Tag Archives: lgbtiq
Linkspam of Spring 2012
So it’s spring here in Oz, and the days are getting longer and warmer, there are more birds about, and weeds are growing at an amazing pace in my garden. So to distract myself from thinking about that, here are some amazing pieces of writing I’ve found about the place recently.
Libby Anne at Love Joy Feminism writes, “When It Really Is about Controlling Women“:
If abortion is murder, the argument that women need to “take responsibility” for the “voluntary decision” to have sex by carrying the pregnancy to term is irrelevant. It should not matter. If it’s just about “saving babies,” then abortion is wrong because it’s murder, not because it’s a woman failing to “take responsibility” for having had sex. When someone makes the above argument, then, they make clear that some proportion of the anti-abortion movement is not simply interested in “saving babies,” but rather in depriving women of control of their own reproduction. Some proportion of the anti-abortion movement, then, is actively anti-woman, not simply passively anti-woman. They make opposing abortion about “slut shaming,” about trying to control women who want to have sex but not to have children, not about “saving babies.”
And then they wonder why women get upset. They wonder why they’re called anti-woman. They shouldn’t. It should be obvious.
Libby Anne also wrote, “Dear Pro-Lifers: STOP ERASING WOMEN“:
There, right there, is where women are removed from the picture entirely. Somehow zygotes magically develop into human beings…like, by themselves. Nothing else involved there. No one else effected. But that’s simply untrue. A zygote will NOT develop naturally into a human being if left to itself. Rather, in order to develop into a human being it has to have massive intervention from an outside source. Namely, a woman. Without this intervention, a zygote will not become a human being.
I’m sorry if it seems like I’m splitting hairs here, and I realized perfectly well that the author of that piece probably didn’t even realize he was doing this (which almost makes it worse), but every time a pro-lifer erases women like this, I can’t help but cringe. No, more than that, I want to yell.
Over at Boing Boing, “Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has a few choice words for a Maryland politician“, with a link to the actual letter written by Chris Kluwe. This issue was beautifully handled by Chris Kluwe and certainly has added for me a whole new respect for NFL players.
A older piece by Kate Harding, “The Fantasy of Being Thin“:
And then I started thinking about what it was really like before I’d actually made peace with my body. And what it was really like was this: The Fantasy of Being Thin absolutely dominated my life — even after I’d gotten thin once, found myself just as depressive and scattered and frustrated as always, and then gained all the weight back because, you know, diets don’t work. The reality of being thin didn’t even sink in after all that, because The Fantasy of Being Thin was still far more familiar to me, still what I knew best. I’d spent years and years nurturing that fantasy, and only a couple years as an actual thin person. Reality didn’t have a chance.
We’ve talked a lot here about how being fat shouldn’t stop you from doing the things you’ve always believed you couldn’t do until you were thin. Put on a bathing suit and go waterskiing. Apply for that awesome job you’re just barely qualified for. Ask that hot guy out. Join a gym. Wear a gorgeous dress. All of those concrete things you’ve been putting off? Just fucking do them, now, because this IS your life, happening as we speak.
From Feministing, a “Young Man schools homophobes with… The Bible?“. The video is an hour long, I read the transcript which is linked under the page. Matthew Vines has taken time to research bible quotes on same-sex relationships (sadly failing to recognise bisexuality but you can’t have everything), and comes to a completely different conclusion than the ones spouted by fringe Christianity.
A same-sex couple in Nevada who have had their same sex relationship recognised by the State and who have a “certificate of domestic partnership” which is supposed to give them the same rights as married couples, had their relationship ignored when one of them was admitted to hospital recently. In the Las Vegas Review Journal, “Same-sex couple in Henderson upset with hospital’s treatment“.
From Benny at Queereka, “Kinksters, Time for a Change“. *Trigger warning for discussions of sexual assault, rape, and harassment*
From Yessenia at Queereka, “Self-Defense: Now Available in Pink!“. *Trigger warning for discussion of rape culture, violence, sexual assault and rape*
Now, as a general rule, I’m suspicious when I see phrases like “women’s self defense.” Because isn’t that just called ‘self-defense?’
