Savage Loved
Friend of the Blog Matt from Denver tipped me off that Dan Savage had responded personally in a post on Slog to a comment I left on another post on Slog about one group's youtube antics boycotting their local Target.
A little back-story here. One of my pet peeves is people conflating "queer" with "gay", and the video pushed that button by demanding that Target take back a contribution to an anti-gay politician and give it to "queer youth" instead. In my comment I was trying to point out that many self-identified "queer youth" are actually anti-"gay" themselves.
I had actually wanted to blog about the issue a couple of weeks ago when I read a ltte in the Weekly Dig from one very outspoken local queer youth by the name of Jason Lydon...
I am really excited that Cara Bayles did this article ("Radiqueers,"News to Us, 6.9.10), but one of the pieces that is missing is an analysis of white supremacy culture and the role it plays in both mainstream and, unfortunately, some radical queer politics.... which I found totally toxic (and not a very nuanced — which is to say true — picture of what's happening in Boston).The dismantling of white institutions and white structures of power is vitalto any real queer movement for liberation. Here in Boston, we see white supremacy in white gay men and white lesbians gentrifying certain neighborhoods in Boston, pricing out low-income people and people of color. Queers in Dorchester, South Boston, Back Bay and Jamaica Plain have an important role in challenging the ways gentrification happens.We should not be creating "safer" spaces for ourselves by taking the homes of other people. Pricing people out of the city is part of white supremacy culture. Take a look at more resources here: cwsworkshop.org/resources/WhitePrivilege.html.
I kept putting off writing about it because to do so would mean publicly revealing that I still occasionally read the Weekly Dig, and there are personal reasons I wanted to avoid that admission.
Anyway, in Savage style Dan went right for the jugular. The title of the post: "The 'Queer Youth' That You Know Are Total Morons."
Although I'm not a big name-caller, I couldn't have said it better myself.
If you had explained it like that I doubt Dan wouldn't had a problem with it. But you failed to differentiate between 'queer' and 'gay', which are synonyms in a lot of people's minds, nor did you say that you did not agree with the comment (at least, in Savage's truncated c & p of your comment).
But yes, I agree with you that queer youth that hold that view are ridiculous. And also that they sound like they need to move past first-year gender studies and actually find out what words mean.
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Whatevs. Savage ain't as smart as he is sassy. I like how he puts a pic of a black couple up and thinks that totally refutes the idea of classism or racism. Whatever you think about queer politics, that picture proves nothing.
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