I usually do a good job of not letting the gender debate get to me emotionally but, lately, I am angry. I am angry that people who champion the elimination of women’s spaces and the indoctrination of children claim to be doing it on my behalf—for the “2SLGTBQIA+” as the acronym is written in Canada. While I feel no attachment to this acronym (in fact, I hate everything it stands for politically and philosophically) I am an “L” and I am swept up in it every time it is invoked.
Never have I been more frustrated than at reactions to last week’s protests against indoctrination in Canadian schools. These protests were framed by the Canadian media and by far-left Canadian politicians as hateful, ultra-conservative, and anti-2SLGTBQIA+.
“The rise of hate towards the 2SLGBTQI+ community is deeply alarming,” bloviated federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh on X.
“Transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia have no place in this country,” simpered Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
And Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley came along with the final nail in the coffin of my patience: “To the queer and trans kids being targeted by today’s protests, I say this — you are not alone.”
All I want to scream at them is, “You are making people hate us! You are using and stretching the goodwill accrued by the gay rights movement to its absolute breaking point for your own political gain and you don’t care that by connecting us to radical queer activists you are tossing the rest of us under the bus.”
To be clear, I know that there are plenty of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-identified people who do feel represented by these woke progressives because they are woke progressives themselves. It is a disappointing state of affairs, but it is the reality of the situation.
The thing is that I don’t pretend to speak for those people. But they do not offer me the same courtesy. When they speak of the gay or “2SLGTBQIA+” community they pretend to speak for all of us. They subsume us all, and it doesn’t seem to occur to them that any same-sex attracted or even transsexual people like my friend Lois could possibly think differently.
But we do exist and we do think differently. Some of us have not been captured by the constructivist, postmodern madness of queer theory. We know that humans can’t change sex and we know that it is appalling to brainwash kids into thinking that they can.
We are not perpetual victims and we don’t try to control people’s speech, beliefs, and thoughts. We ask to be allowed to live our lives how we see fit while respecting how people want to live theirs. And—speaking purely for myself here—I feel grateful to live in a society where I have been able to live my life as an openly same-sex attracted woman with my partner of 16 years.
I am not oppressed, and I believe things were very good until queer activists started making insane demands on the rest of society.
The “live and let live” attitude prevailed until they started targeting children. Destroying women’s sports and spaces was one thing, but that had been happening for decades without the level of public outrage we are seeing now that people are aware of how children are being targeted with sexualization and indoctrination onto gender ideology and queer theory.
And now comes the worst part—people who are waking up to what’s going on and starting to fight back are being painted as “anti-gay” or “anti-LGBT.” Think about how crazy that is for a second: they are angry about the sexualization of children and are being told that makes them anti-gay. The messaging from the woke progressive side is that to be pro-gay is to be pro-sexualization of children.
Their abusive, incessant forced-teaming is fueling a backlash against regular LGB & T people who have been getting along fine with the rest of society, and my anger is directed solely at the people who are pulling this stunt. At a certain point, I can’t blame a parent who doesn’t understand the ins and outs of political and philosophical divisions in the alphabet community and takes the queer activists at face value and considers us all to be in the same boat, targeting their children.
But I am an eternal optimist. There are many people who do know that we aren’t all like that and who appreciate those of us who are willing to speak out more than ever. In stark contrast to what is happening today, the days of gay activism where the main message was that we just want to be free to love who we love now seem like the good ol’ days. I get constant messages of support and reassurance and I firmly believe the majority still wants to live and let live. I am nothing if not always aware of everything and everyone I have to be grateful for.
At the same time, I know I am lucky to live where I live and to have the friends and family I am surrounded by. No matter what happens, I believe I will be fairly insulated from the brunt of the backlash. This is not the case for many LGB & T people both in the West and around the world. In fact, I believe what is happening in Uganda, with a recent and even tougher crackdown on homosexuality, is a direct reaction to unhinged Western queer activism.
This is why I think it is so important that we have examples of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-identified people who are not the pet queers of these woke progressives, and who do not let them get away with pretending to speak for all of us. We have to make it impossible for them to paint us all with the same brush. Many of us live in reality, many of us are not coming for other people’s children, and many of us are sick of being represented by activists and politicians who stand for the opposite of what we believe in. We matter too, and we won’t be silenced.
