hope for change beyond booting people from their positions. We need better solidarity and better leadership in our organizations and it seems white queer folk are just as prone to repeating the routine racist mistakes that other whites make and are equally stubborn about self criticism. It really undermines our organizations when people refuse to read the room while making it about themselves. We all need an annual mandatory history lesson on how often white people fuck it up for everyone. That includes white queers.
White people aren't a minority.
Not until I'm done at least
Is POCERL a thing? People of Color Exclusionary Radical Leftist? Because I feel like I'm being told I'm not self flagellating performatively enough by a bunch of POCERLs and straight white people
Every organization I poked around before finally finding an org made up near-entirely of my folk certainly felt that way. Bunch of "class-war-only, no talk of liberation or reparative justice here, we don't want to 'alienate' the 'allies' by making them do too much introspection"-type beats and ain't no melanin on the leadership. Ain't no melanin in the speakership. Ain't no melanin in the planning rooms. Just 'sit down, shut up, and toe the party line' on some rebranded-DNC shit for us, so I'm gonna say yeah, that feels like it's a thing.
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Gotta keep the left infighting. Unfortunately it's very easy to do.
I think it's fair to say that folks who are singled out would feel and perhaps are in some conventions treated unfairly ('speak to the individual' and all that).
If you're willing to have a discussion, if I made a claim like "You likely have deep-seated misconceptions, base beliefs, which would be difficult to change and difficult to engage with. If the hard work is put in to work towards a common understanding, it's true you may not agree, however I believe strongly at present with the information provided like your conduct and statements, you are missing key details or an in-depth understanding and frankly if you were to attain a greater understanding (something we can hopefully agree is always possible, though not always worth the time, or convenient) your beliefs would be more inline with mine than they are now."
That's a non-starter right? That's essentially what I'd like to communicate and, of course anecdotally (and informally through others) the case is such a statement is ignored.
If it's ignored like, 20 times, would you say it is appropriate to begin being unsavoury and less prosocial as other comrades are? Their conduct seems entirely reasonable to me, and has its own uses. Something I won't really dive into because I think it would amount to bashing you and turning you into a strawperson.
What do you think? I'm genuinely curious as to what you might say and I think I can learn something, hopefully you can too, comeade.
Hmm, it is an interesting question. I fully admit I am in the wrong here, reacting as if it is a personal and homophobic attack.
I think our mutual life experiences have lead us to perceive certain behaviors as abusive even when the intent was not there from the other side. From that misunderstanding, mutual anger is born. I am someone that has no queer support network. I am relentlessly punished by my community for not conforming. I am threatened with violence. I perceive someone calling out my identity with the abuse I suffer at the hands of that community.
When someone claims the right to "punch up" I perceive it emotionally as being personally stomped on.
I get irrational, and emotional. I then say stupid things I come to regret. I fully understand that were I rational, I would not perceive this as a serious personal attack.
Thus, I fully agree I am in the wrong. I would only ask for understanding that this is born out of abuse by the society that we as leftists mutually oppose. Resorting to personal attacks seems pointlessly hurtful in this case, because it doesn't serve any purpose besides making both genuinely upset sides more upset.
Well, I would certainly like to validate your experience. I think at times folks can get self-righteous (god knows I do) and in their crusade they can cause hurt to folks who have more in common than not.
It feels like that may be the case, if so it sucks
Power to you comrade, you got folks here who are rooting for ya.