It's delightful, it's delicious, it's dlevy!

marc4marc:

I am curious about access to the word faggot and who you think has it.

—marc4marc

I think faggots have access to the word faggot.

It’s interesting that you should ask this on a day when this cute lil’ .gif set has crossed my dash about 5 times. I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s identity here but the thing is I have known so many boys like Ezra Miller in my past. So many hippie-ish, anti-capitalist, Food Not Bombs, punk-ish, crusty boys who identified as ‘queer’ or ‘bi-sensual’ or whatever non-commital persona that would allow them to add some much needed ‘edge’ and foster what they perceived to be an increase in status amongst a group of mostly queer, mostly non-white, mostly poor people. They would get drunk and make out with boys at parties, some of them took it further and allowed themselves to be on the receiving end of a blow-job.

I don’t know what Ezra Miller’s sex life is like, and I don’t really care. What I care about is the extreme privilege that is invoked when someone appropriates the identity of an oppressed group. What does someone like Miller know about being queer? What does he know about a confining gender binary? What does he know about getting the shit kicked out of him physically but also mentally and emotionally and spiritually for his entire life? What does he know about having constant suicidal thoughts? What does he know about not having the OPTION to identify as ‘queer’ or ‘gay’ or ‘tranny’ but instead having that label forced on him before he even understands who he is? What does he know about watching the extreme self-hatred that exists in our community destroy the lives of his friends and family through drug-abuse and alcoholism? What does he know about being scared for his friend’s safety, about being scared for his own safety EVERY SINGLE DAY? What does he know about that life?

(Can we also talk about who has access to a fucking hair brush? Like, I can almost smell the essential oils he’s wearing through my computer screen.)

Sexuality is fluid and gender is a social construct and BLAH BLAH BLAH. I don’t live my fucking life in some magical queer Narnia where everyone is free from imperialism and colonization and ugly things like oppression and privilege do not exist. I would like to live there, but I don’t. NO ONE DOES. 

The idea of transcendence is used to obscure oppression. - Jenny Holzer

I’m ALL FOR people exploring and experimenting with their sexuality but I am NOT ABOUT a sexual identity that can be put on and taken off at whim like some thrifted cardigan. If you do not live that faggot life, you do not wear that faggot crown.

—bendriverxxx

So all of this is A+ to me in a lot of ways and interesting but I messaged Ben and said, I’m gonna need you to marry me. I’m also going to reblog this and add an enumerated category if that’s ok with you. and Ben messaged me back and said, Be my guest bb girl.  which is relevant because what I want to talk about is relational positioning. 

You know: “allies.”

Because Ben talks about it but maybe he doesn’t talk about it. And I need to talk about it. In part because there’s been a lot of talk about “the place of allies” flying around my dash lately and most of it I want to give the side-eye because it strikes me as straight up ungrateful bullshit. As Ben says, I don’t live in Narnia and as a queer man of color I have learned that sometimes I need a white person there to say what I want to say (need to say) with their voice because people will listen to it. But other parts have struck me as valid but I couldn’t figure out what was resonating with me. I think what I’m prepared to land on (for now) is how frustrating it is for people of the dominant identity landscape to ape part of my identity in an effort to be cool to me. 

You know: “slumming.” 

I realized the allies that I am mad about are the ones who are slumming it. Who are using me as their Brooklyn summer, their trip to Harlem, their 14 hours in Tijuana, their one time in eastern Europe, their 4 years of Spanish classes, their paper they wrote one time for that really cool professor. 

I am mad at the allies who use my identity as a positionality—use my skin as a place to momentarily occupy so that they can get a little dirty for the boardroom. I think it’s important to understand that identity matrixes represent concrete positions to the dominant narrative and that part of its path to dominating us is briefly inhabiting us. This is the secret lesson of the Alien franchise—the terrifying thing that will come to hunt you will be born only because of its ability to gestate in you. 

So I want to refract: bad allies are born from places where we have allowed them to inhabit. Maybe we need to start refusing entrance.

I am really tired of the who’s queer enough to be queer game. And the “I know people who remind me of this person whom I don’t know but Imma gonna judge him anyway” game.

I get it. We get tired. We get frustrated. But calling on the hierarchy of oppression to silence someone else’s self-professed identity? Fuck that shit.

(via frequentlyfemme)