What makes women’s self defense different? Well, as we’re all generally aware, the implicit rest of the phrase is “women’s self defense against rapists.”
But like most things modified with ‘women,’ the message eventually becomes “self defense that’s pinker and weaker than the regular variety employed by standard (male) humans.” And you get classes like this: “Girls’ Fight Night Out.” Forty-two year old girl Betty Ryan described her reason for attending: ““This was about fun and self-defense, which is why I chose to go.”
Listen, rule of thumb: if you’re learning self-defense against rapists, it’s not gonna be fun.
Three posts from Lesbilicious, “Street Harassment: the taboo is finally breaking”
The neglected phenomenon of street harassment suffered by a majority of women in Brussels as well as in other European cities is the subject of the documentary ‘Femme de la rue’ (‘Woman of the Street’) by student filmmaker Sofie Peteers. Released in Belgium at the end of July 2012, this simple university work created an incredible snowball effect. The topic has been picking up in the francophone medias to such extent that Belgium is now examining the possibility of creating a law to penalize street harassment.
And “Is Fifty Shades of Grey so bad it should be burned?” and “Moscow Pride: a brief history“:
Pride in Moscow has been banned every year, and activists have marched regardless. In 2006 and 2007 the demonstrators were subject to homophobic violence from nationalists as well as from the police, and several were arrested. In 2008 the organisers used a flashmob form of protest, and in 2009 the location was changed at the last minute – clashes with anti-gay protestors were avoided, though the organisers were still arrested and illegally detained overnight. In 2010, activists fed police false information and were able to hold a ten-minute march: for the first time, they avoided violence and arrests.
In late 2010, Alekseev took the Russian government to the European Court of Human Rights, regarding the banned Pride marches in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and won: Russia paid him almost 30,000 Euro in damages and legal fees. However, the next year, the parade was attacked again, and over thirty participants were arrested.
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Pastor Peter Walker- Arsehat of the week!
*Trigger warning for homophobic speech*
I don’t hand out this award very often, although there are quite a few arsehats walking the earth, the rarely do or say something so amazingly awful that I feel the immediate urge to write about it, generally I just call them an arsehat and move on. But today Pastor Peter Walker, a self-confessed Christian (as evidenced by his title), was so horrendous that I have to write and tell everyone that this man has won my Arsehat of the week award. It is entirely possible that he has won the arsehat of the month award, given the magnitude of his offence.
So, I hear you asking, as you’ve wisely kept you head out of offensive LGBTIQ news, what was Walker’s great offence? So great that I am blogging while on my holiday in Cologne, when I could be wandering this fine city instead (well I’m actually doing some washing so I have clothes to wander in)?
Continue reading Pastor Peter Walker- Arsehat of the week!
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Strapping on the ranty pants – Marriage Equality edition (again)
I was really excited to hear that New Zealand was considering a marriage equality bill, and hoped to avoid reading comment from homophobic alarmists, decrying the current decay of modern society, and stating that allowing “teh gays” to marry will bring about the collapse of civilisation as we know it.
However, today a few people on Twitter linked to a “he said, she said” article from stuff.co.nz which sought comment from Christian religious personnel regarding their thoughts on marriage equality, one Catholic Priest and one Uniting Reverend. The comments from the Catholic Priest, Father Merv Duffy were jaw-droppingly astounding, and so ranty pants strapped on, I’m all prepared to have a go.
Continue reading Strapping on the ranty pants – Marriage Equality edition (again)
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Government – the ACL isn’t doing it right
Malcolm Turnbull gave a speech on equal marriage and how perhaps Australia should have civil unions first as several other countries have, in order to demonstrate that the sky won’t fall in if same-sex relationships are recognised. I’m not going to engage in this debate here other than to say I support marriage equality now.
