Known as the “model minority”, persons are dehumanized, never benefited by the comparison to the oddly always compliant minority being propped up as different than the whole rather than exemplary of “their culture”.
It is insane that they think they are complimenting someone by the putdown that they’re a credit to their sex/sexuality/race. Stating that your victory is only to be adequate (but not as qualified as me!) and in comparison to horrid lazy stupid dysfunctions which are the rest of their… category.
The best they can hope for is imposter syndrome and a constant reminder that they don’t belong? Gee.
So I wouldn’t count as decent by their standards, because I have been on disability welfare for the last 12 years, which is most of my adult life.
Of course, they don’t know that I ended up on welfare because of a prolonged period of attacks and abuse, where I got attacked next to a busy road during daylight, death threats shouted through my door and bricks thrown at my windows. I never got a chance to show if I had a strong work ethic before my mental health crumbled.
My welfare was recently extended for an indefinite period. Basically the DWP, who are not known for giving the benefit of the doubt, have decided that I am unlikely to recover.
Oh, and my experiences are far from uncommon among trans people. There is a reason why the attempted suicide rate among trans people is around 50%. Your family’s conditional faux-respect bullshit is part of the problem.
Oh they’re Good People and thus concerned for the suicide rate of queer persons, if only they acted right and to someone’s entirely subjective concept of “decent” they wouldn’t be so sad!
It is not fair to judge someone by things they are unable to control. I am sorry for what you have been through, and I obviously used poor phrasing in my post.
Basic human dignity isn’t something anyone should ever have to earn, and anyone who would demand others who are different than them teach them that they’re worth human dignity is a supercilious jackass who’s opinion of other people is itself worthless. There’s a vast damn difference between dignity and esteem, and someone who can’t tell the difference between the two, who’s default treatment of others differs depending on how similar they are to them, is the problem. When women, POC, LGBT and other marginalized persons
must work twice as hard for half as much, they are not the problem.
So when you tell someone that they better straighten up and fly right in order to convince bigots re-examine their bigotries, you’re correcting the wrong side of the equation and it shows which side’s opinions you truly value. This is why you’re getting push-back for taking it upon yourself to act as the Tone Patrol. Do with that information what you like, but there it is.
I was talking about respect. Everyone by default should be entitled to dignity and civility. We should afford those things to total strangers, Respect, in the sense of the OED primary definition, is “A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements”, and is something earned. At least it is in my world. But my primary point was that people can and do change, often for the better. I understand that you assume that out here we are all hopelessly deplorable bigots and rubes, which is itself a hurtful stereotype.
But the topic of the article was the message of this particular artist, and whether such a statement is more or less likely to end prejudices that people hold. In the case of my parents, ten years ago I would never have imagined that they would ever get over their feelings about LGBT issues. But they seem to have done so. To me, that is positive change. And in their case, the change was effected by their coming to understand that their preconceptions about LGBT issues were wrong, and that our shared values were stronger and more important than anyone’s sexuality, which has become more or less irrelevant. If the conversation had started with “F*** You!”, I do not think we would be where we are today.
Your experiences may vary. These are mine.
Your assumption about what I assume is wrong, and if you feel hurt by a view of you that you imagine I hold which I do not, I can do nothing about that.
I don’t doubt that you believe that. My point is that it’s not anyone’s responsibility to convince homophobes to abandon their homophobia. You don’t defeat bigotry by politely talking people out of it. You defeat it by drawing a line in the sand, by publicly shaming every act of bigotry, by fighting back against inequality. The homophobes are in the wrong. Homophobia is evil. You don’t invite evil into the den for a nice fireside chat. You swat it like the diseased mosquito it is until those that would do and enable evil are afraid to do so.
ETA: I know you mean well - I do not, for the record, think you’re human garbage - but you’re just not getting why your arguments are an apology for bigotry, and not for lack of people trying to explain it to you.
Also, re: deplorable. I don’t use that term and I don’t like trendy little epithets, so I’ll thank you not to put them in my mouth.
By continuing to try and rephrase the discussion in terms of your personal experiences you’re still ignoring history. You’re ignoring the context for the artist’s statement. Why doesn’t the artist deserve the respect of you trying to understand that? Oh, wait, you already said:
In other words we’re back to your view that LGBT people only deserve respect if they’re willing to behave in spite of the mistreatment they’ve suffered.
That’s great that your parents have softened in their attitudes although in your own words they still wish everyone was heterosexual and they object to “homosexual experimentation”. So they haven’t come around to full acceptance, and support and vote for openly bigoted political candidates.
So is it really fair that LGBT members of your family are expected to earn respect, and still aren’t fully respected, while other family members automatically get respect?
There are a number of people I know who are very accepting of people of any ethnicity or gender ID as long as they do in fact share the same cultural values, and in fact have contempt for people of their -own- race who do not share those values.
To use the term “racist” in reference to them is simply not correct.
I actually do think I understand the argument you are making. I even think we agree on goals, but disagree on tactics.
I am also getting a bunch of grief for relating my own experiences with people overcoming homophobia. But I am not claiming that my experiences are universal, but they are valid.
My parents are in their late 70s. The world they grew up in is very different from the one we live in today. They were never evil, they were misinformed. And in my Dad’s case, he really did just sit down with me in the barn and started asking questions about the nature of homosexuality. It is not his fault that he was taught that homosexuals recruited people into their lifestyle, or all the other misconceptions that his generation grew up with. These are the people who unironically were fans of Liberace back in the 1950s. But he was worried about his daughter. he needed to be educated, not “publicly shamed”. I think it is important to differentiate between people who are willfully hateful, and those who are good people, doing the best they can with the information they have. I am pretty sure that one cannot walk into a group of skinheads and have a meaningful dialog on race and sexuality. They are going to have to be confronted directly. But those are not the best tactics to use for the uninformed. That presupposes that your goal is reconciliation rather than conflict. Reconciliation might not be the right word. Peaceful resolution of conflict.
I apologize for the “deplorable” comment, but I don’t think I deserved to be called “human garbage”.
Relating your experiences and those of your family aren’t why you’re getting static. It’s the implication that the tactics of the person in the article are wrong because they’re aggressively confrontational. In general, whenever you criticize the tone of someone who lives every day in their own skin, you’re going to get the same static. I know you think you’re just being helpful, but what you’re doing is armchair quarterbacking - not by relating your experiences, but by using them to support that person or persons using a different approach. I promise you that their experience overwhelmingly outweighs your analyses of their situation. IIRC, you’ve mentioned serving in the armed forces. Even if you’re not a war veteran, I’m sure that, being a veteran, you know veterans who are. You may well therefore know how little they appreciate putting up with well-intentioned armchair quarterbacks trying to tell them how to win a war, or how to survive PTSD, or how to honor their fallen comrades.
