Not really so weird
From commenter “AesopFan” on the thread about the two versions of the song “Fast Car”:
It is profoundly weird that people who claim to be standing up for gays and lesbians are actually the ones erasing the history and achievements of homosexual people.”
It does indeed seem weird, but it’s really not. It’s completely logical and is actually required for leftist activism on certain topics today. It the argument on the left is that bigotry has kept a certain group or groups down in a certain field, and that such bigotry continues to the present day, the existence of earlier achievements by too many members of that group undermines the argument. Oh, one or two might be allowed as stellar examples of success against all odds. But if there are more than those one or two, the whole edifice of the argument begins to collapse.
That phenomenon is also the impetus for the proliferation of fake hate crimes in the last decade or so, although that has a many-decades-long history as well (see Tawana Brawley, for example). Real persecution and real hate crimes – which of course have actually existed and were more numerous historically – don’t need manufacturing.
But the narrative of continuing systemic oppression requires a steady diet of hatred directed at the victim group. If there isn’t enough evidence of that hatred, the evidence must be faked.
Neo, your analysis is IMHO exactly right. I think that in many groups the members are either knaves or fools. The knaves manipulate the fools (and the wider world) to make money, gain status, win fame. The fools are driven by emotion (addicts?) and that is motive enough. Given this construction, the whole point of these movements is not to WIN, it’s to STRUGGLE. Against almost (but not quite) impossible odds. Where the urgent and unrelenting demand is to ACT CATEGORICALLY RIGHT NOW. It is cult-like behavior, it excludes nuance or uncertainty, and when one obstacle is overcome, there is no time to waste, the next must be confronted.
In the case of LGBTQ+ we see the apparatus of excitement and control being shifted from one sub-group to the next in order to keep the game going. God forbid that there would ever be an honest accounting for progress, it would just undermine the argument they must make continually.
In the case of LGBTQ+ we see the apparatus of excitement and control being shifted from one sub-group to the next in order to keep the game going.
I’m amused by the progression of the alphabet soup contained in LGBTQ+. The plus should cover new additions, but no. So in recent months I’ve seen LGBTQIA, or LGBTQIIA, or LGBTQIA2P, or LGBTQIIA2P. I like to befuddle people slightly by rattling off the entire list verbatim.
Neo notes that “the existence of earlier achievements by too many members of that group undermines the argument.” The flip side of that coin, though, is the attempt by many gay and lesbian historians to recruit (if that word is okay) people from the past as examples of Alphabet People. Almost any person who was celibate or took formal vows of celibacy will do: the list includes Joan of Arc; John Henry Newman and other Tractarians who left the Church of England with him after 1845; Isaac Newton (never married); King Charles XII of Sweden (ditto); and Frederick the Great of Prussia (married in name only; saw his wife only once a year for the sake of appearances and died childless); James Buchanan (never married; lived in the same rooming house with William King, Franklin Pierce’s VP, who was known around Washington as “Miss King”); . . . and on and on.
Since Owen @ 3:58 notes the way that that the Alphabet Tribe shifts attention from one subgroup to another “to keep the game going,” I expect the next subgroup to claim the spotlight will be the bisexuals, who often claim to be oppressed by both gays and straights. Here we have another group of royal switch-hitters, starting with Alexander the Great and moving along through the Roman emperor Elagabalus to Louis XIII of France (took 23 years of marriage to produce the future Louis XIV) and James I of England (fathered 7 children but had at least three male “favorites” during his reign); and in recent times, George V’s fourth son, the Duke of Kent, uncle of Elizabeth II, who eventually married but also had affairs with Noel Coward, Cecil Roberts, and the son of the Argentine ambassador to the UK. It’s time for the “Bis” to step up to the plate (baseball metaphor intentional).
On the YouTube Podcast: “Making The Argument with Nick Freitas” resident historian ‘Christian’ has pointed out that identity politics’ victimology is much better served by gender than by race. Once the realization is gained that the radical left is utterly committed to the destruction of traditional western cultural values, its easy to see that racial grievance is inherently limited by the # of voters affected, whereas ‘gender dysphoria’ can be inculcated into entire generations. Men and women of every race. It’s literally satanic in its diabolicalness.
George V’s fourth son, the Duke of Kent, uncle of Elizabeth II, who eventually married but also had affairs with Noel Coward, Cecil Roberts, and the son of the Argentine ambassador to the UK.
==
He married at an earlier age (31) than two of his three surviving brothers and had more children than any of his siblings. And how many of these ‘affairs’ have period documentation?
Interesting thoughts here.
Just to clarify, I was quoting from a “spiked!” post.
I’ve seen that connection made by other pundits as well.
Because homophobic bigotry had such massive negative effects on the careers of Freddie Mercury, George Michael, and Elton John.
And maybe Melissa Ethridge and k.d. lange. But I can’t remember.
Claims of who was and wasn’t LGBTQ+ remind me of empires fighting over borderlands. Gays and lesbians claim those who may have been bisexual or asexual or celibate in an effort to expand the realm and give it greater cultural weight. Once heterosexuality was the default assumption. Now it seems that those who don’t provide clear evidence of heterosexuality are assumed to be homosexual or to fit into another LGBTQ category.
Intersectionality provides a way for everyone who isn’t White, male, and (proven to be) heterosexual to claim to be oppressed, even though they weren’t oppressed in the same way. One group is physically oppressed, enslaved even. Others were marginalized or excluded to different degrees and for different reasons. The idea that there was and is one oppressor, one enemy, keeping everyone else down gives unity and strength to the movement, and the association of different kinds of marginality with the most brutal forms of oppression inspires the movement and gives the struggle for spoils a moralistic veneer.
Neo wrote “the existence of earlier achievements by too many members of that group undermines the argument. Oh, one or two might be allowed as stellar examples of success against all odds. But if there are more than those one or two, the whole edifice of the argument begins to collapse.”
My 1st thought was of a racial aspect, so forgive being off topic. But it burns me how they treat successful blacks who are not leftists.
Justice Thomas, always. And Ben Carson. And a newish recent target: Senator Tim Scott.
Somehow, their fabulous, very hard-earned success just means “the exception proves the rule” of white privilege.
Shaking my head…
I think George Michael and Freddie Mercury were past their prime when their homosexual aspect got to be a matter of public record. Liberace was contentious to people who called attention to his mincing (I seem to recall lawyers sending demand letters on his behalf), but he made good coin off of it. Then you had people whose homosexuality wasn’t known to the public but was known to people who hired them or worked with them. (Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, Cole Porter).
==
Re: homosexuality
Here’s an area where I think normie Americans might take a bow.
I remember coning home from college and going to a friend’s house in the early 70s. His family was being visited by a seriously gay as a goose guy, who was my friend’s second cousin or something.
That family was staunch Catholic, who grew up poor and still had trouble making ends meet, but they were so friendly and loving to the gay.
Conservatives fought gay marriage for reasons I found reasonable, but I think gays won the battle for mainstream acceptance well before that.
It was sort of like civil rights and long hair. Deep down Americans knew it wasn’t right to make a big deal about those and they let it go.
Which is more than I can say for the scorched earth approach we see today from the Woke crowd