The Age wrote about this today, and for some reason quoted Lyle Sheldon from the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), I have no idea why:
The Australian Christian Lobby, which is campaigning against the gay marriage legislation, is warning the Labor Party it risks the creation of a US style religious right if it continues to push for a change to the definition of marriage.
“At the moment both sides [of politics] have policies that appeal to Christians but this issue is damaging Labor,” the lobbby’s chief of staff, Lyle Shelton, said.
Mr Shelton said the rise of the religious right in America had been “polarising politics horribly” and “we don’t need that in Australia at all”.
Now, how I look at this collection of statements is as follows, the Australian Labour Party (ALP), for the most part, supports marriage equality. The ACL warn that if the ALP continues to support marriage equality and not the ACL’s favourite form of bigotry, then there is the potential for the (small) religious right to get political and active in Australia, the way that the religious right is active in the US. The ACL are suggesting that if the ALP continues to support (for the most part) marriage equality, then Australian Christians (and by this suggestion they think most of them although this is not the case) will abandon the ALP and will form their own political party. The ACL go on to suggest that this is a bad thing.
Here’s a small hint for the ACL. Australia has been for many years now a far less religious country than the US. To even suggest that the religious right (such as the ACL) could suddenly be more polarising and horrible than they already are is somewhat laughable. It is sad that the ACL has focused so much energy and fear marriage equality when the majority of Australia is on-board with the idea.
As we know the ACL is linked to the religious right in the US and Dominionism. I suspect their “Warning, warning, you will create the religious right in Australia” is far more of a “YAY RELIGIOUS RIGHT”.
If the ACL want to stop “polarising politics horribly” they should just get out of the marriage equality debate and stop spreading fear and bigotry. After all they cannot know the mind of their god, they cannot practice unconditional love while denying rights and recognition to others and there are so many other social justice issues to look at, poverty, war, the continuation of the NT Intervention, etc. So many issues where Christian compassion, unconditional love, and care can be better spent, in my opinion, than continuing to fear a group who just want to be like everyone else.
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New financial year Linkspam!
I’ve been distracted with my current Cook Book Project so haven’t been blogging as much, and this linkspam is pretty much the entire month of June, and the first few days of July.
Today, I discovered a new blog, thanks to @DeadlyBloggers on Twitter called, “Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist“, and I love her most recent post, “A total and hairy non-issue“:
My own personal journey with depilating is probably similar to other women, particularly in western countries. I had grown up noticing my mother shave her legs, and seeing women with smooth legs on TV and all around me, and at what is probably a ridiculously young age (about 8 ) I deemed my own legs too hairy and shaved them for the first time. I cut them to bits with Dad’s rusty old Gillette Blue 2, and didn’t try that again for another year or so. I’d call my “need” to shave an “unconscious social intervention” as it was based on observation and “normalising messages” hitting me from a very young age. But what was a completely conscious one was when mum took me aside at about 11 or 12 and showed me how to shave my armpits. From that point onwards, I was paranoid of raising my arm if I hadn’t shaved. It wasn’t mum’s fault as nearly every girl in my school seemed to be in the same boat, if not then, then over the coming years.
After a spike in traffic on my blog, and specifically regarding my post about Dan Savage’s biphobia, I wondered what he’d done this time. Apparently he’d used a derogatory comment in relation to GOProud, a coalition of LGBT Republicans and their straight allies. *trigger warning for homophobic language* From the Huffington Post, “Dan Savage and the Other, Uglier F-Word“.
A great article discussing the myth that bisexuals don’t exist called, “Gay or Straight, Most People Think Bisexuality Isn’t Real” from the Philly Post:
There are many people who feel attraction to both genders—or who are indifferent to gender entirely, who are just attracted to people and deal with the gendered parts when things get intimate. How is it possible that high-schoolers think it’s chic (though a little passe) to be bi, but our mouthpieces of popular celebrity culture don’t know what to do with famous people who have fluid sexuality?
