Laverne Cox is the activist we need

I recently saw an ad promoting Chelsea Clinton’s speaking gig for the Human Rights Campaign’s inaugural address, and immediately Googled her to see what connection she has to the LGBT community. She has none. She is a straight, white, cisgendered, privileged daughter of notorious politicians. She does not represent our community, and the concept of her speaking for us is insulting.

Of course, the Human Rights Campaign is pretty much a sellout; they promote sanitized advocacy for the most privileged members of the LGBT community. Just one example of this: at a 2013 rally for marriage equality in front of the White House, the HRC asked people not to wave trans flags because they don’t consider marriage equality a trans issue.

Not only is marriage equality very much a trans issue, that action alone showed their true colors of excluding trans* people from their “community.”

The Human Rights Campaign truly extends very little effort in even making it look like they care about trans people and queers of color; to tie back to what made me write this article, this is reflected in who they choose to be the face of their campaign. Straight white cis people like Chelsea Clinton, easy-to-deal-with and already famous gays or lesbians… please, yall. Please.

The activist that, in my opinion, could best benefit and reflect the LGBT community, is Laverne Cox. As a black trans woman, she could provide representation to a huge part of the LGBT community that so often gets thrown under the bus. Additionally, she doesn’t waste time and seems almost effortlessly articulate—for real, check out the Katie Couric interview.

She was completely right in redirecting the focus away from transition to the extreme adversity and violence that trans people face so often—“The preoccupation with transition and with surgery objectifies trans people. And then we don’t get to really deal with the real lived experiences. The reality of trans peoples’ lives is that so often we are targets of violence. We experience discrimination disproportionately to the rest of the community… if we focus on transition, we don’t actually get to talk about those things.”

HELL YEAH. We don’t have any time to waste, and she knows it.

To summarize, I’m a massive fangirl for Laverne. The rest of the community should be too. As for the Human Rights Campaign—rename yourself. You’re a single-issue group advocating for a specific group, not the LGBT community.

Articles with supporting evidence:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/31563/human-rights-campaign-fails-to-advocate-for-minorities

http://themoonbat.com/2013/04/02/the-problem-with-the-hrc-logo-on-your-profile/

http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=7291

We need REAL queer advocates: why we need to disown FCKH8 and Dan Savage, and shed fears of getting “radical”

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:

http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.fckh8.com

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a6929ebd5d5c67b7ade0767d8c6114fc/tumblr_mwfl25R53J1qa37hco1_500.png

The charity's merch from which FCKH8 stole their ideas: http://web.stonewall.org.uk/public/shop/default.aspx#Clothing