donewiththisshit:

atchka:

Remember this asshole?

Yeah, he got reamed. Check it out.

This guy is getting way too much attention for actively ignoring medical and psychological understandings of health in favor of his personal standards of beauty and worth. 

I couldn’t even get through that whole thing – he makes me want to vomit. I didn’t agree with everything the author said, either (mainly the “objective mental illness” part, because medicalization isn’t exactly “objective” – mental illnesses are very much socially constructed, though that’s not to undermine what she’s saying about the seriousness of anorexia), but it’s nice to see someone take him down a notch.

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Like I’ve said before (here, here, and here), one of my biggest problems with the body acceptance / body image awareness movement, aside from its tendency towards racism and heterosexism, is its obvious hypocrisy in terms of preference for a particular type of body. Dove’s campaign for “real beauty,” which basically only depicts women of the same general size, is a perfect example of this, as is the #NoSizeZero hashtag on Twitter, which seems to be trending in response to Kenneth Tong’s Twitter. Tong promotes anorexia as a lifestyle and regularly tweets misogynistic, fat-phobic posts about women’s bodies and the importance of being a perfect size zero. 

His posts make me angry enough to vomit, but I’m upset that once again, the idea of body acceptance is translating into anti-anorexic and anti-skinny responses to this man. The #TongIsWrong trend I understand, but why does no one thing to tweet #YesAllSizes rather than #NoSizeZero? Why respond to the negativity with more negativity when the idea is to accept everyone’s body, regardless of its size? Let’s not forget that some people are naturally thin and that people of all sizes suffer from eating disorders — adding one more negative voice to a culture obsessed with criticizing “imperfect” bodies doesn’t really help counter Tong’s message.

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As I’m sure many of you know, some students were upset about the rally. These students were also largely misinformed about the purpose of the rally, the events surrounding Tyler’s death, and the history of queer students’ battle for safety and recognition at Rutgers. It’s no coincidence that Tyler is the second queer student at Rutgers to take his own life in the past year or that this particular incident occurred after a horrible violation of his privacy.

For those arguing that this “isn’t what Tyler would want,” you’re probably right. He wouldn’t have wanted a group of students rallying around his death because I’m fairly certain, based on his own online postings as well as basic common sense, that he never wanted his privacy and safety so violated in the first place. Unfortunately, because that’s what happened, a public response is necessary. And when this happens in the context of a university whose housing department continues to refuse LGBTQ students the safe spaces we deserve, even after the suicide last year, it becomes even more important.

At the rally, I heard a number of disturbing comments, largely coming from students who showed up to defend the actions of Tyler’s roommate, arguing that he advertised this private encounter out of “concern” for Tyler. Some were upset at the idea of using Tyler’s death as political leverage, claiming that “no one would care if this were a straight student” (because we all know how biased the world is against heterosexual people, right?), while others simply laughed at the protest and made derogatory comments about a friend of mine (“ew, he said he was transgender, does that mean he was born a woman?”) as well as other students at the event.

The fact that these students are comfortable enough in their own privilege to make such blatantly homophobic and transphobic comments at a rally organized by queer and allied students perfectly illustrates the kind of environment we are dealing with. This type of ignorance is not limited to the students I interacted with, either. Months ago, the head of housing at Rutgers told me that because safe spaces imply that other areas of campus are not safe, she will never agree to the idea of safe space residence halls. Of course, by default, no place is a safe space–but even in the wake of this tragedy, many students and administrators prefer to remain ignorant to the pressures facing LGBTQ students and the fact that homophobia and harassment were indeed at the root of Tyler’s death. It’s just unfortunate that our school is so willing to neglect our need for real safety in order to protect the illusion of safety they so pride themselves on.

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This photo is from last week’s Pride parade in New York. Everyone is always pretty friendly in allowing me to take their photo at these events — it’s one of the only times people are that gracious about having a stranger stick a camera in their face, and it’s one of the things I love about NYC Pride. I also love that it’s one of the most racially diverse queer events you could ever participate in. Not every state is that lucky. What I hate about Pride, though, is that like any queer-related event, the focus is still on very homonormative goals and values.

This year, there was a lot of focus on DADT and on marriage, as there was last year. Don’t get me wrong, when I decided to sneak into the march last year, I ended up walking with Marriage Equality NY – and they were lovely people! But the emphasis on “gay marriage” is problematic for a number of reasons: it ignores the fact that not everyone who wants a same-sex marriage is gay, and it also prioritizes marriage (something that mainly affects gays and lesbians) over issues that affect the other letters in our acronym, such as trans-inclusive hate crime legislation. Last year, I was at an LGBTQ conference with other colleges in the Northeast, and we were asked to state our opinions on a number of issues affecting our community by standing in various boxes ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. When marriage came up, 95% of students strongly disagreed with Prop 8. When HRC’s actions concerning ENDA came up, 95% of students stared blankly at the man asking us questions, as they had no clue what he was talking about.

Let’s think about this for a minute: a bunch of students living on the east coast were up to date and very much concerned with a law in California concerning marriage, yet none of them knew about HRC lying to the trans community and pushing for a non-inclusive ENDA, an action that probably set our community back a good decade. They’ve since apologized, but it’s still troubling that this doesn’t quite register as a big concern within the LGBTQ community (at least not within my age bracket, though I don’t think this is really specific to us).

I also saw a lot of “born gay” signs this year, a phrase that annoys me more and more every time I hear it. I think it’s one of the worst approaches to homophobia our community has ever created. Besides the fact that it (absurdly) singles sexual orientation down to this one so-called “gay gene,” it assumes gender by suggesting that biology predetermines our attraction to gender. If we understand gender to be biologically innate (rather than a social construct), the “born gay” standpoint further complicates the LGB relationship with the trans community, and we have enough tension there to begin with. “Born gay” is an easy comeback to the argument that homosexuality is unnatural as well as the religious argument, but it’s more problematic than anything else, and completely ignores the fluidity of sexuality.

In addition to the born gay posters were signs that appropriated the language of the Civil Rights Movement. I believe I’ve posted about this before (one one of my blogs, at least), but I’m bothered by it so much more after Prop 8. As it is, offending the black community by equating our struggle with the Civil Rights Movement does nothing to help our relationship with people of color, but it’s especially offensive after we blamed black and Latino voters for the outcome of Prop 8. And that was only after opponents of Prop 8 did not go into communities of color to appeal for their vote in the first place…

I still love Pride events, and I always enjoy myself in the craziness of it all. But we’re not immune to homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or racism just because we are a fairly progressive community. As a community so focused on our own oppression, we should be more conscious of the prejudice within our own community and the voices we silence in favor of the ones more marketable to heteronormative society.

(cross-posted on my tumblelog)

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