Even after all these years of progress and activism related to sexual orientation and gender, there remains a core disbelief among gay and straight that bisexuality exists. Some think it’s a phase girls go through in college; others think it’s a bullshit position a guy takes because he’s afraid to be gay. It’s not validated on either side of the aisle, so to speak. So bisexuals disappear into headlines: Frenchie Davis is a lesbian. Score 1 for the absolutist team.
Another article on bisexuality, this time from the Windy City Media Group titled, “Series on bisexuality looks to document diversity in sexual behaviors“:
Bisexuality is sometimes looked on with confusion from both the heterosexual and homosexual communities. Researchers from Indiana University conducted a series of studies recently to explore how the stigma and stereotypes of behaviorally bisexual individuals stands up to reality, and how these men and women are actually living out their sexual lives.
…
“I was really surprised to find, among some of the guys, how they weren’t open at all about their sexuality,” he said. “For a lot of them, it had been the first time they’d ever talked to someone about engaging in sexual behavior with both men and women. There was a lot of stigma, even shame from both gay and straight friends and family members about bisexuality that was above and beyond just typical stigma. For some of them it really did seem like they were clearly linking that with having mental health issues, like feeling depressed or anxious or not comfortable with their sexuality because they felt like they were sort of the only ones. So in terms of the needs for actually doing this type of research, it was really validated.”
No Place for Sheep wrote a piece about “Belief versus human rights“, in relation to Gillard’s (Aussie PM) personal beliefs about marriage equality impacting the human rights of the LGBTIQ community. I recommend this post even though the BTIQ part of the spectrum are missing somewhat in the post.
Be that as it may, the fights led me to thinking about belief. While I agree that everyone is entitled to their beliefs, I don’t agree that everyone is entitled to act on those beliefs to the detriment of others. Once a belief is extrapolated from the personal realm and used to determine the lives of others it is no longer personal, it is political.
Personal belief can legitimately determine the course of one’s own life. If you don’t believe same-sex marriage is right, for example, then don’t make a same-sex marriage. Nobody in our country will force you into an arrangement that powerfully disturbs your moral sensibility.
What disturbs me, however, is the argument that personal beliefs ought to be set apart from the interrogations we are at liberty to apply to all other human processes. The personal belief is elevated to the sacred, inspiring respect and reverence simply because it is a personal belief, and regardless of its substance. While I find this bizarre, hinting as it does at some transcendental exterior governance, I have little problem with it, as long as the belief remains in the realm of the personal. When it becomes prescriptive, I argue that it is no longer protected from scrutiny and critique by reverence.
It turns out that Mitt Romney doesn’t like bisexuals or trans* people (well there is a surprise) to the point where those words in a anti-bullying guide resulted in the guide not being produced/endorsed by his office, “No mention of ‘bisexual,’ ‘transgender’ under Romney“:
Former governor Mitt Romney’s administration in 2006 blocked publication of a state antibullying guide for Massachusetts public schools because officials objected to use of the terms “bisexual’’ and “transgender’’ in passages about protecting certain students from harassment, according to state records and interviews with current and former state officials.
Romney aides said publicly at the time that publication of the guide had been delayed because it was a lengthy document that required further review. But an e-mail authored in May of that year by a high-ranking Department of Public Health official – and obtained last week by the Globe through a public records request – reflected a different reason.
Two pieces, one from Novel Activist, “Martha Nussbaum: Objectification, Sexualisation and Conservative Hypocrisy” and the other from No Place for Sheep, “What is objectification, anyway?“:
There’s an almost constant stream of allegations of objectification through sexualisation currently being made in Western society. These are leveled by concerned citizens against much popular culture, and based largely on images of women that culture produces. These allegations presume an objectifying gaze, that is, they insist the viewer will inevitably reduce women portrayed in certain ways to objects to be used for sexual gratification, rather than seeing them as equal human beings. Clothing, facial expressions and postures are used as signifiers of objectification, as well as language.
The signifiers chosen by concerned citizens are based on a Judeo-Christian perception of the adult female body as unruly, dangerous and indecent, and requiring concealment except in specific circumstances such as marriage and other committed monogamous relationships. Clothing that reveals too much of the body’s “private” zones is regarded as transgressing moral codes, as are postures and language that imply female sexual desire, and/or stimulate male “lust.”
