An Apology About Ableist Language

The word sorry written on a piece of paper
(Content note: ableist slurs)

So in 2010, I wrote a piece for AlterNet (two pieces, actually) about unfair gender role expectations for men. I interviewed my male friends, colleagues, and blog readers, asking them about their experiences of rigid, narrow, contradictory gender expectations, and I wrote my essays piece based on what they said. I also reposted the pieces on my own blog.

No, I’m not apologizing for that. I’m apologizing for the titles, and for some of the language I used in the content. Continue reading “An Apology About Ableist Language”

An Apology About Ableist Language
{advertisement}

Hillary Clinton and the Nancy Reagan AIDS Thing: What We Hoped To Accomplish

ACT UP 25 memorial man grieving in front of posters of people who died of AIDS
ACT UP 25 memorial, corner of 18th and Castro, San Francisco. Man grieving in front of posters of people who died of AIDS. Photo by Greta Christina.

What did we hope to accomplish?

Quick summary, for the six of you who were vacationing on Mars and may have missed it: Hillary Clinton recently said this utterly fucked-up thing about how Ronald and Nancy Reagan had “started a national conversation” about HIV and AIDS, and praising Nancy Reagan’s “low-key advocacy.” The Internet exploded with queers and others screaming about how this not only erased the reality of the many AIDS activists who actually did start the conversation about AIDS, but rewrote the history to laud the very people who had ignored AIDS, perpetuated the shame and silence about it, and caused the deaths of millions in the process. Clinton issued a brief apology on Twitter: the Internet exploded some more, with queers and others screaming about how this was nowhere near good enough, how Clinton’s historical revisionist bullshit needed a much stronger and clearer response than a 140-character apology. Clinton finally issued a more thorough statement, spelling out that the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS, acknowledging the activists who did start the conversation, and discussing the history of AIDS and AIDS activism in the U.S.

After the first apology, during the second round of the explosion, a number of people expressed bafflement and even disapproval at the exploders. “Why do you have to keep talking about this?” they asked. “She apologized in her tweet. What else do you want? You’re giving Donald Trump and the GOP ammunition. Why don’t you let it go? Why do you keep pressuring her? What do you hope to accomplish?”

Speaking for myself, and for some others but not all: What we hoped to accomplish was the second statement.

We got Clinton to learn some important history that matters to us, and to use her sizable platform to educate others about it. We got millions of other people to learn this important history. We got the actual national conversation about AIDS that she’d claimed the Reagans had started. We put a serious dent in the disgusting, revisionist Reagan hagiography — and we got Clinton to help us do that. And we got her to realize that we are not to be fucked with, and that she cannot take us for granted.

The second statement was not perfect. I wish she had explained how she made this ghastly mistake in the first place; I wish she hadn’t praised herself and her platform (that definitely undercuts an apology); I wish she had actually said “I’m sorry” (she did in her tweet, she didn’t here). But there were things about the statement that were surprisingly good. It was a pretty good brief summary of the history of HIV/AIDS, and the points it addressed about the current U.S. epidemic and what needs to be done about it were very on-point: a number of people I know who work in public health or HIV say it could have been written by one of them. And she gave a shout-out to ACT UP, which was surprising and awesome. I’m not sure any serious Presidential candidate has done that before.

We would not have gotten any of that if we hadn’t kept pressing.

There’s something important about this incident that I think some people may not be tracking on. It’s almost impossible to convey what it was like to be in the LGBT community during the worst years of the AIDS pandemic, when your friends and community were dying in huge numbers, the government was ignoring it at best, and most of the world was laughing, scolding, shaming, shunning, or worse. The scars from those years run deep (here is an extraordinary piece of writing about it by Tim Kingston on the Grief Beyond Belief website). And there were so many people who had to put a lid on their grief when it was happening, who had to just put their heads down and cope. When people saw the Reagans being lauded as heroes of the epidemic — the very people who were arguably most complicit in what can fairly be described as a genocide — the lid came off. When you saw the Internet explode, you weren’t just seeing a Presidential candidate criticized for a dreadful gaffe. You were seeing over 25 years of pent-up grief and rage.

