The news has been a lot lately.
All these laws,
Restricting Abortion access and taking away women’s control of their bodies
Tax incentives for straight couples to have more and more children
Banning Drag shows for kids
Blocking Gender affirming care for minors (and even adults)
The whole “Make American Great (a.k.a. Racist) Again” thing.
Oh, and the recent ‘National Day of Hate’ against Jewish people
All these efforts to Impose Voting Restrictions
All the banning and challenging of books –
especially books about Queer people, and Queer history
and Black people, and Black history
and Indigenous people, and Indigenous history
These are all connected
They support and prop up the false gender binary
and the power structures that reward that.
These are all connected
To people under 18 in the US now being a majority people of color.
These are all connected
With 1 in 5 folks in Gen Z (born 1997-2003) identifying as Queer.
Bayard Rustin was an openly gay Black man who was a leader of the Civil Rights movement (he was the guy who taught Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about nonviolent protest, and who organized the famous march on Washington where Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech).
Bayard said in 1986,
“Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us.
Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us.
Our aim was to try to create the kind of America,
Legislatively, morally, and psychologically,
Such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate.
That’s our job today, to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.”
This is still our job, nearly 40 years later.
The nastiness and derision in the political and public sphere has made it more okay to publicly manifest hate against us – all of us. Hate against anyone who dares live outside the narrow and false gender binary: the idea that there are only two ideal types of people – people with male bodies who are ‘manly” and people with female bodies who are ‘feminine,’ and anyone outside that is somehow wrong.
There is so much gender diversity – so many ways to be a human. Other cultures celebrate that diversity, and define gender very differently than we do. Courageous nonbinary folks in our own culture share their truths, like Alok saying that “there are as many genders as there are people in the world.”
The power structures and people propping up the false gender binary want us to live in fear. To see an unsafe world and retreat into closets we did not build. To deny our authentic selves. To deny the joyous lives we might have.
We deserve all the joy.
We deserve to be our authentic selves.
We see this hate and call it out for what it is.
And we will not focus our lives on it.
We focus on the light and the joy and the wonder all around us.
The light and the joy and the wonder we create as individuals.
The light and the joy and the wonder we create as a community.
We stand with each other
Together:
Lesbians
Gays
Bi and Pan
Trans
Queer and Questioning
Intersex
Asexual and Aromantic
2-Spirit
Plus everyone else who identifies as part of the Queer community
and
Women
Black people
Latine people
Asian and Pacific Islander people
People of Color
Indigenous people
Disabled people
Religious minorities
Atheists
Everyone who is othered
Everyone who is under-resourced
Everyone who is under-respected
And we know –
We are the light.
**
Sources for the good stuff (the news is awash with the rest):
To people under 18 in the US now being a majority of people of color:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/12/census-data-race-ethnicity-neighborhoods/
With 1 in 5 folks in Gen Z (born 1997-2003) identifying as Queer:
https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup
Bayard Rustin Quote:
My own banned book, Lee Wind, No Way, They Were Gay? Hidden Lives and Secret Loves (Minneapolis: Zest Books/Lerner Publishing Group, 2021), pg. 90
Alok Quote:
Alok Vaid-Menon, “Stand Proud: Story 2 of 5: Alok Vaid-Menon, Gender NonConforming Performance Artists and Writer,” Squarespace Pride 2019, accessed January 28, 2020, https://pride.squarespace.com/featuredportraits/alok-vaid-menon
What you have written is true. I do believe that things will, in the macro point of view, continue in a positive direction. This is all backlash against the changes that are slowly happening whether the haters like it or not. It is simply how the populace is evolving.
As the world increases in familiarity with the diversity in the world, and in awareness of all we have in common despite those differences, it will simply become more financially advantageous for governments/corporations to acknowledge and support the planet’s diversity. There is no other viable path forward.
We can’t rest though. Change will happen, but we are all participants in the process. Thanks for your encouragement and vision. The storytellers are the shapers of the future.