there will be no music posted today. there will only be thoughts. i posted earlier and decided to pull that and repost later. i am honoring the day of silence today. it is, after all, for the youth.
i have personal experience with violence aimed at lgbt youth. and i have recently re-experienced that same violence as an adult but by another community member. it creates havoc and pain and is unnecessary. stop the violence. see "coming out of the dark" posted on March 15.
The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. This year’s event will be held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed Feb. 12 by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. Hundreds of thousands of students will come together on April 25 to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.
after today, i hope i can speak up more if i see or hear these things happening around me. it's the world i leave behind me that matters, not the one i came into.
The word queer has traditionally meant "strange" or "unusual," but its use in reference to LGBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual, etc.) communities as well as those perceived to be members of those communities has replaced the traditional definition and application. Its usage is considered controversial and underwent substantial changes over the course of the 20th century with some LGBT re-claiming the term as a means of self-empowerment. The term is still considered by some to be offensive and derisive, and by others as a re-appropriated term used to describe a sexual orientation and/or gender identity or gender expression that does not conform to heteronormative society.
i was remembering queer nation for some reason the other day. i guess i was speaking to someone about the word queer. i absolutely loved the queer nation manifesto. i loved the idea of reclaiming the power of that word. it had been used against me many times when i was very young and it held its mystical krypton-like powers for years beyond that. i reveled in being radical about my chosen culture. i say chosen because i did choose to participate in queer culture voluntarily. it's not as if i had a choice really, but i knew i couldn't pretend to belong anywhere else. besides, my feeling was that the queers really had some insight with regard to how to live a fantastically bohemian lifestyle. that is what held interest for me when i came out. actually it still does.
anyway, i remember marching in a gay pride parade in 1990 chanting we're here. we're queer. and we're not going shopping. all this with the help of a megaphone. that's when the guerrilla queer bar concepts got started too. and the kiss ins. oh the gay ol' nineties did hold some promise.
i also found this article which describes a "queer nation" protest during halloween in the castro. i think it describes succinctly the power of this short movement. a moving quote is:
While we were chanting and singing a very attractive woman, I thought, called me by name. I was surprised as I didn't know this person at all. Actually it was a guy I knew from QN in the most amazing drag I'd ever seen. I'd only ever seen bad drag, but he was really good at it. It changed my mind about drag right on the spot. It was an instant consciousness raising. I no longer thought that drag queens were sad and pathetic (which is what many people thing whether they're willing to say it or not.) Here was this beautiful man as a beautiful woman, in my state it probably had even more of an effect than it would have normally.
some of the original street flyers handed out to queers read like this: leaflets from 1990.
Just as importantly, "queer" became an important concept both socially and intellectually, helping to broaden what had been primarily a gay and lesbian social movement into one that was more inclusive of bisexual and transgender people. Rather than denote a particular genre of sexual identity, "queer" came to represent any number of positions arrayed in opposition to oppressive social and cultural norms and policies related to sexuality and gender. The lived political necessity of understanding the nexus of gender and sexuality in this broadening social movement in turn helped launch the field of "queer studies" in higher education.
Use of the term "queer" was never universally embraced by all segments of the constituencies that the concept of "queerness" could potentially represent; indeed, the term often evoked intense hostility. Queer Nation chapters were rife with dissension over issues of race, gender, and class, and they ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own internal contradictions--"queer," after all, means "diversity," whereas "nation" implies "sameness."
Still, in spite of its shortcomings, the shift in perceptions and tactics marked by the emergence of Queer Nation is an important foundation of the current notion of an inclusive gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community.