I’ll be honest and clear: It wasn’t just straight people, or people who didn’t live through the worst years of the pandemic, who were trying to convince us to quit screaming. LGBT people, people who were around during those days, were saying it as well. There is, of course, a huge variety among our community, including a variety of responses to AIDS and the way people speak about it. And when it comes to an issue that’s this emotional, this traumatic, this loaded with personal grief and political rage, it can be hard when other people who went through it are responding differently; when other people are more pragmatic or more ideological, more diplomatic or more hard-assed, more willing to forgive or less. My own general rule is that, within some obvious broad limits of ethics and legality, people get to speak about their own marginalization any way they like, and people get to decide for themselves who they forgive and when. When emotions are running high, though, I get that this can be hard.

But speaking up makes a difference. Demanding accountability from the people who represent us, or who are asking to represent us, makes a difference. Do not tell people who went through a genocide how to speak about it.

(Note: Please DO NOT turn this into a Sanders/Clinton election thread. I will enforce this, possibly without second chances.)

Hillary Clinton and the Nancy Reagan AIDS Thing: What We Hoped To Accomplish

Quick Temporary Note About Comments

Because The Orbit is still new, and for various reasons related to that, I’ve temporarily set my comment settings so people who haven’t commented before will need to have their comments approved by me before they go up. I hope to discontinue this soon: in the meantime, please be patient if you post a comment and it doesn’t get posted while I’m asleep, in therapy, rubbing cat bellies, or otherwise engaged and away from my computer. I’ll get to it as soon as I can. Thanks.

Quick Temporary Note About Comments

Steven Universe Episode 6: Cat Fingers

steven universe cat fingers

Ingrid and I are re-watching the entire Steven Universe series — yet again — and since we’ve been spending so much talking about it with each other, I thought I’d blog some of my observations.. Please note: I’m not writing these Steven Universe posts as a series summary or recap. I’m just writing down some of my observations and reactions (not necessarily coherently), both to the show as a whole and to the individual episodes. These posts will probably make more sense to people who are already watching/ have already watched the show, but I hope they inspire the rest of you to check out the show, as it really is one of the richest and most emotionally intense things I’ve seen on TV. Note: This post may contain spoilers about Steven Universe: the show as a whole, and/or about Episode 6: Cat Fingers.

“It kind of does what it wants.”

Some episodes of Steven Universe are complex and nuanced, with subtle meanings on many levels. This one, I think, is not. This one, I think, is very straightforward: it’s about teenage and pre-teen anxiety about changing bodies.

Teenagehood can seem really exciting to kids. It did to me: when I was growing up. teenagers seemed like the most glamorous people on the planet. But when you’re in the middle of it, it can be difficult and scary. Of course there’s the emotional and psychological transition, the place of not yet being an adult but not being a kid any more, being seen by others as neither or both, not being seen by others the way you’re ready to be seen. But in addition to that, there’s the anxiety of the purely physical changes. Being a pre-teen and teenager can feel like you’re turning into something completely different and alien, and you have no control over it.

I think that’s what this episode is about. Steven sees Amethyst shapeshfting, wants to learn how to do it himself, and starts to be able to make cats pop out of his body. At first it’s exciting and fun. Cats on your fingers! What’s not to like? But he quickly starts to lose control of it. Cats start popping out everywhere and taking over. They even lash out against his will, biting Lars. And he can’t make them go away. Cats start appearing on their own, popping out of his face like zits, and they quickly take over his body and turn him into a monster, unrecognizable even by his own father. (Visually, this is one of the most unsettling episodes of Steven Universe: Ingrid can barely stand to watch it, and I find it pretty disturbing as well.)

