Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Eye-Eye-Eye-QIA

I took some flack I didn't acknowledge a while back for using just the acronym LGBT without adding Q.  And then I heard someone say . . . QI which was followed by . . . QIA.  I didn't even understand what the I and A were supposed to mean and had to look them up.  They are "intersex" and "asexual" and in the process I found out that the Q which I had taken to mean "queer" was sometimes asserted to mean "questioning".  And when I read that the "A" meant "asexual" I wondered if that included those who were asexual involuntarily, a group I definitely belong to, though it's really more just figuring at my age I'd rather not take a chance of being the fool of love, at least not that kind of love.

I don't leave them out to be exclusive I leave the "Q" out because I will not use a term of derision for my people, even those who attempt to co-opt the enemies language, I think that's a stupid idea that will only work inside the group discriminated against, the enemy will still use it to mean what it's always meant to them.  And, despite what paying attention to the media and lefty online stuff will lead you to believe, they still outnumber you by a lot.

I don't know what "intersex" means and, well, I've already pointed out how "asexual" is ambiguous.  Which I have to say is what I originally assumed the "A" meant. 

As far as I'm concerned, when I say LGBT, I don't want to exclude anyone, I want everyone to be treated equally and with respect.  And I think that acronym is as long as one should be.

I will not use the term "cis" because I don't know what it's supposed to mean other than to be mean to someone because they're not up on "cis" or something.   I'm not so stupid that I think that a straight man who identifies as a straight man can't understand why anyone who the kind of people who like to pigeonhole people with a label like to label with them should be treated well  and with respect.   Or that such people don't have their own, individual, relevant ways of thinking that escape the attempt to put them into a classification for whatever purpose, most of those, in my observation, not good ones.  It's a means of saying someone has cooties.  I experienced and witnessed enough of that as a member of the LGBT community, which is mighty diverse.   I have a lot more in common with a lot of straight, white men who identify as straight and white than I ever did with Roy Cohn or the equally putrid Peter Thiel or, for that matter, John Waters or Michael Foucault.

If you want to say LGBTQIAxxx, extending your dicing and dividing a community that will only advance through unity and making alliances with straight people,  feel free to do it.  I'm no bossy boots. But I'd rather concentrate on unifying than dividing and excluding.

11 comments:

  1. Modern liberals believe what the word needs now are more labels so that we can better determine who is most deserving of virtue signaling. This is why I can't stand Amber Ruffin - her whole shtick is, "I'm a black woman, so what I have to say must be important and funny."

    St. Paul said there is no Gentile or Jew, no slave or free...so I'm gonna go with that.

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    1. But Amber Ruffin is a Black Woman and comic writers using their own identity is certainly not something she invented. Good Lord, the number of white male comedians who have used their gender, their ethnicity their sexual identity even their class would pretty much be the entire set of white male comedians. And not just comedians but writers i general.

      I think what Amber Ruffin says is funny because she uses commonly held assumptions that White People hold about Black People and, in her case Black Women, holding it up and showing the absurdity of the stereotyping is a good part of what she does.

      Do you think John Oliver isn't funny because he uses his race, gender and ethnicity as a mainstay of his humor?

      Who do you find funny? I'll bet you couldn't list ten white male comedians you find funny without them doing essentially the same thing.

      That's not to say that kind of thing is inevitably funny, like so much in comedy, it walks a narrow line.

      St. Paul wasn't talking about professional comedians when he said that. And there have been no more sedulous classifiers of people than White, European Males, Especially conservatives.

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  2. There is a problem of "virtue signaling," although I don't know Amber Ruffin from Lenny Bruce, so that's as far as I go in this conversation.

    "Virtue signaling" is one with "we must believe the women!" That's not gonna last long before, despite the lack of due process in public opinion, it turns back on women in a very nasty way. Too much of nothin' makes a man, or a woman, feel ill at ease.

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    1. I certainly agree that when someone is being accused of a crime that the possibility that they didn't do it is as important as any of the possibilities.

      As I've mentioned, I've had fallings out with a lot of people over exactly that issue, only in this case it was a man making an accusation of a gay man touching him in which, since he was famous, he was believed even though he was using the alleged trauma of that one incident, which happened when he was an adult, in which nothing but one touch happened. And he claimed the guy was trying to give him a blow job for him beating up his wife, womanizing, etc.

      The idea that you can judge a specific case on the basis of what other people, entirely unrelated to the ones involved in that specific case is one of the most pernicious aspects of the #me-too phenomenon and likely the weakest part of what started out as a worthy goal. It will result in a backlash which will probably let lots of actual sexual harassers and abusers and even rapists off because that tactic of stereotyping and discrimination has only ever worked to promote injustice, not to end it. Justice is hard, injustice is easier, as is being foolish instead of being rigorously honest. I think a lot of injustice is just the product of laziness and lazy thinking.

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    2. "I think a lot of injustice is just the product of laziness and lazy thinking."