An introductory post and a follow up three post series on “Christian Fundamentalist Homophobia: It Really Is About Fear” (introduction, part 1, part 2, part 3) from the phoenix and the olive branch *trigger warning for homophobic language and hate speech (excerpts from all four posts):
I was raised to be homophobic. Oh, my church had lots of ways to deflect the label when it was applied to us, but deep down, I was afraid. The other kids were afraid, too. When pressed, we would spew lines like “hate the sin, love the sinner” or “I’m not afraid of gay people, I just disagree with their lifestyle.” (That one confuses me now: how can you “disagree” with someone else’s life? It’s not about disagreement, it’s about disapproval.) There’s always this old favorite, too: “They don’t even know they’re in sin; they’re deceived. We need to pray for them.” Thing is, all of this masks a genuine, visceral, inculcated fear. I wasn’t raised to have a vague, condescending, pious pity for LGBTQ people. I was raised to be violently afraid of them.
…
In my church, homophobia was a matter of course. We didn’t spend a lot of time hashing out the Scriptural arguments against homosexuality. Occasionally Paul and Leviticus were cited, but more often, sermons would rattle out evidence of modern depravity along these lines: “…and Satan has so perverted this generation that it thinks there’s nothing wrong with divorce, abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and girls throwing their babies in trash cans and doing drugs.” Defiance of gender roles was just one of the most obvious signs of demonic control.
Whether or not my church explicitly intended for me to receive this message, I understood homosexuality as one of an array of perversions. Homosexuality, promiscuity, pedophilia drug addiction, alcoholism, cheating, self-harm, unwed pregnancy and abortion were not treated as separate issues. I was afraid of gay people because I was taught that it was impossible to be gay or lesbian without partaking in all of the above.
…
These rhetorical strategies also reveal fundamentalist Christianity’s basic approach to LGBTQ identities: they are symptoms of an overactive sexuality. The demon that leads men to pornography and women to prostitution is the same one that causes sexual attraction to break out of the appropriate boxes. Fundamentalists don’t fully accept LGBTQ identities as categories. Instead, they see them as temporary stopping points on the way to total depravity. Hence their slippery slope arguments and their conviction that you can “pray away the gay.” The implication is that if you don’t “pray away the gay,” you’re mere moments away from self-harm and child molestation. [emphasis in original]
…
I have one final thing to offer to the “hate the sin, love the sinner” crowd from the other side of the fence they built to keep us illegal Christians out:
Unconditional love does not mean loving someone while disapproving of their actions. It means forsaking the right to disapprove. You cannot love who I am and hate what I do. What I do shows you who I am.If you choose to love a figment of your imagination, some idea of who I might become, then you love only your own mind, and what you hate is me. [emphasis in original]
Another post from the phoenix and the olive branch, “Bedroom Submission, Birth Control and Tokophobia” on the harm of Christian Patriarchy on women and the author herself *trigger warning for discussion of rape*:
Worse yet, in my church, women were told we were merely “incubators” for male seed. A man’s children were his; a woman’s children were also his. There was effectively no difference between a man’s children from another marriage or the children a man and woman had together. All belonged to the father. The mother was just the vice president: a useful source of authority in her husband’s absence, but ultimately powerless.
…
Pregnancy and babies, to me, signaled the dehumanization of women. Once women became mothers, they were trapped forever, at the mercy of their husbands. I looked at pregnant bellies and I saw swollen bee stings inflicted by aggressive overlords. In darker moments, I imagined myself committing suicide if I became pregnant. Abortion would save my life (a desperate realization that shocked me a little bit), but I would be cast out on my face. Pregnancy therefore looked like the end of the road. A death sentence. Once the wedding bells rang, I was a soul without a body in the eyes of the church. [emphasis in original]
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Knowing the mind of God
I am regularly amazed that some religious folk claim to know the mind of their god. I’m specifically referring to the Judeo-Christian god at this point, I have had insufficient exposure to adherents of other religions to know if there any people who claim to speak on behalf of their god/s (though given people I wouldn’t be surprised).
