It's a Rant

[chasingtides]

I've got a new peeve: when I post something about legal inequalities regarding queers and being upset that I'm not an equal under certain laws and I'm told to sit down and shut up, that I'm immature and I need to learn to be patient. (Actually, I'd be peeved if this happened in real life, but in real life I have the extraordinary superpower of Angry Tiny Person Glare with Added Queer Theory To Baffle With. If nothing else, it shuts people up.)

I won't sit down. I won't shut up. I don't want to wait a couple years until the federal government recognizes certain types of marriage. (I think it'd be an inappropriate 10th anniversary gift to same sex marriage in Massachusetts for the federal government to say, "Oh, by the way, we're finally recognizing that you could possibly actually be getting equal rights to your opposite sex coupled neighbours. Happy anniversary!") I think DADT is hurting straights as well as queers - we're weeding out the ranks of our military while we're at war. It doesn't take a genius to see that that's a bad idea.

Also, "The fight for African American Equality was not won in a damn day in this nation's history."

Well, I'm not African-American, nor did I specialise in the twentieth century in history, but my family and my nuns would have tanned my hide if I didn't know this: Neither African American rights nor women's rights came by people sitting down and shutting up and towing the party line.

My great-grandmother, widow and mother and breadwinner, marched with the first suffrage meeting in this country. She was pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables and heckled and told to go home to her husband. My cousins and mother worked with women's right and African American rights in the 60's and 70's because they were women and one of them married an African American man and wanted her children to grow up in an equal world.

None of them earned anything by shutting up and waiting until it was convenient. It is never convenient. We are never convenient. But rights - that is, things that should be inherent but are being denied by law - shouldn't wait convenience. That's why they're rights and not conveniences.

Comments

[skye-princess.livejournal.com]

I agree with you one hundred percent. Change can only occur when one person has the courage to stand up and to speak out for what is right and just. That one person would then inspire others to speak out on his/her behalf. Soon, you would have hundreds of people speaking out to the point that their collective voice cannot be ignored any longer. Also, the only way to make people listen is, in a sense, get in their face and confront them head on with the issue that you're fighting for, be it equal rights for members of the GLBT community, women, African-Americans, etc.

Actually, I'd be peeved if this happened in real life, but in real life I have the extraordinary superpower of Angry Tiny Person Glare with Added Queer Theory To Baffle With. If nothing else, it shuts people up.

In addition, you have your trusty cane to help make people shut up as well, if it ever comes to using force like that.

[fmyates.livejournal.com]

Being polite = being ignored.
Always make noise.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Going, "Oh, thank you, Mr Man, for letting me get married it my state. It's such a privilege. I wouldn't dream of asking you, Mr Man, to recognise it as actual marriage. What? I'm not a person, not like you are? Why, thank you, Mr Man, for speaking to me! You're right. I don't have the right to have a job, regardless of who or how I fuck or what's in my pants, or defend my country. Mr Man, you're right, I can't be patriot. I'm inherently anti-American. You're so right, Mr Man," isn't going to help anyone and might just explode my head.

[shrewreader.livejournal.com]

WORD.

Also, public would be cool, 'cause then the wealth'd be share3d.

If your great grandmother's around, still, thank her for me. (If not, I'll send a thank you note to go to her memorial marker.)

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Made public so you can share.

Grandma Sweeney's dead, but well and fondly remembered.

[extria.livejournal.com]

♥

[ibroketuesday.livejournal.com]

This. Thank you.

[jackien1968.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The fight wasn't won in a day, but it was fought hard every one of those days and not by waiting around for the timing to be more comfortable.

I live in California, and Prop. 8 really took it out of me emotionally even though I would have thought I didn't care what a bunch of random strangers think of me. I think part of it is feeling unsafe because of learning my state's govt. is set up to allow a morass of lemmings to put my human rights to a vote.

Anyway, I enjoyed "Bloody Knuckles" via your self-rec on spnstoryfinders and I will probably wander by to check out your other fic.

Best regards,
Jackie