Mississippi, armpit of America

You remember when you saw Brokeback Mountain and (hopefully) thought about how sad it was that Jake Gyllenhall got murdered for being into dick?  Well, add fifty years and a decided lack of community growth, and you get today's story:









This is Marco MacMillian.  He was running an innovative mayoral campaign as perhaps the first out candidate for such an office in Mississippi, and his body was found along a riverbed yesterday.  It appears that his car was involved in an accident, but his body was taken elsewhere.  Now the case is a homicide investigation.  It seems clear from the few available details that this was a targeted murder.

Now, we can spend some time guessing as to why this upstanding citizen was murdered, but we don't need to spend much.

So, for all of the readers who voiced anger with my portrayal of the gay situation in Mississippi, just so you know, this shit is where I'm coming from.  Hate crimes are totally Mississippi's bag.

Rapt Genius

I need to throw a little more love to Rap Genius.  I understand I'm the first current release author to explain my stuff on the site.  I just thought their shit was good for thought experiments; I had no clue I was the first living writer to think that! 

I hope Frank Ocean explains my shit.

Props, Maboo and RapGenius.

Word to your Mother

So, lately, I've gotten a bit of hate(r) mail, and it wasn't what I expected.  I've spoken publicly now for about a month on what I'll shorthand as "the danger of the acronym."  Basically, my argument is that by creating separate labels that may or may not accurately describe differences, we're making equality harder vis a vis anyone who doesn't want a part of the acronym.  Apparently, this has really set off persons who identify with the "QGQIAA" (queer.genderqueer.intersex.asexual...) segment of the burgeoning "LGBTQGQIAA," which is damned ironic since, if I have to pick a letter to represent myself, I'm taking the "Q" over the "B" (this despite the fact that I enjoy both cock and pussy).  It's also ironic because I wrote years ago about how offensively our society treats intersex persons, and explained why that was probably a result of our attempts to frame sexuality with reference to gender where societies of the past (and some in the present) draw sexual distinctions in other ways (e.g., class, power relations, age, etc.).  So before you yell at me for excluding your category, please understand what I'm really saying about this:

Everything we think about who we are ultimately results in some part from the words we have at our disposal to describe ourselves (remember, no words for "heterosexual" or "homosexual" in any language we can find until 1869).  When we have inadequate words to describe what we feel, who we are, what we do, we have to sacrifice some parts of ourselves for existing words or amalgamate those inadequate words to try to make something more accurate.  I think this is what we're doing with the ever-expanding acronym, but it's counterproductive! By giving each part of the acronym a more and more specific meaning when we expand it, we ensure that it excludes more people who feel queer in one way or another because they don't feel they fit neatly into any of the extant categories.

I'm not the only person making this argument.  A recent TED talk by an economist dives into the problem too.  Watch, as I summarize:

Keith Chen grew up speaking Chinese and English and noted the different treatment of tense and the way the language he was speaking at the time forced him to think about himself, his family, and his surroundings in different ways.  He wonders how profound that effect is.  He applies this hypothesis to saving behaviors based on a language's portrayal of the coterminous or distant nature of the future.  He finds, even when controlling for factors like geography, class, etc., that people engage in notably different behaviors depending on how their language frames the future as distant (where one might favor present rewards) or equal to the present (where one might favor saving).  Lo and behold, people speaking futureless languages save more.

This same phenomenon is working on us when we say "gay" or "straight" or "bi" or "gender queer."  This is because, before we pick any of these labels to describe ourselves, we naturally consider whether we do or do not fit into the constraints of the word's definition.  We do not consider what else we may be without relation to the word.  We also instruct the public to consider us differently from the "masses" by virtue of our shiny new label.  But, we're not different.  Everybody's just a spot on the same spectrum.  By coining the words "heterosexual" and "homosexual," we formed personality categories that could be criminalized.  Only sexual behaviors had been criminalized before, not sexualities.  Behaviors are easier to keep private, at least, but, more importantly, they have to be discussed in context with specific human circumstances. 

Now, by expanding the acronym, we're demanding that people who don't feel queer think of themselves as even more different than those who identify as queer in some way, partly because now we give them even more specific things to think about not being (ex: "I'm not into men exclusively, ugh, I'm not queer"; "My sex organs are totally normal, I'm not intersex!").  But, then, what about the boy who likes to cross-dress but feels mostly attracted to women?  If he's willing to adopt the "GC" of the acronym, he must separate from heterosexual men; if he refuses to adopt, he loses the ability to identify with other men who like to dress as women, gay or not.  We fuck that kid over with the acronym.

So, before you yell at me in a bar, or send me some scathing email about being exclusionist, at least recognize that my argument is intended to help your ass out.