The god of the Old and New Testament clearly states in the Bible that:
8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
33 Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!
34 For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?
Who knows enough to give him advice?35 And who has given him so much
that he needs to pay it back?
So clearly the mind of at the very least the Christian god is unknowable, inscrutable and unlike any adherent’s own mind, and yet so many people claim to know and even act as if they know, exactly what their god wants.
I’ve always been confused by what god is actually like (even when I was a Christian), because the Bible is rather contradictory about that, god was jealous, loving, peace, all knowing, all powerful, all present, the light, vengeful, etc (nice list here), so clearly knowing what god thought about on any particular topic was impossible.
The Bible itself is contradictory, condemning queer people in one part and then celebrating them in others (the story of Ruth, the story of David and Saul), and then Jesus who allegedly lived during the Roman empire when same-sex relationships were part of society. Nowhere did Jesus (who was allegedly the son of God) actually condemn same-sex relationships, even though they would have been practised by the Roman occupiers of Jerusalem. Those who point to the Bible to condemn queer relationships tend to focus on two main parts of the Bible, Leviticus (while ignoring ALL the other parts of Leviticus that no longer apply in this modern day and age), and the various letters of Paul (while ignoring his other commentary, for the most part, on the role of women both in the church and in relationships, and how the end times were imminent).
So I do not understand how lobbyists from the Australian [un]Christian Lobby, or how someone like Archbishop Peter Jensen can claim, or appear to claim, that they speak not only for themselves and their own fears about queer people, but for the deity they claim to believe in – the one who they should well know they cannot speak for.
If you believe in a deity of some description, I don’t really have a problem with your personal belief, but I do have a big problem with any attempt to shift that personal belief onto the lives of other people because you believe that your deity would be much happier if segments of the population lived miserable and unhappy lives. I have big problems when people’s personal beliefs are treated like the be-all and end-all of all ethical and moral existence, so that in effect the faith you ascribe to is the only source of morality in the world. I have a big problem when personal belief is used to restrict the human rights of other people – because you believe your god (who you cannot know the thoughts of) would be much happier if queer people couldn’t marry their partner of choice.
As I have, and as many other people have, pointed out before – religion has been used to defend slavery, defend not granting equal rights for women, defend racism, defend arranged marriages, defend refusing birth control, defend not providing abortion services, etc – and these things have slowly passed and changed as society has matured.
And as society continues to mature, more will change. Queer people will get the equal rights they seek, and the versus in the Bible that condemn them will be assigned to irrelevancy just as most of Leviticus is now. This change is inevitable and is the right thing to do. Those who cling to homophobia are frightened of change, and I can understand that, but if you profess to love the god of the Bible, then you have to trust that change happens for a reason and god’s inscrutable plan is the way forward. That the god you believe in is in control (because that’s what you believe) and that you shouldn’t fight his/her wishes.
I don’t believe in any god, I believe in doing the right thing because it is right not because I will get some future reward or punishment otherwise. I believe in granting human rights to all regardless of their sexual orientation, race, religion, political opinion, place of origin, etc. My rights will not be diminished by other people having access to the same rights. There is not a finite amount of human rights in the world, which would mean that granting some to a disadvantaged group will take away any of my own rights (it might remove some of my privilege but that’s another story).
It’s time that those who campaign so tirelessly against the equal rights of others and claim that they are doing it for their god, sat down, took a deep breath, and considered whether or not they are acting for their own personal interests and whether they are indeed following the precepts of their own god. Time to examine the plank in their eye before checking the splinter in mine, as well as considering how Jesus treated the disadvantaged of his own time as a lesson on how perhaps you should treat the disadvantaged of today.
