Thursday, December 24, 2009

Happy Holidays for Whom?

Holidays « gudbuytjane
Dismantling oppression requires acknowledgment of privilege, which is a difficult thing to do. We’re trained to evade it and to feel emotions such as anger and defensiveness when presented with it, because to acknowledge our privileges as individuals acknowledges the system from which that privilege arises. Still, if we are truly invested in change and seeking progressive alternatives to the way things are, we must be willing to engage that discomfort.

Acknowledge your privilege this holiday season. Not “in the spirit of the season” – that phrase is couched in the hypocrisy of the public moralizing of an oppressor culture – but against the notion of a culture that abandons those who most need love and acceptance while promoting empty images of family and community. Acknowledge that, as you sit down to dinner with your family or loved ones, there are those who are not welcome to do the same with their families, and that a disproportionate number of those people are transgender or transsexual.


Despite any kvetching on my part about mi familia, at least I am lucky enough to have a family that loves and accepts me as well as my cis gay sister, uncles and cousins. Not everyone is so lucky.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Humanity. No exceptions. No qualifications.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

We need to stick a warning label on me after this one...

Did you hear the one about the white nationalist network traveling to Washington D.C. to participate in a Congressional hearing?


No really. I'm not joking. Our congressional "leaders" are seeking advice on immigration reform from people with known ties to white nationalist organizations and holocaust denialists. If anyone here has ever wondered why I get kinda pissed off when people blithely discuss immigration reform and quote bullshit from groups like this...here's your 411. Many of those at the forefront of the push for reform and tighter laws are a bunch of racist douchebags with ulterior motives, i.e., a USA that is "free' of the taint of non-white Western Euro people.

This is not acceptable and I would hope it is obvious why. As I pointed out to a friend online, having these assholes testify for immigration reform is like having Polanski testify for the reform of sexual assault laws. Not. OK.