Quick fact about the LGBT movement: It’s not all
about gay marriage. In fact, it’s not even all about gays. Contrary to what Dan
Savage would have you think, we are not only fighting for cisgendered, white
gay males.
We need to step away from the FCKH8 model of falsely
edgy “support” for LGBT causes, like same-sex marriage, by using harmful stereotypes
and throwing huge parts of our community under the bus. I’m not against
swearing at haters for kicks—but not only should that not represent the
movement, FCKH8 is actively disrespectful to people they should be supporting.
Aside from blatantly stealing ideas from actual charities like Stonewall, it’s an
outright scam: see links at bottom of page. It seems like all they do is use
the “sassy black woman” stereotype as a prop, perpetuate the sexualized image
of lesbian relationships (not the same thing as acceptance!), dismiss asexuals (see screencap below)
and
focus on defending male homosexuality. Ultimately, they’re a massive insult and
disservice to the community. So, why do we let these people represent our
movement?
The thing with the approach that FCKH8 and Dan
Savage take is that it’s barely even for us queers. It’s targeted at making
straight “allies” feel like they’re awesome because they don’t bully gays.
Sorry guys, but you don’t deserve a medal for being a decent human being. Can
we move on to the real issues now? Same-sex marriage is a start, and it’s
already pretty popular. Let’s keep going. How about trans/gender nonconforming
recognition and protection? How about access to their appropriate school
facilities and fair treatment in the workplace? How about fair access to
healthcare for trans and queer people, and how about we address the fact that
trans and queer people are more vulnerable to experience violence from family
members and officers of the law? Addressing the violence and hatred queer and
trans people experience from those they should trust the most has a quick
answer—solidarity.
We need a community that cares about ALL queers, not just
gay men and lesbians. And that community needs to take care of its own, starting with supporting each other on a basic level by empowering queers of all identities, working ensure
access to healthcare for transgender people (especially youth), and fighting police corruption/targeting of LGBT people, to start with. That’s a few steps
we need to take. That’s what charity should be going towards—not some obnoxious
FCKH8 rep’s pocket. (Did I mention they’re for profit?)
There’s also stigmas in our own community we need to
fight—negativity towards genderqueers/agendered people, denial of pansexuality,
etc. We need to stop disrespecting each other.
We need solidarity
and community, and we need to stop caring about being accepted by mainstream
media, industry and politics. We don’t have the time to care about them. This
is about us, and we need to advocate for everyone in our community. The time is now.
FCKH8's scam-ness:
The charity's merch from which FCKH8 stole their ideas: http://web.stonewall.org.uk/public/shop/default.aspx#Clothing
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