It’s telling that Amethyst is who Steven is imitating here. He models himself after all the gems at some point or another, but in this episode it’s Amethyst, the one who’s most like a teenager, whose shapeshifting abilities he admires and wants to imitate. It’s interesting that Steven doesn’t grasp how disturbing this is to others: he runs around town showing off his cat fingers, not picking up on how freaky people find it. And I think it’s telling that in this episode, it isn’t the Gems who help him. It’s his dad. In one sense this is magic gem business — he’s made his body turn into cats — but sentient rocks can’t teach him how to deal with his changing body. This episode starts and ends with Steven and Greg: ultimately, this is intensely human, parent-child business.

(Side note: When people teaching a skill say, “Relax and don’t try so hard,” they don’t always acknowledge that this can be a really hard thing to do. I find it interesting that Steven is actually very good at it, and picks it up quickly. He obviously doesn’t control it very well — but the basic idea of “trying not to try,” he’s very good at.)

Steven Universe Episode 6: Cat Fingers

Welcome to The Orbit!

Welcome to The Orbit!

Comet the cat with laptop

This is my new blogging home. It’s a new blogging network, specifically dedicated to atheism and social justice, co-founded by over twenty bloggers including me.

I’ll have a lot more to say about it in the coming days. For now, I mostly just want to say Welcome! I am hugely excited and happy to be here. I’m excited to be a co-builder of something new: I think The Orbit is going to be an important and valuable place for atheists who care about social justice, and I’m so proud to be part of creating it. A lot of atheists have felt increasingly disconnected from organized atheism, and we hope to give these people a home. In fact, we hope to give a home to anyone who cares about the things we care about.

If you want to find out more about us — our mission, who we are, how we’re structured, why we chose The Orbit as our name, what’s unique about us, what we even mean by social justice  — please visit our About Us page. You can also ask me questions here in the comments, but I can’t promise to answer all or even any of them: I’m a little swamped right now, as you might imagine.

The other bloggers currently in The Orbit are Alex Gabriel, Alix Jules, Alyssa Gonzalez, Ani, Ania Bula, Aoife O’Riordan, Ashley F. Miller, Benny Vimes, Brianne Bilyeu, Chris Hall, D. Frederick Sparks, Dana Hunter, Dori Mooneyham, Heina Dadabhoy, Jason Thibeault, Luxander Pond, Miri Mogilevsky, Niki M., Sincere Kirabo, Stephanie Zvan, Tony Thompson, and Zinnia Jones. I hope you’ll take some time and visit all of them over the coming days and weeks: pulling together this roster has been one of the most fun and exciting parts of this process, and I am so excited to be working with these people, I cannot even tell you.

happy Greta in colorful outfit in garden
We’ll probably be shaking out a few tech issues over the next few days. If you run into any problems, please let us know — and please be patient. And if you’re excited and happy about this, please help us out if you can — kick in to our Kickstarter campaign to help cover our operating costs (even small amounts help, they really do add up), or just spread the word about us. Welcome to my new home!

Welcome to The Orbit!

The Orbit: Atheist Social Justice Blogging Site Launches

Here’s the official press release announcing the launch of The Orbit.

March 14, 2016

For immediate release

The Orbit: Atheist Social Justice Blogging Site Launches

A new atheist blogging site, dedicated to working on social justice both in and out of organized atheism, launches today. Located at the-orbit.net, The Orbit is being created by bloggers from all corners of progressive atheism, including the Freethought Blogs network, the Patheos Atheist channel, Skepchick, and independent blogs.

“The word ‘orbit’ resonates with what we’re doing, on many levels,” says Greta Christina. “We love the connection with science and astronomy, with Galileo and other heretics who changed the world — and we love the reminder that we all orbit something and none of us is the center of the universe.”

