I've been seeing lotttttts of libs in the comments clapping for all this pinkwashing lately and it's really got me down. Like to them, this is a clear sign that society is improving and if you suggest that maybe we could ask for more you just get shit on with maxims like "perfect is the enemy of good", or worse yet "you know these campaigns are put together by real people, who are often times LGBT themselves, right?"
It's just so disheartening. This will be the arc of history we take, assimilated by capital instead of being liberated. Make no mistake; gestures like these, on the scale we see now, will result in otherwise privileged LGBT people like me being accepted by this society. And I can't do anything but watch as my freedom is slowly dismembered from my intersectional dream.
I’ve been seeing lotttttts of libs in the comments clapping for all this pinkwashing lately
I hate being the Russian Bots guy, but so much of modern social media is just manufactured consent. The comments are as much a part of the marketing push as the headline.
It’s just so disheartening. This will be the arc of history we take, assimilated by capital instead of being liberated. Make no mistake; gestures like these, on the scale we see now, will result in otherwise privileged LGBT people like me being accepted by this society. And I can’t do anything but watch as my freedom is slowly dismembered from my intersectional dream.
I think this takes an overly optimistic view of how much freedom we had in prior generations. Like... point to the "Freedom Decade", the ten year span when we had all the freedom that we're supposedly losing today. Was it the '00s under Bush? The '90s under Clinton? The '80s under Reagan?
I think a lot of what we experience as we get older isn't "losing freedom", it's "recognizing the risks associated with rebellion". When you're a teenager, you're not fully conscious of the long term harm inflicted by an arrest or a serious injury or a black mark on your employment history. But once you get into your 20s and 30s, when you're really alienated from your peers while living hand-to-mouth, the peril you feel is much more visceral. You don't have the same kind of social support network cultivated during your school years. You have more debt and more expenses. You have family members you used to rely on who now rely on you.
De-industrialization and de-unionization definitely hurt. But having grown up in Texas, I guess I never saw any of that shit. All I saw were the big cotton farms and sugar mills and retail stores full of working poor people. And I saw the big energy and tech companies and medical centers full of wealthy people. Real freedom was always just being in that second group. Don't be poor. Don't be black. Don't be uneducated. Otherwise, your life is going to be miserable.
But I never really saw a point in history when I was free. I never lived through a period in history when Capital wasn't in control.
I've been seeing lotttttts of libs in the comments clapping for all this pinkwashing lately and it's really got me down. Like to them, this is a clear sign that society is improving and if you suggest that maybe we could ask for more you just get shit on with maxims like "perfect is the enemy of good", or worse yet "you know these campaigns are put together by real people, who are often times LGBT themselves, right?"
It's just so disheartening. This will be the arc of history we take, assimilated by capital instead of being liberated. Make no mistake; gestures like these, on the scale we see now, will result in otherwise privileged LGBT people like me being accepted by this society. And I can't do anything but watch as my freedom is slowly dismembered from my intersectional dream.
I hate being the Russian Bots guy, but so much of modern social media is just manufactured consent. The comments are as much a part of the marketing push as the headline.
I think this takes an overly optimistic view of how much freedom we had in prior generations. Like... point to the "Freedom Decade", the ten year span when we had all the freedom that we're supposedly losing today. Was it the '00s under Bush? The '90s under Clinton? The '80s under Reagan?
I think a lot of what we experience as we get older isn't "losing freedom", it's "recognizing the risks associated with rebellion". When you're a teenager, you're not fully conscious of the long term harm inflicted by an arrest or a serious injury or a black mark on your employment history. But once you get into your 20s and 30s, when you're really alienated from your peers while living hand-to-mouth, the peril you feel is much more visceral. You don't have the same kind of social support network cultivated during your school years. You have more debt and more expenses. You have family members you used to rely on who now rely on you.
De-industrialization and de-unionization definitely hurt. But having grown up in Texas, I guess I never saw any of that shit. All I saw were the big cotton farms and sugar mills and retail stores full of working poor people. And I saw the big energy and tech companies and medical centers full of wealthy people. Real freedom was always just being in that second group. Don't be poor. Don't be black. Don't be uneducated. Otherwise, your life is going to be miserable.
But I never really saw a point in history when I was free. I never lived through a period in history when Capital wasn't in control.