I have been following their Twitter account for a while and was thinking about dumping them because their take on things is so U.S. focused that I find their tweets a) boring and b) really fucking irritating. The other day their twitter feed picked up their "Word of the Gay" (another thing that has been trying my patience) as "Ginger beer". They had poorly defined this as being insulting when it's just cockney rhyming slang for "queer" and as such to be seen as empowering and reclaimed if one wishes. So, I go off to their site to post a pissy correction and I notice their site slugline:
Queers United: The activist blog Uniting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersexual, Asexual community & Allies in the fight for equality.
I mean, come the fuck on. Where exactly is the "Intersexual community"? Or the "Asexual community"? What legislation or media endorsed, society wide discrimination exists for the "asexual community"? What exactly does being "asexual" mean anyway? Supposedly this image below helps you identify whether you are "asexual" or not.
Whether this is a real thing or not, I really don't give a shit; but what I do what to know is what "asexuality" has to do with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender political activism and why there should be one unifying cause for them all. Maybe I am just turning into a mardy old cow, but it seems to me that the whole Western gay civil and human rights movement has been hijacked by idiots. Rather than campaign for the rights of LGBT folk in places where homosexuality is outlawed and queers face an increasingly harsh and oppressed existence, people jibber on about issues that have no political or even sociological basis for activism.
The whole hysteria on Twitter over AmazonFail is indicative of just how far wrong Western LGBT activists have gone. In this case people were outraged and mobilised with amazing speed over the supposed discrimination of LGBT communities by Amazon. The story remains unclear but it seems that Amazon's algorithm for tagging books as "adult" or not was either hijacked or messed up. As a result thousands of books tagged as "gay" or "lesbian" disappeared from the bestseller rankings and did not show up in searches. Amazon customer services at first said this was policy in order for the site to remain "family friendly". People were annoyed and outraged that a book with zero sexual content but merely talking about homosexuality would be deemed as "adult" and, quite rightly kicked up a fuss. Then Amazon spokespeople said that there had been a "glitch" and that the books were unintentionally tagged, i.e. there was no policy. This was not the end of the outrage however and many people still maintained a boycott against Amazon and suggested that the algorithm was homophobic.
Now, I am all for highlighting corporate irresponsibility and boycotts of big business whose activities impact on the human and civil rights of communities. I urge everyone to join the BDS movement against Israel (- reports show that this tactic is working in Europe). However, there is something rather bizarre about calling for a boycott of a company that doesn't have a policy to - or indeed a persistent, inadvertent mechanism for - discriminating against LGBT people. What is equally bizarre is that the discriminating practice in question - poor visibility of LGBT folk - is something that is practiced by every major television and news network out there. Demonstrative homosexual activity is non-existent on mainstream television here as I am sure it is in the U.S. Sure, there are gay characters in soaps and dramas, but you rarely see them kiss or display the samekind of affection and intimacy as heterosexual characters.
Strangest of all though is the reaction to Amazon as though it is a state run utility or indeed a Nation State in and of itself. The victory dance of activists over the issue hitting the mainstream media within 24 hours was understandable; issues such as these often take months to work their way into wider media psyche, so this was a real achievement. It's testament to the power of social media like Twitter, obviously, and it all occurred at a time when Nafta Flu was incubating in a pig so it was good enough to make the news.
But a tiny bit of perspective allows us to see this for what it really was: at best a corporate entity bowing to the purchasing power of queers and their allies. At worst? A trite little distraction that allows people to feel safe and smug about victory in a battle that never was. Maybe I'm being cynical - perhaps people will draw strength from this and go forth and fight state sponsored discrimination and intolerance. Or perhaps people just don't recognise or understand the difference between fighting transnational businesses and fighting sovereign states any more and think one is as good as the other.
(Incidentally, this is by far and away THE WORST flow chart I have ever seen. What precisely is the point of all those boxes when it seems that the ONLY criteria needed to define asexuality is whether a person experiences sexual attraction?! Idiocy!)
No comments:
Post a Comment