The Orbit is a diverse collective of atheist, humanist, and other non-religious bloggers who are committed to social justice, both within organized atheism and outside it. “It’s not just atheism that’s struggling with social justice,” says D. Frederick Sparks. “Organizations across the board are neglecting the needs of marginalized people, and aren’t willing to look at the ways they make those people feel unwelcome. We plan to be one of the outposts for social justice atheism — but also for social justice in every community we care about.”

Bloggers at The Orbit include Alex Gabriel, Alix Jules, Alyssa Gonzalez, Ani, Ania Bula, Aoife O’Riordan, Ashley F. Miller, Benny Vimes, Brianne Bilyeu, Chris Hall, D. Frederick Sparks, Dana Hunter, Dori Mooneyham, Greta Christina, Heina Dadabhoy, Jason Thibeault, Luxander Pond, Miri Mogilevsky, Niki M., Sincere Kirabo, Stephanie Zvan, Tony Thompson, and Zinnia Jones, with a lineup that is continuing to grow. “We’re extremely proud of our team,” says Tony Thompson. “They represent some of the strongest, most insightful voices in atheism.” The Orbit is structured as a collective, with all bloggers having a voice in decisions and contributing to day-to-day operations. The site is launching a Kickstarter campaign to cover operating costs and pay bloggers for their work.

The network plans to continue a friendly, collegial relationship with bloggers at Freethought Blogs, Skepchick, Patheos Atheist, and elsewhere. “There’s room for lots of blog networks and media sites in organized atheism,” says Luxander Pond. “This is a fast-growing community.” Recent major changes at Freethought Blogs provided many Orbiters with the impetus and opportunity to rethink what they wanted from a blog network. “Ultimately,” says Stephanie Zvan, “we decided to seize the opening to build something new, with a new structure and vision.”

More information is available at the-orbit.net/about-us. For media inquiries, contact Ashley F. Miller at [email protected].

The Orbit: Atheist Social Justice Blogging Site Launches

Support the Black Skeptics “First in the Family” Humanist Scholarship Fund

Please support the Black Skeptics of Los Angeles First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative! Please donate if you can — even small donations help, they really do add up — and please spread the word on social media.

In 2013, Black Skeptics Los Angeles (BSLA), a 501c3 organization, spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative, which focuses on providing resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless and LGBTQ youth who will be the first in their families to go to college. Responding directly to the school-to-prison pipeline crisis in communities of color, BSLA is the first atheist organization to specifically address college pipelining for youth of color with an explicitly anti-racist multicultural emphasis. If current prison pipelining trends persist the Education Trust estimates that only “one of every 20 African American kindergartners will graduate from a four-year California university” in the next decade. In addition:

The school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately locks up African American and Latino youth, leaving many with criminal records and no possibility of “re-entry” to employment, housing or higher education

African American youth are severely over-represented in foster care, homeless populations, and juvenile jails

Foster care and homeless youth of color have some of the lowest rates of college transfer and graduation amongst college youth populations

LGBTQ youth of color have disproportionately high suspension/expulsion and push-out rates in U.S. public schools

Black females are consistently suspended at greater rates than ALL OTHER groups besides black males

So-called inner city schools have fewer Advanced Placement, college prep and honors courses and highly qualified STEM teachers than their white suburban counterparts

With your support, Black Skeptics hopes to award at least four youth $1000 scholarships to assist with their books, tuition, housing and other living expenses. Their 2013-2015 scholars are now at USC, UCLA, UC Riverside, Cal State University Long Beach, Babson College, University of North Texas, UC Merced and El Camino College.

So please support the First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative! Please donate if you can — even small donations help, they really do add up — and please spread the word. Thanks!

BSLA and their alum also thank their previous supporters: Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Humanist Association, Atheists United, Black Non-Believers, Minority Atheists of Michigan and more!

Comforting Thoughts book cover oblong 100 JPG
Coming Out Atheist
Bending
why are you atheists so angry
Greta Christina is author of four books: Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.

{AD}

Support the Black Skeptics “First in the Family” Humanist Scholarship Fund