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Don’t Call me Queer
I have long been alarmed by the queer movement's hegemonic tendencies. In a number of spheres, including elite mainstream media, the word "queer" is rapidly displacing the term "lesbian," "gay" and "bisexual." In so doing, queer is disappearing lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.
Some of those who use "queer" as a synonym for "gay" or "LGB" in publications such as The New York Times are doing so merely to signal that they are with it. They remember a similar linguistic evolution, the one that went from "Negro" to “African American” to “Black” to "BIPOC." Every now and again, though, the way a writer uses the term "queer" reveals that he is a true believer and not a tourist.
For several years I have been saying that "queer" is neither a sexual orientation nor a gender identity but a scene. “Queer” is a scene that materialized around a set of learned attitudes, beliefs and postures embraced by terminally cool educated urban youth. Queer culture comes in at least three forms:
1. At its Judith-Butler worst, Queer Theory/Not Theory aims to topple all societal norms governing sex and sex roles (I refuse to say "gender"). This manifests itself, for example, in the indoctrination of K-12 students into gender-identity ideology in many American schools.
2. I hold a particular animus against the woke variety of queer that prevails at my university's version of what is known on other campuses as the LGBTQ center. (I am a gay senior citizen taking break from a post-bac degree program at Portland State University "PSU".)
You see, Portland State University's Queer Resource Center (QRC) recognizes only two populations and constituencies: Queer and Trans. The words "gay" and "lesbian" are not to be found in the Queer Resource Center's mission statement. In fact, unless my repeated searches missed it, "gay" appears on the QRC's site only when citing unaffiliated outside organizations' use of the word.
As if that weren't bad enough, the QRC's politics are stridently woke:
OUR PURPOSE
The Queer Resource Center supports queer and trans students at Portland State University to achieve their educational goals through advocacy, community, and celebration. The Queer Resource Center prioritizes a racial justice framework to improve campus climate through education, policy change, and campus-wide organizing.
OUR VISION
The Queer Resource Center strives to provide students with the support they need to persist to graduation through increasing equity and access for queer and trans students at Portland State University.
https://www.pdx.edu/queer-resource-center/
It is expected that a good Portland State University queer will model the values of diversity, inclusion, equity and anti-racism. Its activities calendar is a festival of intersectional racial, ethnic and gender identity group culture. If you're BIPOC and trans, well, the QRC is your home away from home. You’ll look in vain for a gay men’s board game night or any other programs or resources aimed at lesbian, bisexuals or gay students.
When I complained to the QRC about its erasure of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, the reply as good as admitted that the queer hegemony was intentional. In any case, they added, everyone there was fine with it. If I didn't like it, why, they even provided a helpful link to the complaint form.
It is deplorable that PSU’s only official organization for what used to be known as sexual minorities does not recognize or accommodate the university's mainstream gay, lesbian and bisexual students. That the QRC has so thoroughly embraced the leftist ideology of wokeness is unconscionable. It's as if PSU's French club expected students to support the ideology of Marine Le Pen and organized its programming around it.
Still, what else can one expect at a university whose president declared that his "highest priority is sustaining and amplifying [the school's] commitment to racial justice"? That's what PSU's ex-president Steven Percy, a generic-looking middle-aged white guy, announced some two and one-half years ago. During his tenure, the very first item on the list of strategic priorities of the Office of President was "Acting on Equity and Racial Justice." This means:
"We are fighting racism and advancing social justice across our campus by applying an antiracist lens to everything we do, measuring our progress and holding each other to account. We are taking steps to ensure success for all students, more equitable working conditions and an environment where people feel safe, belong, and prosper.” PSU’s new president has revised the web page where that text appears. It remains to be seen whether she will repudiate the illiberal ideology the statement reflects.
The situation at the Queer Resource Center validates the virus model of the spread of woke ideology within organizations. When president Percy sneezed, everyone came down with a case of diversity, equity and inclusion.
A note on the QRC’s home page says: “The [Student] Support Fund is currently on pause until Fall 2023 as the QRC staff restructures our policies and fundraise [sic].” Could it be that someone in the university’s administration has had it with the Center’s extreme queer- and trans-centeredness?
Anyone wishing to learn more about Portland State University's Queer Resource Center can visit its site by clicking on this link: https://www.pdx.edu/queer-resource-center/
3. As for lay queers, well they're just the latest iteration of insufferable, disaffected, leftist urban youth. How do you know who’s queer? Don’t worry. They will tell you. And if they don’t, their queer® uniform will.