      In these instances, the crime is often so emotional and the lack of physical evidence much more likely than in other felonies that they should be considered with care and attention. But all too often, virtue signaling gets in the way. Don't get that the 'Rolling Stone' Virginia story was criticized by a few sources before it cracked, almost all of whom were called "misogynist" for daring to question the brave writer and braver victim. You can't repeat memes like "rape culture" ad nauseum and then be surprised when people start to see it everywhere.

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  3. "But Amber Ruffin is a Black Woman and comic writers using their own identity is certainly not something she invented."

    I didn't say there is anything wrong with comedy based on one's social/racial/etc. perspective, but Ruffin's observations are condescendingly racist in that she sounds like she has appointed herself spokesman for black woman because she's black too.

    Example: Taking credit for the black, female vote in Alabama (a state I'll bet she's never even visited) because, hey, she's a black woman, is just absurd. Had Moore won, would she have come out and said, "!@#$ you Seth, white men like you got Moore elected!" C'mon.

    My comment was that her whole shtick is that she's a black woman. There's little actual observation or commentary. Just, "I'm a black woman, and I find X offensive, so it is, because I'm black, and I know what all black people think."

    This isn't a black v white thing, or even a liberal v conservative thing. It's about what's right (not politically).

    Yes, I'm aware St. Paul wasn't talking about Amber in his letter to the Galatians. But she's clearly under the impression that there is white and black, especially in Alabama, a state I'm sure she's looked at on a map.

    I grew up listening to my grandparents' Charley Pride records (along with Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams, Sr.), I never thought, "That black man is culturally appropriating our music!" You know why? I'm not obsessed with race, and I certainly don't think races own culture, with a "No Trespassing" sign people who are #wrongskin.

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    1. First, since she's a writer on Seth Myers' show how do you know which of the jokes he says are her product? The few spots she does are themed around her identity but there isn't any way to know if that's all she does, I suspect she's funny about a lot of thing other than that.

      It was a Senate race to find a replacement from a racist-fascist, Jeff Sessions, in which a racist accused by multiple women of sexually assaulting and harassing them when they were in their early, middle and late teens and he was a 32-year-old ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR, getting banned from a mall for harassing young girls, etc. was running against the man who finally got convictions in the bombing of a black church in which four Black Girls the same age were murdered, it would have been absurd for Amber Ruffin OR ANYONE ELSE to have left those aspects of identity out of any commentary on it.

      White comedians certainly didn't leave those things out of their commentary. Neither did the racists supporting Moore.

      I, you and likely Amber Ruffin doesn't know what she would have said if Moore was elected, I suspect that the focus would have been on his sexual harassment which, so far as we know now, was exclusively of White Girls.

      Well, I don't listen to that generation of country music much but I listened to a lot of Jimmy Rogers and The Carter Family and their use of African-American idioms as well as Scots-Irish-English couldn't be more obvious, the appropriation of idioms is what created the genre of country music, as did Jazz, as did every other genre, including classical music. Debussy certainly was influenced by ragtime, as even more explicitly was Stravinsky and even Schoenberg, especially evident in his Op. 34 piano pieces. There was even evidence that in his last years Brahms was aware of ragtime and some say he was considering music influenced by it.

      That's a far cry from outright theft adding a layer of racist misogyny as the Rolling Stones have committed. It's also a far cry from Nick LaRocca claiming that he had invented Jazz and that Black musicians had had nothing to do with it.

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    2. Make that "I, you and likely Amber Ruffin don't know... I hate these little text windows. If I wanted to tweet I'd use twitter.

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  4. "First, since she's a writer on Seth Myers' show how do you know which of the jokes he says are her product?"

    You posted her video, and she said, "As a black woman, you are welcome America for Roy Moore losing." Yes, it was a "joke," but the subtext is that a black, female comedian living in New York City knows exactly how a black, female social worker in Tuscaloosa feels. Hey, you're a gay Christian, what's up with Peter Thiel? See how absurd, prejudiced and stupid is sounds?

    "Amber Ruffin OR ANYONE ELSE to have left those aspects of identity out of any commentary on it."

    Were her commentary, "As a black woman, let me say to my sisters in the Heart of Dixie: 'You. Go. Girls!'" you'd have a point. But she keeps using "we" and "us" as though by sheer coincidence of her skin tone, she knows why women with a similar shade voted in a state one thousand geographic and one million cultural miles away.

    "I, you and likely Amber Ruffin doesn't know what she would have said if Moore was elected, I suspect that the focus would have been on his sexual harassment which, so far as we know now, was exclusively of White Girls."

    Take her reasoning (Amber is a black woman, in New York, ergo she deserves credit for what black women do in Alabama) to the next logical step (Seth is a white man, in New York, ergo, he deserves blame for what white men do in Alabama).

    It's racist to assume because you look a certain way you thereby identify and understand and are responsible for the behavior of everyone who has a similar appearance.

    "Well, I don't listen to that generation of country music much but I listened to a lot of Jimmy Rogers and The Carter Family..."

