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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These photos are from this morning, when the Westboro Baptist Church — the hate group known for protesting Matthew Shepard’s funeral and soldiers’ funerals around the country — came to campus to picket outside of Rutgers Hillel. Almost everyone on campus was anticipating their visit, so Hillel has been rounding up different religious organizations, queer organizations, and music groups on campus for the past couple of weeks to help organize a counter-protest in the form of a rally against hate. Despite the rain, it was a huge success — the a capella groups, the unified diversity speeches, and the mass amount of cheering drowned out the WBC completely…

To begin with, there was a lot of debate surrounding the WBC’s visit and how our community should respond. Immediately I thought of Romaine Patterson’s Angel Action and the impact of such a creative and positive response to the WBC… some wanted to merely treat it as a joke, others wanted to throw a dance party noiseout, and still others wanted to completely ignore them, believing that to be our safest bet. Thankfully, Hillel put together a very well thought out program that took attention away from WBC rather than emphasizing their visit, which I hope makes an impact on those who argued against any sort of recognition of their visit. For one thing, it wasn’t practical — regardless of whether or not anyone organizes around the WBC, signs like “God hates fags” and “the Jews killed Jesus” and “thank God for dead soldiers” generally attract a lot of attention. One way or another, a mass of people would have circled around them, and when the WBC has the chance to provoke unprepared and unsuspecting bystanders, they take the opportunity to attack and then sue them for their engagement, alleging verbal and/or physical attacks. The fact that their entire organization is built around verbal and visual displays of violence doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the outcome of these lawsuits, which usually result in funding for the WBC. Thankfully, we didn’t run into any such problems, and all in all, I’d say the event was a complete success — in fact, I only have one photo where the WBC is actually visible, because the 1,200 participating supporters of Hillel completely blocked them out. They gave up fairly early, but our rally continued.

A lot of people, I think, are actually glad that the WBC came to Rutgers. If nothing else, their extremism provides us with a unique opportunity to build alliances between groups of people with a long history of dividedness between them, and I hope that sense of unity will stay with us.

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This year’s NY Pride marked the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. During a time when raids of gay bars were rather common, the queer community finally organized itself in a fight against police brutality one night in June, almost immediately after receiving the news of Judy Garland’s death — a death that deeply impacted many members of the LGBT community. Ever since, this has been cited as the moment that gave birth to the modern gay liberation movement, and as I myself marched in NY Pride this year, I passed by a number of Stonewall veterans who were looked to with great honor and respect. One of the veterans in particularly was carrying a sign that read “WE NEED A MILLION STONEWALLS,” which I thought was particularly striking. The sign, of course, was not suggesting that more raids and rioting must happen, but that our current generation must revolutionize the way these Stonewall veterans did — but with more relevance to the issues we are facing today, of course, as raids and police brutality are no longer considered normative.

Unfortunately, though, the Stonewall sign seems to have taken on a more literal significance after this weekend. Though our community has seen much progress in the time that has passed since June 1969, our commemoration of the event that sparked the modern gay liberation movement coincides with a raid extraordinarily reminiscent of the raid on Stonewall. This past weekend, Fort Worth police raided a new gay bar called Rainbow Lounge. On that night, Rainbow Lounge was itself remembering Stonewall by screening documentaries about the event, and the night was going well until police showed up unexpectedly to make arrests — particularly targeting the most effeminate looking men. This targeting of individuals in a gay bar combined with the excessive violence used by police — violence that landed one man in the hospital with a fractured skull — is disheartening enough when we think of it in terms of history, but when we consider the fact that this is continuing in the year 2009, it’s difficult to still feel optimistic about the accomplishments we’ve made in society.

To add to the striking similarities between these two events, we have recently lost our own icon. Admittedly, a comparison between Judy Garland and Michael Jackson is quite the stretch — if only because Garland was more of an LGBT icon in particular than Jackson (I suppose sister Janet is more appropriate for that label). However, that in itself is the sign of progress evident in this unfortunate raid. Why? Because today, there is no icon like Judy Garland. If that seems strange to you, let me put it this way: the LGBT community is facing a lot of battles in 2009. This raid comes amidst debates about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, ENDA, Prop 8, and many other issues. There is so much going on within our community that it is almost impossible to keep up with it all, and just as there is no main icon within our community, we are not all dependent on one main issue, either. Our community is more diverse, more spread out, more visible and more active than ever before, and despite the constant struggle for our rights, we must remain proud of what we have accomplished and see the positive signs of change we have helped create.

