Fairness - The Commentary

When in 2015 Michelangelo Signorile  published his warning :  It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality , no matter how accurate his analysis was, he had little idea that even worse would be the election of a sociopathic egomaniac as president and a Vice President who is the poster boy for everything that is anti-LGBTQ. Back then  I said  that it was the must-read of the year. The way forward, he pointed out, was no longer to be wishy-washy liberals who thought that cookies and milk and the singing of Kumbaya would make everyone like us. “In fact,” Signorile wrote, “it’s time for us to be intolerant – intolerant of all forms of homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry against LGBT people. People often use the phrase ‘let’s agree to disagree’ when they respect but do not share the different positions of their friends or colleagues. But it’s time that all of us who support LGBT equality no longer agree to disagree on full ...

“White privilege.” “Male privilege.” Heterosexual privilege.” “Class privilege.” “Able-bodied privilege.” “Christian privilege.” Though the concept of the privilege of the dominant group that’s based on culturally accepting their characteristics as the norm and others as deviants from a norm that’s somehow considered more natural, American, and human  has been around for decades , its very mention to a person in those dominant groups often raises the level of a discussion’s heat.  People not a part of those dominant groups are regularly, and often silently, aware of what those phrases mean to their daily lives, but the dynamics of our culture’s intersection of the categories we use to divide people complicates the discussion. And when government or other institutions act to mitigate privilege, those actions often evoke complaints of reverse discrimination. We see this in the stereotypical attacks on affirmative action – the  often misunderstood  but most co...

“If they just didn’t have to flaunt it.” “Why do they throw it in our faces?” “Can’t they just act like Americans?” “I like the ones who fit in with the rest of us.” “Why do we have to have all this Pride month propaganda?” All these complaints are akin to the  recent statement  by a Missouri lawmaker who has a long record of opening his mouth to change feet: “When you look at the tenets of religion, of the Bible, of the Quran, of other religions, there is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.” The complaints reflect where anti-LGBTQ people who’ve convinced themselves they’re not are and how those who still raise money off of anti-LGBTQ crusades get the attention of their followers. They’re in sync with anti-LGBTQ claims that the goal of “the militant gays” (you know, like some kind of mafia) is to destroy “traditional” American culture or some part thereof. It’s also another example of what members of dominant groups say about any outsiders...

The politics and administration of the Trump phenomenon are a full-blown affirmation of what’s now called “toxic masculinity.”  Observers point ou t that it’s both an appeal to men (mostly white) who feel that their and America’s masculinity is threatened as well as a glorification of the masculine gender conditioning that’s been part of American society for generations. Calling it “toxic masculinity,” though, makes it sound as if it’s something other than what it actually is: the full living out of a generations-old American male gender role that many thought was waning. It’s none other than our culture’s dominant definition of masculinity out in full force. There are many elements of this role such as the putting down of anything judged feminine or just not masculine enough while promoting a female role that makes women trophies and support personnel for the macho ego. Those elements have been called sexist and misogynist for they invoke the stereotypes of frat boy referenc...

We want to believe that everyone means what they say. We want to believe that a little more educating and presentation of the facts convinces people.  We think that explaining ourselves over and over again and spending a lot of energy to understand the right-wing will help us get along. We’re invested in the idea that showing them we care about their views – even claiming we “respect” irrational views – will win them over. And when these things don’t work, we blame ourselves, our lack of listening skills, our lack of empathy, our neglect to spend enough time, or our failure to articulate clearly what we mean.  We treat ourselves as the guilty party  in the debates and actually, though we’d never admit it to ourselves, end up looking down on right-wingers and their dupes as if they’re mere victims of ignorance, misinformation or illogic, not as actors who make choices and cling to their prejudices no matter how we argue.  No wonder that the right-wing thinks...

If Republican operatives  like Frank Luntz hadn’t already perfected the ability to manipulate people  (“What matters most in politics is personality. It's not issues; it's not image.”) so that they’d regularly vote against their own interests before, we now have an administration that is thoroughly experienced in the manipulation of emotions over logic and the triggering of all that will keep its enemies off guard. The President himself has a history of being an egotistic, self-promoting conman and reality TV entertainer, and the real mastermind behind his initiatives,  Steve Bannon , came from the leadership of the Breitbart right-wing news-manipulating organization. Thus, the first days of this administration have been marked by immediate bold executive actions that have been paced to hold the media’s attention and  make people reel  from their rapid-fire timing. Their strategy is brilliantly meant: to make the President look as if he’s a real take-cha...

If the Trump presidential campaign’s success didn’t convince people, then nothing will. Liberal people want to cling to the belief that just rationally explaining something to a right-winger and reciting policy proposals ought to convince them. We have an undying faith in education as the presentation of information. We really want to believe that if human beings just hear the facts, they’ll come around. We think that it’s some misunderstanding or failure of logic that causes people to “vote against their self-interest.” And we’re aghast that people actually accept that we’re in a “post-fact” world. It’s easy, then, to conclude that people who vote for those who use them are just ignorant of something they should know. So, we expect that enlightening them to their lack is the solution. There’s a moveable middle that will actually listen to such argumentation, a middle, by the way, that seems to be shrinking because of decades of Republican right-wing consultants’ work to fram...

The fact that our president-elect appealed to both class and white racism in this election is beyond any doubt –  it’s all on video . Yet, there are those who want to defend him as if the way he used race is somehow separate from the question of whether or not he really is a racist. They’re really actually defending themselves – they don’t want to admit that they’d vote for an open racist. They don’t want to accept their personal responsibility for the resulting  rise in crimes  against Muslims, people of color, and LGBT people that has followed the permission their chosen candidate has thereby given for people to act as open bigots. They'd prefer to deny that they themselves hold enough racism to give someone who appeals to white racism a pass, as if playing on racism, xenophobia, and homophobia isn’t important to them. They don’t want to think of how their votes evidence their lack of empathy for anyone but themselves. Both class and race figured at a basic leve...