    You are ignoring the point. No one is saying Charley Pride is "appropriating" white music the way Amber is insisting white women are black music. Because some people are more obsessed with race than others. It's not a good thing, as Paul points out. I would even say it is racist.

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    1. "You posted her video, and she said, "As a black woman, you are welcome America for Roy Moore losing." Yes, it was a "joke," but the subtext is that a black, female comedian living in New York City knows exactly how a black, female social worker in Tuscaloosa feels. Hey, you're a gay Christian, what's up with Peter Thiel? See how absurd, prejudiced and stupid is sounds?"

      You really are hung up on here, aren't you. To start with, Amber Ruffin is from Omaha, Nebraska, not NYC. I wonder why you don't feel similar rage at white, male commentators who are from New York City who always talk about how people in other places think, OR WHITE MEN IN THE SOUTH AND SOUTH-WEST WHO ARE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT HOW PEOPLE IN THE NORTH-EAST THINK?

      I'm quite capable of saying things about how Peter Thiel thinks BECAUSE I HAVE READ WHAT HE SAYS HE THINKS. He's one person, I don't have to characterize how he thinks because he says it. And I'm not making jokes about him. I don't have much of a problem saying things about gay men in NYC (where I don't live and haven't been to in more than two decades) or San Francisco where I have never been

      I have always, in everything I've ever posted that impinges on issues of guilt said that only people who are individually guilty of things bear guilt from them, I said that, more or less, in the piece I wrote above. I already pointed out that Amber Ruffin's piece was about the absurdity of stereotypes, using stereotypes to point that out SHE USED AN IMAGE WHICH NO ONE WOULD MISTAKE AS A TYPICAL BLACK WOMAN WHO VOTED IN ALABAMA, it was comic hyperbole.

      It's an obvious phenomenon that much of pop culture that is adopted, or "appropriated" by the kind of White People who follow pop culture originates among Black People, that's been true in the United States going back before the 19th century. Banjos were introduced into North America by people brought here in slavery, the musical styles that they played on them were copied by the white people who appropriated their instrument to make music on. Black People who invented ragtime melded Black musical traditions with European band instrumental music and used, primarily, the European invented piano to create it with. And from them White People took up ragtime, the same for Jazz which is even more obviously a melding of the music of black cultures with the European band music tradition. To point out that such cross overs include fashion and language and other things is often white people copying black innovators is banal because it's so obvious. She was saying something that I wished, that White People would learn something more useful, such as voting for a better candidate, from Black Voters. I have pointed out that the minority of white male Voters who voted for Doug Jones were as crucial to his win as the overwhelming percentage of Black Women who voted for him, if a small percentage of them had stayed home or not voted for him, the great turnout among Black Voters wouldn't have mattered, that given, I have no problem with Amber Ruffin's comic presentation about it. Comedy isn't necessarily about telling the whole truth, it's about making people laugh. If you make an important point about some aspect of the truth while doing so, that's more than most comedians care to try.

      I think we've gone over this enough at this point.

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  5. "That's a far cry from outright theft adding a layer of racist misogyny as the Rolling Stones have committed."

    You know nothing of the blues if you think what they did was "theft." Listen to bluesmen from the 20s and you'll find melody lines, chord progressions and lyrical concepts that pop up in myriad recordings. Skip James' "22-20 Blues" becomes Robert Johnson's "32-20 Blues." The standard "Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor" becomes Mississippi John Hurt's "Ain't No Tellin'" and so on. It was common and tolerated much like a pitcher in baseball throwing a spitball. The Stones just happened to come along with a better way to market and sell their music, and, lest we forget, took time to pay tribute to those that inspired them. One of their earliest compositions was "2120 South Michigan Avenue." The location of Chess Records.

    Now, taking a song wholesale and changing the lyrics, as they do on "Prodigal Son," is another matter. But you're acting like one of those acronyms you hate if you think the Stones added misogyny to the blues. "I'm gonna beat my woman, until I get satisfied." "I'd rather be buried in some cypress grove/Than married to a woman I can't control." "Listen here mama let me explain you this/You wanna get crooked I'm gonna give you my fist." I could fill an entire page with "hokum" blues lyrics that would make a gangster rapper blush.

    And racism? Ha! "Brownskin woman like somethin' fit to eat/But a jet black woman, don't put your hands on me."

    Those songs were written before Mick and Keith were even born.

    "It's also a far cry from Nick LaRocca claiming that he had invented Jazz and that Black musicians had had nothing to do with it."

    I will bet you anything you want that Amber Ruffin and 90% of the people who use the term "appropriation" and not ironically have no freaking clue who that is. Nor do they know that the claim to have "invented" jazz or know its origin was a common one. Jelly Roll Morton boasted he invented it in New Orleans. Willie "The Lion" Smith insisted it rose out the Brickyards of Haverstraw. Missouri-born Wilbur Sweatman told an interviewer that so far as he knew jazz came from the Ozarks.

    Alexander Pope warned that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Amber & Co. have very little.

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