If nothing else, this is for sure something we would have never heard in 1969: “Rest assured that neither the people of Fort Worth nor the government of the city of Fort Worth will tolerate discrimination against any of its citizens.” Stated by Joel Burns, a Fort Worth city councilman and Tarrant County’s first openly gay elected official, this quote should give us faith in the strength and support of our community. It should remind us that there will be plenty of battles, setbacks and disheartening moments along the way, but in the end, we know we’re facing the right direction.

(Also posted at Associated Content)

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The kindness I saw in strangers helping and caring for one another during Pride made me feel, once again, extremely proud to be a part of the queer community — possibly one of the most peaceful and positive communities I know. To remember the event and say thanks to everyone who came with me, I’ve created a little slideshow of the pictures I managed to take while marching. Enjoy!

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One campaign I am particularly interested in is the Dove campaign for “real beauty,” which annoys me for a number of reasons. Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of such a message when coming from a company that sells beauty products, I question what exactly they mean by “real beauty” or “real women,” which is what the claim to feature in their ads. The idea of a “real woman” seems to suggest that some women are not real, either because they are famous or because they conform to current societal standards of beauty by embracing the ever so coveted protruding hipbone look. Despite the negative attitude they promote towards the skinny standard, they don’t seem to promote women of very many sizes. All of these women look to be within close range of one another in terms of weight. Furthermore, the thinnest woman in the picture is the only woman pictured from straight ahead without another woman covering part of her body or some sort of pose cleverly manipulated to accentuate her curves while simultaneously masking the size of her thighs. None of the women are significantly overweight to begin with, nor are any of them underweight.

This image also mirrors a lot of the problematic phrases constantly used to promote healthier body images among women, as most of them simply present a different idea of what the standard should be. “Real women have curves” doesn’t say to me that women come in all shapes in sizes and should be proud of their natural shape; on the contrary, it suggests that all women are beautiful so long as they aren’t too thin. I’m not sure how much better that is than the expectation that all women share Barbie’s measurements — the reality is that some women are naturally thin. Some of us are never going to have hips and large breasts. Society might tell me I’m not a Real Woman because my ribs don’t show quite enough, but now Dove is telling me that I’m not a real Woman because I need to gain 30 pounds.

In terms of race, this ad is also very interesting. They at first appear to present a range of colours; it is strange, though, that despite the fact that women of colour have a wider variety in skin tone, there are four different shades of white in this picture. Of the two women of colour, neither one is particularly dark-skinned, and the woman all the way to the left is hardly a shade darker than the woman to her right. The woman closest to the center of the image, besides being the thinnest, is also the lightest and only blonde. In addition to that, all Real Women appear to have perfectly white, straight teeth and glowing skin. They may also belong to the anti-cellulite campaign that Margaret mentioned, but that’s an assumption on my part…

The Dove campaign reminds me of Nike’s “If You Let Me Play” commercials from the mid-90s, which I first read critiques of in my psychology class with Dean Schuster last year (Psych 421: Intersections of Sport & Sexuality). Those commercials seem to have been received very well by the general public, getting a lot of praise for promoting women in sports, but its underlying subtext promotes a very different message rooted in notions of white male dominance. Besides the audacity that these girls are asking for permission to play rather than implying they should be “allowed” to play by default, the vulnerable-looking girls Nike chooses to feature present an interesting image of girls in America, with the white girls receiving significantly more airtime and filling the most prominent sections of the commercial. An article I read in that class by Shelley Lucas goes into much further detail, but I don’t want to stray too far from the topic of advertising and photography. What it comes down to is the fact that in these ads, Nike is trying to inconspicuously promote their company and products by presenting a message that will be well-received in a more modern America, but its hypocritical use of certain prejudices and biases to appeal to the American public reveal the truth behind their motives.

In the end, advertising always has one goal: to reach to their demographic. As our morals change as a society, advertising will change to appeal to those morals, but it does not necessarily mean that the advertisers have suddenly embraced our cause or denounced the sexist and racist attitudes that still govern our country and society — those attitudes simply become more covert as these values slip out of our consciousness and take on less obvious and more institutionalized forms.

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