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I support Marriage Equality
I also support “equal marriage” and “same-sex marriage”. I do not support “gay marriage” because that excludes the bisexuals, trans* and intersex individuals that want to marry a same-sex partner. I am also really sick of reading about “gay marriage” in Fairfax publications. Today’s two articles:
MP changes view on gay marriage
…
Despite Mr Gray’s change of heart, it remains almost certain that the vote on two private members bills seeking to legalise gay marriage will fail.
The opposition has banned a conscience vote and all MPs and senators have been told to vote against gay marriage.
…
One member of the Left – who holds a marginal seat supports gay marriage but has yet to decide how he will vote – was eager for the vote to be held sooner given the level of emotion it was sparking on both sides of the debate. [emphasis added]
and the second:
Labor to fast-track gay marriage vote
Labor is trying to bring gay marriage to a parliamentary vote sooner rather than later — probably in August — to prevent it diverting attention from other issues and causing the government continuing grief. [emphasis added]
And over the past few days:
Tuesday: Gay marriage debate brought forward
Monday: Greens want conscience vote on gay marriage & Churches lay down law on gay marriage as vote nears & House to debate gay marriage bills
Sunday: Wong says gay marriage will come & MPs abused over gay marriage & Pro-gay marriage MPs get hate mail
I’ve already written about how “gay and lesbian” is not an umbrella term, clearly this is something that Fairfax have failed to grasp, and it is very disappointing. Every time Fairfax writes about “gay marriage” they are excluding bisexuals, trans* and intersex people who want to marry their same-sex partner. Every time Fairfax writes about “gay marriage” they participate in the continued erasure of bisexuals, trans* and intersex people and their same-sex relationships. Every time Fairfax writes about “gay marriage” bisexuals, trans* and intersex people see another article that is not for them and they potentially lose audience.
The most disappointing thing is that many of the quotes used in the articles above from various institutions and individuals, refers to “same-sex marriage” or “marriage equality” or even “equal marriage”. It’s Fairfax that are going out of their way to refer to the campaign for marriage equality as “gay marriage” not the people or institutions they are speaking to. This really makes no sense to me.
I don’t buy the “well it’s shorter than ‘marriage equality'” because they’re not limited in characters. I don’t buy the “well everyone knows what ‘gay marriage’ is but the other terms are confusing” argument, because the individuals and institutions they’re quoting are using “same-sex marriage” etc, and clearly people understand what that is. I honestly believe that Fairfax are being lazy and cannot be bothered being inclusive. This does effectively mean that Fairfax are not interested in maintaining an audience of bisexual, trans* and intersex individuals, because they’re not catering to them. Now I know Fairfax can do better, and I’m happy to take them through an inclusive of the bisexual, trans* and intersex community 101 if necessary, though I will not speak on behalf of the trans* or intersex community, but can happily point them at resources.
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All the linkspam in the world
This is going to be rather epic, because I’ve been busy, and because I caught up with my RSS feed while I was visiting family and so I have many articles which I found interesting. And since I can’t share them on Google Reader anymore, everyone else gets to enjoy them here.
Continue reading All the linkspam in the world
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Letter to the editor of The Australian
I am very disappointed and upset that I was so badly misrepresented in the article written by Ean Higgins and published in The Australian 21 May 2012. There are factual inaccuracies and inferences in the article which I would like corrected.
The headline was a deliberate attempt to mislead readers into thinking my submission to the senate supported polyamorous marriage when in fact it did no such thing. My submission, which has been publicly viewable on my personal blog since 12 March 2012, was in favour of equal marriage for same sex attracted couples, similar to many other submissions in favour. There was no mention of polyamory, and in my discussions with Ean Higgins I believed that I was clear that my submission was not in favour of introducing polyamory, but in favour of marriage equality for same sex attracted couples. I am not championing polyamorous marriage.
Furthermore, I do not speak for the poly community in Australia and any suggestion that I do so is a complete fabrication.
I would like these corrections to be noted by The Australia as the inference that I am lobbying for polyamory to the current Senate Committee on Marriage Equality is both factually incorrect and not representative of my submission.
